Volume 15, Issue 1

At the end of the first century CE, we see a broad reception of Catullus, both members of the nobility and professional writers such as Pliny the Younger, Martial and Statius. Three significant aspects are to be considered: By reading and adapting Catullus, they can establish a connection with the great writers of the past. Given the rise of Latin literary canons in the first century, Catullus is a particularly suitable model to be imitated, and maybe even to surpass. The most important aspect, for amateurs and professionals alike, is the social representation inherent in the act of reception. The Catullan oeuvre mainly appeals to writers because parts of its poetic programme can also be found in the set of rules the nobility abides by and in their sociable institutions. The way Catullus celebrates amicitia in his poems becomes a model of self-representation for an elite which seeks to impress with cultural savoir-faire ; likewise, it serves to create consensus and self-assurance. Finally professional writers read and appropriate Catullus in like manner, with regard to social aspects. Catullan poetry serves as a way of displaying friendship, especially when looking at the interchange between poeta and patronus ; this is quite similar to amateur poetry in the style of Pliny. It is a means of establishing proximity, familiarity and community between socially unequal parties.

The article focuses on two selected instances that reveal in an especially poignant manner the methods employed by Aristides to tackle Plato’s attack on oratory in his speech In Defence of Rhetoric. First, it looks at how Aristides is at pains to turn Plato’s reproach in the Gorgias that rhetoric is not an art into an advantage by trying to transfer to oratory the idea of divine inspiration that in Platonic dialogues such as Phaedrus and Ion is connected with poetry. A self-admonitory passage that Aristides uses to finish up an excursus on his experience of divine intervention during his numerous stays at the sanctuaries of Asclepius and Serapis is subject to special scrutiny: it turns out that a sufficiently early manuscript, which has been dated to the 11th c. AD, viz. Parisinus graecus 2950, yields a useful variante (unfortunately misread by Behr in his critical apparatus) that vividly depicts Plato’s role as the driving force behind the previous iatromantic excursus. Second, Aristides’ idea of two kinds of rhetoric is explored, with a special focus on a passage where two hitherto neglected manuscripts, viz. Marc. graec. 424 and Ath. Iv. 163 (both 14th c. AD) alongside two other textual witnesses yield a variante that brings out to the full the meaning of an otherwise rather pointless remark: Aristides states that Plato justly slandered rhetoric (κακῶς instead of καλῶς εἰρήκει), if one takes into account that he slandered not the true, but the apparent one. Overall, the article shows that the scope of In Defence of Rhetoric is not destructive criticism. In harmony with a general tendency of the Second Sophistic, Aristides rather aims at claiming Plato, “the father and teacher of the rhetoricians”, as a representative of his own discipline.

Jerusalem and its surrounding hinterland were popular destinations for late antique pilgrims. The majority relied on the hospitality offered in Christian guesthouses during their visits and afterwards returned to their homes all over the late antique world. This study aims at investigating how pilgrimage hospitality in the Holy Land between the fourth and the sixth centuries functioned in general – and to what extent board and lodging provided by the mostly monastic hosts had to be remunerated through either manual labour, voluntary financial donations or testamentary bequests by the guests. It will be demonstrated that hospitality was not only a Christian virtue but also a necessary means for the monasteries to survive as it formed the financial backbone for their social and political activities in the city of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Patriarchate. This constant source of income through a permanent influx of pilgrims enabled further monastic financial investments in a growing number of guesthouses which were constructed not only on the outskirts but also in the centres of cities and towns. Soon, alterations in both the ground plans and the function of the monasteries became noticeable: The monastic institutions of the Holy Land shifted from mere clusters of cells ( laurae ) – which were unable to host the growing number of visitors and new novices alike – to monasteries ( coenobia ) with a strictly regulated communal life. The study furthermore shows that this change found support in the hagiographical literature of the age. Exhortations to demonstrate hospitality to pilgrims and to rebuild the cells into proper monasteries were often placed in narratives of divine visions or in the ultima verba or monastic testaments of famous abbots. Nevertheless, these changes were not unchallenged by monks who aimed for a more traditional lifestyle in quiet contemplation ( hesychia ) far away from the more economically-driven ambitions of their superiors, who, to quote John Moschus, had „lined up their bellies and purses.“

This bibliographical inventory surveys 50 medieval Greek apocalyptic sources ranging from the turn of the sixth century until the late fifteenth century. The surveyed material consists of historical and moral apocalypses, oracular prophecies and end-time calculations. The survey enumerates the various appellations and dating attempts for each text as proposed in modern scholarship. Moreover, references to editions and translations of each source are provided; they are followed by a preliminary list of the known manuscript witnesses. The purpose of the inventory is twofold: (i) it presents a quantitative estimation of the respective manuscript distribution. Altogether 1024 textual witnesses in 688 manuscripts have been identified to contain the surveyed apocalyptic texts. It has been found that about 70 % of all manuscript material dates to the fifteenth century or later. Consequently, it can be established that the period surrounding and following the halōsis of 1453 functions as a filter that, to a large extent, regulates our access to and conditions our understanding of medieval Greek apocalyptic thought. Moreover, the inventory (ii) provides a holistic yet concise overview of a large section of Byzantine apocalypticism, which appears necessary for any comprehensive research that engages in (or steps beyond) intertextual analysis.

Chapter II, 45 of the Book of Ceremonies, a half-edited dossier pertaining to the naval expedition of 949 against the Arabs at Crete, contains a document which is most banal and singular at once. This is a procurement report of miscellaneous supplies recording in each entry the amount spent and the nature of the supplies acquired, occasionally specifying the price per item or per measure. However common such reports are in ancient and modern accounting, this is the only document of its kind preserved from the middle Byzantine period. In line with the State accounting norms inherited from Late Antiquity, all expenses are listed in gold, the silver miliaresia being recorded as fractions of a golden nomisma. The symbols for fractions have not been recognized by editors, translators and students of the text; they were either disregarded or misinterpreted. Restoring their meaning to these symbols allows not only a coherent reading of the report as a whole and a better understanding of the State purchasing process; it also throws light on prices of many items and on the last-minute enterprise which consisted in building Viking-style boats for the Rus’ warriors participating in the campaign.

Recently, M. Hurbanič had claimed in an essay that there was only one stone bridge over the Golden Horn. Consequently, he considered the several names which were mentioned in the Byzantine sources (Justinian, Kallinikos, Panteleimon and Camel Bridge) as the names of the same bridge. However, according to Ibn Battuta, who stayed in Constantinople in 1334, the former stone bridge over the Golden Horn was destroyed a long time before his visit. This construction must have been collapsed at an unknown time after 1204. On the other hand, the name Camel Bridge appears in the sources only from the end of the 13th century and for the last time in 1343. This new bridge, which was unknown to Ibn Battuta, is depicted on a veduta of Constantinople-Istanbul (Düsseldorf, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, G 13, fol. 54r, ca. 1485/90) with the inscription pons despine. It is the same bridge which is depicted in the Vatican “Epithalamion” (Vat. gr. 1851, fol. 3v). Although the date of the manuscript is being controversially discussed at present, I agree with the scholars who date it in the Palaiologan era. The bridge on fol. 3v marks the place where a foreign imperial bride (presumably Maria-Kyratza of Bulgaria, the bride of Andronikos IV Palaiologos, who entered Constantinople by ship in 1346) is received by court ladies, and is already dressed in the robe of an Augusta (ῥωμαικὸν δεσποινικὸν ἱμάτιον). The name pons despine is without doubt the Latin translation of γέφυρα τῆς δεσποίνης. The bridge on both illustrations must be located further north of the Kosmidion at the narrowest point of the Golden Horn near modern district Silâhtarağa. In future discussions on the date of the Vatican “Epithalamion”, the pons despine in the Düsseldorf manuscript should be taken into account since it owes its name to the reception of an imperial bride (δέσποινης νύμφη). This event must have taken place in the Palaiologan period near the Camel Bridge, the only still existing bridge over the Golden Horn in 1343, 1346 and 1485/90.

The principal purpose and nucleus of the article is the publication of a Latin text of highly demanding qualities in terms of philological principles which, in connection with its first abundantly annotated translation into German, has hitherto scarcely been noticed by researchers. The only literary collection which bears witness to the existence of the manuscript is a folio edition which presumably came into being in the middle of the 12th century, i. e. during the time of the crusades (conquest of Jerusalem in 1099) and is kept in the municipal library of the city of Treves. The dialogue between the anonymous author and a Greek, who hates the Saracens, forms the content. When, in the centre of the text, the author asks about Mohammed, the ‘monster’ ( monstrum ), the Greek relates the life of the hater of all Christians in the darkest colours. He begins wit Mohammed’s youth when he was a swineherd, continues with his devil-initiated encounter with the heretic Nestorius and the general development of a new common ‘faith’ as well as its spreading among the desert tribes by means of sorcery and deceipt and the student’s treacherous murder of his teacher. The assassin is then married to a Babylonian royal widow and, finally, meets his contumelious death caused by a pigs’ attack. The repeated comparison of our text with poetical ‘western’ scripts of the 11th and 12th centuries (Embricho of Mayence, Guibert of Nogent, Walter of Compiègne) as regards the subject matter leads us to the conclusion that our manuscript is likely to be of a most Islam critical tendency.