Beiträge zur Altertumskunde

In recent years, despite the growing body of research on Giordano Bruno, there has been a striking lack of attention to his Latin commentary on Aristotle’s natural philosophy, entitled In Physicam Aristotelis Animadversiones. The work, which has been unjustly overlooked, represents a fundamental turning point in Bruno’s ongoing engagement with the philosophy of the Stagirite, marking a shift away from the primarily polemical approach evident in the Italian dialogues. Over a century after the posthumous publication of the Commentary, this book presents a new critical edition based on a comprehensive examination of the entire manuscript tradition. The Latin text is accompanied by an Italian translation, which is also the first modern language translation of the Commentary. This edition is further enriched by an introductory essay that addresses the main issues related to work, and by a thorough historical-philosophical commentary that analyses Bruno's position in itself and against the background of the Medieval and Renaissance Aristotelian tradition.

This volume collects contributions on the theme of prolepsis in Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Renaissance. As the interest in this topic grows, our goal is to provide a first attempt at adopting an all-encompassing approach, which thematizes prolepsis as a pivotal hermeneutic tool to “read” into different times and contexts. While the first section maintains a more traditional literary approach to the topic, the second section hosts a reflection on the relationship between prolepsis and kingship within historiographical accounts. The chapters of the third section revolve around a religious interpretation of prolepsis, creating an overview of theological practices and narrations connected to foreshadowing through time. Section four hosts chapters that differ significantly in their individual fields but share the common understanding of a practical application of prolepsis in the ancient Greek world, with a specific technical focus. The three essays of the fifth and final section explore entirely different conceptualizations, delving into alternative notions of prolepsis, combining approaches and maintaining a more methodological focus.

Wer an Fabeln denkt, denkt oft zuerst die antiken Tierfabeln Äsops. Doch auch in späterer Zeit waren Fabeln allgegenwärtig, entwickelten sich weiter und nahmen neue Funktionen ein.

Der italienische Autor Laurentius Abstemius hat 1495 und 1505 zwei Fabelbücher (Hecatomythien) verfasst, die charakteristisch für die neuen Fabeln der Renaissance sind. Ihm ist es gelungen, in seinen Fabelsammlungen einen Bogen von der antiken Fabel über die mittelalterliche Exempelliteratur bis hin zu zeitgenössischem Schwankgut zu spannen und so verschiedenste Epochen und Gattungen in belehrenden, komischen oder gar derben Stücken zu vereinen. Diese weitreichenden Traditionslinien, die thematische Vielfalt und der hohe Unterhaltungswert trugen maßgeblich zur großen Verbreitung und breiten Rezeption seines Werkes bei.

Erstmalig werden nun eine Edition beider Hecatomythien, eine deutsche Übersetzung sowie umfangreiche Untersuchungen zu Quellen und Rezeption vorgelegt. Ergänzt wird die Arbeit u. a. durch eine Biographie des Autors, Analysen zu seinem Gattungsverständnis, zur Stilistik sowie einem Abriss der Druckgeschichte. Somit können die Lücken ein Stück weiter geschlossen werden, die in der Forschung zur europäischen Fabeltradition noch bestehen.

For about five hundred years – between Ovid’s death (17 AD) and Maximianus’ Elegies (6^th century AD) – the genre of love elegy disappears. Does this mean that love poetry in general was no longer being written? This was certainly not the case. Poets continued to compose love poetry, merely in other forms than elegy. This book deals with non-elegiac Latin love poetry of Late Antiquity. It is the first monograph to focus on the metaliterary interpretation of four non-elegiac poetic works: the Pervigilium Veneris, Ausonius’ Bissula, Reposianus’ De concubitu Martis et Veneris, and the Aegritudo Perdicae. The book contains all the required information about these poems (including their date, authorship, structure, and literary tradition). However, its content is predominantly original, as it examines subjects that have not previously been discussed in the past. These include: a) the generic interaction between the poems’ ‘host’ genre and several ‘guest’ genres that are present within them; b) the metaliterary discourse developed in several passages, which reveals the metapoetic self-consciousness of their poets; c) their hidden demands for the innovation of love poetry; and d) their allusive comments on the conservatism of this era.

Plato’s famous and infamous criticism of Homer was the climax of a series of attacks by early thinkers on the first and greatest Greek poet Homer. It triggers an even longer series of responses attempting either to justify further "the old quarrel between philosophy poetry" (Pl. Resp. 607b-c), or, in most cases, to reconcile the two great authors. The so-called Plato-Homer problem is in broad outline twofold, with numberless ramifications and sub-issues. Why does Plato’s Republic repeatedly attack and even exile the greatest cultural authority of the Greeks? And why does he do so while quoting Homer abundantly – more than any other author – and even adapting many artistic features of Homeric poetry? This volume concentrates on the various responses to the controversy among Platonically minded writers, while including a few other reactions from just outside that circle. Strategies of reconciliation are many, including both allegorical and non-allegorical approaches, involving the notions of myth, mimesis, inspiration, wisdom, theology, etc. The volume presents original treatments of major figures, such as Porphyry and Proclus, as well lesser-known authors or texts (e.g. Platonic Spuria), and non-Platonists (Xenophon, Aristotle, scholiasts, etc.) who serve as enlightening comparative figures. While recent literature on these questions usually concentrates on single authors, this book details its reception in the Platonic tradition overall.

This study addresses the often-discussed relationship between the two works that comprise Aristotle’s philosophy of human affairs, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics. Their relationship has been described often by determining “politics” as the subject of both.

By this view, for the Nicomachean Ethics a political dimension is claimed which it does not have. While in Nicomachean Ethics 1.1 a political knowledge which possesses absolute powers is introduced, it has no counterpart in the Politics and is an abomination by the general views of the Politics about the powers, that is people, that govern the polis. On the other hand, by the view that Aristotle´s practical philosophy was unified, the Politics is not recognized as a theoretical study in its own right, which is independent of anything discussed in the Nicomachean Ethics, and pursues its own objectives.

This study will focus on the central subjects of the Politics, its theoretical concepts and their relationship to one another. It will emphasize the dominant theoretical approach of this work, which develops in a systematic manner the crucial political concepts of polis, community, constitution, and addresses the political aspirations of free citizens which must be met.

Der Band untersucht die komplexe und kompetitive Diskussion um die Zulässigkeit und Relevanz der blutigen Opfer, die sich in christlichen und nichtchristlichen Texten des zweiten bis fünften Jahrhunderts nachzeichnen lässt. Als Quellengrundlage dienen dabei mittel- und neuplatonische Schriften sowie christliche Apologien, in denen über diese Kultpraxis reflektiert wird.

Über den untersuchten Zeitraum werden die in den Texten vorgetragenen Argumente für und wider die blutigen Opfer sowie die von einigen Autoren stattdessen vorgesehenen Alternativen dazu erstmals systematisch zusammengestellt und hinsichtlich ihrer Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten analysiert. Ein besonderes Augenmerk gilt zudem den intertextuellen Bezügen, gerade dann, wenn die Argumente der gegnerischen Seite rezipiert werden.

Die Analyse zeigt, dass die Diskussion um die blutigen Opfer vielschichtiger und dynamischer war, als bislang angenommen wurde. Der Band bietet daher nicht nur interessierten Personen aus dem Bereich der Alten Geschichte, sondern auch der Philosophie, Religionswissenschaft und der Theologie neue Anregungen.

This book examines the narratives of early cultural history in ancient Greece and Rome, spanning from a macrocosmic outlook to a microcosmic exploration of individual stories, familial dynamics, and societal contexts. The collection investigates the concepts of archaeologies, origins, and antiquities through a multifaceted approach, considering literary, rhetorical, philosophical, historical, and epigraphic viewpoints. Each chapter delves into various aspects of cultural history, encompassing the influence of Homeric scholarship on Thucydides’ ‘Archaeology,’ Plato’s concept of ‘archaeologies’, the interpretation of the past through Hellenistic inscriptions, and the cultural histories of Sallust, Dicaearchus, and Varro. It also discusses the relationship between history, humanity, and the natural world in Lucretius and Seneca, Vergil’s accounts of early human history, the role of families in shaping cultural history, the origins of sexual violence in mythological stories, and the reinterpretation of Roman foundational myths in late antiquity. This volume invites readers to reflect on the ways in which the Greeks and Romans narrated their past, interpreted their origins, and constructed their collective memories.

The last two decades have seen a growing interest in Jerome’s epistolary, with the publication of several commentaries on single letters; however, no full-scale study has so far been devoted to Epistle 107, Ad Laetam de institutione filiae. This didactic and parenetic letter, addressed to the Roman noblewoman Laeta around 401-402 AD, is indeed among the most relevant pieces of Jerome’s letter collection, and while it has aroused the interest of scholars interested in the problems of Late Antique pedagogy and female virginity, it has so far received limited attention on a philological and literary level.

Aiming to fill this gap, the present volume provides an introduction that addresses the main issues related to the letter (addressee, dating, typology, use of classical and biblical sources, manuscript tradition and reception), the critically revised Latin text, a new Italian translation, and a full-scale lemmatic commentary.

Il volume costituisce il primo studio monografico dedicato all’Epistola 107 di Gerolamo, Ad Laetam de institutione filiae; contiene un’introduzione che affronta le principali questioni relative alla lettera (destinataria, datazione, struttura, uso delle fonti classiche e bibliche, tradizione manoscritta e fortuna), il testo latino riveduto, una traduzione e un commento che ne indaga gli aspetti filologici, stilistico-letterari e contenutistici.

The seventeen contributions constituting this edited volume focus on archaic Greek thought — Presocratics broadly understood, including Sophists, Archaic poets, or Tragedians — and its multiform reception, use or appropriation through times and lands.

The first chapters deal with the direct reconstruction and understanding of early Greek thought, from the very first philosophical writings to the last Presocratic philosopher. By alternating discussions of editorial and translation issues, stylistic analysis, geographical study and history of science, these contributions question the value of the testimonies or fragments attributed to those early thinkers and challenge our understanding of the texts at the origin of western philosophy.

The volume subsequently focuses on the echoes of those Archaic voices, over a long period of time from Aristotle to the 20th century. From their early reception in Greek and Roman time to their adaptation in contemporary poetry, by way of their appropriation and use in Islamic philosophy or in Latin-America colonization, the contributions gathered in this second part illustrate the large scope of influence of ancient philosophers and of their ideas in various times and places.

This book offers the first analysis of the rape of women of marriageable age (raptus virginum) in ancient Rome. This is a subject about which the legal sources preserved in Justinian's Digest provide us with very little, and not unequivocal, information. The aim is to reveal the intellectual and argumentative practices that led to the emergence of the crime of rape (crimen raptus) in Pseudo-Quintilian’s school of rhetoric (turn of the first century AD), prior to its normalisation as a violent crime (crimen vis) by the jurisprudence of the Severan age (beginning of the third century AD). To this end, the author examines in depth the most salient aspects of the system of principles and rules into which Pseudo-Quintilian places the concept of sexual violence: the definition of the unlawful act, the application of the procedure, the function of penalties, the meaning of the law, the notion of criminal responsibility and the controversial issue of the victim's consent. Drawing on a diversified epistemological framework, the book achieves a critical synthesis between the traditional dogmatic approach and the anthropology of law, providing innovative answers to questions regarded by historians who have dealt with the subject-matter of rape in Rome as closed or futile.

Inscrit dans la mouvance internationale dédiée aux interactions entre déclamations juridiques et droit romain, cet ouvrage offre la première analyse du viol des femmes nubiles (raptus virginum), en révélant les pratiques intellectuelles qui ont amené à l’émergence du crime de viol (crimen raptus) dans l’école de rhétorique du Pseudo-Quintilien, en amont de sa normalisation comme crime violent par la jurisprudence de l’âge sévérien.

This volume contains 18 papers presented at the International Conference "Mirabilia and violence around the Indus. The last years of Alexander the Great in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit literary reception", held at the University of Cagliari (8-10 March 2023). Divided into three thematic sections (Il mondo classico; L'India e la Cina; Medioevo e Rinascimento), the essays differ in the linguistic varieties of the primary sources analysed, in the chronological range from the first Hellenism to the Renaissance, and in the approach adopted, historical or philological-literary. However, a common thread runs through all the works: the reception of Alexander from a broad and multifocal perspective, ranging from the description of the mirabilia associated with the late Eastern campaign to the contrasting characterisation of the king as a 'philosopher in arms' and an unbridled conqueror. With contributions from several experts in the specific subject and in the various disciplines involved, this book offers an interdisciplinary approach that can stimulate scholars and students in a variety of fields.

Il volume raccoglie 18 contributi, ordinati in tre sezioni tematiche (Il mondo classico; L’India e la Cina; Medioevo e Rinascimento). Si tratta di lavori differenti per varietà delle fonti, cronologia (dal primo Ellenismo all’Umanesimo) e approccio (storico e filologico-letterario), in un ideale dialogo tra cultori di discipline diverse e tra Occidente e Oriente antico, nella prospettiva unificante degli studi sulla ricezione di Alessandro Magno.

German Alsatian Jacob Balde (1604–1668) is considered one of the most significant Neo-Latin poets. His work encompasses a wide range of genres. The thirty interpretations presented here examine all of the Jesuit’s periods of creative output. It pays special attention to his reception, presenting two extensive, previously overlooked documents: a parody by Magnus Daniel Omeis and the Freiburg Festival play Cithara Jacobi Baldei.

In light of the evident global rise of populist tendencies in recent years, it seems reasonable to ask whether there were political currents in classical Athens and then in the Hellenist poleis that could qualify as populist today, and how they manifested themselves. The volume asks this question in constant dialogue with the present and modern political science research.

The book examines the manuscript and printed tradition of Aristides’ Sacred Tales, on the basis of an integral collation of all witnesses. Thanks to the data collected and to the paleographic reexamination of the codices, it is now possible to offer, in addition to a series of contributions on the language and style of the work, a stemmatic reconstruction of its textual tradition and a picture of its fortune from antiquity to the present day.

This volume examines certain transformations associated with the concept of theurgy in late ancient Neoplatonism. Theurgy is understood above all as the search for immanent media to embody divine powers. It implies a fundamentally positive relationship to corporeality, the world of the senses, and matter, and is thus more about integrating corporeal layers of reality than about escaping the world.

Different receptions permeated Roman culture in all phases of its formation and development. This included, firstly, Greek-Hellenistic culture as the great initial template and broadened into self-determination through self-reception in the imperial period. This volume delves into these receptions from the perspective of ancient history, archaeology, and philological literary studies, and includes their impact in the twenty-first century.

Recently, a new idea of Cicero has emerged, which once against takes Cicero seriously as an academic philosopher. This is the starting point for these studies on his works and impact, which show how the Roman philosopher developed an innovative form of skeptical philosophy in his dialogues, thereby making an essential contribution to the transformation of philosophy and scholarship.

Proclus, successor of the School of Athens in the fifth century AD, is one of the last great voices of a pagan polytheistic world in crisis in the face of the gradual rise of Christianity.
His writing bears witness not only to one of the most influential metaphysical representations for the constitution of the idea of a philosophical "system" based on a complex "language game" based on the conceptual sphere of "order" and "unity", but also of an attempt to reconcile rhetorics with philosophy. In the three chapters in which the book is structured (style, system, unity), then, a conscious intention is evident in Proclus, to adapt the content of his systematic metaphysics to literary form. Hence there is a consistency traced in Proclus' stylistic choices , with the aesthetic norms of a rhetorical canon, probably established in the cycle of readings of the Neoplatonic school.
The way in which expressive "art" is subordinated in Proclus to philosophy is one of the most emblematic examples of a development in late antiquity, that of the enkuklios paideia – the union of all the arts necessary for the formation of man – that would later constitute in the Latin world the cycle of liberal arts.

This is the first full-scale critical edition of the Epigramma Paulini, with English translation and commentary.

The Epigramma Paulini (110 hexameters) is a late-antique poem of unknown date and authorship (arguably written during the first decade of the fifth century AD), preserved by only one (Carolingian) manuscript. While the outside world is torn by outbreaks of war and social unrest, the poem’s three characters discuss people’s behavior and reaction to the crisis. What should one change to stop social and political decline? What hope does one have to end the crisis and to rebuild a new society? These are some of the questions the three characters of the poem strive to answer.

In recent years, scholars have paid some attention to this piece, mainly drawn to it by a singular insertion of satire within the frame of Vergil’s pastoral model; however, no close study of the poem had been published. This first critical edition provides an in-depth exploration of the poem’s message and its innovative contribution to the reception of classical, pagan literature in a Christian context.

This volume presents the editio princeps of the Latin version of the Isocratic Nicocles composed by the humanist Guarino Veronese. The edition, complete with Italian translation and commentary notes, is preceded by an introduction that places text within its cultural context. The volume concludes with descriptions of all the manuscripts and observations on the Greek model, the translation method and the author's lexicon.

In the current revival of studies on Alexander the Great, literature has until now neglected – also because of the scarcity of testimonies – its ‘poetic’ side. Choerilus of Iasus, the most important among the poets who accompanied Alexander’s endeavours, represents no exception. For this reason, the book delivers a complete study of Choerilus’ works, life and (mis-)fortune. By doing so, it reassesses philologically and historically a blind spot in present-day research and therefore illuminates further the field of Alexandrography as well as its literary reception. The volume entails first of all a new edition of all the testimonies and fragments pertaining to Choerilus of Iasus, updating and expanding the latest collection edited by H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons in the Supplementum Hellenisticum (1983). Following up, the book develops in four chapters an analysis and discussion of the texts collected in the critical edition. The fifth concluding chapter retraces and contextualises the history of modern studies, from the Renaissance on, concerning the elusive figure of Choerilus.

This book is the first study to focus on a metaliterary interpretation of Maximianus’ Elegies, and aims to fill a major gap in international literature concerning the thoughts of the last love elegist on the evolution and renovation of the genre of love elegy during Late Antiquity.

The book includes all known subjects of Maximianus’ poetry (e.g., the division of his work into six elegies, its attribution to Cornelius Gallus by Pomponius Gauricus in 1502, its reception in recent years, the intellectual milieu of the Ostrogothic Italy, the historical contextualization of his poetry, the Appendix Maximiani, the impact of the Augustan love elegy (and especially Ovid’s) upon it, etc.), in order to offer a more complete picture of it. However, the content of the book is predominantly prototype, as it examines subjects that have not previously been discussed in the past. These include: a) The generic interaction between the ‘host’ genre of love elegy, and several ‘guest’ genres (e.g., Roman comedy, epic, pastoral); b) The hidden metapoetic discourse regarding the genre of love elegy itself.

The book is intended for scholars or students working on or interested in Roman love elegy and its generic evolution in Late Antiquity.

This volume presents the first German translation of the sixth tract from Proclus’ Politeia commentary. The text is flanked by an extensive commentary, which situates it within the systematic context of Neoplatonic philosophy. The tract is the central source of our knowledge on the Neoplatonic theory of poetry and allegorical technique, which this volume makes available to a wider audience for the first time.

This book deals with some Aristotelian philosophers of the Hellenistic Age, ranging from Theophrastus of Eresus to Cratippus of Pergamum. The problem of knowledge, the question of time, and the doctrine of the soul are investigated by comparing these Peripatetics’ views with Aristotle’s philosophy, and above all by setting their doctrines within the broader framework of post-Aristotelian and Hellenistic philosophies (the Old Academy, Epicureanism, and Stoicism).

Ever since Dodd applied the concept of "shame culture" to Greek culture, Greek studies scholars have been paying special attention to the topic of shame. This volume is now the first to provide a systematic examination of shame in Plato, revealing that Plato did not view shame and related emotions as negative, as has been traditionally assumed, but by all means acknowledged the positive role that they play in a range of different areas.

This volume brings together shorter essays on Homer’s Iliad, Plato, Thucydides, and Paul, written by the Regensburg Greek studies professor Ernst Heitsch († 2019) between 2001 and 2017. It thus continues on from the first three volumes of the Collected Writings begun by the author himself.

The aim of the book is to encourage discussion among experts on De ira, a text of philosophical nature, by reading it page by page, from a philosophical, philological, and literary perspective (a multidisciplinary choice which is the conditio sine qua non of all judicious research on Seneca).

Moreover, the way in which each of these close readings is conducted adds an additional value: they each deal with a section of the text, presenting all the data necessary for its understanding. All together, they cover the whole work. Each of them is also an attempt at a global interpretation of the treatise, examined through the particular framing of the textual passage around which the “Lectures plurielles” are conceived.

Around this “polyphonic” analysis of the text, we have built a structure that aims to offer the reader a complete reference work on all the issues of the De ira. Sources, manuscript tradition, images, political and philosophical concepts, posterity – in short, all the aspects that a traditional commentary of the text would not have allowed us to distinguish so clearly – find their place here.

This book is therefore aimed at specialists as well as students or anyone interested in the thought of emotions in antiquity.

Un livre de référence sur le De ira de Sénèque qui offre, en privilégiant la multiplicité des voix, un commentaire de l'intégralité du traité, complété d'une vue d'ensemble sur la colère comme objet d'enquête philosophique dans l'antiquité.

Numerous ancient Christian authors puts the concepts of regret and reversal at the center of their writings. These reflections have been largely overlooked in studies on the history of philosophy to date. In contrast, this study would like to draw attention to the significance of these deliberations on the concept of regret for the history of philosophy.

The papers in this volume provide insights into the diverse discussions surrounding questions of agent and action theory in ancient philosophy, from the fifth century BCE up into late antiquity. It focuses on factors relevant to action such as the soul; the relationship between agents, actions, and goals; the rationality relevant to action; and taking action in the community.

In his 1621 New Latin tragedy Athamantis Furor, the French rhetoric teacher and Catholic pastor Jean Portier (Ioannes Porterius) dramatized the misfortunes of the mythic King Athamas. He was heavily influenced by ancient texts. This volume provides a new edition of his play, translates it into German for the first time, and interprets and provides commentary on it, focusing on classical reception.

This book examines the origin and development of the concept of isonomia along with theoretical concepts of order that extend across epochs from ancient times to the imperial age.

In three of his Latin lives of monks, Jerome refers back – both implicitly and explicitly – to Athanasius’ Greek biography of the hermit Antonius. In so doing, he develops new motifs, topics, problems and figures, combining a Roman consciousness of style with Christian inspiration. The result is a multifaceted »dialogue« between the hermits, with a rich intertextuality that is the focus of analysis in this monograph.

The is the first monograph to study the literary supplements of Johannes Freinsheims (1608–1660) on the history of Alexander the Great by Q. Curtius Rufus (probably of the 1^st century). It argues that the text served as a literary contribution for coping with political and military crises during the Thirty Years’ War and as a subtle advocacy for the Protestant cause.

The philosophical and philological study of Aristotle fragments and lost works has fallen somewhat into the background since the 1960’s. This is regrettable considering the different and innovative directions the study of Aristotle has taken in the last decades. This collection of new peer-reviewed essays applies the latest developments and trends of analysis, criticism, and methodology to the study of Aristotle’s fragments. The individual essays use the fragments as tools of interpretation, shed new light on different areas of Aristotle philosophy, and lay bridges between Aristotle’s lost and extant works. The first part shows how Aristotle frames parts of his own understanding of Philosophy in his published, 'popular' work. The second part deals with issues of philosophical interpretation in Aristotle’s extant works which can be illuminated by fragments of his lost works. The philosophical issues treated in this section range from Theology to Natural Science, Psychology, Politics, and Poetics. As a whole, the book articulates a new approach to Aristotle’s lost works, by providing a reassessment and new methodological explorations of the fragments.

Jakob Balde (1604-1664) ist einer der bedeutendsten neulateinischen Dichter. Während sein lyrisches Werk der früheren und mittleren Periode gut erforscht wurde, ist sein satirisches Werk der späten Periode nahezu vollständig vernachlässigt worden. Die Schrift Solatium Podagricorum (Trost der Gichtkranken) wird hier zum ersten Mal in deutscher Übersetzung und mit einem ausführlichen Kommentar sowie einer Einführung zugänglich gemacht. Das reichausgeprägte Genus der Paradoxenkomien der neulateinischen Dichter geht auf das Lob der Torheit zurück, das Erasmus von Rotterdam 1509 gedichtet hat. Während Willibald Pirckheimer 1525 als erster ein Lob des Podagra schuf, bedeutet Baldes Solatium zugleich den Höhepunkt und das Ende der literarischen Podagra-Elogien. Balde führt den an dieser Krankheit der Reichen Leidenden die glücklichen Umstände, aus denen sie entsteht, und die Vorteile, die sie mit sich bringt, in ebenso scherzhaft-unterhaltender wie zum Nachdenken anregender Weise vor Augen. Die 43 in Prosa verfassten Kapitel des ersten und die 89 Gedichte des zweiten Buches geben einen reichen Einblick in die Kultur und Bildung der gehobenen Schicht des 17. Jahrhunderts. Die Schrift ist für Literaturwissenschaftler, Historiker und Medizinhistoriker von Interesse.

The volume contains a selection of essays on Plato from his beginnings to his aftermath in the works of Donald Davidson and Hans Georg Gadamer. Particular attention is paid to the problem of the idea of the good and the question of its transcendence and immanence. The detailed introduction opens up the contents of the volume in a synopsis that is not only accessible to specialists.

The goal of this interdisciplinary analysis of the representations of cities and their spaces in Greek and Latin texts from the 7^th century BC to the 5^th century AD is to identify the influence of political and propagandistic factors in developing canonical representations of cities in Greek classical culture. The book also considers their reception and transformation in the changing contexts of the Roman imperial era and late antiquity.

In der Antike diente der Brief nicht nur dem Austausch von Informationen, sondern er erfüllte darüber hinaus eine Vielzahl weiterer kommunikativer Funktionen. Einen repräsentativen Einblick in diese zu geben, ist Anliegen der 18 Beiträge des Bandes, deren zeitliches Spektrum über die ganze griechische und römische Antike reicht. In ihrem Zentrum stehen die grundlegenden Konstituenten eines Briefes, nämlich sein ‚Adressant‘ bzw. Absender und sein ‚Adressat‘. Sie fragen dabei nach dem Verhältnis von Personenkonstellation, Kontext und Kommunikationsstruktur der untersuchten Briefe, aber auch wie sich die verschiedenen in diesen zu greifenden kommunikativen Strategien in der textinternen Modellierung von Adressant und Adressat niederschlagen. Sie berücksichtigen schließlich auch, dass möglicherweise nicht nur der direkt im Formular genannte Briefempfänger Ziel der Korrespondenz ist, sondern ein über diesen hinausgehendes Publikum, das somit als ‚Adressat auf zweiter Ebene‘ fungiert. Vor diesem Hintergrund gilt die Aufmerksamkeit der Beiträge auch der Erweiterung des Funktionsspektrums antiker Briefe im allgemeinen sowie der Gestaltungsoptionen der briefinternen Sprecherinstanzen im Speziellen, zu denen in vorderster Linie die Selbstdarstellung des Adressaten gegenüber einem größeren Publikum gehört.

Since the Renaissance, scholars have attempted to reconstruct ancient Greek music mainly on the basis of literary testimonies. Since the late 19th c. evidence from inscriptions and papyri enriched the picture. This book explores the factors that guided such reconstructions, from Aristophanes’ comments on music to the influence of Roman music in late antiquity, thereby offering a crucial contribution to our understanding of ancient music’s legacy.

Ancient political philosophy is still influential today. This volume collects articles on its pre-Socratic beginnings as well as Plato and Aristotle, its indisputable founders. Other articles consider Hellenistic schools of thought or thinkers from the imperial, late antiquity, and early Islamic periods. The book explores ancient thinking on politics across history, demonstrating its continued contemporary relevance.

Euripides’ Electra opened up for its audience an opportunity to become self-aware as to the appeal of tragic Kunstsprache: it both reflected and sustained traditional, aristocratically-inflected assumptions about the continuity of appearance and substance, even in a radical democracy. A complex analogy between social and aesthetic valuation is played out and brought to light. The characterization of Orestes early in the play demonstrates how social appearances made clear the identity of well-born, and how they were still assumed to indicate superior virtue and agency. On the aesthetic side of the analogy, one of the functions of tragic diction, as an essential indication of heroic character and agency, comes into view in a dramatic and thematic sequence that begins with Achilles ode and ends with the planning of the murders. Serious doubts are created as to whether Orestes will realize the assumed potential inherent in his heroic genealogy and, at the same time, as to whether the components of his character as an aesthetic construct are congruent with such qualities and agency. Both sides of this complex analogy are thus problematized, and, at a metapoetic level, its nature and bases are exposed for reflection.

This book examines the legacy of Pindar’s phraseology by bringing together the results and methods of classical studies with those of historical linguistics. Besides providing new insights into individual passages in Pindar, this study demonstrates Pindar’s dominant role in the history of Greek literature and identifies new set pieces from Indogermanic poetic language.

In Livy’s work, both typological groups and remarkable individuals are essential drivers of the historical process. This study examines the role of all groups of people as well as the “great individuals” in Livy and assigns them their respective places in his grand narrative of the rise and decline of Rome. In particular, it identifies the ethical standards Livy applies in his assessments.

Through a detailed philological analysis, Carlo Lucarini distinguishes the poets who have composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are, in fact, patchworks put together by two Bearbeiter at the end of VII c. BC. By doing so, he sheds new light on the vexata quaestio of the composition of both poems, opening the way for further research.

This book offers the hint for a new reflection on ancient textual transmission and editorial practices in Antiquity.In the first section, it retraces the first steps of the process of ancient writing and editing. The reader will discover how the book is both a material object and a metaphorical personification, material or immaterial. The second section will focus on corpora of Greek texts, their formation, and their paratextual apparatus. Readers will explore various issues dealing with the mechanisms that are at the basis of the assembling of ancient Greek texts, but great attention will also be given to the role of ancient scholarly work. The third section shows how texts have two levels of authorship: the author of the text, and the scribe who copies the text. The scribe is not a medium, but plays a crucial role in changing the text. This section will focus on the protagonists of some interesting cases of textual transmission, but also on the books they manufactured or kept in the libraries, and on the words they engraved on stones. Therefore, the fresh voices of the contributors of this book, offer new perspectives on established research fields dealing with textual criticism.

This collection of essays presents the latest results of cutting-edge research on the epic poetry tradition from Homer to the early modern period; narrative and interpretive paradigms in prose and poetry; intertextuality and narratology; exemplarity; didactic poetry and technical writings; the history of science; and the reception of antiquity in texts and the visual arts.

Despite the growing interest in Apuleius’ Apologia or Pro se de magia, a speech he delivered in AD 158/159 to defend himself against the charge of being a magus, the only comprehensive study on this speech and magic to date is that by Adam Abt (1908). The aim of this volume is to shed new light on the extent to which Apuleius’ speech reveals his own knowledge of magic, and on the implications of the dangerous allegations brought against Apuleius. By analysing the Apologia sequentially, the author does not only reassess Abt’s analysis but proposes a new reconstruction of the prosecution’s case, arguing that it is heavily distorted by Apuleius. Since ancient magic is the main topic of this speech, an extensive discussion of the topic is provided, offering a new semantic taxonomy of magus and its cognates. Finally, this volume also explores Apuleius’ forensic techniques and the Platonic ideology underpinning his speech. It is proposed that a Platonising reasoning – distinguishing between higher and lower concepts – lies at the core of Apuleius’ rhetorical strategy, and that Apuleius aims to charm the judge, the audience and, ultimately, his readers with the irresistible power of his arguments.

Damascius (c. 462 – after 538) was the last of the heads of the Platonic Academy, and the last systematic thinker of pagan antiquity. His philosophy seeks to understand the first principle beyond reality. The failure of all such attempts at understanding proves that the fundamental ideas of metaphysics are nothing less than “inarticulable ideas” (arrhetoi ennoiai), which attempt to express the unsayable without being able to do so.

Riddles played a prominent role in Ancient Greek life in applications such as literature, general education, and cult activities. Examining this diverse genre in all its aspects, this study analyses how and why riddles are told. It also carefully considers the identity and characteristics of riddle tellers as well as their subjects.

This book collects essays and other contributions by colleagues, students, and friends of the late Diskin Clay, reflecting the unusually broad range of his interests. Clay’s work in ancient philosophy, and particularly in Epicurus and Epicureanism and in Plato, is reflected chapters on Epicurean concerns by André Laks, David Sedley and Martin Ferguson Smith, as well as Jed Atkins on Lucretius and Leo Strauss; Michael Erler contributes a chapter on Plato. James Lesher discusses Xenophanes and Sophocles, and Aryeh Kosman contributes a jeu d’esprit on the obscure Pythagorean Ameinias. Greek cultural history finds multidisciplinary treatment in Rebecca Sinos’s study of Archilochus’ Heros and the Parian Relief, Frank Romer’s mythographic essay on Aphrodite’s origins and archaic mythopoieia more generally, and Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou’s explication of Callimachus’s kenning of Mt. Athos as "ox-piercing spit of your mother Arsinoe." More purely literary interests are pursued in chapters on ancient Greek (Joseph Russo on Homer, Dirk Obbink on Sappho), Latin (Jenny Strauss Clay and Gregson Davis on Horace), and post-classical poetry (Helen Hadzichronoglou on Cavafy, John Miller on Robert Pinsky and Ovid). Peter Burian contributes an essay on the possibility and impossibility of translating Aeschylus. In addition to these essays, two original poems (Rosanna Warren and Jeffrey Carson) and two pairs of translations (from Horace by Davis and from Foscolo by Burian) recognize Clay’s own activity as poet and translator. The volume begins with an Introduction discussing Clay’s life and work, and concludes with a bibliography of Clay’s publications.

This volume undertakes a comprehensive study of ancient dramatic renditions of the Oedipus theme, from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (the fragments of which are addressed in particular detail) through those of Seneca. In a sharper and more systematic way than ever before, it aims to highlight not only the generic connections between the many versions of the Oedipus story, but also their claims to originality.

Jakob Balde SJ (1604-1668), einer der bedeutendsten deutschen neulateinischen Dichter, veröffentlichte 1664 das Spätwerk Expeditio polemico-poetica, das eine brillante Verteidigung lateinischsprachiger Literatur darstellt. Die Balde-Renaissance ist an dem Meisterwerk gänzlich vorübergegangen, was an dem teilweise extrem schwierigen Charakter liegen mag. Die 1729 zuletzt gedruckte Schrift wird zum erstenmal mit ausführlicher Einführung, kritischem Text, genauer Übersetzung und fortlaufendem Kommentar vorgelegt.

Der erste Teil gibt den Titel für das Werk ab: der Feldzug der lateinischen und neulateinischen Dichter gegen die Festung der Ignoranz, die das Haupt der Kritiker der neulateinischen Literatur ist – eine witzige, zuweilen groteske Erzählung. Den zweiten Teil bilden 489 meist pointiert formulierte Themen, die Balde nicht nur für eigene Bearbeitung, sondern auch als Anregung für junge Adepten vorgelegt hat. Sie gelten zu Unrecht als sprödes Sammelsurium. Nimmt man sie ernst, zeigt sich ein schillerndes Kaleidoskop welthaltiger, tiefblickender, schlagender, ironischer und satirischer Gedanken, sozusagen ‚Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit‘, die man als Bausteine einer Deutung der wirren Zeit nach dem Dreißgjährigen Krieg ansehen kann.

This volume sets out to explore the complex relationship between Horace and Seneca. It is the first book that examines the interface between these different and yet highly comparable authors with consideration of their œuvres in their entirety. The fourteen chapters collected here explore a wide range of topics clustered around the following four themes: the combination of literature and philosophy; the ways in which Seneca’s choral odes rework Horatian material and move beyond it; the treatment of ethical, poetic, and aesthetic questions by the two authors; and the problem of literary influence and reception as well as ancient and modern reflections on these problems. While the intertextual contacts between Horace and Seneca themselves lie at the core of this project, it also considers the earlier texts that serve as sources for both authors, intermediary steps in Roman literature, and later texts where connections between the two philosopher-poets are drawn. Although not as obviously palpable as the linkage between authors who share a common generic tradition, this uneven but pervasive relationship can be regarded as one of the most prolific literary interactions between the early Augustan and the Neronian periods. A bidirectional list of correspondences between Horace and Seneca concludes the volume.

This volume examines the reception of Egypt during the Late Roman Empire from the perspectives of classical philology, ancient studies, and Egyptology. It focuses on Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, as viewed in a broad contemporary, literary, and religious-historical context. It includes consideration of other authors who wrote about Egyptian religion, such as Iamblichus, Porphyrios, and Aelius Aristides.

We cannot fully understand the development of Roman poetry if we ignore the works that survive only in fragments, or that are known only through quotations or allusions. During the last two decades, studies on this topic have been fostered by the collections of Courtney, Hollis and Blänsdorf, but there is still room for further improvement in editing and discussing the fragments of the Latin non-dramatic poets. This volume gathers together ten essays, most of which were discussed in a Seminar held in Bologna in 2014; they can be seen as case studies that confront the main issues of the research on Roman poetic fragments, such as textual criticism and interpretation, authorship, prosody and colometry, literary genre, and the connection between quotation and context. These papers do not deal only with texts already known, but suggest some new additions to the corpus of the Fragmenta poetarum Latinorum. In a methodological introduction, the editor also provides an up-to-date review of the scholarship on the subject, that aims to supplement Blänsdorf’s bibliography. For all these reasons, this volume will be of primary relevance to students and scholars in Classical philology.

Il volume raccoglie dieci studi che affrontano i principali problemi della ricerca sui frammenti poetici latini: ecdotica e interpretazione, aggiunte al corpus, autorialità, metrica, genere letterario e rapporto con il contesto citazionale. Il saggio introduttivo, di carattere metodologico, fornisce anche una rassegna aggiornata degli studi sull’argomento che intende integrare la bibliografia di Blänsdorf.

In recent years interest has grown for the study of ancient declamation (both Greek and Latin), and not only amongst classical scholars, but also in legal, literary and anthropological studies. It is now widely believed, in fact, that these texts, traditionally outside the traditional canon, can provide an interesting perspective to reinterpret the literature of the Imperial Age and to get a deeper understanding of the Roman legal mind and of ancient imagery in general. This collection of essays seeks to address the Declamationes Minores from different points of view. Not only does it analyse the specific features of the text as a schoolbook, but it also tries to highlight the contiguity of fictitious speeches with the literary tradition and the legal and philosophical culture of the time. The volume is a useful tool to explore little-known texts, which nevertheless constitute an effective access point to the imagery of the Imperial Age.

Dedicato alle Declamationes Minores attribuite a Quintiliano, il volume fa emergere i diversi motivi di interesse di questo antico libro di scuola: un manuale che introduce il lettore nel lavoro quotidiano di un maestro di retorica, ma anche uno strumento utile per esplorare l’immaginario antico e la stretta relazione che unisce retorica, letteratura e riflessione giuridica.

This book presents a study of two discussions contained in Porphyry’s De Abstinentia. Both of them deal with an often forgotten aspect of antiquity: vegetarianism. The author discusses the connections between the fragments Against the Vegetarians and On Piety and shows how Porphyry, in an open debate with the Stoics, develops a spatial terminology to present his own ethics.

The main focus of this book is the ancient formation and development of the canons of Greek historiography. It takes a fresh look on the modern debate on canonical literature and deals with Greek historiographical traditions in the works of ancient rhetors and literary critics. Writings on historiography by Cicero, Quintilian, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus are chiefly taken into account to explore the canons of Greek historians in Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Ages. Essential in canon-formation was the concept of classicism which took shape in the Age of Augustus, but whose earlier developments can be traced back to Isocrates, a model rhetor according to Dionysius at the end of the 1st century BC. The analysis explores also late-antique authors of school treatises and progymnasmata, a field where historiography had a pedagogical function. Previous studies on canonical literature have rarely considered historiography. This book examines not only the works of ancient historians and their legacy, but also the relationship between historiography, literary criticism, and the rhetorical tradition.

The volume’s topic is a comparative analysis of the main authors and social groups who were engaged with the reception of hellenistic philosophy at Rome. It studies in which way their specific approach to philosophy can be explained by their Roman cultural and intellectual background. Thus the volume designs philosophical and cultural criteria to be common to the philosophical activities of Romans and make them discernible as specifically Roman.

Juvenal’s satire continues to fascinate his readers and to challenge scholars by the constant interplay of a strong poetical identity, a keen historical perception, and an irresoluble ideological tension. The essays collected in this volume pursue these three strands from different but complementary perspectives, aiming at a firmer assessment of the character, the oeuvre, and the background of Rome’s last great satirical poet.

La satira di Giovenale pone sfide continue agli studiosi e non cessa di affascinare i suoi lettori, per l’interazione fra una veemente identità poetica, una dolorosa coscienza storica e un’inesausta tensione ideologica. I saggi qui raccolti affrontano questi tre nuclei tematici da prospettive diverse ma complementari, per delineare più compiutamente la figura, l’opera e l’orizzonte di riferimento dell’ultimo grande poeta satirico di Roma.

"What is the definition of that which is named ‘soul?’ Can we give it any other definition than that stated just now: ‘the motion able to move itself?’" (Laws 895e). The essays in this volume touch upon the central theme in Plato’s late dialogues of the soul as the principle of self-motion and vitality. They discuss in particular the soul’s relation to the intelligible world and understanding, as well as its cosmic and socio-political dimensions.

Dedicated to Getzel M. Cohen, a leading expert in Seleucid history, this volume gathers 45 contributions on Seleucid history, archaeology, numismatics, political relations, policy toward the Jews, Greek cities, non-Greek populations, peripheral and neighboring regions, imperial administration, economy and public finances, and ancient descriptions of the Seleucid Empire. The reader will gain an international perspective on current research.

In Philostratus’ biography of Apollonius, one finds a series of sections in which this globally traveled philosopher converses with Greeks and non-Greeks about phenomena of art and religion. This volume presents these sections in a new bilingual edition and interprets them in essays that reveal their unique and very appealing mix of literary fact and fiction.

In several late dialogues, Plato uses the paradeigma of the letters to illustrate the methods of dialectics. This study examines why letters in particular represent suitable models, and explores important themes of Plato’s late ontology and epistemology from this viewpoint. The author thereby reveals the nature of the paradeigma and its central role as a method.

Among the items in his legacy, the Florentine philosopher and humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) left an extensive collection of Latin letters, which illustrate his studies and how he viewed himself as a teacher and counselor of princes. This book provides an introduction to this letter collection, analyzing selected letters with reference to the roles adopted by the author and his literary strategies.

Diagoras of Melos (lyric poet, 5th c. B.C.) has received special attention for some time now because he was regarded as a radical atheist and the author of a prose work on atheism in antiquity. He was notorious for revealing and ridiculing the Eleusinian Mysteries and was condemned for impiety at Athens. The present book evaluates Diagoras’ biography and shows that he cannot be considered to have been an atheist in the modern sense.

In addition to being the author of the Parallel Lives of noble Greeks and Romans, Plutarch of Chaeronea (AD c.46-c.120) is widely known for his rich ethical theory, which has ensured him a reputation as one of the most profound moralists in antiquity and beyond. Previous studies have considered Plutarch's moralism in the light of specific works or group of works, so that an exploration of his overall concept of ethical education remains a desideratum.

Bringing together a wide range of texts from both the Parallel Lives and the Moralia, this study puts the moralising agents that Plutarch considers important for ethical development at the heart of its interpretation. These agents operate in different educational settings, and perform distinct moralising roles, dictated by the special features of the type of moral education they are expected to enact. Ethical education in Plutarch becomes a distinctive manifestation of paideia vis-à-vis the intellectual trends of the Imperial period, especially in contexts of cultural identity and power. By reappraising Plutarch's ethical authority and the significance of his didactic spirit, this book will appeal not only to scholars and students of Plutarch, but to anyone interested in the history of moral education and the development of Greek ethics.

As a genre situated at the crossroad of rhetoric and fiction declamatio offers the freedom to experiment with new forms of discourse. Placing the literariness of declamatio into the spotlight, this volume showcases declamation as a realm of genuine literary creation with its own theoretical underpinning, literary technique and generic conventions. Focusing on the oeuvre of Calpurnius Flaccus this volume demonstrates that these texts constitute a genre on their own, the rhetorical and literary framework of which remains not yet fully mapped. Contributions from an international group of leading scholars from the field of Roman Literature and Rhetoric will explore the question of how Roman Declamation functions as a literary genre. This volume investigates the literary technique and the generic conventions of declamatio in its social, pedagocial and ethical context to determine “the poetics” of Roman Declamation.

This volume is of interest to students and scholars of Rhetoric and Roman Literature.

If you are interested in Roman Declamation, we also recommend the volume on the Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian by the same editors to you.

The Ciris has received a certain amount of scholarly attention during the twentieth century, but on the whole has failed to meet with an adequate appreciation. This book aims to vindicate the Ciris, mainly by exploring its use of pre-Virgilian poetic texts largely ignored in previous scholarship.

The core of the book consists of a discursive literary commentary, divided into chapters that examine consecutively the poem's main narrative units. Viewing allusion and allegory as intrinsic features of poetic composition rather than mere artistic devices, the book explores, among more prominent intertexts, Apollonius' Argonautica and Callimachus' Hecale, Lucretius and Catullus 64. Allusions are also suggested to Homer and Empedocles, Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion, Nicander and Euphorion, Choerilus of Samos and Asius of Samos, Ennius and Cicero. Through its intricate web of references to poetic intertexts, the Ciris, it is argued, creates an implicit allegorical pattern with an original poetological message.

Allusion and Allegory is thus the first book-length study to offer a coherent literary interpretation of this controversial poem.

Drawing on surviving fragments, the papers collected in this volume reconstruct both the ways in which Hellenistic biographers worked and the characteristics of their works. They investigate the texts’ value as sources for cultural history and address the relation between biography and other genres. In so doing they show that biography was a form of historiography and even constituted an integral part of the era’s historiographical discourse.

Ancient cultures have left written evidence of a variety of scientific texts. But how can/should they be translated? Is it possible to use modern concepts (and terminology) in their translation and which consequences result from this practice? Scholars of various disciplines discuss the practice of translating ancient scientific texts and present examples of these texts and their translations.

In the Erga [Works and Days] Hesiod unfolds an image of a man whose existence is not determined solely by ineluctable fate. Led by his mind (nous), the individual instead assumes responsibility for his own behavior. This study examines both this perspective – novel in the context of early Greek literature – and shows that nous is of critical importance for the proper understanding of the Erga.

In 1758, the German Jesuit Ignaz Weitenauer published a neo-Latin tragedy “Annibal moriens” [The Death of Hannibal] on the death of the Carthaginian general. In both style and content, the work largely followed the mode of ancient literature. The new edition is presented alongside a German prose translation and includes commentary and interpretation focused on the play’s reception of the ancient world.

As a genre situated at the crossroad of rhetoric and fiction, declamatio offers the freedom to experiment with new forms of discourse. Placing the literariness of declamatio into the spotlight, this volume showcases declamation as a realm of genuine literary creation with its own theoretical underpinning, literary technique and generic conventions. Focusing on the oeuvre of (Ps)Quintilian, this volume demonstrates that these texts constitute a genre on their own, the rhetorical and literary framework of which remains not yet fully mapped. It is of interest to students and scholars of Rhetoric and Roman Literature.

The significance of Plato’s literary style to the content of his ideas is perhaps one of the central problems in the study of Plato and Ancient Philosophy as a whole. As Samuel Scolnicov points out in this collection, many other philosophers have employed literary techniques to express their ideas, just as many literary authors have exemplified philosophical ideas in their narratives, but for no other philosopher does the mode of expression play such a vital role in their thought as it does for Plato. And yet, even after two thousand years there is still no consensus about why Plato expresses his ideas in this distinctive style.

Selected from the first Latin American Area meeting of the International Plato Society (www.platosociety.org) in Brazil in 2012, the following collection of essays presents some of the most recent scholarship from around the world on the wide range of issues related to Plato’s dialogue form. The essays can be divided into three categories. The first addresses general questions concerning Plato’s literary style. The second concerns the relation of his style to other genres and traditions in Ancient Greece. And the third examines Plato’s characters and his purpose in using them.

This volume offers a systematic study of the use of literary quotations in Pliny’s letters. By looking at exemplary quotations from Homer and Virgil, the author shows how Pliny uses quotations as a literary device to appeal to the intellectual background of his contemporary readership.

Anders Cullhed’s study The Shadow of Creusa explores the early Christian confrontation with pagan culture as a remote anticipation of many later clashes between religious orthodoxy and literary fictionality. After a careful survey of Saint Augustine’s critical attitudes to ancient myth and poetry, summarized as a long drawn-out farewell, Cullhed examines other Late Antique dismissals as well as appropriations of the classical heritage. Macrobius, Martianus Capella and Boethius figure among the Late Antique intellectuals who attempted to save or even restore the old mythology by means of allegorical representation. On the other hand, pious poets such as Paulinus of Nola and Bible epic writers such as Iuvencus or Avitus of Vienne turned against pagan lies, and the mighty arch-bishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose, played off unconditional Christian truth against the last Roman strongholds of cultural pluralism. Thus, The Shadow of Creusa elucidates a cultural conflict which was to leave traces all through the Middle Ages and reach down to our present day.

Our understanding of science, mathematics, and medicine today can be deeply enriched by studying the historical roots of these areas of inquiry in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. The fields of ancient science and mathematics have in recent years witnessed remarkable growth. The present volume brings together contributions from more than thirty of the most important scholars working in these fields in the United States and Europe in honor of the eminent historian of ancient science and medicine Heinrich von Staden, Professor Emeritus of Classics and History of Science at the Institute of Advanced Study and William Lampson Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at Yale University. The papers range widely from Mesopotamia to Ancient Greece and Rome, from the first millennium B.C. to the early medieval period, and from mathematics to philosophy, mechanics to medicine, representing both a wide diversity of national traditions and the cutting edge of the international scholarly community.

The doctrinal writings of St. Basil of Caesarea were of key importance at the 1438–9 Ecumenical Council of Ferrara-Florence. A short time later, Bessarion commissioned rhetoric professor George of Trebizond to translate the texts as a gift to Pope Eugenius IV. In addition to the three books Contra Eunomium and the book De spiritu sancto, the work includes the pseudo-Basilian books IV and V Contra Eunomium and the short piece De spiritu.

George of Trebizond (1396–1472/3) is among the most colorful figures of early Italian humanism. His translation of the dogmatic works of St. Basil the Great, commissioned by Cardinal Bessarion, should be seen not only in the context of the Unity Council of Ferrara-Florence but also in terms of its singular role in the Plato-Aristotle controversy and in George’s major falling-out with Bessarion.

This book reveals the literary ways in which Ovid dealt with his exile. It develops the self-portrait of a masterful poet whose individualism seems to presage modernity, and shows how Ovid makes creative use of mythic figures in order to locate his own cultural identity. He creates a tableau of an upside-down world of exile, in which he does not reject Roman values, but lays claim to them on his own terms.

This sourcebook compiles the first complete collection and translation of Latin texts through the Constantinian period about the Scythians and other nomadic peoples in the Scythian cultural group, such as the Massagetians, Essedonians, Daheans, and Sakas. It provides extensive insight into the ways that the Romans viewed nomadic culture and the nomadic way of life.

The widespread notion that Romans hated monarchy (odium regni) ever since the beginning of the Republic runs counter to the many positive connotations they attributed to reges and regnum. This study takes this contradiction as its point of departure and shows how Romans could condemn the idea of royal rule while at the same time maintaining a positive regard for regnum.

This study includes new translations and interpretations of the first 34 poems in the Anacreontic corpus. The aim of the study is to outline a representative image of this variation of the poetry of the Imperial period by taking into consideration how older as well as more contemporary literary genres influenced their construction.

Philosophy and rhetoric became integral elements of Athenian culture. This development was accompanied by a critical discourse that questioned their educational use and warned of its dire consequences for peaceful coexistence in the polis. This study provides the first detailed examination of this critical discourse.

Nearly all the surviving works of Zeno of Elea are mere paraphrases and discussions of his thoughts on the part of later authors. Nevertheless, analysis of all relevant sources does lead to plausible hypotheses about the proper meaning of the “Paradoxes of plurality” (Frag. B1–3) and the “Paradox of place” (Frag. B5). It lends a new perspective to Zeno’s importance for the intellectual history of the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC.

How seriously are we to take Seneca’s philosophizing in the Epistulae morales? Much of their content seems inconsistent and designed for mere effect. This study reveals how Seneca’s choice of words and intellectual acuity are subordinated to the pedagogical aim of gradual persuasion. It becomes apparent that Seneca’s formulation is tactical and that his statements must be interpreted in terms of their specific psychological intent.

The little–researched poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus reflects a remarkable interweaving of Judeo–Christian thought and the Greek–Pagan poetic tradition. This book includes a bilingual edition and analysis of the imagery in the double–poem “On Silence During Lent” (Carm. II,1,34A/B), a work that offers an especially vivid illustration of the often innovative interposition of different traditions.

Homer’s Iliad has influenced European literature and art to this day. In the last 30 years, researchers have made significant progress in illuminating this epic. In this study, a leading Homer scholar engages in dialogue with the international research community to reflect on today’s most significant questions, among them the Iliad’s origins, language and style, structure, historical context, and after-effects.

In the Roman republic, pamphlets were pieces of fictional propaganda that had a considerable impact. This study argues that Cicero composed the Second Philippic as a political pamphlet and followed specific genre criteria . The Second Philippic was probably distributed as a pamphlet and may well have cost Cicero his life.

This volume presents a new edition and annotated translation of Pompeius Magnus, a Neo-Latin tragedy on the death of the Roman general, which was published in 1621 by the French Jesuit Petrus Mussonius. The content and language of the play were strongly influenced by Classical literature.

The collected papers in this volume, many of them previously unpublished, demonstrate the politcial character of Roman tragedy and show that, during the Imperial period, panegyrics often shifted to opposition.

One of the principal dilemmas for scholars of Roman comedy is demonstrating its originality compared to its (sometimes lost) Greek forebears. In 30 papers written between 1973 and 2013, ten of them previously unpublished, the author uses close analysis of the works of Plautus and Terence to reveal each dramatist’s unique style of dramaturgy and at times utopian worldview and expands our understanding of so-called “Greek” new comedy.

Plato’s criticism of writing has engendered much controversy – and it is where interpretations of Platonic philosophy often part ways. This study uses textual and philosophical analysis to shed light on the debate. By comparing Plato’s views to Plotinus’s thoughts about the conditions and forms of philosophical discussion, the author gives the debate historical and systematic context.

This collection of essays presents the history of the “Tübingen School of Plato”, including all the central works by its principal exponents. It includes detailed descriptions of the succession of theoretical principles that characterized Platonism from pre-Socratic philosophy to Neo-Platonism. The elucidation of interconnections within the broad realm of contemporary Plato research make this volume a perfect introduction to Plato.

In antiquity, philosophical argumentation was often embedded in a literary form of presentation whose composition followed certain genre-determined rules. At the Third Congress of the Society for Ancient Philosophy, philologists and philosophers gave presentations about this point of intersection between philosophical argument and literary forms. This volume seeks to provide insight into the discussion as well as stimulate further thought.

This is the first full-scale publication dedicated to the study of friendship in Neo-Platonism. Based on his interpratation of the works of Plotinus, Iamblichus, Themistius, and Emperor Julian the author argues that friendship is the core concept within Neo-Platonic political philosophy. This study makes a valuable contribution to scholarship on neo-platonic ethics and political philosophy as well as the theory of governance (Herrschaftstheorie) in Late Antiquity.

The motifs of fons inspirationis and labor limae lost their semantic force in Latin poetry after the Augustan age. This book analyzes these two topoi from Ovid to Martial and shows how poetic inspiration and lima poetica are subtly displayed for the purpose of self-fashioning and communication by poets with their patrons.

È luogo comune che, esaurendosi la stagione poetica augustea, i motivi di sorso ispiratore e labor limae perdano pregnanza semantica. Questo libro analizza le occorrenze di entrambi i topoi nella poesia latina di omaggio da Ovidio a Marziale, e mostra che sorgenti delle Muse e lima poetica entrano in delicate strategie di self-fashioning e di comunicazione con i patroni poeti.

The essays compiled in this volume individually address the varied forms in which the revival of Platonism manifested itself in ancient philosophy. It pays special attention to the issues of unity and beauty, the mind and knowledge, the soul and the body, virtue and happiness, and additionally considers the political and religious dimensions of Platonic thought. Starting from Plato and Aristotle, the studies examine the multiple transformational forms of Platonism, including the Neo-Platonists – Plotinus, Porphyrios, Iamblichus, Themistius, Proclus, and Marinus – along with Christian thinkers such as St. Augustine, Boethius, and Dionysus the Areopagite. The authors who have contributed to this volume make multiple references to the scholarly work of Dominic J. O’Meara. Their further refinement of O’Meara’s approach particularly casts a new light on Late-Platonic ethics. The essays in this collection also contribute to scholarly research about the multiple inter-relationships among the Platonists themselves and between Platonists and philosophers from other schools. Taken as a whole, this book reveals the full breadth of potential in the revival and transformation of ancient Platonism.

The volume focuses on the evidence of scenic art present in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria to verify its influence on the education of the speaker. The enquiry will also make reference to all Greek and Latin sources useful in highlighting the mutual dependence between oratory and theater from the fifth century B.C. to the second century A.D. The most important area of investigation concerns the teaching of comoedus, master of diction and gestures. The fields of specialization and methods configured by Quintilian recall in detail the training process followed by Demosthenes to achieve excellence in the actio under the guidance of different actors; this close similarity suggests a persistence of training relationships between theater and oratory. The choice of comoedus is based on well-defined selection criteria: in particular, the comedy seems to have replaced the tragedy as the teaching model in the imperial era because of its greater verisimilitude. The enquiry extends to the acting techniques used in the imperial era, with particular attention to the mask and the strategies of identification that the actor could suggest to the speaker to activate the process of sympatheia with the public.

Il volume si incentra sulle testimonianze relative all’arte scenica presenti nell’Institutio oratoria di Quintiliano, per verificarne l’influenza sulla formazione dell’oratore. L’indagine si estende a tutte le altre fonti greche e latine utili ad evidenziare la dipendenza fra oratoria e teatro, a partire dal V secolo a. C. fino al II d. C. Il più originale settore d’indagine riguarda la docenza del comoedus, la cui tecnica costituisce un’importante risorsa anche per l’oratoria.

This study examines ancient dialogue as a genre, and its 17 essays explore the relationship between its form, content, and function, with a focus on the literary aspects of dialogue. The contributions address the development of the genre over time as well as the formal aspects of dialogue.

“Spuria Macri” consists of 20 chapters and 487 hexameters about plant, animal, and mineral remedies added to the poem “Macer Floridus.” This translation, the first ever into German, contains rich commentaries on language, sources, reception, authorship, intellectual history, and genre.

This collection of papers contains some 60 articles selected from the works of the philologist Ernst Vogt. They deal with a variety of very different aspects of the study of ancient languages, for example the history of literary forms and genres, Greek literature of the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods, the history of transmission and reception, or the history of classical philology. All of the texts have been checked and additions or amendments made.

In his utopian novel Hiera Anagraphe (Sacred History) Euhemerus of Messene (ca. 300 B.C.) describes his travel to the island Panchaia in the Indian Ocean where he discovered an inscribed stele in the temple of Zeus Triphylius. It turned out that the Olympian gods (Uranos, Kronos, Zeus) were deified kings. The travels of Zeus allowed to describe peoples and places all over the world.

Winiarczyk investigates the sources of the theological views of Euhemerus. He proves that Euhemerus’ religious views were rooted in old Greek tradition (the worship of heroes, gods as founders of their own cult, tombs of gods, euergetism, rationalistic interpretation of myths, the explanations of the origin of religion by the sophists, the ruler cult). The description of the Panchaian society is intended to suggest an archaic and closed culture, in which the stele recording res gestae of the deified kings might have been preserved.

The translation of Ennius’ Euhemerus sive Sacra historia (ca. 200 - ca. 194) is a free prose rendering, which Lactantius knew only indirectly. The book is concluded by a short history of Euhemerism in the pagan, Christian and Jewish literature.

The dissolution of the Roman Empire and the end of ancient civilization constitute European history’s most profound crisis. Over the centuries, this crisis has often inspired explanatory attempts and comparisons with more recent times. The essays presented in this volume, written by Alexander Demandt between 1977 and 2011, serve to amplify his comprehensive treatment undertaken in Der Fall Roms. Die Auflösung des römischen Reichs im Urteil der Nachwelt and Die Spätantike. Römische Geschichte von Diocletian bis Justinian.

Until now, the image of the Amazons that prevailed in classical antiquity has been predominantly interpreted within the framework of gender discourse. However, Amazons have been paradigmatic in all literary and pictorial genres and through all epochs of antiquity as representatives of various contrast in myth and history, including the familiar and alien, self and other, as well as settled and nomadic. As such, they are a part of very generalized alternative worlds in which constructions of the self and images of the other are co-mingled.

This study examines the radical critique of wealth and moneymaking that permeates Plato’s works from the early dialogues to the Republic and the Laws. The author shows that Plato’s position on wealth should not be ascribed to aristocratic prejudices, but instead brought into relation with one of his core philosophical beliefs: the establishment of an original conception of aretê (virtue) that conflicts with money making.

The Epistula ex Ponto III 1, composed by Ovid to his wife in the 2nd period of his relegatio, is the summary of the leitmotives of his exile poetry and lacks a recent accurate analysis. This linguistic-philological commentary, the most updated and comprehensive available since the 1965 Staffhorst’s one, reveals dense intertextual connections with the author’s other writings, with the previous Latin love poetry and the ways of the Ciceronian and Horatian decorum, by underlining an articulated literary dialogue that, in the recovery of the original mournful connotation of ancient elegy, employs also typically tragic contents and styles. The request to the wife to intercede with Livia is modelled according to the structural and conceptual modules of the suasoria around the main theme of conjugal fides and includes the consideration of historic and sociological themes (such as the wife’s figure and her play in the imperial society, the relationships of the intellectual person with power towards the end of the Augustan principality and the increasing importance of the role of the empress during the last years of the princeps’ life).

The oath was an institution of fundamental importance across a wide range of social interactions throughout the ancient Greek world, making a crucial contribution to social stability and harmony; yet there has been no comprehensive, dedicated scholarly study of the subject for over a century. This volume of a two-volume study explores the nature of oaths as Greeks perceived it, the ways in which they were used (and sometimes abused) in Greek life and literature, and their inherent binding power.

The oath was an institution of fundamental importance across a wide range of social interactions throughout the ancient Greek world, making a crucial contribution to social stability and harmony; yet there has been no comprehensive, dedicated scholarly study of the subject for over a century. This volume of a two-volume study explores how oaths functioned in the working of the Greek city-state (polis) and in relations between different states as well as between Greeks and non-Greeks.

In May 2011, a conference on riddles and word games in Greek and Latin poetry took place at the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of Warsaw. The conference was intended as an open forum where specialists working in different fields of classical studies could meet to discuss the varied manifestations of riddles and other technopaegnia - both terms being understood broadly to encompass the full range of play with language in classical antiquity, in keeping with the use made of the two terms in ancient and early modern theoretical discussions. This volume offers revised versions of the papers presented during the conference. Contributions by scholars from Europe and the USA treat a number of interconnected topics, including: ancient and modern attempts to formulate a definition of the riddle; poetic games at Greek symposia; experimentation with language in late classical poetry; riddles in the book cultures of the Hellenistic age and late antiquity; the functions of word games carved in stone, written on papyrus, or inscribed on the wall as graffiti; authors famed for their obscurity, such as Heraclitus and Lycophron; wordplay in Neo-Latin poetry; oracles, magic squares, pattern poetry, palindromes and acrostichs.

In the literature of the late Roman Republic, political change was accompanied by a loosening of tradition concepts of sexual morality and gender. Investigating texts from Lucilius to Ovid, the author shows that the subjects of masculinity and effeminatio are closely tied to political discourse in every literary genre of the time.

This book reconstructs the theory of signification implicit in Aristotle’s De Interpretatione and its psychological background in his writing De Anima, a project often envisioned by scholars but never systematically undertaken.

I begin by explaining what sort of phonetic material, according to Aristotle, can be a significans and a phônê. To that end, I provide a physiological account of which animal sounds count as phônê, as well as a psychological evaluation of the cognitive content of the phônai under consideration in De Interpretatione: names, verbs, and assertive sentences.

I then turn to noêmata, which, for Aristotle, are the psychological reference and significata of names, verbs and assertive sentences. I explain what, for Aristotle, are the logical properties a significatum must have in order to be signified by the phonetic material of a name, verb or assertive sentence, and why noêmata can fulfil those logical conditions.

Finally, I elucidate the significans-significatum relation without making use of the modern semantic triangle. This approach is consonant with Aristotle’s methodology and breaks new ground by exploring the connection between the linguistic and psychological aspects of Aristotle’s theory of signification.

The birth of rhetoric is traced back to the 5th century B.C.E., when the first theoretical treatises on rhetoric were drafted. As early as in the speeches of the Iliad however, one can recognize a deliberate and thoughtful use of refined rhetorical techniques, although these techniques were only codified at a much later date. The Homeric orators thus appear to have been influenced by unwritten but nevertheless valid rules of rhetoric. Based on detailed analysis of the most important speeches in the epic and related reflections by the poet, the author reveals Homer as a pioneer of rhetoric.

Francis Cairns has made well-known contributions to the study of Roman Epic and Elegy. Papers on Catullus and Horace assembles his substantial body of work on Roman Lyric - about 30 papers published between 1969 and 2010 in many European and American periodicals, themed volumes and Festschriften, along with some new papers.

Many aspects of the lyric poetry of Catullus and Horace are treated in this collection. Particular emphasis is given to the political and religious interests of both poets, to their interactions with their contemporaries, to the ‛learning’ which informs their poetry, and to their generic practices. Philological problems of text and interpretation are treated pari passu, as are relevant aesthetic questions. The volume is fully indexed and contains a composite bibliography and addenda and corrigenda.
Papers on Catullus and Horace will make access to this body of important scholarly material easier and more convenient for scholars and students of Latin poetry.

Since Terzaghi’s edition (1939) no new relevant data were found illustrating the textual history of the Synesian poetic corpus from Late Antiquity to the Palaeologan Byzantium. Thanks to a new inspection of the main manuscripts and the enucleation of thematic and structural incoherencies, hitherto unnoticed, it seems possible to restore the structure of the hymnodic corpus as it was before its original pattern was damaged and modified by late Byzantine editors. Specific researches are devoted to: (1) the displacement of the ninth hymn (originally intended to open the hymns series); (2) the beginning of a new hymn with the last verses of the ninth; (3) the merging of two hymns into what is now the first hymn and a new assessment of the last part of the same piece (according to the Neoplatonic theory of the soul); (4) the real purpose and nature of the hymns 6-8 (uncorrectly considered “tout court” as christological), and the original structure of the eighth hymn (to be divided in two different poems). Moreover, the study of ancient and late antique metrical and musical theories reveals hitherto unexpected features about both production and performance of Synesius’ hymns.