Published by De Gruyter

Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes

Edited by: Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos

ISSN: 1868-4785

Übersicht
Volumes

Trends in Classics, a series and journal edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos, publishes innovative, interdisciplinary work which brings to the study of Greek and Latin texts the insights and methods of related disciplines such as narratology, intertextuality, reader-response criticism, and oral poetics. Both publications seek to publish research across the full range of classical antiquity.

The series Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes welcomes monographs, edited volumes, conference proceedings and collections of papers; it provides an important forum for the ongoing debate about where Classics fits in modern cultural and historical studies.　

The journal Trends in Classics is published twice a year with approx. 160 pp. per issue. Each year one issue is devoted to a specific subject with articles edited by a guest editor.

Author / Editor information

Franco Montanari, University of Genova, Italy; Antonios Rengakos, Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Tereus Through The Ages

Reassembling the Myth of Tereus from Archaic Epic to Ovid

Alessandra Abbattista, Chiara Blanco, Maria Haley, Giacomo Savani

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This volume constitutes the first attempt at bringing together scholars from Greek literature, Latin literature and archaeology working on the tradition of the Tereus myth. More specifically, it will focus on the reconstruction, transmission and reception of the myth in Greece and Rome by examining the different adaptations and interactions of the story through the lens of assemblage theory.

References to the Tereus myth date back to the Homeric poems; it was addressed by renowned dramatists, such as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Accius, before being adapted by Ovid. These different versions raise questions about the reconstruction of the myth and the representation of women, revenge, paidophagia and metamorphosis. Aspects of the story reverberate in ancient material culture, especially Greek vase paintings, which stem from different variants and traditions.

Building on assemblage theory, the volume draws forth collaboration between specialists in Classical studies to examine how the myth was adapted in Greece and Rome without prestiging a Greek original. As such, it will be of significant interest for researchers and postgraduate students working on Greek and Roman tragedy, Ovid, classical reception and ancient material culture.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783110728804
ISBN:: 9783110728804
ISBN:: 9783110728897
ISBN:: 9783110728705
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Archaeology
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Metaphors of the Ancient World

Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Ancient Sources

Fabian Horn

Volume 181 in this series

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The objective of this edited volume is to bring together contributions from the fields of Ancient Greek and Latin Philology that apply the cognitive linguistic framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to ancient texts and other source material. The individual chapters are unified by this shared theoretical approach, occasionally supplemented by further theoretical frameworks and methodologies from literary criticism and the cognitive sciences.

The scope of the volume is broad, and there is no restriction to specific literary genres or periods of history. Discussion ranges from the Archaic Greek epic poetry of Homer to the early imperial philosophical treatises of Seneca the Younger. Topics treated along the way include Presocratic philosophy, Ancient Greek comedy, and Roman love elegy. This collection of research by theoretically aligned Classicists thereby showcases the potential and versatility of CMT when it comes to the study and interpretation of ancient texts.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111631929
ISBN:: 9783111631929
ISBN:: 9783111632704
ISBN:: 9783111632698
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Εpic Pastures

Reshaping Epic and Pastoral in Ovid’s ›Metamorphoses‹

Eleni Ntanou

Volume 180 in this series

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Although nearly all scholars acknowledge that the Metamorphoses appears to engage with pastoral poetry, there has not been a monograph specifically designed to address and explore the interaction between pastoral and epic in the Metamorphoses. This book fills in this gap, building on modern approaches to intertextuality, Ovidian, and pastoral studies.

The present book is comprised from five main chapters: 1. Pastoral Encounters, 2. Female Pastoral, 3. Mourning Pastoral, 4. Pastoral Ascent in the Metamorphoses, 5. Pastoral, Golden Age and the Metamorphoses). The chapters are often in dialogue with one another, thus offering a more sustained examination of the topic. Alongside the lack of comprehensive monograph on pastoral in the Metamorphoses, the preseny book’s originality and contribution lie on the exploration of pastoral in the Metamorphoses through the lenses of fiction, heroics, and gender, notions which are interwoven throughout the chapters.

This modern approach to generic interaction will be useful for scholars working on Ovid and across the range of Greek and Roman literature, as well as for students of Classics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111529134
ISBN:: 9783111529134
ISBN:: 9783111531472
ISBN:: 9783111531847
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Chronology and History of the Attic Theatre

Origins, Fifth Century, Fourth Century (and Late) Reception

Massimiliano Ornaghi

Volume 179 in this series

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“Chronology and History of the Attic Theatre” presents the results of research carried out by a wide range of scholars specialised in various fields of ancient theatre studies, brought together in dialogue on a common focus: the history of the Attic theatre, from its origins to the fifth century BCE. Each chapter of the book proceeds from a case study, but aims to draw general conclusions in relation to the main theme. Many types of evidence have been collected and analysed: archaeological evidence, especially from the sixth and fifth centuries BCE; epigraphic evidence, from the sixth century BCE to the Hellenistic period; literary evidence from the tragedies, satyr plays and comedies, but also classical and post-classical texts relating to pre-theatrical performances and the first dramatic contests.
These sources have been used to analyse the different theatrical phenomena from a historicalchronological perspective, looking also at the links between them (or with other artistic expressions) and at the phases of reception and theorisation of classical theatre.
The book thus offers a wealth of information, updated, rethought and linked in original ways, that can contribute to a better vision of the history of ancient Greek theatre.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111621937
ISBN:: 9783111621937
ISBN:: 9783111621845
ISBN:: 9783111621388
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Ancient and Medieval Greek Etymology

Theory and Practice II

Arnaud Zucker, Claire Le Feuvre, Maria Chriti

Volume 178 in this series

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This volume on ancient Greek synchronic etymology offers a set of papers evidencing the cultural significance of etymological commitment in ancient and medieval literature. It continues a collective work (begun in a first volume under the same title) of reflection on, and valorization of the significance, development and impact of the Greek etymologizing thought. The three sections illustrate the variety of approaches to the same object, which was much more than a technical way of studying language for Greek writers. Contributions focus on the functions of etymology as they were intended by the authors according to their own aims. The wide range of genres and authors and the interplay between theoretical reflection and applied practice demonstrate the importance of etymology in Greek culture. The studies proposed here show how versatile the uses of etymology are in ancient texts, appearing both technical and inspired, literary and philosophical, serious and playful, lexicological and conceptual. Part of them deals with the link and difference between etymology and etiology. The work is of special interest to scholars on etymology in ancient Greek scholarship and on more general issues in lexicology, semiology, and folk-etymology.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111573120
ISBN:: 9783111573120
ISBN:: 9783111572796
ISBN:: 9783111572505
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Subject:: Linguistics and Semiotics
Subject:: Other Languages of Europe
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Philosophy
Subject:: Philosophy of Language
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Early Christian Writers in the West and the Classical Literary Tradition

Stylistic and Literary Perspectives

Sophia Papaioannou, Thomas Tsartsidis

Volume 177 in this series

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Early Christian prose writers of the Latin West (2^nd–5^th c. AD) have long been studied predominantly from theological and historical perspectives. Hence, there is a conspicuous scarcity of comprehensive studies approaching these texts from stylistic and literary angles. This volume will be an important step towards filling this substantial gap in recent scholarship. It will include chapters on selected Latin Christian writers such as Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, Lactantius, Firmicus Maternus, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. It aims at investigating, on the one hand, ways in which these texts can be appreciated as literary texts in their own right, by exploring the style and imagery employed in them; and, on the other, the intricate and meaningful modes in which these writers interact, develop, and transform phraseology, topoi, concepts, and techniques found in Classical literature. This volume will offer a paradigmatic overview as to the usefulness of approaching early Christian writers through a literary lens, thus opening up new paths of research across various disciplines including Classics, Literary Studies, Theology, and (Social) History.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111027432
ISBN:: 9783111027432
ISBN:: 9783111027807
ISBN:: 9783111028002
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Subject:: Early Christianity
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Classical Enrichment

Greek and Latin Literature and its Reception

Antony Augoustakis, Stavros Frangoulidis, Thea S. Thorsen

Volume 176 in this series

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This collection brings together twenty eight chapters written by Stephen Harrison’s colleagues and former students from around the globe to celebrate both his distinguished teaching and research career as a classicist and his outstanding and admirable service to the international classical community. The wide variety of original contributions on topics ranging from Greek to Latin and ancient literature’s reception in opera and contemporary writing is divided into five parts. Each corresponds to the staggering publication record of the honorand, encompassing, as it does, a broad literary spectrum, starting from the literature of the end of the Roman Republic and coming down to Neo-Latin and the reception of Classics in Irish, in English poetry and in European literature and culture in general. This corpus of compelling chapters is hoped to match Stephen Harrison’s rich research output in an illuminating dialogue with it.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111577289
ISBN:: 9783111577289
ISBN:: 9783111577753
ISBN:: 9783111576848
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2024

Transgressive Heroism

Gender, Genre, and Ovid in Valerius Flaccus’ ›Argonautica‹

Raymond Marks

Volume 175 in this series

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Roman epic is traditionally understood to advance a masculine, martial form of heroism. In his version of the Argonaut legend, the Argonautica, however, Valerius Flaccus challenges that prevailing ethos of the genre by turning Medea, Jason’s love interest in the story, into a heroic figure and Jason himself into her emasculated victim. The present study charts this plotline as it unfolds in the second half of Valerius’ epic, finding its key source of inspiration in the poetry of Ovid with its tales of transgressive love, gender-bending, and unconventional heroism. Employing an extensive program of allusion to his Metamorphoses and elegiac works, Valerius transforms Medea from the innocent, vulnerable girl we see in her first appearance in the poem into a threatening, powerful, and masculine figure, who not only helps Jason fulfill his quest for the golden fleece, but eclipses him as hero in the process. Readers of this study will gain insight into Valerius’ inventive reworking of the Argonaut myth and innovations within the epic genre as well as a greater appreciation for Ovid’s influence on Roman epic poetry in the first century CE.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111562629
ISBN:: 9783111562629
ISBN:: 9783111562544
ISBN:: 9783111562742
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2025

Callimachus: The Epigrams

Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary

Susan A. Stephens, Benjamin Acosta-Hughes

Volume 174 in this series

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Recent decades have seen a flourishing of interest in Hellenistic epigram (short poems usually in elegiac couplets), an interest fostered in part by the appearance of several ground-breaking new studies of these poems and the history of their collection, as well as by the publication in 2001 of a newly found papyrus, P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309, that preserves over 100 epigrams of Posidippus of Pela. Missing hitherto in this proliferation of new scholarship on epigram is an edition and commentary in English on the epigrams of Callimachus, one of the leading and most widely imitated creative figures of this period, an artist who composed in a wide variety of poetic genres, one of which was epigram. Callimachus' epigrams adumbrate a broad selection of types, among them sepulchral, dedicatory, epideictic and erotic poems; the poems are brilliant artworks themselves and are among the most illuminating examples of this poetic genre. Scholarship on Callimachus tends to favor the fragmentary poems (the Aetia, the Hecale, the Iambi etc.) over the extant; our study seeks to redress this imbalance, and to cast a new interpretive light upon these glittering gems, which came to be widely admired and imitated in both later Greek and Latin poetry.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783110770575
ISBN:: 9783110770575
ISBN:: 9783110770490
ISBN:: 9783110770452
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2024

The Future of the Past

Why Classical Studies still matter. Athenian Dialogues IV

Georgios K. Giannakis, Theodore Papanghelis, Antonios Rengakos

Volume 173 in this series

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This collective volume contains 27 original studies that address in a critical way the position of classical studies in the twenty-first century and its challenges, as captured in the oxymoron of the theme title ‘the future of the past’.

The relevance of classical antiquity is reflected in all aspects of modern life: the sciences, the linguistic forms, literary expressions, cultural tradition, religion and ethics, philosophical thinking, modes of argument, political theory, history, the arts, and an entire host of other areas—in a word, much of what modern man is. As the conversation between past and present is best demonstrated at the intersection of different disciplines and cultural trends, interdisciplinary and intercultural topics are discussed in the essays. The contributions are organized in thematic groups according to the topics and sub-topics covered, and explore new ways of viewing the values of the classical past and their relevance to the present and future of societies.

The work is of special relevance to scholars interested in classical studies, ancient history, critical thinking, the reception of classical ideas in the modern world, and the relation of the past with the present and the future of humanity.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111337852
ISBN:: 9783111337852
ISBN:: 9783111338088
ISBN:: 9783111337142
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2024

Dire Remedies: A Social History of Healthcare in Classical Antiquity

William V. Harris

Volume 172 in this series

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Dire Remedies: a Social History of Healthcare in Classical Antiquity is the first wide-ranging social history of ancient healthcare. Greek medicine is at the origin of modern medicine, but it was very often ineffective. What did people actually do when faced with pain and illness? Starting with a review of ancient health conditions and a survey of what doctors had to offer, W.V. Harris describes the multifarious practices and diverse kinds of people to whom Greeks and Romans turned for help. Topics include the possible development of analgesics, ancient ideas about contagion, the history of the god Asclepius and more generally the role of religion and magic, opinions about abortion, ancient responses to mental illness, and the invention of the hospital. Taking into account the fill range of textual sources and archaeological material, this book attempts to provide an unprecedentedly realistic – and readable – depiction of the Greek and Roman responses to ill health.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111507996
ISBN:: 9783111507996
ISBN:: 9783111508320
ISBN:: 9783111454399
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Science and Medicine
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

The Greek Poetry of Summons and Invitation

From Homer to the Hellenistic Age

Francis Cairns

Volume 171 in this series

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The Greek Poetry of Summons and Invitation assembles and studies for the first time the numerous poetic invitations and summonses of Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece. These poems and passages come from epic, lyric, dramatic, epigrammatic, and epigraphic sources. Most of them are by celebrated Greek poets ― Homer, Sappho, Alcaeus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Theocritus, Callimachus, Apollonius, among others. Analysis of this poetic corpus associates it with the ‘kletikon’, an ancient rhetorical genre of content, and reveals everywhere in it the commonplaces of that genre, thus allowing new sub-types of the kletikon to be discovered, and the development of the genre over the centuries to be charted. When individual invitations and summonses are viewed against this generic background, their originality and merits emerge along with their poets’ unique voices. Each summons and invitation is presented, translated, discussed in detail, and, when part of a longer work, linked to its context. This volume is directed to scholars and students of Classics; scholars of the Latin equivalent genre, the ‘vocatio’, which persisted into the Renaissance, can also find in it an intellectual model.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111481388
ISBN:: 9783111481388
ISBN:: 9783111482736
ISBN:: 9783111481067
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

The Greek Words in Persius’ Literary Programme

Spyridon Tzounakas

Volume 170 in this series

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This book demonstrates that the carefully chosen Greek words in Persius’ programmatic passages play a significant role in the context of his literary criticism: they allow him to express his objection to the Graecizing poetic compositions of his day more convincingly, while facilitating intertextual dialogues with many writers. Greek words that occur in programmatic passages throw into relief various pathologies of poetry which Persius disapproves of and which contribute effectively to a justification of his rejection. However, this practice, which does not continue into the rest of his work, where Greek words are incorporated into the satirist’s thought more harmoniously, appears to serve specific expediencies and should not be considered characteristic of Persius’ attitude towards Greek culture in general. Besides, the satiric persona adopts a positive stance regarding Greek philosophy or comedy and criticizes the ignorant critics of Greek culture, while many aspects of Greek thought enrich his own poetry in several passages. Thus, despite the intensity with which he turns against the Graecizing compositions of his day, generalizations regarding an anti-Hellenic stance on Persius’ part should be deemed unfounded.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111501758
ISBN:: 9783111501758
ISBN:: 9783111502274
ISBN:: 9783111501338
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2024

Greek Culture in Hellenistic Egypt

Persistence and Evolutions

Lucio Del Corso, Antonio Ricciardetto

Volume 169 in this series

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This book investigates some aspects of the cultural consequences of the settlement of Greeks in Egypt during the Hellenistic period, through a discussion of papyrological material, archaeological evidence, and literary sources. It is divided into three sections. The first, Space and Images, reflects on the evolutions and changes in iconography, spatial organization, and landscape. The second, Ethnic Interactions, offers new hints on the long debated topic of ethnicity, relying on a wide range of Greek and Demotic sources. The third, The Literary Experience, shifts the attention from documents to literature, examining the circulation of Greek texts and books in Egypt from different perspectives.

Mixing case studies and overviews, the volume offers an updated, multifaceted representation of complex phaenomena which can be understood only going beyond disciplinary boundaries.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111334646
ISBN:: 9783111334646
ISBN:: 9783111334547
ISBN:: 9783111334677
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Archaeology
Subject:: Papyrology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Ahead of Publication 2024

Polytropos Ajax

Roots, Evolution, and Reception of a Multifaceted Hero

Silvia Speriani, Stephen Harrison

Volume 168 in this series

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Meanings are realized at the point of reception and this volume intends to offer an in-depth discussion of some of the meanings associated with and raised by the figure of Telamonian Ajax at various, specifically contextualized, and yet somehow connectable ‘points of reception’.

Part 1 looks at how, and from where, and with what effects, the epic and tragic figure of Ajax is constructed and re-defined in archaic and classical Greece. Part 2 moves on to Roman Ajax(es), evaluating how he is used in and by Latin literature as a tool for window-references and innovation, and for reflecting on national identity and cultural categories. Part 3 discusses various ways in which the myth of Ajax, especially in its Sophoclean version, has been translated into theatrical, psychological, and philosophical discussions.

This is not an attempt to look for Ajax’s true nature (an ill-posed question in itself). Nor is it a claim to evaluate Ajax’s features as if they could be placed on a straight evolutionary line (they never can be). On the contrary, the volume provides a multiform and interconnected ensemble of relevant patterns, always particularly situated, and constantly changing.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9783111450469
ISBN:: 9783111450469
ISBN:: 9783111451145
ISBN:: 9783111450353
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Archaeology
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Lucretian Receptions in Prose

George Kazantzidis

Volume 167 in this series

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The examination of Lucretian reception in Latin poetry has been served well by scholars. Lucretius’ presence in later prose writers, on the other hand, is a topic that warrants more investigation.

Susanne Gatzemeier’s 2013 monograph (Ut ait Lucretius: Die Lukrezrezeption in der lateinischen Prosa bis Laktanz) is an invaluable contribution to the topic but by no means exhaustive either in terms of the potential intertextualities it traces or in terms of its interpretive methods and insights. At the same time, recent studies implicate Lucretius’ name in discussions of prose writers who were not that often thought in the past to have engaged with the De Rerum Natura in an active way. Caesar and Livy but also Vitruvius and Tacitus are some good examples. The present volume taps into this discussion and broadens further our understanding of Lucretian reception in prose writers, including Cicero, Celsus, Seneca the Younger, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch and Lactantius.

Building on the vast scholarship on the significance of Lucretius as a model for later poets, the volume sheds new light on the De Rerum Natura’s afterlife by looking at its presence in philosophical prose, medical writing, oratory, epistolary writing and Christian theology.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111443720
ISBN:: 9783111443720
ISBN:: 9783111443812
ISBN:: 9783111443669
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Early Greek Epic Fragments III

Epics on Herakles and Theseus: Panyassis’ ›Herakleia‹ and the ›Theseis‹

Christos C. Tsagalis

Volume 165 in this series

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This is the third volume in the series of commentaries on Early Greek Epic Fragments (EGEF III). It contains introduction, text, translation, and commentary on the Herakleia by Panyassis of Halikarnassos and on the Theseis. Two other volumes have been already published (EGEF I: Genealogical and Antiquarian Epic, De Gruyter 2017; EGEF II: Epics on Herakles: Kreophylos and Peisandros, De Gruyter 2022) and one more is to follow (EGEF IV: The Persika by Choerilos of Samos). This sub-series within TCSV aims to provide scholars and students with up-to-date commentaries on the extant fragments of early Greek epic that have not received, contrary to Cyclic epic, the attention they deserve.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111447568
ISBN:: 9783111447568
ISBN:: 9783111447599
ISBN:: 9783111447278
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Education and Learning in Byzantine Thessalonike

Filippomaria Pontani

Volume 164 in this series

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Byzantine Thessaloniki has often been considered in its relationship with Constantinople, as a deuteragonist vis-à-vis the capital. However, from the 11th through the 15th century the symproteuousa has often played an important role in terms of the study, preservation and circulation of learning.

The present volume collects 11 papers originating in a conference held at Thessaloniki's Kentro Istorias in May 2022. Some of them offer new elements and fresh discoveries on single erudites and their work, from Michael Mitylenaios to John Pediasimos, from Demetrios Triklinios to Thomas Magister, from Matthew Blastares to Manuel Boullotes. Hagiography, schedography, lexicography, philology on ancient Greek texts, and even canonical law, are among the genres practised by Thessalonian scholars over the centuries. Other papers offer thoughts on Eustathios' didactic aims, bird's-eye views of the city's intellectual milieux in the early Palaeologan era, or of the learned circles in Manuel II's entourage.

The book acknowledges the "highs" and the "lows" in the cultural development of medieval Thessaloniki, and brings together essential elements towards an assessment of the city's role in the history of education and learning.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111429410
ISBN:: 9783111429410
ISBN:: 9783111430232
ISBN:: 9783111421476
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Byzantine Studies
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Byzantine Studies
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Decoding the Osirian Myth

A Transcultural Reading of Plutarch’s Narrative

Panagiota Sarischouli

Volume 163 in this series

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The earliest written references to the Osirian myth-complex appeared already in the Pyramid Text spells (c. 2400–2300 BCE). The most complete exposition of this ancient Egyptian myth is, however, found in the Greek treatise On Isis and Osiris, in which the 2nd-century CE Platonist Plutarch utilises Egyptian mythology to advocate his philosophical ideas concerning the divine and the nature of the cosmos. This book aims at “decoding” Plutarch’s narrative of the Osirian myth, linking his claims to the existing Egyptian and Greek parallels. It thus analyses a multitude of mythic and religious traditions from a transcultural perspective, exploring the relation of the Pharaonic features of the Osirian divinities to the features they had acquired in Ptolemaic and Roman times, interpreting the Egyptian myth within the overall framework of parallel mythologies from other cultures, and examining whether the brief mythic stories (historiolae) recited in Late Egyptian ritual texts can be deployed to enrich the context of certain obscure episodes in Plutarch’s account of the myth. The book will be of great interest not only to scholars and students of Plutarch and later Middle Platonism, but also to Egyptologists. Due to its thematic variety and scope, this publication will also appeal to a wider array of readers (specialists and non-specialists alike) interested in religious syncretism, interreligious connections, and the challenge of multiculturalism from Hellenistic times until Late Antiquity.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111435138
ISBN:: 9783111435138
ISBN:: 9783111435213
ISBN:: 9783111435022
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Religion
Subject:: Egyptology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Magic in the Literature of the Neronian Period

Realism and Criticism

Konstantinos Arampapaslis

Volume 162 in this series

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Neronian representations of magic, a practice prevalent in the everyday life of the period and a central topic in its literary production, are characterized by unprecedented accuracy and detail. The similarities of witchcraft depictions in Seneca’s Medea, Lucan’s book 6, and Petronius’ Satyrica with spells of the PGM, the defixiones, as well as with Pliny’s quasi-magical recipes underscore realism as the distinctive trait of Neronian magic scenes which has often been considered the authors’ means to differentiate themselves from their Augustan predecessors. However, such high-degree realism is not merely an ornamental feature but transforms into a tool that influences the reader’s response toward magic, according to each author’s worldview and aims. The cross-generic examination of the motif of magic in the major Neronian authors shows how realism forms a link between reader, contemporary experience, and text that encourages more active participation on the part of the reader. At the same time, images of destruction, the horrific, and the ridiculous further enhance the negative view of magic as an ineffective (Lucan-Petronius) or destructive force (Seneca), simultaneously eliciting the reader’s critical response.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111429441
ISBN:: 9783111429441
ISBN:: 9783111430546
ISBN:: 9783111429403
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Science and Medicine
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Off the Beaten Path

Ovidian Journeys in Valerius Flaccus’ ›Argonautica‹

Raymond Marks

Volume 161 in this series

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In the Argonautica, Valerius Flaccus not only recounts a voyage, that of the Argonauts in their quest for the golden fleece, but takes a journey himself, a poetic one, during which he explores new, unconventional paths in the epic genre. The present volume examines this aspect of Valerius’ poetic program, locating its primary source of inspiration in the works of Ovid, especially his epic, the Metamorphoses, and his exile poetry. It argues that the Metamorphoses influences not only discrete – often digressive – episodes in the Argonautica, but Valerius’ view of his poem as a “secondary” form of epic, which broadly deviates from the generic norms of his day. Echoes of the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto complement this approach by identifying many of Valerius’ characters, who are similarly displaced to the edges of the civilized world, with the exiled Ovid and even Valerius himself, who, at the end of the epic, finds his own “ship”, the epic itself, stranded roughly where Ovid lived out his days in exile. From this study, readers will gain a greater appreciation for the importance of Ovid to Valerius’ conception and execution of his epic program and one of its central themes, the journey.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111403649
ISBN:: 9783111403649
ISBN:: 9783111403892
ISBN:: 9783111403045
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Treasuries of Literature

Anthologies, Lexica, Scholia and the Indirect Tradition of Classical Texts in the Greek World

Federico Favi, Virginia Mastellari

Volume 160 in this series

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The contributions included in this volume deal with the indirect tradition of classical Greek texts in anthologies, lexica and scholia. The innovative approach taken consists in considering the indirect sources as texts worth studying in their own right, rather than as repositories of older, more important texts. The indirect tradition in scholarly literature is thus considered in terms of its broader historical and cultural implications.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111386010
ISBN:: 9783111386010
ISBN:: 9783111385976
ISBN:: 9783111386164
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2024

Style in Latin Poetry

Paolo Dainotti, Alexandre Pinheiro Hasegawa, Stephen Harrison

Volume 159 in this series

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Though stylistics undoubtedly plays a crucial role in the scholarship on Latin poetry – from commentaries to textual criticism, from intertextuality to literary criticism – in recent years, for various reasons, it has not received the attention it deserves. This book, published a generation after Adams and Mayer’s seminal 1999 volume, Aspects of the Language of Latin Poetry, ideally aims to complement and update it on a smaller scale, offering the reader a collection of stimulating papers from international scholars on the style of some of the most significant voices of Latin poetry, from early drama to the Flavian period.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111067353
ISBN:: 9783111067353
ISBN:: 9783111066141
ISBN:: 9783111067933
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Memory and Emotions in Antiquity

Ancient Emotions IV

George Kazantzidis, Dimos Spatharas

Volume 158 in this series

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The contributions of this volume discuss the interfaces between memory and emotions in ancient literature, social life, and philosophy. They explore the ways in which memories intersect with emotions in the epics of Homer and Virgil, the importance of memory for the emotions scripts employed by public speakers to enhance the persuasiveness of their arguments, and ‘cultural memory’ in Philostratus’ Heroicus. Contributions that focus on aspects of ancient societies and politics investigate memory and emotions in the Bacchic-Orphic gold leaves, the importance of memories on inscriptions commemorating private and public emotions, and the ways in which emotive memories enhanced the monumentalizing project of Herodes Atticus in Greece. The essays emphasizing philosophical approaches to memory and emotions discuss Aristotle’s biological treatises and Augustine’s deployment of nostalgia and autobiographical narrative in the wider frame of his didactic programme. Modern approaches to embodied cognition are also employed to shed light on how memories attached to our bodily experiences can enhance the interpretation of Roman literature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111345246
ISBN:: 9783111345246
ISBN:: 9783111345321
ISBN:: 9783111344805
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Labor Imperfectus

Unfinished, Incomplete, Partial Texts in Classical Antiquity

Jacqueline Fabre-Serris, Marco Formisano, Stavros Frangoulidis

Volume 157 in this series

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Unfinishedness and incompleteness are a central feature of ancient Greek and Roman literature that has often been taken for granted but not deeply examined; many texts have been transmitted to us incomplete. How and to what extent has this feature of many texts influenced their aesthetic perception and interpretation, and how does it still influence them today? Also, how do various editorial arrangements of fragmentary texts influence the reconstruction of closure? These important questions offer the opportunity to bring together specialists working on Greek and Roman texts across various genres: epic, tragedy, poetry, mythographic texts, rhetorical texts, philosophical treatises, and the novel. Reading a text by focusing on its current unfinishedness or incompleteness, or the textual signs suggesting an unfinished or incomplete state, the contributors examine the relations between author, reader and text as underscored by the verbal, generic and aesthetic features of each work. This edited volume brings together a broad spectrum of approaches to ancient and modern texts and aims to reach out to a broad scholarly community consisting not only of Classicists but also scholars of other literature and aesthetics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111340944
ISBN:: 9783111340944
ISBN:: 9783111340791
ISBN:: 9783111341019
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Textual Scholarship
Subject:: Literary Theory
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Ovid’s Terence

Tradition and Allusion in the Love Elegies and Beyond

Iris Brecke

Volume 156 in this series

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This book investigates the complex reception of Terence in Ovid and a number of allusions to the Terentian comedies in the love elegies and the exilic elegiac epistle Tristia 2. The genres of Latin love elegy and New Comedy are often seen as closely connected in research, and one leading view is that Latin love elegy to a large degree springs out of the comic genre. However, though both genres are strongly rooted in social practise and presents interpersonal relationships in a non-mythological, everyday setting, there are also major differences between them. Marriage, for instance, is the conventional goal for the young lover withing the comic genre, whereas the elegiac lover should avoid it. Taking into account both the similarities and the crucial differences between the comic genre and Latin love elegy, and key elegiac topoi such as seruitium amoris and militia amoris, this book demonstrates an intricate connection between Ovid and Terence, and a complex nexus of allusions that goes straight to the core of Ovid’s elegiac authorship.

Winner of the Trends in Classics Book Prize 2023

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111308036
ISBN:: 9783111308036
ISBN:: 9783111308548
ISBN:: 9783111307039
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

Nonverbal Behaviour in Ancient Literature

Athenian Dialogues III

Andreas Serafim, Sophia Papaioannou

Volume 155 in this series

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The volume offers an up-to-date and nuanced study of a multi-thematic topic, expressions of which can be found abundantly in ancient Greek and Latin literature: nonverbal behaviour, i.e., vocalics, kinesics, proxemics, haptics, and chronemics. The individual chapters explore texts from Homer to the 4th century AD to discuss aspects of nonverbal behaviour and how these are linked to, reflect upon, and are informed by general cultural frameworks in ancient Greece and Rome. Material sources are also examined to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the texts.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111338675
ISBN:: 9783111338675
ISBN:: 9783111338521
ISBN:: 9783111338880
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2024

The Play of Language in Ancient Greek Comedy

Comic Discourse and Linguistic Artifices of Humour, from Aristophanes to Menander

Kostas Apostolakis, Ioannis M. Konstantakos

Volume 154 in this series

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Ancient Greek comedy relied primarily on its text and words for the fulfilment of its humorous effects and aesthetic goals. In the wake of a rich tradition of previous scholarship, this volume explores a variety of linguistic materials and stylistic artifices exploited by the Greek comic poets, from vocabulary and figures of speech (metaphors, similes, rhyme) to types of joke, obscenity, and the mechanisms of parody. Most of the chapters focus on Aristophanes and Old Comedy, which offers the richest arsenal of such techniques, but the less ploughed fields of Middle and New Comedy are also explored. Emphasis is placed on practical criticism and textual readings, on the examination of particular artifices of speech and the analysis of individual passages. The main purpose is to highlight the use of language for the achievement of the aesthetic, artistic, and intellectual purposes of ancient comedy, in particular for the generation of humour and comic effect, the delineation of characters, the transmission of ideological messages, and the construction of poetic meaning. The volume will be useful to scholars of ancient drama, linguists, students of humour, and scholars of Classical literature in general.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111295282
ISBN:: 9783111295282
ISBN:: 9783111294490
ISBN:: 9783111295992
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Plato’s Proto-Narratology

Metanarrative Reflections and Narrative Paradigms

Vasileios Liotsakis

Volume 153 in this series

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Plato’s contribution to narratology has traditionally been traced in his tripartite categorisation of narrative modes we read of in the Republic. Although other aspects of storytelling are also addressed throughout the Platonic oeuvre, such passages are treated as instantaneous flares of metanarrative speculation on Plato’s part and do not seem to contribute to the reconstruction of his ‘theory of narrative’. Vasileios Liotsakis challenges this view and argues that the Statesman, the Timaeus/Critias and the Laws reveal that Plato had consolidated in his mind and compositionally put into effect one systematic mode in which to express his thoughts on narratives. In these dialogues Liotsakis recognizes the birth of a proto-narratology which differs in many respects from what we today expect from a narratological handbook, but still demonstrates two key-features of narratology: (a) a conscious focus on certain aspects of narrativity which are vastly discussed by narratologists and pertain to the structuring and reception of narratives; and (b) a schematised mode of interaction between metanarrative reflections and textual bodies which serve as the paradigms through which to explore the interpretive potential of these reflections.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111307824
ISBN:: 9783111307824
ISBN:: 9783111308456
ISBN:: 9783111307107
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2024

The Laurel and the Olive

Collected Essays on Archaic and Hellenistic Poetry

Benjamin Acosta-Hughes

Volume 152 in this series

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A central, much-studied feature of the poetry of 3rd cent. BCE Alexandria is the artistic treatment of the cultural past, the reception of earlier Greek poetry and artwork in the artistic creations of a new, Greco-Egyptian world deracinated both geographically and temporally from the heroes and models of Archaic and Classical Greece. Benjamin Acosta-Hughes has devoted a 30+ year professional scholarly career to the study of this reception, one of both imitation and variation, which took place concurrently with the massive collection and categorization of earlier Greek literature in the work of the scholars gathered under royal patronage at the Ptolemaic court in Alexandria, a truly revolutionary new effort of cultural memorialization. The poets of this period, among them Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius and Posidippus, vied in their efforts to compose works that at once celebrated their poetic heritage and at the same time marked their own poetry as original artistic creation and as critical commentary upon their earlier models. This collection will be of interest not only for readers of Archaic and Hellenistic poetry, but also for readers interested in the later reception of the Alexandrians at Rome.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110787672
ISBN:: 9783110787672
ISBN:: 9783110787504
ISBN:: 9783110787832
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Egyptology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2023

›On Avoiding Distress‹ and ›On My Own Opinions‹

Galen, Ioannis Polemis, Sophia Xenophontos

Volume 151 in this series

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The discovery of the fifteenth-century codex Vlatadon 14 in 2005 was an extraordinary moment for scholars of Graeco Roman antiquity, as it brought to light a new witness to a large collection of Galen’s medical and philosophical works. Among them is the moral essay De indolentia (On Avoiding Distress), a text long deemed lost, and the De propriis placitis (On My Own Opinions), a doxographical piece with a complex textual tradition, up to that point known only through a corrupt medieval Latin translation and some passages preserved in Greek. This volume provides a new critical edition of the two Galenic treatises, which represents a significant improvement on earlier editorial attempts by offering more accurate readings of the codex, including supplementation of previously unrestored lacunae, and many emendations to thorny passages owed to physical damage in the manuscript as well as perhaps careless scribes and/or the poor quality of their model. The more authoritative version of the two texts is accompanied by fresh English translations and brief introductions, making both works widely accessible not just to Classicists but also to scholars and students of ancient medicine, ancient philosophy and Roman Imperial literary culture.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111320816
ISBN:: 9783111320816
ISBN:: 9783111320410
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2024

Digressions in Classical Historiography

Mario Baumann, Vasileios Liotsakis

Volume 150 in this series

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Although digressive discourse constitutes a key feature of Greco-Roman historiography, we possess no collective volume on the matter. The chapters of this book fill this gap by offering an overall view of the use of digressions in Greco-Roman historical prose from its beginning in the 5^th century BCE up to the Imperial Era. Ancient historiographers traditionally took as digressions the cases in which they interrupted their focused chronological narration. Such cases include lengthy geographical descriptions, prolepses or analepses, and authorial comments. Ancient historiographers rarely deign to interrupt their narration’s main storyline with excursuses which are flagrantly disconnected from it. Instead, they often "coat" their digressions with distinctive patterns of their own thinking, thus rendering them ideological and thematic milestones within an entire work. Furthermore, digressions may constitute pivotal points in the very structure of ancient historical narratives, while ancient historians also use excursuses to establish a dialogue with their readers and to activate them in various ways. All these aspects of digressions in Greco-Roman historiography are studied in detail in the chapters of this volume.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111320908
ISBN:: 9783111320908
ISBN:: 9783111320755
ISBN:: 9783111321158
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

›res vera, res ficta‹: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography

Janja Soldo, Claire Rachel Jackson

Volume 149 in this series

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Letters are famously easy to recognise, notoriously hard to define. Both real and fictitious letters can look identical to the point that there are no formal criteria which can distinguish one from the other. This has long been a point of anxiety in scholarship which has considered the value of an ancient letter to be determined by its authenticity, necessitating a strict binary opposition of genuine as opposed to fake letters.

This volume challenges this dichotomy directly. Rather than defining epistolary fiction as a literary genre in opposition to ‘genuine’ letters or reducing it down to fixed rhetorical features, it argues that fiction is an inherent and fluid property of letters which ancient writers recognised and exploited. This volume contributes to wider scholarship on ancient fiction by demonstrating through the multiplicity of genres, contexts, and time periods discussed how complex and multifaceted ancient awareness of fictionality was. As such, this volume shows that letters are uniquely well-placed to unsettle disciplinary boundaries of fact and fiction, authentic and spurious, and that this allows for a deeper understanding of how ancient writers conceptualised and manipulated the fictional potential of letters.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111308128
ISBN:: 9783111308128
ISBN:: 9783111308494
ISBN:: 9783111306995
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Selected Papers on Ancient Literature and its Reception

Philip Russell Hardie

Volume 148 in this series

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This volume gathers together about two thirds of the articles and essays published between 1983 and 2021 by Philip Hardie, whose work on ancient literature has been of seminal importance in the field. The centre of gravity lies in late Republican and Augustan poetry, in particular Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid, with important contributions on wider Augustan culture; on Neronian and Flavian epic; on the Latin poetry of late antiquity; and on the reception of Latin poetry.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110798852
ISBN:: 9783110798852
ISBN:: 9783110798951
ISBN:: 9783110792423
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Ritual and the Poetics of Closure in Flavian Literature

Angeliki-Nektaria Roumpou

Volume 147 in this series

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This collection of papers responds to the question of whether a ritual at the end of a text can offer resolution and order or rather a complicated kind of closure. It reveals that ritual can bring but also can thwart closure by alluding to new beginnings. A ritual could be a perfect kind of ending but it hardly ever seems to be. In Flavian literature this is even more apparent because of the complicated political background under which these texts were produced. Ancient religious practices in the closing sections of Flavian texts help us create connections between endings and (new) beginnings, order and disorder, binding and loosening, structure and dissolution which reflects the structure of the Empire in Flavian Rome. Overall, this volume offers a new tool for studying literary endings through ritual, which promotes our understanding of Flavian culture and politics as well as creating a new perception of the use of religion and ritual in Flavian literature: instead of giving a sense of closure, this volume argues that ritual is a medium to increase complexity, to expose ritual actors and to project a generic riskiness of ritual actors also onto the epic actors who are acting before and mostly after a ritual scene.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770483
ISBN:: 9783110770483
ISBN:: 9783110770568
ISBN:: 9783110770469
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Page and Stage

Intersections of Text and Performance in Ancient Greek Drama

Stuart Douglas Olson, Oliver Taplin, Piero Totaro

Volume 146 in this series

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Our knowledge of the ancient theatre is limited by the textual and iconographic character of the evidence available to us: we cannot watch or otherwise experience an Athenian tragedy or comedy. These essays, by a distinguished group of international scholars, bridge the gap between the surviving literary and iconographic evidence and the realities of performance on the ancient Greek stage. This ambitious goal is reached by means of a detailed examination of several case-studies: the construction of dramatic space in Sophocles’ Antigone; the significance of the use of deictic pronouns in Sophocles’ Trachiniae; the theatrical and religious dynamics of the appearance of divine figures on stage; the relationship between the victory celebrations at the end of Aristophanic comedies and their counterparts in the after-performance real world; the investigation of nude or semi-nude female characters in Aristophanes; the staging of Clouds and the opening scene of Acharnians; the meditation on the metapoetics of the use of props in 5th-century comedy; the relationship between performance context and text through a close reading of a number of Aristophanic fragments; the way the scholia vetera on Frogs imagine and use questions of staging practice; and the potential Aeschylean authorship of some of stage-direction traceable in Aeschylus’ Eumenides and Diktoulkoi.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111248028
ISBN:: 9783111248028
ISBN:: 9783111248615
ISBN:: 9783111247397
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Leadership and Leaders in Polybius

Nikos Miltsios

Volume 145 in this series

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The issue of leadership is crucial to Polybius’ desire to explain the rise of Rome over almost the entire known world and provide benefit and utility to readers who may have to assume positions of responsibility. This book focuses on descriptions of leadership behaviors in the Histories, aiming to identify regularly recurring patterns, motifs, and themes in the relevant passages, which could, precisely because of their persistence, heighten our sensitivity to the subtleties of Polybius’ treatment of the subject. Given that the interest in leadership permeates Polybius’ work and engages with his main thematic concerns, this study brings the reader face-to-face with questions of power and control, identity and nationality, the role of fortune, narrative strategies, thereby providing a basis for reading the Histories more generally. At the same time, a major concern throughout the book is with the ways Polybius’ representation of leadership seems to have been influenced by literary depictions of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Polybius’ interplay with his literary context and tradition deepens our understanding of what he is trying to accomplish in the narrative and how he is interacting with the expectations of his audiences.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111239538
ISBN:: 9783111239538
ISBN:: 9783111239927
ISBN:: 9783111239477
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Dynamics Of Marginality

Liminal Characters and Marginal Groups in Neronian and Flavian Literature

Konstantinos Arampapaslis, Antony Augoustakis, Stephen Froedge, Clayton Schroer

Volume 143 in this series

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This volume explores the theme of marginality in the literature and history of the Neronian and Flavian periods. As a concept of modern criticism, the term marginality has been applied to the connection between the uprooted experience of immigrant communities and the subsequent diasporas these groups formed in their new homes. The concept also covers individuals or groups who were barred from access to resources and equal opportunities based on their deviation from a "normal" or dominant culture or ideology. From a literary vantage point, we are interested in the voices of "marginal," or underappreciated authors and critical voices. The distinction between marginalia and "the" text is often nebulous, with marginal comments making their way into the paradosis and being regarded, in modern criticism, as important sources of information in their own right. The analysis of relevant passages from various authors including Lucan, Petronius, Persius, Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, Silius Italicus, and Statius, as well as the Moretum of the Appendix Vergiliana is vital for our understanding of the treatment of marginalized people in various literary genres in relation to each one’s different purposes.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111063942
ISBN:: 9783111063942
ISBN:: 9783111628486
ISBN:: 9783111061580
ISBN:: 9783111064109
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Open Access 2023

Knowledge Construction in Late Antiquity

Monika Amsler, SNF

Volume 142 in this series

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Social Studies of the sciences have long analyzed and exposed the constructed nature of knowledge. Pioneering studies of knowledge production in laboratories (e.g., Latour/Woolgar 1979; Knorr-Cetina 1981) have identified factors that affect processes that lead to the generation of scientific data and their subsequent interpretation, such as money, training and curriculum, location and infrastructure, biography-based knowledge and talent, and chance. More recent theories of knowledge construction have further identified different forms of knowledge, such as tacit, intuitive, explicit, personal, and social knowledge. These theoretical frameworks and critical terms can help reveal and clarify the processes that led to ancient data gathering, information and knowledge production.　

The contributors use late-antique hermeneutical associations as means to explore intuitive or even tacit knowledge; they appreciate mistakes as a platform to study the value of personal knowledge and its premises; they think about rows and tables, letter exchanges, and schools as platforms of distributed cognition; they consider walls as venues for social knowledge production; and rethink the value of social knowledge in scholarly genealogies—then and now.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111010311
ISBN:: 9783111010311
ISBN:: 9783111628011
ISBN:: 9783110997637
ISBN:: 9783111011042
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

The Concept of News in Ancient Greek Literature

Raquel Fornieles

Volume 141 in this series

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The concept of news that we have today is not a modern invention, but rather a social and cultural institution that has been passed down to us by the Greeks as a legacy. This concept is only modified by the social, political, and economic conditions that make our society different from theirs. In order to understand what was considered news in Ancient Greece, a lexical study of ἄγγελος and all of its derivatives attested in a representative corpus of the period spanning from the second millennium BC to the end of the fourth BC has been conducted. This piece of research provides new contributions both to studies in Classics (there are hardly any studies on the transmission of news in Antiquity) and in journalism. This study also reveals an interesting point: the presence of false news – similar to current fake news – in ancient Greek literature, especially in tragedy and historiography when it comes to the use of the derivatives of ἄγγελος.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111022376
ISBN:: 9783111022376
ISBN:: 9783111536828
ISBN:: 9783111022956
ISBN:: 9783111021669
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

The Staying Power of Thetis

Allusion, Interaction, and Reception from Homer to the 21st Century

Maciej Paprocki, Gary Patrick Vos, David John Wright

Volume 140 in this series

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In 1991, Laura Slatkin published The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad, in which she argued that Homer knowingly situated the storyworld of the Iliad against the backdrop of an older world of mythos by which the events in the Iliad are explained and given traction. Slatkin’s focus was on Achilles’ mother, Thetis: an ostensibly marginal and powerless goddess, Thetis nevertheless drives the plot of the Iliad, being allusively credited with the power to uphold or challenge the rule of Zeus. Now, almost thirty years after Slatkin’s publication, this timely volume re-examines depictions and receptions of this ambiguous goddess, in works ranging from archaic Greek poetry to twenty-first century cinema. Twenty authors build upon Slatkin’s readings to explore Thetis and multiple roles she played in Western literature, art, material culture, religion, and myth. Ever the shapeshifter, Thetis has been and continues to be reconceptualised: supporter or opponent of Zeus’ regime, model bride or unwilling victim of Peleus’ rape, good mother or child-murderess, figure of comedy or monstrous witch. Hers is an enduring power of transformation, resonating within art and literature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110678437
ISBN:: 9783110678437
ISBN:: 9783110678512
ISBN:: 9783110678352
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

The Reception of Ancient Cyprus in Western Culture

Spyridon Tzounakas, Stella Alekou, Stephen J. Harrison

Volume 139 in this series

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The reception of ancient Cyprus in the Western world has not received much attention in scholarship, despite the fact that significant literary and extra-literary evidence presented by European intellectuals and artists explicitly or implicitly refers to the history of Cyprus, as well as to the myths and art produced on it or inspired by its landscape. This is a neglect that this volume wishes to address, by re-establishing the literary thread of the representation of ancient Cyprus beyond generic, spatial and temporal limits, and by thus shedding light on its depiction throughout the centuries, from the ancient Roman to the Western world up until modern times. The volume’s central thesis is that a number of Cypriot traditions constitute a unique example of intercultural and multi-level fusions of diverse European civilizations. By investigating the various and often contradictory ways in which Cyprus was represented in Latin literature and beyond, the volume treats its multifaceted reception as a vastly complex matter, and suggests that even though the island has always been an outlier, it has often been explored in literature as an intellectual landscape and a precious pathway between at times conflictual yet compatible worlds.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110984309
ISBN:: 9783110984309
ISBN:: 9783110996654
ISBN:: 9783110984514
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

Early Greek Epic: Language, Interpretation, Performance

Christos C. Tsagalis

Volume 138 in this series

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In the last fifty years major developments have taken place, both in the field of Homeric studies and in the rest of early Greek epic. These developments have not only created a more solid basis for studying the Homeric epics, but they have also broadened our horizons with respect to the place of Homeric poetry within a larger cultural milieu. The impressive advances in Hesiodic studies, the more systematic approach to the Epic Cycle, the more nuanced use and re-evaluation of dominant twentieth-century theories like Neoanalysis and Oral Theory, the study of other fragmentary Greek epic, the cognitive turn, narratology, the performance of epic poetry in the ancient and modern world, the fruitful utilization of Indo-European material, and the widely accepted recognition of the close relation between Homer and the mythology and literature of the ancient Near East have virtually shaped anew the way we read and understand Homer, Hesiod, and early Greek epic. The studies collected in this volume are informed by most of the aforementioned sub-fields and span four research areas: (i) Homer; (ii) Hesiod; (iii) the Epic Cycle; (d) the performance of epic.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110981384
ISBN:: 9783110981384
ISBN:: 9783110993721
ISBN:: 9783110981407
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

The Limits of Exactitude in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Literature and Textual Transmission

Nicoletta Bruno, Giulia Dovico, Olivia Montepaone, Marco Pelucchi

Volume 137 in this series

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Building on Calvino’s observations on Exactitude in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, the present book elucidates on the possible definitions of exactitude, the endeavor of reaching exactitude, and the undeniable limits to the achievement of this ambitious milestone.
The eighteen essays in this interdisciplinary volume show how ancient and medieval authors have been dealing with the problem of exactitude vs. inexactitude and have been able to exploit the ambiguities related to these two concepts to various ends. The articles focus on rhetoric and historiography (section I), exact sciences and technical disciplines (II), the peculiarity of quotations (III), cases of programmatic inexactitude (IV) and textual transmission (V). Several interconnected questions weave a net across the volume: to what extent is exactitude the goal in ancient and medieval texts? How can the concepts of accuracy and inaccuracy aid the reinterpretation of an already known text or fact? To what extent can certain definitions of exactitude be stretched, without turning into inexactitude?
The volume presents an extensive study capable of highlighting the shrewdness and aptness of the concepts introduced by Calvino more than thirty years ago.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110796612
ISBN:: 9783110796612
ISBN:: 9783110796667
ISBN:: 9783110796513
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: History of Literary Studies
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Later Greek Epic and the Latin Literary Tradition

Further Explorations

Katerina Carvounis, Sophia Papaioannou, Giampiero Scafoglio

Volume 136 in this series

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The volume offers an innovative and systematic exploration of the diverse ways in which Later Greek Epic interacts with the Latin literary tradition. Taking as a starting point the premise that it is probable for the Greek epic poets of the Late Antiquity to have been familiar with leading works of Latin poetry, either in the original or in translation, the contributions in this book pursue a new form of intertextuality, in which the leading epic poets of the Imperial era (Quintus of Smyrna, Triphiodorus, Nonnus, and the author of the Orphic Argonautica) engage with a range of models in inventive, complex, and often covert ways. Instead of asking, in other words, whether Greek authors used Latin models, we ask how they engaged with them and why they opted for certain choices and not for others. Through sophisticated discussions, it becomes clear that intertexts are usually systems that combine ideology, cultural traditions, and literary aesthetics in an inextricable fashion. The book will prove that Latin literature, far from being distinct from the Greek epic tradition of the imperial era, is an essential, indeed defining, component within a common literary and ideological heritage across the Roman empire.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110791907
ISBN:: 9783110791907
ISBN:: 9783111536675
ISBN:: 9783110791983
ISBN:: 9783110791792
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Tragic Papyri

Aeschylus' ›Theoroi‹, ›Hypsipyle‹, ›Laïos‹, ›Prometheus Pyrkaeus‹ and Sophocles' ›Inachos‹

Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou

Volume 135 in this series

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With concern to Greek literature and particularly to 5th c. BCE tragic production, papyri provide us usually with not only the most ancient attestation but also the most reliable one. Much more so when the papyri are the only or the main witnesses of the tragic plays. The misfortune is that the papyri transmit texts incomplete, fragmentary, and almost always anonymous. It is the scholar’s task to read, supplement, interpret and identify the particular texts. In this book, five Greek plays that survived fragmentarily in papyri are published, four by Aeschylus and one by Sophocles. Three of them are satyr plays: Aeschylus’ Theoroi, Hypsipyle, and Prometheus Pyrkaeus; Sophocles’ Inachos belongs to the genre we use to call ‘prosatyric’; Aeschylus’ Laïos is a typical tragedy. The author’s scope was, after each text’s identification was secured as regards the poet and the play’s title, to proceed to textual and interpretative observations that contributed to reconstructing in whole or in part the storyline of the relevant plays. These observations often led to unexpected conclusions and an overthrow of established opinions. Thus, the book will appeal to classical scholars, especially those interested in theatrical studies.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110796605
ISBN:: 9783110796605
ISBN:: 9783110796698
ISBN:: 9783110796483
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Papyrology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Xenophon’s ›Anabasis‹ and its Reception

Tim Rood, Melina Tamiolaki

Volume 134 in this series

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This volume constitutes the first large-scale collaborative reflection on Xenophon’s Anabasis, gathering experts on Greek historiography and Xenophon. It is structured in three sections: the first section provides a linear reading of the Anabasis through chapters on select episodes (from Book 1 through Book 7), including the opening, Cyrus’ characterisation, the meeting of Socrates and Xenophon, Xenophon’s leadership, the marches through Armenia and along the Black Sea coast and the service under Seuthes in Thrace.
The second section offers an in-depth exploration of hitherto overlooked recurrent themes. Based on new approaches and scholarly trends, it focuses on topics such as the concept of friendship, the speeches of characters other than Xenophon, the suffering of the human body, the role of rumour and misrepresentation, and the depiction of emotions.
The third section offers a more thorough investigation of the manifold reception of this work (in Antiquity, Byzantium, Renaissance, modern period, in cinema studies and illustrations).
Finally, in acknowledgement of the Anabasis’ long history as a pedagogical text, the volume contains an envoi on the importance and benefits of teaching Xenophon and the Anabasis, more specifically.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110793437
ISBN:: 9783110793437
ISBN:: 9783110793482
ISBN:: 9783110793376
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2023

The Orators and Their Treatment of the Recent Past

Aggelos Kapellos

Volume 133 in this series

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This volume focuses on the representation of the recent past in classical Athenian oratory and investigates the ability of the orators to interpret it according to their interests; the inability of the Athenians to make an objective assessment of it; and the unwillingness of the citizens to hear the truth, make self-criticism and take responsibility for bad results. Twenty-eight scholars have written chapters to this end, dealing with a wide range of themes, in terms both of contents and of chronology, from the fifth to the fourth century B.C. Each contributor has written a chapter that analyzes one or more historical events mentioned or alluded in the corpus of the Attic orators and covers the three species of Attic oratory. Chapters that treat other issues collectively are also included. The common feature of each contribution is an outline of the recent events that took place and influenced the citizens and/or the city of Athens and its juxtaposition with their rhetorical treatment by the orators either by comparing the rhetorical texts with the historical sources and/or by examining the rhetorical means through which the speakers model the recent past. This book aims at advanced students and professional scholars. This volume focuses on the representation of the recent past in classical Athenian oratory and investigates: the ability of the orators to interpret it according to their interests; the inability of the Athenians to make an objective assessment of persons and events of the recent past and their unwillingness to hear the truth, make self-criticism and take responsibility for bad results.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110791877
ISBN:: 9783110791877
ISBN:: 9783111536682
ISBN:: 9783110791969
ISBN:: 9783110791815
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Documentality

New Approaches to Written Documents in Imperial Life and Literature

Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne, Scott Jared DiGiulio, Inger Neeltje Irene Kuin

Volume 132 in this series

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This volume unites scholars of classical epigraphy, papyrology, and literature to analyze the documentary habit in the Roman Empire. Texts like inscriptions and letters have gained importance in classical scholarship, but there has been limited analysis of the imaginative and sociological dimensions of the ancient document. Individual chapters investigate the definition of the document in ancient thought, and how modern understandings of documentation may (mis)shape scholarly approaches to documentary sources in antiquity. Contributors reexamine familiar categories of ancient documents through the lenses of perception and function, and reveal where the modern understanding of the document departs from ancient conceptions of documentation. The boundary between literary genres and documentary genres of writing appears more fluid than prior scholarship had allowed. Compared to modern audiences, inhabitants of the Roman Empire used a more diverse range of both non-textual and textual forms of documentation, and they did so with a more active, questioning attitude. The interdisciplinary approach to the "mentality" of documentation in this volume advances beyond standard discussions of form, genre, and style to revisit the document through the eyes of Greco-Roman readers and viewers.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110791914
ISBN:: 9783110791914
ISBN:: 9783111536668
ISBN:: 9783110791921
ISBN:: 9783110791778
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Papyrology
Subject:: Epigraphy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Medical Understandings of Emotions in Antiquity

Theory, Practice, Suffering. Ancient Emotions III

George Kazantzidis, Dimos Spatharas

Volume 131 in this series

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This volume focuses on the under-explored topic of emotions' implications for ancient medical theory and practice, while it also raises questions about patients' sentiments. Ancient medicine, along with philosophy, offer unique windows to professional and scientific explanatory models of emotions. Thus, the contributions included in this volume offer comparative ground that helps readers and researchers interested in ancient emotions pin down possible interfaces and differences between systematic and lay cultural understandings of emotions. Although the volume emphasizes the multifaceted links between medicine and ancient philosophical thinking, especially ethics, it also pays due attention to the representation of patients' feelings in the extant medical treatises and doctors' emotional reticence. The chapters that constitute this volume investigate a great range of medical writers including Hippocrates and the Hippocratics, and Galen, while comparative approaches to medical writings and philosophy, especially Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, dwell on the notion of wonder/admiration (thauma), conceptualizations of the body and the soul, and the category pathos itself. The volume also sheds light on the metaphorical uses of medicine in ancient thinking.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110771930
ISBN:: 9783110771930
ISBN:: 9783111534336
ISBN:: 9783110772012
ISBN:: 9783110771893
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Science and Medicine
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Ancient Greek Literature and the Foreign

Athenian Dialogues II

Efi Papadodima

Volume 130 in this series

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Within the frame of the sub-series Athenian Dialogues, this volume comprises a selected number of talks delivered at the annual Seminar of the Research Centre for Greek and Latin Literature of the Academy of Athens 2018-2019 on the broad topic of Ancient Greek Literature and the Foreign. The volume aims at building on the ongoing dialogue on the par excellence intricate, as well as timely issues of "ethnicity," identity, and identification, as represented in ancient Greek (and, secondarily, Roman) literature. This is certainly a richly researched field, which extends to interdisciplinary areas of inquiry, namely those of classical studies, archaeology, ancient history, sociology, and anthropology. It is this interdisciplinary scope that makes the subject all the more relevant and worthy of investigation. The volume ultimately highlights new or under-researched aspects of the broad theme of ancient inter-cultural relations, which could in their turn lead to more detailed or more specified inquiries on this ever relevant and important, as well as universal, topic.

Through the contributions of expert scholars on these areas of inquiry (Konstan, Lefkowitz, Paschalis, Seaford, Thomas, Vasounia, Vlassopoulos), the volume: (1) revisits key themes and aspects of the ancient Greek world's diverse forms of contact with foreign peoples and civilizations, (2) lays forth new data about specific such contacts and encounters or (3) formulates new questions about the very texture and essence of the theme of inter-cultural relations and forms of communication.

More specifically, the volume addresses the following themes: the overarching role and function of the barbarian repertoire in Greek literature and culture, which certainly call for further theoretical investigation (Vlassopoulos); the highly popular but actually controversial theme of xenia in the Homeric epics and in archaic thought (Konstan); the intricate, intriguing role of the Foreigner as a focus for civic unity (Seaford); the role of the enigmatic figure of Dionysus from Greece to India (Vasunia); the representation of barbarians in Euripidean tragedy, and more specifically the portrayal of the controversial Phrygian slave in Euripides' Orestes (Lefkowitz); the meaningful changes in the representation of the arch-enemy, the Persians, across the late 5th and 4th century prose (Thomas); the adventures of Europa's legendary abduction from Moschus to Nonnus, along with its implications for the understanding of the division and animosity between the two continents, (future) Europe and Asia (Paschalis).

The volume ultimately covers a wide range of ancient sources (literary and material, from Homer up to Nonnus) that delve into the interaction of ancient Greek civilization with foreign civilizations. It thus highlights new aspects of the diverse forms of contact of the Greek world with foreign civilizations and elements, both in terms of geography and particular seminal "mythical" or historical figures and forces (e.g. India and the "mysterious" Dionysus, as well as the emblematic Greek antagonist of the classical and post-classical era, i.e. the Persian Empire) and in terms of particular literary themes and motifs (e.g. the abduction of Europa).

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110767599
ISBN:: 9783110767599
ISBN:: 9783110767636
ISBN:: 9783110767575
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Early Greek Epic Fragments II

Epics on Herakles: Kreophylos and Peisandros

Christos C. Tsagalis

Volume 129 in this series

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This is a full-scale edition with commentary of the archaic epic poems Oichalias Halosis by Kreophylos of Samos and Herakleia by Peisandros of Kamiros. The Greek text (divided between testimonies and fragments) is accompanied by detailed critical apparatus and English translation. There are also extensive introductions to the biography of each poet, the title of the poem, its content and style, as well as a careful examination of the relative chronology of each epic. The detailed commentary of every fragment offers an up-to-date examination of all the extant material that has come down to us through a rich indirect tradition. This is the second installment of the project Early Greek Epic Poets (vol. I: Genealogical and Antiquarian Epic, De Gruyter 2017), which aims to enhance the study of Greek epic poetry of the archaic and classical period by means of providing readers with authoritative editions and commentaries of a significant part of fragmentary early Greek epic.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110767605
ISBN:: 9783110767605
ISBN:: 9783110767643
ISBN:: 9783110767568
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

›Dionysiac‹ Dialogues

Euripides' ›Bacchae‹, Aeschylus and ›Christus Patiens‹

Georgia Xanthaki-Karamanou

Volume 128 in this series

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This book consists of two main, interrelated thematic units: the reception of Aeschylus' Dionysiac plays in Bacchae and the refiguration of the latter in the Byzantine drama Christus Patiens. In both sections the common denominator is Euripides' Bacchae, which is approached as a receiving text in the first unit and as a source text in the second. Each section addresses dramatic, ideological and cultural facets of the reception process, yielding insight into pivotal Dionysiac motifs that the ancient and Byzantine treatments share. Different pieces of evidence, mythographic, stylistic, and iconographic, are interrogated, so that light is shed on aspects of the storyline, the concepts, and the imagery of Aeschylus' two tetralogies. At the same time, Bacchae provides a valuable exemplum for aspects of dramatic technique, plot-patterns, and concepts refigured in Christus Patiens. This exploration thoroughly and systematically focuses on the ways in which the pagan play was transformed to bring forward new pillars of thought and innovative values in different cultural and ideological contexts over a wide time span from Greek Antiquity to Byzantium.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110764413
ISBN:: 9783110764413
ISBN:: 9783110764499
ISBN:: 9783110764345
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

The Layers of the Text

Collected Papers on Classical Literature 2008–2021

Richard Hunter, Antonios Rengakos, Evangelos Karakasis

Volume 127 in this series

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This volume collects the most recent essays of Richard Hunter, one of the world's leading experts in the field of Greek and Latin literature. The essays range across all periods of ancient literature from Homer to late antiquity, with a particular focus not just on the texts in their original contexts, but also on how they were interpreted and exploited for both literary and more broadly cultural purposes later in antiquity. Taken together, the essays sketch a picture of a continuous tradition of critical and historical engagement with the literature of the past from the period of Aristophanes and then Plato and Aristotle in classical Athens to the rich prose literature of the Second Sophistic. Richard Hunter's earlier essays are collected in On Coming After (Berlin 2008).

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110747577
ISBN:: 9783110747577
ISBN:: 9783111276496
ISBN:: 9783110747768
ISBN:: 9783110747560
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Sex and the Ancient City

Sex and Sexual Practices in Greco-Roman Antiquity

Andreas Serafim, George Kazantzidis, Kyriakos Demetriou

Volume 126 in this series

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This volume aims to revisit, further explore and tease out the textual, but also non-textual sources in an attempt to reconstruct a clearer picture of a particular aspect of sexuality, i.e. sexual practices, in Greco-Roman antiquity. Sexual practices refers to a part of the overarching notion of sexuality: specifically, the acts of sexual intercourse, the erogenous capacities and genital functions of male and female body, and any other physical or biological actions that define one’s sexual identity or orientation. This volume aims to approach not simply the acts of sexual intercourse themselves, but also their legal, social, political, religious, medical, cultural/moral and interdisciplinary (e.g. emotional, performative) perspectives, as manifested in a range of both textual and non-textual evidence (i.e. architecture, iconography, epigraphy, etc.). The insights taken from the contributions to this volume would enable researchers across a range of disciplines – e.g. sex/gender studies, comparative literature, psychology and cognitive neuroscience – to use theoretical perspectives, methodologies and conceptual tools to frame the sprawling examination of aspects of sexuality in broad terms, or sexual practices in particular.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695793
ISBN:: 9783110695793
ISBN:: 9783110695885
ISBN:: 9783110695779
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Deixis and Frames of Reference in Hellenistic Dedicatory Epigrams

Flavia Licciardello

Volume 125 in this series

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The book presents an analysis of communicative structures and deictic elements in Hellenistic dedicatory epigrams. Moving from the most recent linguistic theories on pragmatics and considering together both Stein- and Buchepigramme, this study investigates the linguistic means that are employed in texts transmitted on different media (the stone and the book) to point to and describe their spatial and temporal context. The research is based on the collection of a new corpus of Hellenistic book and inscribed dedicatory epigrams, which were compared to pre-Hellenistic dedicatory epigrams in order to highlight the crucial changes that characterise the development of the epigrammatic genre in the Hellenistic era. By demonstrating that the evolution of the epigrammatic genre moved on the same track for book and stone epigrams, this work offers an important contribution to the ongoing debate on the history of the epigrammatic genre and aims to stimulate further reflection on a poetic genre, which, since its origins in the Greek world, has been successful both in ancient and modern literary traditions.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110681673
ISBN:: 9783110681673
ISBN:: 9783110681857
ISBN:: 9783110681598
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Epigraphy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Myths on the Margins of Homer

Prolegomena to the ›Mythographus Homericus‹

Joan Pagès, Nereida Villagra

Volume 124 in this series

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Even though there is agreement on the existence of an Imperial commentary on Homer, going under the name Mythographus Homericus, a large-scale study of this work has been lacking. The objective of this collective volume is to fill this blank. The authors represent diverse opinions, a consequence of the complex nature of the textual tradition but also of the difficulty of defining the nature of this mythographic work itself. This volume offers a study of Mythographus Homericus from different perspectives: the place of the work in the history of scholarship, the state of the text, which has been transmitted by scholia and papyri, its readership, its place in mythography and in Homeric scholarship, its intertextual relationship to other mythographic works or scholiastic corpora and its contribution to the study of myth from a typological perspective.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110751192
ISBN:: 9783110751192
ISBN:: 9783110751239
ISBN:: 9783110751154
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Subject:: Papyrology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Witnesses and Evidence in Ancient Greek Literature

Andreas Markantonatos, Vasileios Liotsakis, Andreas Serafim

Volume 123 in this series

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The fact that aspects of witnesses and evidence put them in the centre of the institutional and cultural (e.g. religious, literary) construction of ancient societies indicates that it is important to keep offering nuanced approaches to the topic of this volume. To advance knowledge of the processes of presenting witnesses and gathering, or constructing, evidence is, in fact, to better and more fully understand the ways in which deliberative Athenian democracy functions, what the core elements of political life and civic identity are, and how they relate to the system of using logos to make decisions. For, witnesses and evidence were important prerequisites of getting the Athenian citizenship and exerting the civic/political identity as a member of the community. It is important, therefore, all the matters that relate to information-gathering and decision-making to be examined anew. Emphasis can be placed on a variety of genres to allow scholars recreate the fullest and clearest possible image about the witnessing and evidencing in antiquity. Chapters in this volume include considerations of social, political, literary, and moral theory, alongside studies of the impact of information-gathering and decision-making in oratory and drama, with a steady focus on the application of key ideas and values in social and political justice to issues of pressing ethical concern.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110751970
ISBN:: 9783110751970
ISBN:: 9783110752076
ISBN:: 9783110751161
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Law
Subject:: History, Philosophy and Sociology of Law
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Pathologies of Love in Classical Literature

Dimitrios Kanellakis

Volume 122 in this series

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Do you believe in love at first sight? The Greeks and the Romans certainly did. But far from enjoying this romantic moment carefree, they saw it as a cruel experience and an infection. Then what are the symptoms of falling in love? Are there any remedies? Any form of immunity?

This book explores the conception of love (erôs) as a physical, emotional, and mental disease, a social-ethical disorder, and a literary unorthodoxy in Greek and Latin literature. Through illustrative case studies, the contributors to this volume examine two distinct, yet historically and poetically interrelated traditions of ‘pathological love’: lovesickness as/similar to disease and deviant sexuality described in nosologic terms. The chapters represent a wide range of genres (lyric poetry, philosophy, oratory, comedy, tragedy, elegy, satire, novel, and of course medical literature) and a fascinating synthesis of methodologies and approaches, including textual criticism, comparative philology, narratology, performance theory, and social history. The book closes with an anthology of Greek and Latin passages on pathological erôs. While primarily aimed at an academic readership, the book is accessible to anyone interested in Classics and/or the theme of love.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110747942
ISBN:: 9783110747942
ISBN:: 9783111276618
ISBN:: 9783110748062
ISBN:: 9783110747881
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Science and Medicine
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Comic Invective in Ancient Greek and Roman Oratory

Sophia Papaioannou, Andreas Serafim

Volume 121 in this series

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This volume acknowledges the centrality of comic invective in a range of oratorical institutions (especially forensic and symbouleutic), and aspires to enhance the knowledge and understanding of how this technique is used in such con-texts of both Greek and Roman oratory. Despite the important scholarly work that has been done in discussing the patterns of using invective in Greek and Roman texts and contexts, there are still notable gaps in our knowledge of the issue. The introduction to, and the twelve chapters of, this volume address some understudied multi-genre and interdisciplinary topics: first, the ways in which comic invective in oratory draws on, or has implications for, comedy and other genres, or how these literary genres are influenced by oratorical theory and practice, and by contemporary socio-political circumstances, in articulating comic invective and targeting prominent individuals; second, how comic invective sustains relationships and promotes persuasion through unity and division; third, how it connects with sexuality, the human body and male/female physiology; fourth, what impact generic dichotomies, as, for example, public-private and defence-prosecution, may have upon using comic invective; and fifth, what the limitations in its use are, depending on the codes of honour and decency in ancient Greece and Rome.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110735536
ISBN:: 9783110735536
ISBN:: 9783111271040
ISBN:: 9783110738964
ISBN:: 9783110735666
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

The Embodied Self in Plato

Phaedo – Republic – Timaeus

Orestis Karatzoglou

Volume 120 in this series

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This book argues that, rather than being conceived merely as a hindrance, the body contributes constructively in the fashioning of a Platonic unified self. The Phaedo shows awareness that the indeterminacy inherent in the body infects the validity of any scientific argument but also provides the subject of inquiry with the ability to actualize, to the extent possible, the ideal self. The Republic locates bodily desires and needs in the tripartite soul. Achievement of maximal unity is dependent upon successful training of the rational part of the soul, but the earlier curriculum of Books 2 and 3, which aims at instilling a pre-reflectively virtuous disposition in the lower parts of the soul, is a prerequisite for the advanced studies of Republic 7. In the Timaeus, the world soul is fashioned out of Being, Sameness, and Difference: an examination of the Sophist and the Parmenides reveals that Difference is to be identified with the Timaeus’ Receptacle, the third ontological principle which emerges as the quasi-material component that provides each individual soul with the alloplastic capacity for psychological growth and alteration.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110732450
ISBN:: 9783110732450
ISBN:: 9783111122076
ISBN:: 9783110732498
ISBN:: 9783110737400
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Science and Medicine
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Ancient Memory

Remembrance and Commemoration in Graeco-Roman Literature

Katharine Mawford, Eleni Ntanou

Volume 119 in this series

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Although the recent ‘memory boom’ has led to increasing interdisciplinary interest, there is a significant gap relating to the examination of this topic in Classics. In particular, there is need for a systematic exploration of ancient memory and its use as a critical and methodological tool for delving into ancient literature.

The present volume provides just such an approach, theorising the use and role of memory in Graeco-Roman thought and literature, and building on the background of memory studies. The volume’s contributors apply theoretical models such as memoryscapes, civic and cultural memory, and memory loss to a range of authors, from Homeric epic to Senecan drama, and from historiography to Cicero’s recollections of performances. The chapters are divided into four sections according to the main perspective taken. These are: 1) the Mechanics of Memory, 2) Collective memory, 3) Female Memory, and 4) Oblivion.

This modern approach to ancient memory will be useful for scholars working across the range of Greek and Roman literature, as well as for students, and a broader interdisciplinary audience interested in the intersection of memory studies and Classics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110728798
ISBN:: 9783110728798
ISBN:: 9783111267739
ISBN:: 9783110728927
ISBN:: 9783110728712
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

The Fiction of Occasion in Hellenistic and Roman Poetry

Adrian Gramps

Volume 118 in this series

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The aim of this book is to devise a method for approaching the problem of presence in Hellenistic and Roman poetry. The problem of presence, as defined here, is the problem of the availability or accessibility to the reader of the fictional worlds disclosed by poetry. From Callimachus’ Hymns to the Odes of Horace, poets of this era repeatedly challenge readers by beckoning them to explore fictive spaces which are at once familiar and otherworldly, realms of the imagination which are nevertheless firmly rooted in the lived reality of the poets and their contemporaries. We too, when we read these poems, may feel simultaneously a sense of being transported to a world apart and of being seized upon by the poem’s address in the here and now of reading. The fiction of occasion is proposed as a new conceptual tool for understanding how these poems produce such problematic presences and what varieties of experience they make possible for their readers. The fiction of occasion is defined as a phenomenon whereby a poem is fictionally framed as part of a material event or ‘occasion’ with which the reader is invited to engage through the medium of the senses. The book explores this concept through close readings of key authors from the corpus of first-person poetry written in Greek and Latin between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE, with a focus on Callimachus, Bion, Catullus, Propertius, and Horace. The ultimate purpose of these readings is to move towards developing a new vocabulary for conceptualising ancient poetry as an embodied experience.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110731606
ISBN:: 9783110731606
ISBN:: 9783111270647
ISBN:: 9783110731644
ISBN:: 9783110736991
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Lucretius on Disease

The Poetics of Morbidity in ›De rerum natura‹

George Kazantzidis

Volume 117 in this series

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The standard view in scholarship is that disease in Lucretius' De rerum natura is mainly a problem to be solved and then dispensed with.

However, a closer reading suggests that things are more layered and complex than they appear at first sight: just as morbus causes a radical rearrangement of atoms in the body and makes the patient engage with alternative and up to that point unknown dimensions of the sensible world, so does disease as a theme generate a multiplicity of meanings in the text. The present book argues for a reconsideration of morbus in De rerum natura along those lines: it invites the reader to revisit the topic of disease and reflect on the various, and often contrasting, discourses that unfold around it. More specifically, it illustrates how, apart from calling for therapy, disease, due to its dominant presence in the narrative, transforms at the same time into a concept that is integral both to the poem’s philosophical agenda but also to its wider aesthetic concerns as a literary product.

The book thus sheds new light on De rerum natura's intense preoccupation with morbus by showing how disease is not exclusively conceived by Lucretius as a blind, obliterating force but is crucially linked to life and meaning—both inside and outside the text.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110722765
ISBN:: 9783110722765
ISBN:: 9783111116648
ISBN:: 9783110722659
ISBN:: 9783110722925
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Science and Medicine
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

The Search for the Self in Statius' ›Thebaid‹

Identity, Intertext and the Sublime

Jean-Michel Hulls

Volume 116 in this series

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The aim of this project is to provide a sustained analysis of the concept of ‘self’ in Statius’ Thebaid. It is this project’s contention that the poem is profoundly interested in ideas of identity and selfhood. The poem stages itself as a metapoetic exploration of the difficulties for a belated epicist in finding a place in the literary canon; it shows the impossibility of squaring large-scale epic poetics with small-scale, finely-wrought Callimacheanism; it reflects the violent disjunction between Statius’ authorial pose as a poet without power and the extreme violence of his poetics; it opens up the intricacies of constructing original, coherent characters out of intertextual, exemplary models. The central tenet of the project is that Statius in the Thebaid stages his own 'death', but does so that his poem may live. This book is intended for an academic audience including undergraduate and graduate students as well as specialists in the field. Although the project will be of primary importance to readers of Flavian literature, it will also be of interest to those who study intertextuality and characterisation in Roman literature more generally, selfhood and identity in Roman literature and culture and the reception of Roman literature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110717990
ISBN:: 9783110717990
ISBN:: 9783111265865
ISBN:: 9783110718041
ISBN:: 9783110717785
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2022

Mythical Narratives in Stesichorus

Greek Heroes on the Move

Sofia Carvalho

Volume 115 in this series

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The mythical narratives of Stesichorus provide the earliest surviving examples of poetic production in the Greek West. This book illustrates how Stesichorus reshaped Greek epic to create a remarkably innovative type of lyric poetry – a literature that was particularly expressive in its handling of motifs associated with travel, such as the voyages of heroes, their returns home, and their escapes. This comprehensive survey of Stesichorus’ treatment of myth discusses his engagement with Homer and Hesiod, his powerful and often moving means of characterisation, his subtle treatment of narrative, and his elaboration of emotional episodes unprecedented in archaic Greek lyric poetry.
All Greek is translated, making the book accessible to anyone with an interest in one of the great poets of archaic Greece, whose work had such an impact on the later genre of tragedy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715736
ISBN:: 9783110715736
ISBN:: 9783111265698
ISBN:: 9783110715880
ISBN:: 9783110715453
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature

Martin Vöhler, Therese Fuhrer, Stavros Frangoulidis

Volume 114 in this series

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Ambiguity in the sense of two or more possible meanings is considered to be a distinctive feature of modern art and literature. It characterizes the "open artwork" (Eco) and is generated by "disruptive tactics" (Wellershoff) and strategies to engender uncertainty. While ambiguity is seen as a "paradigm of modernity" (Bode), there is skepticism regarding its use in the pre-modern era. Older studies were dominated by the conviction that there was a lack of ambiguity in pre-modernity because, according to the rules of the "old rhetoric", ambiguity was seen as an avoidable error (vitium) and a violation of the dictate of clarity (perspicuitas).

The aim of the volume is to re-examine the putative "absence of ambiguity" in the pre-modern era. Is it not possible to find clear examples of deliberately employed (intended) ambiguity in antiquity? Are the oracles and riddles, the Palinode of Stesichoros and Socrates (Phaedrus), the dissoi logoi of rhetoric, the ambiguities of the tragedies all exceptions or do they not indicate a distinct interest in the artistic use of ambiguity?

The presentations of the conference, which will include scholars from various philologies, will combine a recourse to theoretical concepts of intended ambiguity with exemplary analyses from the field of pre-modern art and literature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715811
ISBN:: 9783110715811
ISBN:: 9783110715842
ISBN:: 9783110715415
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Suspense in Ancient Greek Literature

Ioannis M. Konstantakos, Vasileios Liotsakis

Volume 113 in this series

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The use of suspense in ancient literature attracts increasing attention in modern scholarship, but hitherto there has been no comprehensive work analysing the techniques of suspense through the various genres of the Classical literary canon. This volume aspires to fill such a gap, exploring the phenomenon of suspense in the earliest narrative writings of the western world, the literature of the ancient Greeks. The individual chapters focus on a wide range of poetic and prose genres (epic, drama, historiography, oratory, novel, and works of literary criticism) and examine the means by which ancient authors elicited emotions of tense expectation and fearful anticipation for the outcome of the story, the development of the plot, or the characters' fate. A variety of theoretical tools, from narratology and performance studies to psychological and cognitive approaches, are exploited to study the operation of suspense in the works under discussion. Suspenseful effects are analysed in a double perspective, both in terms of the artifices employed by authors and with regard to the responses and experiences of the audience. The volume will be useful to classical scholars, narratologists, and literary historians and theorists.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715521
ISBN:: 9783110715521
ISBN:: 9783110715583
ISBN:: 9783110715392
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Synchrony and Diachrony of Ancient Greek

Language, Linguistics and Philology

Georgios K. Giannakis, Luz Conti, Jesús de la Villa, Raquel Fornieles

Volume 112 in this series

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This collective volume contains thirty six original studies on various aspects of Ancient Greek language, linguistics and philology written by an international group of leading authorities in the field.

The essays are organized in five thematic groups covering a wide variety of issues of ancient Greek linguistics, ranging from epigraphy and the study of individual dialects to various other aspects of the structure of the language, such as phonetics and phonology, morphology, lexicon and word formation, etymology, metrics as well as many syntactic matters and problems of pragmatics and stylistics of the language; a number of essays move in the middle ground where language, linguistics and philology crosscut and cross-fertilize each other with the application of linguistic theory to the study of classical texts.

The work is of special relevance to scholars interested in Greek linguistics in general and in particular aspects of the Greek language.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110719192
ISBN:: 9783110719192
ISBN:: 9783110719338
ISBN:: 9783110718621
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Epigraphy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Ancient and Medieval Greek Etymology

Theory and Practice I

Arnaud Zucker, Claire Le Feuvre

Volume 111 in this series

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This volume on Greek synchronic etymology offers a set of papers evidencing the cultural significance of etymological commitment in ancient and medieval literature. The four sections illustrate the variety of approaches of the same object, which for Greek writers was much more than a technical way of studying language. Contributions focus on the functions of etymology as they were intended by the authors according to their own aims. (1) “Philosophical issues” addresses the theory of etymology and its explanatory power, especially in Plato and in Neoplatonism. (2) “Linguistic issues” discusses various etymologizing techniques and the status of etymology, which was criticized and openly rejected by some authors. (3) “Poetical practices of etymology” investigates the ubiquitous presence of etymological reflections in learned poetry, whatever the genre, didactic, aetiological or epic. (4) “Etymology and word-plays” addresses the vexed question of the limit between a mere pun and a real etymological explanation, which is more than once difficult to establish. The wide range of genres and authors and the interplay between theoretical reflection and applied practice shows clearly the importance of etymology in Greek thought.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110714876
ISBN:: 9783110714876
ISBN:: 9783110714913
ISBN:: 9783110714852
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Subject:: Philosophy
Subject:: Philosophy of Language
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Plato’s ›Theaetetus‹ Revisited

Beatriz Bossi, Thomas M. Robinson

Volume 110 in this series

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This book meets the need to revise the standard interpretations of an apparently aporetic dialogue, full of eloquent silences and tricky suggestions, as it explores, among many other topics, the dramatis personae, including Plato's self-references behind the scene and the role of Socrates on stage, the question of method and refutation and the way dialectics plays a part in the dialogue. More especifically, it contains a set of papers devoted to perception and Plato's criticism of Heraclitus and Protagoras. A section deals with the problem of the relation between knowledge and thinking, including the the aviary model and the possibility of error. It also emphasizes some positive contributions to the classical Platonic doctrines and his philosophy of education. The reception of the dialogue in antiquity and the medieval age closes the analysis. Representing different hermeneutical traditions, prestigious scholars engage with these issues in divergent ways, as they shed new light on a complex controversial work.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715477
ISBN:: 9783110715477
ISBN:: 9783110715590
ISBN:: 9783110715262
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Identities, Ethnicities and Gender in Antiquity

Jacqueline Fabre-Serris, Alison Keith, Florence Klein

Volume 109 in this series

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The question of ‘identity’ arises for any individual or ethnic group when they come into contact with a stranger or another people. Such contact results in the self-conscious identification of ways of life, customs, traditions, and other forms of society as one’s own specific cultural features and the construction of others as characteristic of peoples from more or less distant lands, described as very ‘different’. Since all societies are structured by the division between the sexes in every field of public and private activity, the modern concept of ‘gender’ is a key comparator to be considered when investigating how the concepts of identity and ethnicity are articulated in the evaluation of the norms and values of other cultures. The object of this book is to analyze, at the beginning Western culture, various examples of the ways the Greeks and Romans deployed these three parameters in the definition of their identity, both cultural and gendered, by reference to their neighbours and foreign nations at different times in their history. This study also aims to enrich contemporary debates by showing that we have yet to learn from the ancients’ discussions of social and cultural issues that are still relevant today.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110719949
ISBN:: 9783110719949
ISBN:: 9783111115900
ISBN:: 9783110719970
ISBN:: 9783110719857
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Studies, other
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

The Rhetoric of Unity and Division in Ancient Literature

Andreas N. Michalopoulos, Andreas Serafim, Flaminia Beneventano della Corte, Alessandro Vatri

Volume 108 in this series

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This volume, comprising 24 essays, aims to contribute to a developing appreciation of the capacity of rhetoric to reinforce affiliation or disaffiliation to groups. To this end, the essays span a variety of ancient literary genres (i.e. oratory, historical and technical prose, drama and poetry) and themes (i.e. audience-speaker, laughter, emotions, language, gender, identity, and religion).

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110611168
ISBN:: 9783110611168
ISBN:: 9783110609790
ISBN:: 9783110609868
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Lists and Catalogues in Ancient Literature and Beyond

Towards a Poetics of Enumeration

Rebecca Laemmle, Cédric Scheidegger Laemmle, Katharina Wesselmann

Volume 107 in this series

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Lists and catalogues have been en vogue in philosophy, cultural, media and literary studies for more than a decade. These explorations of enumerative modes, however, have not yet had the impact on classical scholarship that they deserve. While they routinely take (a limited set of) ancient models as their starting point, there is no comparably comprehensive study that focuses on antiquity; conversely, studies on lists and catalogues in Classics remain largely limited to individual texts, and – with some notable exceptions – offer little in terms of explicit theorising. The present volume is an attempt to close this gap and foster the dialogue between the recent theoretical re-appraisal of enumerative modes and scholarship on ancient cultures.
The 16 contributions to the volume juxtapose literary forms of enumeration with an abundance of ancient non-, sub- or para-literary practices of listing and cataloguing. In their different approaches to this vast and heterogenous corpus, they offer a sense of the hermeneutic, epistemic and methodological challenges with which the study of enumeration is faced, and elucidate how pragmatics, materiality, performativity and aesthetics are mediated in lists and catalogues.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712230
ISBN:: 9783110712230
ISBN:: 9783110712285
ISBN:: 9783110712193
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Rhetoric and Religion in Ancient Greece and Rome

Sophia Papaioannou, Andreas Serafim, Kyriakos Demetriou

Volume 106 in this series

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It is perhaps a truism to note that ancient religion and rhetoric were closely intertwined in Greek and Roman antiquity. Religion is embedded in socio-political, legal and cultural institutions and structures, while also being influenced, or even determined, by them. Rhetoric is used to address the divine, to invoke the gods, to talk about the sacred, to express piety and to articulate, refer to, recite or explain the meaning of hymns, oaths, prayers, oracles and other religious matters and processes. The 13 contributions to this volume explore themes and topics that most succinctly describe the firm interrelation between religion and rhetoric mostly in, but not exclusively focused on, Greek and Roman antiquity, offering new, interdisciplinary insights into a great variety of aspects, from identity construction and performance to legal/political practices and a broad analytical approach to transcultural ritualistic customs. The volume also offers perceptive insights into oriental (i.e. Egyptian magic) texts and Christian literature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110699623
ISBN:: 9783110699623
ISBN:: 9783111262703
ISBN:: 9783110699708
ISBN:: 9783110699166
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Religion
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Religious Studies
Subject:: Ancient Religions
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

The Continuity of Classical Literature Through Fragmentary Traditions

Francesco Ginelli, Francesco Lupi

Volume 105 in this series

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Fragmentary texts play a central role in Classics. Their study poses a stimulating challenge to scholars and readers, while its methods and principles, far from being rigidly immutable, invite constant reflection on its methods, approaches, and goals. By focusing on some of the most relevant issues that fragmentologists have to face, this book contributes to the ongoing and lively debate on the study of fragmentary texts.
This volume contains an extensive theoretical introduction on the study of textual fragments, followed by eight essays on a wide variety of topics relevant to the study of fragmentary texts across literary genres. The chapters range from archaic Greek epics (the Hesiodic corpus) to late-antique grammarian Nonius Marcellus as a source of fragments of Republican literature. All contributions share a nuanced, critical attention to the main methodological implications of the study of fragmentary texts and mutually contribute to highlighting the field’s common specificities and limitations, both in theory and in editorial practice.
The book offers a representative spectrum of fragmentological issues, providing all readers with an interest in Classics with an up-to-date, methodologically aware approach to the field.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110712223
ISBN:: 9783110712223
ISBN:: 9783110712292
ISBN:: 9783110700374
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Urban Disasters and the Roman Imagination

Virginia M. Closs, Elizabeth Keitel

Volume 104 in this series

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This book affords new perspectives on urban disasters in the ancient Roman context, attending not just to the material and historical realities of such events, but also to the imaginary and literary possibilities offered by urban disaster as a figure of thought. Existential threats to the ancient city took many forms, including military invasions, natural disasters, public health crises, and gradual systemic collapses brought on by political or economic factors. In Roman cities, the memory of such events left lasting imprints on the city in psychological as well as in material terms. Individual chapters explore historical disasters and their commemoration, but others also consider of the effect of anticipated and imagined catastrophes. They analyze the destruction of cities both as a threat to be forestalled, and as a potentially regenerative agent of change, and the ways in which destroyed cities are revisited — and in a sense, rebuilt— in literary and social memory. The contributors to this volume seek to explore the Roman conception of disaster in terms that are not exclusively literary or historical. Instead, they explore the connections between and among various elements in the assemblage of experiences, texts, and traditions touching upon the theme of urban disasters in the Roman world.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110674736
ISBN:: 9783110674736
ISBN:: 9783110674767
ISBN:: 9783110674699
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Elements of Tragedy in Flavian Epic

Sophia Papaioannou, Agis Marinis

Volume 103 in this series

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In the light of recent scholarly work on tragic patterns and allusions in Flavian epic, the publication of a volume exclusively dedicated to the relationship between Flavian epic and tragedy is timely. The volume, concentrating on the poetic works of Silius Italicus, Statius and Valerius Flaccus, consists of eight original contributions, two by the editors themselves and a further six by experts on Flavian epic. The volume is preceded by an introduction by the editors and it concludes with an ‘Afterword’ by Carole E. Newlands.
Among key themes analysed are narrative patterns, strategies or type-scenes that appear to derive from tragedy, the Aristotelian notions of hamartia and anagnorisis, human and divine causation, the ‘transfer’ of individual characters from tragedy to epic, as well as instances of tragic language and imagery.
The volume at hand showcases an array of methodological approaches to the question of the presence of tragic elements in epic. Hence, it will be of interest to scholars and students in the area of Classics or Literary Studies focusing on such intergeneric and intertextual connections; it will be also of interest to scholars working on Flavian epic or on the ancient reception of Greek and Roman tragedy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110709841
ISBN:: 9783110709841
ISBN:: 9783110709971
ISBN:: 9783110709520
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature

Aspects of Ethical Reasoning from Homer to Aristotle and Beyond

Maria Liatsi

Volume 102 in this series

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Interpretation of ancient Greek literature is often enough distorted by the preconceptions of modern times, especially on ancient morality. This is often equivalent to begging the question. If we think e.g. of aretê, which has different meanings in different contexts, we shall think in English (or in Modern Greek or in French or in German) and shall falsify the phenomena. If we are to understand the Greek concept e.g. of aretê we must study the nature of the situations in which it is applied. For it is an important fact in the study of Greek society that the Greeks used the one word (e.g. aretê) where we use different words. If we are to understand properly the texts, we have to view them in their historical and social context. Ancient Greek thought needs to be studied together with politics, ethics, and economic behaviour. Moreover, the best insights can be found in those who confine themselves to the terms of each ancient author's analysis. From this principle each of the contributions of the volume begins.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110699616
ISBN:: 9783110699616
ISBN:: 9783110699685
ISBN:: 9783110699173
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Ancient Greek Comedy

Genre – Texts – Reception

Almut Fries, Dimitrios Kanellakis

Volume 101 in this series

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This volume, in honour of Angus M. Bowie, collects seventeen original essays on Greek comedy. Its contributors treat questions of origin, genre and artistic expression, interpret individual plays from different angles (literary, historical, performative) and cover aspects of reception from antiquity to the 20th century. Topics that have not received much attention so far, such as the prehistory of Doric comedy or music in Old Comedy, receive a prominent place.

The essays are arranged in three sections: (1) Genre, (2) Texts and Contexts, (3) Reception. Within each section the chapters are as far as possible arranged in chronological order, according to historical time or to the (putative) dates of the plays under discussion. Thus readers will be able to construe their own diachronic and thematic connections, for example between the portrayal of stock characters in early Doric farce and developed Attic New Comedy or between different forms of comic reception in the fourth century BC.

The book is intended for professional scholars, graduate and undergraduate students. Its wide range of subjects and approaches will appeal not only to those working on Greek comedy, but to anyone interested in Greek drama and its afterlife.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110646269
ISBN:: 9783110646269
ISBN:: 9783110645224
ISBN:: 9783110645095
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Faces of Silence in Ancient Greek Literature

Athenian Dialogues I

Efi Papadodima

Volume 100 in this series

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The volume offers new insights into the intricate theme of silence in Greek literature, especially drama.

Even though the topic has received respectable attention in recent years, it still lends itself to further inquiry, which embraces silence's very essence and boundaries; its applications and effects in particular texts or genres; and some of its technical features and qualities.

The particular topics discussed extend to all these three areas of inquiry, by looking into: silence's possible role in the performance of epic and lyric; its impact on the workings of praise-poetry; its distinct deployments in our five complete ancient novels; Aristophanic, comic and otherwise, silences; the vocabulary of the unspeakable in tragedy; the connections of tragic silence to power, authority, resistance, and motivation; female tragic silences and their transcendence, against the background of male oppression or domination; famous tragic silences as expressions of the ritualized isolation of the individual from both human and divine society.

The emerging insights are valuable for the broader interpretation of the relevant texts, as well as for the fuller understanding of central values and practices of the society that created them.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695625
ISBN:: 9783110695625
ISBN:: 9783110695656
ISBN:: 9783110690019
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Word, Phrase, and Sentence in Relation

Ancient Grammars and Contexts

Paola Cotticelli-Kurras

Volume 99 in this series

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The contributions contained in this volume offer a multidisciplinary approach into the history of the parts of speech and their role in building phrases and sentences. They fulfill a current interest for syntactic problems for combining recent linguistic theories with the long tradition of the Classical studies. The studies cover a chronological range reaching from Aristotle to Priscian and deal with concepts like ῥῆμα and λóγος, or the two Aristotelian expressions λέξις εἰρομένη and λέξις κατεστραμμένη as well as διάβασις and μετάβασις in Apollonius Dyscolos and the corresponding Latin term transitio and finally the Latin pronouns qui or quis. Through the metalinguistic approach the authors tackle syntactic structures like dependency or government, syntactic features or properties such as transitivity or subject and predicate or the development of the syntactic role of pronouns in introducing relative sentences. Furthermore, in providing testimonies of the historical existence of the controversy anomaly-analogy, the history of this quarrel is drawn from the Alexandrinian tradition to the Latin one with emphasis on the studium grammaticae as a development of an independent field of study.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110688047
ISBN:: 9783110688047
ISBN:: 9783110688115
ISBN:: 9783110687965
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

›Prometheus Bound‹ – A Separate Authorial Trace in the Aeschylean Corpus

Nikos Manousakis

Volume 98 in this series

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Classics, Computer Science, and Linguistics are brought together in this book, in an attempt to provide an answer to the authorship question concerning Prometheus Bound, a disputed play in the Aeschylean corpus, by applying some well-established Computer Stylistics methods. One of the main objectives of Stylometry, which, broadly speaking, is the study of quantified style, is Authorship Attribution. In its traditional form it can range from manually calculating descriptive statistics to the use of computer-assisted methodologies. However, non-traditional Authorship Attribution drastically changed the field. It brought together modern Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence applications (machine learning, natural language processing), and its key characteristic is that it aims at developing fully-automated systems for the attribution of texts of unknown authorship. In this book the author employs a series of supervised and unsupervised techniques used in non-traditional Authorship Attribution–applied here for the first time in ancient drama. The outcome of the analysis indicates a significant distance between the disputed text and the secure plays of Aeschylus, but also various interesting (micro-linguistic) ties of affinity with other authors, especially Sophocles and Euripides.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110687675
ISBN:: 9783110687675
ISBN:: 9783110687811
ISBN:: 9783110687644
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

The Flower of Suffering

Theology, Justice, and the Cosmos in Aeschylus’ ›Oresteia‹ and Presocratic Thought

Nuria Scapin

Volume 97 in this series

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Greek tragedy occupies a prominent place in the development of early Greek thought. However, even within the partial renaissance of debates about tragedy’s roots in the popular thought of archaic Greece, its potential connection to the early philosophical tradition remains, with few exceptions, at the periphery of current interest. This book aims to show that our understanding of Aeschylus’ Oresteia is enhanced by seeing that the trilogy’s treatment of Zeus and Justice (Dikê) shares certain concepts, assumptions, categories of thought, and forms of expression with the surviving fragments and doxography of certain Presocratic thinkers (especially Anaximander, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides). By examining several aspects of the tragic trilogy in relation to Presocratic debates about theology and cosmic justice, it shows how such scrutiny may affect our understanding of the theological ‘tension’ and metaphysical assumptions underpinning the Oresteia’s dramatic narrative. Ultimately, it argues that Aeschylus bestows on the experience of human suffering, as it is given in the contradictory multiplicity of the world, the status of a profound form of knowledge: a meeting point between the human and divine spheres.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110685633
ISBN:: 9783110685633
ISBN:: 9783110685763
ISBN:: 9783110685527
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Aristophanes and the Poetics of Surprise

Dimitrios Kanellakis

Volume 96 in this series

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The purpose of this book is to examine the variety, the mechanisms, and the poetological intention of the effect of surprise in Aristophanic comedy, addressing the phenomenon not as a self-evident or unselfconscious element of comedy as a genre, but as an elaborate system which characterises the style of the specific dramatist. More precisely, the book analyses Aristophanes’ most prominent verbal, thematic, and theatrical modes of surprise from a typological perspective, and interprets them as comprising the key area in which the playwright claims and demonstrates his artistic superiority over rival genres and individual poets. In line with this purpose, two parallel aims of the book are to provide an original commentary on the passages under examination, and to promote the study of modern performances – a practice which has so far been either restricted to Classical Reception or only theoretically acknowledged (if at all) by mainstream philological scholarship. This is a timely book on a topic of wide current interest across a range of interlocking disciplines: emotion studies, semiotics, narratology, information theory, and -most pertinently for this book- humour research.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110677034
ISBN:: 9783110677034
ISBN:: 9783110778083
ISBN:: 9783110677164
ISBN:: 9783110676983
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2021

Studies on ›P. Oxy.‹ XXXI 2537

Linda Rocchi

Volume 95 in this series

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Among the very few papyri devoted to the work of the Attic orator Lysias, one of the most interesting is certainly P. Oxy. XXXI 2537. Dated palaeographically to the late 2nd-early 3rd century CE, it contains the summaries of 22 Lysianic speeches, 18 of which were formerly unknown or known just by the title and brief quotations in lexicographers. And yet, despite the undeniable richness of this collection, the papyrus has generally received little attention from modern scholarship, and no complete survey of its many aspects of significance has been yet produced. This work aims to fill this gap: along with a new transcription and critical edition based on autopsy of the papyrus, this book provides a translation and the first exhaustive commentary of the text. Through careful textual and juridical analysis, the author examines both the relationship between summaries and speeches, with a discussion of the significant legal features of each procedure, and the overall importance of this papyrus for the history of the corpus of Lysias. The book will thus be of interest for papyrologists, legal historians, students of Attic oratory, and researchers in the field of the history of the material culture of Graeco-Roman Egypt alike.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110703702
ISBN:: 9783110703702
ISBN:: 9783110703603
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Defining Orphism

The Beliefs, the ›teletae‹ and the Writings

Anthi Chrysanthou

Volume 94 in this series

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The complex matter of Orphism has so far been addressed by scholars through studies focusing on one of its components each time, primarily the Derveni Papyrus and the Gold Tablets while the text of the Orphic Rhapsodies has remained under-examined mostly due to its fragmentary nature and the lack of a reconstruction. This book brings all of the major components of Orphism together in one study, in this way highlighting both parallels and divergences between them, and a wide range of non-Orphic sources referring to Orphic practices, beliefs and texts. For the complete analysis of the Orphic Rhapsodies a reconstruction of the text was necessary, which is included in this book along with a commentary and translation. This work proposes a new definition of Orphism and it can constitute a whole-encompassing and concise guide for scholars and students interested in Orphism. The reconstruction of the Orphic Rhapsodies could also contribute on shifting the understanding of this work to new perspectives as it demonstrates that the Orphic Rhapsodies was a more complex text rather than a single continuous theogonic narrative as has been approached up to this date.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110678451
ISBN:: 9783110678451
ISBN:: 9783110778090
ISBN:: 9783110678536
ISBN:: 9783110678390
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Religion
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Dionysus and Rome

Religion and Literature

Fiachra Mac Góráin

Volume 93 in this series

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While most work on Dionysus is based on Greek sources, this collection of essays examines the god’s Roman and Italian manifestations.
Nine contributions address Bacchus’ appearance at the crossroads of Greek and Roman cultures, tracing continuities and differences between literary and archaeological sources for the god. The essays offer coverage of Dionysus in Roman art, Italian epigraphy; Latin poetry including epic, drama and elegy; and prose, including historiography, rhetorical and Christian discourse.
The introduction offers an overview of the presence of Dionysus in Italy from the archaic to the imperial periods, identifying the main scholarly trends, with treatment of key Dionysian episodes in Roman history and literature. Individual chapters address the reception of Euripides’ Bacchae across Greek and Roman literature from Athens to Byzantium; Dionysus in Roman art of the archaic and Augustan periods; the god’s relationship with Fufluns and Liber in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE; Dionysian associations; Bacchus in Cicero; Ovid’s Tristia 5.3; Bacchus in the writings of Christian Latin writers.
The collection sheds light on a relatively understudied aspect of Dionysus, and will stimulate further research in this area.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110672237
ISBN:: 9783110672237
ISBN:: 9783110777765
ISBN:: 9783110671568
ISBN:: 9783110672312
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Religion
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Host or Parasite?

Mythographers and their Contemporaries in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods

Allen J. Romano, John Marincola

Volume 92 in this series

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Building upon the explosion of recent work on mythography, contributions to this volume direct attention to less frequently explored questions of how ancient poets, historians, and philosophers themselves adopted and adapted the work of mythographers. Study of the way that mythographers and their contemporaries take on positions of, alternately, “host” or “parasite” in relation to the other exposes the richness mythographic practice and the roles that mythographers played in the evolving Greco-Roman discourse of myth. From, among others, the seeds of mythographic discourse in Pindar and Plato, to the mythography of the Peripatics, the in-between mythography of Diodorus Siculus, and the “mythographic topography” of Pausanias, this volume invites a reappraisal of the role that mythography played at every stage of Greek thought about myth. Through contributions that explore both mythographers’ distinctive style of studying myth to other contributions that focus primarily on the how and why of non-mythographers’ use of mythographic techniques, what emerges is a picture of mythography that broadens our conception of mythography while at the same time inviting scholars to seek out more such echoes of mythographic discourse in the work of poets, historians, philosophers at large.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110672824
ISBN:: 9783110672824
ISBN:: 9783110672855
ISBN:: 9783110672794
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

The Stylus and the Scalpel

Theory and Practice of Metaphors in Seneca’s Prose

Tommaso Gazzarri

Volume 91 in this series

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Seneca’s developed metaphors draw on what is known to describe the unknown. They put hard ethical in highly accessible, and often quite entertaining, terms. The present book provides a functional description of Seneca’s dialectical relation between metaphorical language and philosophy. It shows how Stoic philosophy finds a new means of expression in Seneca’s highly elaborated rhetorical discourse, and how this relates to the social and cultural demands of Neronian culture. Metaphors are purposely utilized to work "collectively" rather than by category or type and that, therefore, the analysis of what metaphors do when Seneca chooses to combine them in clusters, demonstrates the existence of a "metanarrative of rhetoric". This approach is fundamentally innovative and has the advantage of gauging the functioning of Senecan style as a whole, rather than focusing on single features of its rhetorical functioning. The main target is to show how philosophical preaching materially contributes to the healing of human soul because it shapes the individual’s cognitive faculty in a way that is physical and not simply figurative. The stylus and the scalpel blend in their functions. This kind of therapy is not just the simulacrum of a more "real" one, it is in itself medical in nature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673715
ISBN:: 9783110673715
ISBN:: 9783110673777
ISBN:: 9783110673579
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Lucretius Poet and Philosopher

Background and Fortunes of ›De Rerum Natura‹

Philip R. Hardie, Valentina Prosperi, Diego Zucca

Volume 90 in this series

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Six hundred years after Poggio’s retrieval of the De rerum natura, and with the recent surge of interest in Lucretius and his influence, there has never been a better time to fully assess and recognize the shaping force of his thought and poetry over European culture from antiquity to modern times. This volume offers a multidisciplinary and updated overview of Lucretius as philosopher and as poet, with special attention to how these two aspects interact. The volume includes 18 contributions by established as well as early career scholars working on Lucretius’ philosophical and poetic work, and his reception both in ancient and early modern times. All the chapters present new and original research. Section I explores core issues of Epicurean-Lucretian epistemology and ethics. Section II expounds much new material on ancient response to and reception of Lucretius. Section III presents new material and analysis on the immediate, fraught early modern reception of the poem. Section IV offers a wide collection of new and original papers on Lucretius’ fortunes in the period from Machiavelli up to Victorian times. Section V explores little known aspects of the iconographical and biographical motifs related to the De rerum natura.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487
ISBN:: 9783110673487
ISBN:: 9783110673517
ISBN:: 9783110673470
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Homer and Early Greek Epic

Collected Essays

Margalit Finkelberg

Volume 89 in this series

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This collection includes thirty scholarly essays on Homer and Greek epic poetry published by Margalit Finkelberg over the past three decades. The topics discussed reflect the author’s research interests and represent the main directions of her contribution to Homeric studies: Homer's language and diction, archaic Greek epic tradition, Homer's world and values, transmission and reception of the Homeric poems. The book gives special emphasis to some of the central issues in contemporary Homeric scholarship, such as oral-formulaic theory and the role of the individual poet; Neoanalysis and the character of the relationship between Homer and the tradition about the Trojan War; the multi-layered texture of the Homeric poems; the Homeric Question; the canonic status of the Iliad and the Odyssey in antiquity and modernity. All the articles are revised and updated. The book addresses both scholars and advanced students of Classics, as well as non-specialists interested in the Homeric poems and their journey through centuries.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671452
ISBN:: 9783110671452
ISBN:: 9783110671421
ISBN:: 9783110671520
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Xenophon on Violence

Aggelos Kapellos

Volume 88 in this series

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This volume examines the issue of violence in Xenophon’s works, who lived in circumstances of war for many years. All the papers address issues of violence from different aspects. The exclusive focus on this issue is justified, since no previous detailed study exists on the subject. Most of the chapters focus on the Hellenica, because this work records more aspects of violence than the rest of his works. The volume is more concerned with examining violence in practice rather than the theory of violence, and violent practices are more frequently recorded in the Hellenica, which is the main historical work of Xenophon.This volume attempts to provide a comprehensive study of the subject of violence in Xenophon’s works and to demonstrate the coherence and consistency of his thought on it. This work aspires to be a contribution to classical scholarship since it attempts to: (1) shed further light on the literary character of Xenophon’s oeuvre; (2) offer new interpretation of passages and themes; and (3) put emphasis on passages that scholars have not pointed out and which offer important insights to the thought of Xenophon.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671469
ISBN:: 9783110671469
ISBN:: 9783110671414
ISBN:: 9783110671537
ISBN:: 9783110763720
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Toward the Characterization of Helen in Homer

Appellatives, Periphrastic Denominations, and Noun-Epithet Formulas

Lowell Edmunds

Volume 87 in this series

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This monograph lays the groundwork for a new approach of the characterization of the Homeric Helen, focusing on how she is addressed and named in the Iliad and the Odyssey and especially on her epithets. Her social identity in Troy and in Sparta emerges in the words used to address and name her. Her epithets, most of them referring to her beauty or her kinship with Zeus and coming mainly from the narrator, make her the counterpart of the heroes.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110626124
ISBN:: 9783110626124
ISBN:: 9783110626025
ISBN:: 9783110763379
ISBN:: 9783110626483
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

The Genres of Late Antique Christian Poetry

Between Modulations and Transpositions

Fotini Hadjittofi, Anna Lefteratou

Volume 86 in this series

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Classicizing Christian poetry has largely been neglected by literary scholars, but has recently been receiving growing attention, especially the poetry written in Latin. One of the objectives of this volume is to redress the balance by allowing more space to discussions of Greek Christian poetry.

The contributions collected here ask how Christian poets engage with (and are conscious of) the double reliance of their poetry on two separate systems: on the one hand, the classical poetic models and, on the other, the various genres and sub-genres of Christian prose. Keeping in mind the different settings of the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West, the contributions seek to understand the impact of historical setting on genre, the influence of the paideia shared by authors and audiences, and the continued relevance of traditional categories of literary genre. While our immediate focus is genre, most of the contributions also engage with the ideological ramifications of the transposition of Christian themes into classicizing literature.

This volume offers important and original case studies on the reception and appropriation of the classical past and its literary forms by Christian poetry.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110696219
ISBN:: 9783110696219
ISBN:: 9783110995831
ISBN:: 9783110689976
ISBN:: 9783110696233
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Early Christianity
Subject:: Byzantine Studies
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

The Paths of Greek

Literature, Linguistics and Epigraphy

Enzo Passa, Olga Tribulato

Volume 85 in this series

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This volume proposes a multidisciplinary approach to the history of Ancient Greek. Each of its ten papers offers a methodological example of how the study of Greek can be greatly enhanced by a truly multidisciplinary perspective in which the analysis of language interacts with epigraphy, textual philology and comparative linguistics, yet without neglecting the role that linguistic features play in the texts in which they are used, and hence in the culture which produced both.

The first four papers tackle epic language, addressing eccentric pronouns and formulas, the role and semantics of the middle perfect, and the development of hexameter poetry in the colonial West. The next two papers are devoted to lyric poetry and its linguistic influence in Greek literature and tackle fragments by Corinna and Epicharmus respectively. The remaining four contributions look into a variety of topics spanning from early Ionic prose to the diachronic development of the Greek lexicon and its reception in Byzantine lexicography. They all provide examples of how Greek literary language evolved across the centuries, how it was perceived by ancient scholars, and what contribution modern linguistic approaches can provide to our understanding of both these issues.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110621747
ISBN:: 9783110621747
ISBN:: 9783110621808
ISBN:: 9783110621082
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama

Anna A. Lamari, Franco Montanari, Anna Novokhatko

Volume 84 in this series

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This volume examines whether dramatic fragments should be approached as parts of a greater whole or as self-contained entities. It comprises contributions by a broad spectrum of international scholars: by young researchers working on fragmentary drama as well as by well-known experts in this field.

The volume explores another kind of fragmentation that seems already to have been embraced by the ancient dramatists: quotations extracted from their context and immersed in a new whole, in which they work both as cohesive unities and detachable entities. Sections of poetic works circulated in antiquity not only as parts of a whole, but also independently, i.e. as component fractions, rather like quotations on facebook today. Fragmentation can thus be seen operating on the level of dissociation, but also on the level of cohesion.

The volume investigates interpretive possibilities, quotation contexts, production and reception stages of fragmentary texts, looking into the ways dramatic fragments can either increase the depth of fragmentation or strengthen the intensity of cohesion.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110621693
ISBN:: 9783110621693
ISBN:: 9783110622195
ISBN:: 9783110621020
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Cultural Studies
Subject:: Genres and Media in Cultural Studies
Subject:: Drama, Theater
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Emotions, persuasion, and public discourse in classical Athens

Ancient Emotions II

Dimos Spatharas

Volume 83 in this series

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This book is an addition to the burgeoning secondary literature on ancient emotions. Its primary aim is to suggest possible ways in which recent approaches to emotions can help us understand significant aspects of persuasion in classical antiquity and, especially audiences' psychological manipulation in the civic procedures of classical Athens. Based on cognitive approaches to emotions, Skinner's theoretical work on the language of ideology, or ancient theories about enargeia, the book examines pivotal aspects of psychological manipulation in ancient rhetorical theory and practice. At the same time, the book looks into possible ways in which the emotive potentialities of vision -both sights and mental images- are explained or deployed by orators. The book includes substantial discussion of Gorgias' approach to sights ' emotional qualities and their implications for persuasion and deception and the importance of visuality for Thucydides' analysis of emotions' role in the polis' public communication. It also looks into the deployment of enargeia in forensic narratives revolving around violence. The book also focuses on the ideological implications of envy for the political discourse of classical Athens and emphasizes the rhetorical strategies employed by self-praising speakers who want to preempt their listeners' loathing. The book is therefore a useful addition to the burgeoning secondary literature on ancient emotions. Despite the prominence of emotions in classicists' scholarly work, their implications for persuasion is undeservedly under-researched. By employing appraisal-oriented analysis of emotions this books suggests new methodological approaches to ancient pathopoiia. These approaches take into consideration the wider ideological or cultural contexts which determine individual speakers' rhetorical strategies.

This book is the second volume of Ancient Emotions, edited by George Kazantzidis and Dimos Spatharas within the series Trends in Classics. Supplementary Volumes. This project investigates the history of emotions in classical antiquity, providing a home for interdisciplinary approaches to ancient emotions, and exploring the inter-faces between emotions and significant aspects of ancient literature and culture

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618174
ISBN:: 9783110618174
ISBN:: 9783110763324
ISBN:: 9783110618426
ISBN:: 9783110618037
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Xenophon’s Peloponnesian War

Aggelos Kapellos

Volume 82 in this series

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The advances in Xenophontic studies of the last generation have still not resulted in a definitive literary treatment of the Hellenica 1-2, so Xenophon’s description of the Peloponnesian War deserves closer examination. This book aims to show that Xenophon has crafted his narrative in such a way as to reinforce the opinion of Thucydides, whose work he continued, that the development of the Peloponnesian War depended to a great extent on Persian money, but the factors that ultimately determined its outcome were the moral virtues and the skills of the military leaders of Athens and Sparta. Regarding Athens, Xenophon wants to show that despite Persia’s support of Sparta, Athens lost the war because of its troubled relationship with Alcibiades; the moral disintegration of the Athenians who condemned illegally the Arginousai generals and the appointment of generals who were greatly inferior. Concerning Sparta, Xenophon leads his readers to believe that in spite of- not because of- the interference of Persia in the Peloponnesian War the moral and military qualities of Lysander and Callicratidas were what turned the course of the war either in favor of or against Sparta in each phase of the war.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110668315
ISBN:: 9783110668315
ISBN:: 9783110660654
ISBN:: 9783110667370
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World

George Kazantzidis

Volume 81 in this series

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The present volume offers a systematic discussion of the complex relationship between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world.
For a long time, the relationship between the two has been assumed to be virtually non-existent. Paradoxography is concerned with disclosing a world full of marvels and wondrous occurrences without providing an answer as to how these phenomena can be explained. Its main aim is to astonish and leave its readers bewildered and confused. By contrast, medicine is committed to the rational explanation of human phusis, which makes it, in a number of significant ways, incompatible with thauma. This volume moves beyond the binary opposition between ‘rational’ and ‘non-rational’ modes of thinking, by focusing on instances in which the paradox is construed with direct reference to established medical sources and beliefs or, inversely, on cases in which medical discourse allows space for wonder and admiration. Its aim is to show that thauma, rather than present a barrier, functions as a concept which effectively allows for the dialogue between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110661774
ISBN:: 9783110661774
ISBN:: 9783110660470
ISBN:: 9783110660371
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Science and Medicine
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Refiguring Tragedy

Studies in Plays Preserved in Fragments and Their Reception

Ioanna Karamanou

Volume 80 in this series

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This book brings together case studies delving into different, unstudied aspects of the Nachleben of selected lost tragedies either in their once extant form or in their fragmentary state in later periods of time. It seeks to explore the ways in which the plays in question were reworked, discussed, represented or reperformed within varying frameworks. Notably enough, research on the reception of tragic fragments could yield insight not only into the receiving work, but also into the facets of the source text that have attracted attention in its subsequent refigurations. It could thus shed light on the ideological and cultural routes through which these fragmentary tragedies were received by the poet, the scholar, the artist, the viewer, the reader and the spectator in each case. The complex process of the refiguration of a fragmentarily preserved play within different contexts could form a yardstick of its cultural power and elucidate the dynamics of fragmentation in modern times. Τhe volume is of particular interest to scholars in the fields of classics, reception, cultural and performance studies, as well as to readers fascinated by Greek tragedy and its vibrant afterlife.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110661279
ISBN:: 9783110661279
ISBN:: 9783110659740
ISBN:: 9783110660005
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Studies in Sappho and Alcaeus

Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou

Volume 79 in this series

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The poetry of the archaic poets of Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus, has been imperfectly and poorly transmitted either in book fragments or in later ragged papyri, so that new attempts of interpretation will always be required, especially when new research tools and methods have appeared in classical scholarship.
The book consists of 14 articles by the author, which present and deal with diverse problems of the two poets of Lesbos. Various questions on already transmitted poems, different readings, reconstructions, and interpretations of the new finds are proposed, but, most importantly, new approaches in general topics, such as the division of Sappho’s work in Books, the logic leading to this division, the order of these Books, the contents of each of them, the interpretation of the surviving fragments, often quite different than before. A feature that characterizes the old-age poetry of Sappho is her anxiety about the posthumous fate of her poetry and her hope that Kleïs, her only daughter, will ensure its dissemination. Finally, the author investigates the communal festival of Hera in Lesbos, a festival performed in common with Zeus and Dionysus, the so-called “Lesbian Triad”. The festival is specified as a welcome to the season of spring at the time of the vernal equinox. Also, the location of the temenos of Hera is investigated, close to Pyrrha of Lesbos, which was the site of Alcaeus’ second exile.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110630398
ISBN:: 9783110630398
ISBN:: 9783110763393
ISBN:: 9783110630862
ISBN:: 9783110629835
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Alexander the Great in Arrian’s ›Anabasis‹

A Literary Portrait

Vasileios Liotsakis

Volume 78 in this series

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Arrian’s Alexandrou Anabasis constitutes the most reliable account at our disposal about Alexander the Great's campaign in Asia. However, whereas the work has been thoroughly studied as a historical source, its literary qualities have been relatively neglected, with no autonomous monograph existing on this matter. Vasileios Liotsakis fills this gap in the studies of Alexander the Great’s literary tradition, by offering the first monograph on Arrian’s compositional strategies. Liotsakis focuses on the narrative techniques and verbal choices, through which Arrian allows praise and criticism to intermingle in his portrait of the Macedonian king. His main point of argument is that Arrian systematically exploits an abundance of narrative means (military descriptions, presentation of peoples, march-narratives, anachronies, and epic elements) in order to draw the reader’s attention not only to Alexander’s intellectual skills but also to the fact that the king was gradually corrupted by his success. This book puts Arrian’s literary contrivances under the microscope, sheds new light on unexplored aspects of the Anabasis’ narrative arrangement, and contributes to the studies of Alexander’s prosopography in Classical historiography.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110659979
ISBN:: 9783110659979
ISBN:: 9783110658798
ISBN:: 9783110658736
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Making and Rethinking the Renaissance

Between Greek and Latin in 15th-16th Century Europe

Giancarlo Abbamonte, Stephen Harrison

Volume 77 in this series

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The purpose of this volume is to investigate the crucial role played by the return of knowledge of Greek in the transformation of European culture, both through the translation of texts, and through the direct study of the language. It aims to collect and organize in one database all the digitalised versions of the first editions of Greek grammars, lexica and school texts available in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, between two crucial dates: the start of Chrysoloras’s teaching in Florence (c. 1397) and the end of the activity of Aldo Manuzio and Andrea Asolano in Venice (c. 1529). This is the first step in a major investigation into the knowledge of Greek and its dissemination in Western Europe: the selection of the texts and the first milestones in teaching methods were put together in that period, through the work of scholars like Chrysoloras, Guarino and many others. A remarkable role was played also by the men involved in the Council of Ferrara (1438-39), where there was a large circulation of Greek books and ideas. About ten years later, Giovanni Tortelli, together with Pope Nicholas V, took the first steps in founding the Vatican Library.

Research into the return of the knowledge of Greek to Western Europe has suffered for a long time from the lack of intersection of skills and fields of research: to fully understand this phenomenon, one has to go back a very long way through the tradition of the texts and their reception in contexts as different as the Middle Ages and the beginning of Renaissance humanism. However, over the past thirty years, scholars have demonstrated the crucial role played by the return of knowledge of Greek in the transformation of European culture, both through the translation of texts, and through the direct study of the language. In addition, the actual translations from Greek into Latin remain poorly studied and a clear understanding of the intellectual and cultural contexts that produced them is lacking. In the Middle Ages the knowledge of Greek was limited to isolated areas that had no reciprocal links. As had happened to many Latin authors, all Greek literature was rather neglected, perhaps because a number of philosophical texts had already been available in translation from the seventh century AD, or because of a sense of mistrust, due to their ethnic and religious differences. Between the 12th and 14th century AD, a change is perceptible: the sharp decrease in Greek texts and knowledge in the South of Italy, once a reference-point for this kind of study, was perhaps an important reason prompting Italian humanists to go and study Greek in Constantinople.

Over the past thirty years it has become evident to scholars that humanism, through the re-appreciation of classical antiquity, created a bridge to the modern era, which also includes the Middle Ages. The criticism by the humanists of medieval authors did not prevent them from using a number of tools that the Middle Ages had developed or synthesized: glossaries, epitomes, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, translations, commentaries. At present one thing that is missing, however, is a systematic study of the tools used for the study of Greek between the 15th and 16th century; this is truly important, because, in the following centuries, Greek culture provided the basis of European thought in all the most important fields of knowledge. This volume seeks to supply that gap.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110660968
ISBN:: 9783110660968
ISBN:: 9783110657838
ISBN:: 9783110657975
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Studies in the Reception of Pindar in Ptolemaic Poetry

Alexandros Kampakoglou

Volume 76 in this series

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Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the influence of archaic lyric poetry on Hellenistic poets. However, no study has yet examined the reception of Pindar, the most prominent of the lyric poets, in the poetry of this period. This monograph is the first book to offer a systematic examination of the evidence for the reception of Pindar in the works of Callimachus of Cyrene, Theocritus of Syracuse, Apollonius of Rhodes and Posidippus of Pella. Through a series of case studies, it argues that Pindaric poetry exercised a considerable influence on a variety of Hellenistic genres: epinician elegies and epigrams, hymns, encomia, and epic poetry. For the poets active at the courts of the first three Ptolemies, Pindar's poetry represented praise discourse in its most successful configuration. Imitating aspects of it, they lent their support to the ideological apparatus of Greco-Egyptian kingship, shaped the literary profile of Pindar for future generations of readers, and defined their own role and place in Greek literary history. The discussion offered in this book suggests new insights into aspects of literary tradition, Ptolemaic patronage, and Hellenistic poetics, placing Pindar's work at the very heart of an intricate nexus of political and poetic correspondences.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110651867
ISBN:: 9783110651867
ISBN:: 9783110648744
ISBN:: 9783110641400
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

The Paradigm of Simias

Essays on Poetic Eccentricity

Jan Kwapisz

Volume 75 in this series

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This book’s concern is with notoriously obscure ancient poets-riddlers, whom it argues to have been an essential, albeit necessarily marginal, element of the literary landscape of Antiquity, which, in addition, exerted subtle yet lasting influence on European culture. The three first essays in this book trace a direct line of influence between the early Hellenistic scholar-poet Simias of Rhodes, the late Republican Roman experimentalist Laevius and Constantine the Great’s virtuoso panegyrist Optatian Porfyry, whereas the fourth essay discusses the preservation and transformation of the model invented by Simias in Byzantium. The Appendix reflects on the triumph of this intellectual paradigm in Neo-Latin Jesuit education by investigating the case of a peripheral yet highly influential Central European college at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book is at once a contribution to the scholarship on the reception of Hellenistic poetry and to the study of ancient ‘technopaegnia’ (i.e. playful poetry) and their cultural influence in Antiquity, Byzantium and post-mediaeval Europe.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110640106
ISBN:: 9783110640106
ISBN:: 9783110635935
ISBN:: 9783110636048
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Classical Tradition and Reception
Subject:: Byzantine Studies
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Poet and Orator

A Symbiotic Relationship in Democratic Athens

Andreas Markantonatos, Eleni Volonaki

Volume 74 in this series

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This multiauthored volume, as well as bringing into clearer focus the notion of drama and oratory as important media of public inquiry and critique, aims to generate significant attention to the unified intentions of the dramatist and the orator to establish favourable conditions of internal stability in democratic Athens. We hope that readers both enjoy and find valuable their engagement with these ideas and beliefs regarding the indissoluble bond between oratorical expertise and dramatic artistry. This exciting collection of studies by worldwide acclaimed classicists and acute younger Hellenists is envisaged as part of the general effort, almost unanimously acknowledged as valid and productive, to explore the impact of formalized speech in particular and craftsmanship rhetoric in general upon Attic drama as a moral and educational force in the Athenian city-state. Both poet and orator seek to deepen the central tensions of their work and to enlarge the main themes of their texts to even broader terms by investing in the art of rhetoric, whilst at the same time, through a skillful handling of events, evaluating the past and establishing standards or ideology.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110629729
ISBN:: 9783110629729
ISBN:: 9783110736892
ISBN:: 9783110626902
ISBN:: 9783110626988
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Approaches to Greek Poetry

Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Aeschylus in Ancient Exegesis

Marco Ercoles, Lara Pagani, Filippomaria Pontani, Giuseppe Ucciardello

Volume 73 in this series

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In the last decades the field of research on ancient Greek scholarship has been the object of a remarkable surge of interest, with the publication of handbooks, reference works, and new editions of texts. This partly unexpected revival is very promising and it continues to enhance and modify both our knowledge of ancient scholarship and the way in which we are accustomed to discuss these texts and tackle the editorial and exegetical challenges they pose.

This volume deals with some pivotal aspects of this topic, being the outcome of a three-year project funded by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR) on specific aspects of the critical re-appraisal of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Aeschylus in Greek culture throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. It tackles issues such as the material form of the transmission of the exegesis from papyri to codices, the examination of hitherto unexplored branches of the manuscript evidence, the discussion of some important scholia, and the role played by the indirect tradition and the assimilation of the exegetical heritage in grammatical and lexicographical works.

Some strands of the ancient and medieval scholarship are here re-evaluated afresh by adopting an interdisciplinary methodology which blends modern editorial techniques developed for ‘problematic’ or ‘non-authorial’ medieval texts with current trends in the history of philology and literary criticism. In their diversity of subject matter and approach the papers collected in the volume give intended readers an excellent overview of the topics of the project.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110631883
ISBN:: 9783110631883
ISBN:: 9783110629873
ISBN:: 9783110629606
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Studies in Greek Lexicography

Georgios K. Giannakis, Christoforos Charalambakis, Franco Montanari, Antonios Rengakos

Volume 72 in this series

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This volume presents nineteen studies by specialists in the field of Greek lexicography. A number of papers deal with historical aspects of Greek lexicography covering all phases of the language, i.e. ancient, medieval and modern, as well as the interrelations of Greek to neighboring languages. In addition, other papers address more formal issues, such as morphological, semantic and syntactic problems that are relevant to the study of Greek lexicography, as well as the study of individual words. Finally, in one study the problem of technical linguistic terminology is addressed along with the methodological, epistemological and other issues relating to the particular problem. The work is of special interest to scholars on the long standing problems of diachronic semantics, historical morphology and word formation, and to all those interested in etymology and the study of words of the Greek language.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110622744
ISBN:: 9783110622744
ISBN:: 9783110621617
ISBN:: 9783110621570
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Theocritus and his native Muse

A Syracusan among many

Poulheria Kyriakou

Volume 71 in this series

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Hellenistic poets opted and were very likely expected to deal meaningfully, and perhaps competitively, with the tradition they inherited. They also needed to secure the goodwill of actual or potential patrons. Apollonius, the author of a novel heroic epic, eschews references to literary polemics and patronage. Callimachus often adopts a polemical stance against some colleagues in order to suggest his poetic excellence. Theocritus chooses a third way, which has not been investigated adequately. He avoids antagonism but ironizes the theme of poetic excellence and distances himself from the tradition of competitive success. He does not cast his narrators as superior to predecessors and contemporaries but stresses the advantages and merits of colleagues. This rejection of conceit is connected with a major strand in Theocritean poetry: the power of word, including song, to provide assistance to characters in distress is a major open issue. Language is versatile and potent but not all-powerful. Song gives pleasure but is not a panacea while instruction and advice are never helpful and may even prove harmful. Most genuine pieces are ambiguous and open-ended so that the aspirations of characters are not presented as doomed to failure.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272
ISBN:: 9783110615272
ISBN:: 9783110614602
ISBN:: 9783110614794
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Acusilaus of Argos’ Rhapsody in Prose

Introduction, Text, and Commentary

Ilaria Andolfi

Volume 70 in this series

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This volume is a full-scale commentary on the extant fragments of Acusilaus of Argos, commonly regarded as one of the earliest Greek mythographers (VI-V cent. BCE). To encapsulate his contribution to archaic literature, his book on Genealogies is described as a "Rhapsody in Prose", that foregrounds especially the exegetical nature of his book, which rewrote the most ancient past on the basis of the most authoritative epic poems.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618600
ISBN:: 9783110618600
ISBN:: 9783110616958
ISBN:: 9783110617030
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Intratextuality and Latin Literature

Stephen J. Harrison, Stavros Frangoulidis, Theodore D. Papanghelis

Volume 69 in this series

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Recent years have witnessed an increased interest in classical studies in the ways meaning is generated through the medium of intertextuality, namely how different texts of the same or different authors communicate and interact with each other. Attention (although on a lesser scale) has also been paid to the manner in which meaning is produced through interaction between various parts of the same text or body of texts within the overall production of a single author, namely intratextuality. Taking off from the seminal volume on Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations, edited by A. Sharrock / H. Morales (Oxford 2000), which largely sets the theoretical framework for such internal associations within classical texts, this collective volume brings together twenty-seven contributions, written by an international team of experts, exploring the evolution of intratextuality from Late Republic to Late Antiquity across a wide range of authors, genres and historical periods. Of particular interest are also the combined instances of intra- and intertextual poetics as well as the way in which intratextuality in Latin literature draws on reading practices and critical methods already theorized and operative in Greek antiquity.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110611021
ISBN:: 9783110611021
ISBN:: 9783110710182
ISBN:: 9783110610239
ISBN:: 9783110610215
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

Plato’s ›Statesman‹ Revisited

Beatriz Bossi, Thomas M. Robinson

Volume 68 in this series

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This volume tackles both the apparent lack of unity and the perplexing philosophical content of the Statesman as it explores, in what is now Plato's second account, subsequent to that of the Republic, of what would constitute the best society, the role and nature of the statesman in it; the art of governance of it; the role and nature of its laws; the role and status of its female citizens; and how the virtues are interwoven within it, along with many other topics, including (in a major Myth) that of the origins of the universe and of humankind. Coming as they do from often widely differing hermeneutical traditions, the authors in the volume offer responses to substantive and intriguing questions that the dialogue raises which are frequently divergent, but by that very token of much value in any attempt to interpret a complex and multifaceted work.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110605549
ISBN:: 9783110605549
ISBN:: 9783110604917
ISBN:: 9783110604634
ISBN:: 9783110710168
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Plato’s forms, mathematics and astronomy

Theokritos Kouremenos

Volume 67 in this series

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Plato’s view that mathematics paves the way for his philosophy of forms is well known. This book attempts to flesh out the relationship between mathematics and philosophy as Plato conceived them by proposing that in his view, although it is philosophy that came up with the concept of beings, which he calls forms, and highlighted their importance, first to natural philosophy and then to ethics, the things that do qualify as beings are inchoately revealed by mathematics as the raw materials that must be further processed by philosophy (mathematicians, to use Plato’s simile in the Euthedemus, do not invent the theorems they prove but discover beings and, like hunters who must hand over what they catch to chefs if it is going to turn into something useful, they must hand over their discoveries to philosophers). Even those forms that do not bear names of mathematical objects, such as the famous forms of beauty and goodness, are in fact forms of mathematical objects. The first chapter is an attempt to defend this thesis. The second argues that for Plato philosophy’s crucial task of investigating the exfoliation of the forms into the sensible world, including the sphere of human private and public life, is already foreshadowed in one of its branches, astronomy.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110601862
ISBN:: 9783110601862
ISBN:: 9783110685299
ISBN:: 9783110601435
ISBN:: 9783110601480
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

The Iliad – the Poem of Zeus

Pietro Pucci

Volume 66 in this series

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The scholarly tendency has too often weakened the conspicuous novelty and originality that characterizes Zeus in the Iliad. This book remedies that tendency and depicts the extraordinary figure of Zeus: lord (or impersonation) of lightning and thunders, exclusive master of human destiny --and therefore of human history—and chief of Olympus. This unique personality endowed with polyvalent powers represents itself the conflict between superhuman moral indifference for mortal destiny and anthropomorphic feelings for human beings: he both preordains the death of his son and weeps on his demise. Zeus embodies the Mysterium tremendum. This new Zeus cannot glance at the past image that the tradition painted of him without smiling at its simplicity and disrespect: a parodic or amusing tone surrounds him as he refers or is referred to aspects of his traditional image. The great characters of the Poem give two wise responses to Zeus, lord of destiny: "heroic death" or serene acceptance. We, the readers, are expected to react in the same way.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110602456
ISBN:: 9783110602456
ISBN:: 9783110710144
ISBN:: 9783110601541
ISBN:: 9783110601374
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2019

After 69 CE - Writing Civil War in Flavian Rome

Lauren Donovan Ginsberg, Darcy Anne Krasne

Volume 65 in this series

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The fall of Nero and the civil wars of 69 CE ushered in an era scarred by the recent conflicts; Flavian literature also inherited a rich tradition of narrating nefas from its predecessors who had confronted and commemorated the traumas of Pharsalus and Actium. Despite the present surge of scholarly interest in both Flavian literary studies and Roman civil war literature, however, the Flavian contribution to Rome’s literature of bellum ciuile remains understudied. This volume shines a spotlight on these neglected voices. In the wake of 69 CE, writing civil war became an inescapable project for Flavian Rome: from Statius’s fraternas acies and Silius’s suicidal Saguntines to the internecine narratives detailed in Josephus’s Bellum Iudaicum and woven into Frontinus’s exempla, Flavian authors’ preoccupation with civil war transcends genre and subject matter. This book provides an important new chapter in the study of Roman civil war literature by investigating the multi-faceted Flavian response to this persistent and prominent theme.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110585841
ISBN:: 9783110585841
ISBN:: 9783110736885
ISBN:: 9783110584745
ISBN:: 9783110583960
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2020

Intertextuality in Flavian Epic Poetry

Contemporary Approaches

Neil Coffee, Chris Forstall, Lavinia Galli Milic, Damien Nelis

Volume 64 in this series

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This collection of essays reaffirms the central importance of adopting an intertextual approach to the study of Flavian epic poetry and shows, despite all that has been achieved, just how much still remains to be done on the topic. Most of the contributions are written by scholars who have already made major contributions to the field, and taken together they offer a set of state of the art contributions on individual topics, a general survey of trends in recent scholarship, and a vision of at least some of the paths work is likely to follow in the years ahead. In addition, there is a particular focus on recent developments in digital search techniques and the influence they are likely to have on all future work in the study of the fundamentally intertextual nature of Latin poetry and on the writing of literary history more generally.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110602203
ISBN:: 9783110602203
ISBN:: 9783110777017
ISBN:: 9783110599756
ISBN:: 9783110597684
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Hope in Ancient Literature, History, and Art

Ancient Emotions I

George Kazantzidis, Dimos Spatharas

Volume 63 in this series

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Although ancient hope has attracted much scholarly attention in the past, this is the first book-length discussion of the topic. The introduction offers a systematic discussion of the semantics of Greek elpis and Latin spes and addresses the difficult question of whether hope -ancient and modern- is an emotion. On the other hand, the 16 contributions deal with specific aspects of hope in Greek and Latin literature, history and art, including Pindar's poetry, Greek tragedy, Thucydides, Virgil's epic and Tacitus' Historiae. The volume also explores from a historical perspective the hopes of slaves in antiquity, the importance of hope for the enhancement of stereotypes about the barbarians, and the depiction of hope in visual culture, providing thereby a useful tool not only for classicist but also for philosophers, cultural historians and political scientists.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110598254
ISBN:: 9783110598254
ISBN:: 9783110710137
ISBN:: 9783110597103
ISBN:: 9783110596878
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Subject:: Classical Studies, other
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Dynamics of Ancient Prose

Biographic, Novelistic, Apologetic

Thea S. Thorsen, Stephen Harrison

Volume 62 in this series

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Ancient prose is intriguingly diverse. This volume explores the dynamics of the Latin and Greek prose of the Roman empire in the forms of biography, novel and apologetics which have historically lacked recognition as uncanonical genres, and yet appear vital today. Focusing on the sophistication in thought and artistic texture to be found within these literary kinds, this volume offers a collection of stimulating essays for students and scholars of literature and culture in antiquity - and beyond.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110594430
ISBN:: 9783110594430
ISBN:: 9783110596052
ISBN:: 9783110593716
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Life, Love and Death in Latin Poetry

Stavros Frangoulidis, Stephen J. Harrison

Volume 61 in this series

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Inspired by Theodore Papanghelis’ Propertius: A Hellenistic Poet on Love and Death (1987), this collective volume brings together seventeen contributions, written by an international team of experts, exploring the different ways in which Latin authors and some of their modern readers created narratives of life, love and death. Taken together the papers offer stimulating readings of Latin texts over many centuries, examined in a variety of genres and from various perspectives: poetics and authorial self-fashioning; intertextuality; fiction and ‘reality’; gender and queer studies; narratological readings; temporality and aesthetics; genre and meta-genre; structures of the narrative and transgression of boundaries on the ideological and the formalistic level; reception; meta-dramatic and feminist accounts-the female voice. Overall, the articles offer rich insights into the handling and development of these narratives from Classical Greece through Rome up to modern English poetry.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596182
ISBN:: 9783110596182
ISBN:: 9783110593631
ISBN:: 9783110587760
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Polybius and His Legacy

Nikos Miltsios, Melina Tamiolaki

Volume 60 in this series

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Although scholars continue to address old questions about Polybius, it is clear that they are also turning their attention to aspects of his history that have been inadequately dealt with in the past or have even gone largely unnoticed. Polybius' history is increasingly treated not just as a source of valuable information on the impressive expansion of Roman rule in the Mediterranean world, but also as a complex and nuanced narrative with its own interests and purposes. Moreover, since (apart from Livy's use of Polybius, which has been thoroughly discussed) most studies of Polybius' reception focus on the modern world, especially in relation to the theory of mixed constitutions, finding out more about Polybius' impact on ancient Greek and Roman authors remains a major desideratum. This volume brings together contributions which, in either posing new questions or reformulating old ones, attest both to the ardent scholarly interest currently directed toward Polybius and to the variety of hermeneutical issues raised by his work. Subjects discussed include Polybius' historical ideas, his methods of composition, his views on the role of the historian, his representation of cultural difference, his intertextual affinities, and his reception and influence. Taken together, the papers in this collection attempt to promote a deeper understanding of the qualities and peculiarities of Polybius' history, as well as to offer fresh insights into the interpretation of this important work.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110584844
ISBN:: 9783110584844
ISBN:: 9783110685282
ISBN:: 9783110584790
ISBN:: 9783110583977
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Herodotus - narrator, scientist, historian

Ewen Bowie

Volume 59 in this series

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Recently the importance for Herodotus' work of contemporary medical and sophistic thought and techniques of argument has been widely recognised, as long had been his dependence on and difference from earlier geographical and ethnographic writing. This volume focuses on the place of these interests in his investigatory techniques and sets them alongside his many narrative skills, from superficially traditonal battle narrative and reworking of Greek or non-Greek traditions that border on myth to the structuring of narrative by highlighting the life of objects, and addresses such fundamental issues as how he chooses between competing explanations and how far he valued truth. The book tackles many of the basic issues that confront any attempt to understand Herodotus' work.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110583557
ISBN:: 9783110583557
ISBN:: 9783110582109
ISBN:: 9783110581539
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Paths of Song

The Lyric Dimension of Greek Tragedy

Rosa Andújar, Thomas R. P. Coward, Theodora A. Hadjimichael

Volume 58 in this series

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Paths of Song: The Lyric Dimension of Greek Tragedy analyzes the multiple and varied evocations of choral lyric in fifth-century Greek tragedy using a variety of methodological approaches that illustrate the myriad forms through which lyric is present and can be presented in tragedy. This collection focuses on different types of interaction of Greek tragedy with lyric poetry in fifth-century Athens: generic, mythological, cultural, musical, and performative. The collected essays demonstrate the dynamic and nuanced relationship between lyric poetry and tragedy within the larger frame of Athenian song- and performance-culture, and reveal a vibrant and symbiotic co-existence between tragedy and lyric. Paths of Song illustrates the effects that this dynamic engagement with lyric possibly had on tragic performances, including performances of satyr drama, as well as on processes of survival and reputation, selection and refiguration, tradition and innovation. The volume is of particular interest to scholars in the field of classics, cultural studies, and the performing arts, as well as to readers interested in poetic transmission and in cultural evolution in antiquity.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110575910
ISBN:: 9783110575910
ISBN:: 9783110573312
ISBN:: 9783110685275
ISBN:: 9783110573992
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Plutarch’s >Parallel Lives< - Narrative Technique and Moral Judgement

Chrysanthos S. Chrysanthou

Volume 57 in this series

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In the Parallel Lives Plutarch does not absolve his readers of the need for moral reflection by offering any sort of hard and fast rules for their moral judgement. Rather, he uses strategies to elicit readers’ active engagement with the act of judging. This book, drawing on the insights of recent narrative theories, especially narratology and reader-response criticism, examines Plutarch’s narrative techniques in the Parallel Lives of drawing his readers into the process of moral evaluation and exposing them to the complexities entailed in it. Subjects discussed include Plutarch’s prefatory projection of himself and his readers and the interaction between the two; Plutarch’s presentation of the mental and emotional workings of historical agents, which serves to re-enact the participants’ experience at the time and thus arouse empathy in the readers; Plutarch’s closural strategies and their profound effects on the readers’ moral inquiry; Plutarch’s principles of historical criticism in On the malice of Herodotus in relation to his narrative strategies in the Lives. Through illustrating Plutarch’s narrative technique, this book elucidates Plutarch’s praise-and-blame rhetoric in the Lives as well as his sensibility to the challenges inherent in recounting, reading about, and evaluating the lives of the great men of history.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110574715
ISBN:: 9783110574715
ISBN:: 9783110573916
ISBN:: 9783110572988
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

They Keep It All Hid

Augustan Poetry, its Antecedents and Reception

Peter E. Knox, Hayden Pelliccia, Alexander Sens

Volume 56 in this series

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This volume comprises a series of studies focusing on the Latin poetry of the first and second centuries BCE, its relationship to earlier models both Greek and Latin, and its reception by later writers. A point of particular focus is the influence of Greek poetry, including not only Hellenistic writers like Callimachus, Theocritus, and Lycophron, but also archaic poets like Pindar and Bacchylides. The volume also includes studies of style, as well as treatments of the influence of Latin poetry on writers like Marvell and Dylan. Contributers include J. N. Adams, Barbara Weiden Boyd, Brian Breed, Sergio Casali, Julia Hejduk, Peter Knox, Leah Kronenburg, Charles Martindale, Charles McNelis, James O’Hara, Thomas Palaima, Hayden Pelliccia, David Petrain, David Ross, and Alexander Sens.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110545708
ISBN:: 9783110545708
ISBN:: 9783110544503
ISBN:: 9783110544176
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Sophisticated Speakers

Atticistic pronunciation in the Atticist lexica

Carlo Vessella

Volume 55 in this series

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This book explores for the first time the relation between Atticist lexicography and the pronunciation of Greek, an aspect of Atticism that has never been studied thouroughly before. It examines the ideas of the Atticist about what Greek should sound like, drawing on Atticist lexicography as the main source of information on the special pronunciation of the Atticist. The book addresses all scholars with an interest in Atticism, Greek in the Imperial period, and linguistic purism more in general. It sheds new light on an aspect of Atticism that is otherwise poorly attested, and complements the existiting study on later Greek and the impact of Atticism in the history of the Greek language.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110432299
ISBN:: 9783110432299
ISBN:: 9783110685176
ISBN:: 9783110440409
ISBN:: 9783110432404
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Gaze, Vision, and Visuality in Ancient Greek Literature

Alexandros Kampakoglou, Anna Novokhatko

Volume 54 in this series

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Visual culture, performance and spectacle lay at the heart of all aspects of ancient Greek daily routine, such as court and assembly, cult and ritual, and art and culture. Seeing was considered the most secure means of obtaining knowledge, with many citing the etymological connection between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ in ancient Greek as evidence for this. Seeing was also however often associated with mere appearances, false perception and deception. Gazing and visuality in the ancient Greek world have had a central place in the scholarship for some time now, enjoying an abundance of pertinent discussions and bibliography. If this book differs from the previous publications, it is in its emphasis on diverse genres: the concepts ‘gaze’, ‘vision’ and ‘visuality’ are considered across different Greek genres and media. The recipients of ancient Greek literature (both oral and written) were encouraged to perceive the narrated scenes as spectacles and to ‘follow the gaze’ of the characters in the narrative. By setting a broad time span, the evolution of visual culture in Greece is tracked, while also addressing broader topics such as theories of vision, the prominence of visuality in specific time periods, and the position of visuality in a hierarchisation of the senses.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110571288
ISBN:: 9783110571288
ISBN:: 9783110569063
ISBN:: 9783110568998
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Recognizing Miracles in Antiquity and Beyond

Maria Gerolemou

Volume 53 in this series

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In recent years, scholars have extensively explored the function of the miraculous and wondrous in ancient narratives, mostly pondering on how ancient authors view wondrous accounts, i.e. the treatment of the descriptions of wondrous occurrences as true events or their use. More precisely, these narratives investigate whether the wondrous pursues a display of erudition or merely provides stylistic variety; sometimes, such narratives even represent the wish of the author to grant a “rational explanation” to extraordinary actions. At present, however, two aspects of the topic have not been fully examined: a) the ability of the wondrous/miraculous to set cognitive mechanisms in motion and b) the power of the wondrous/miraculous to contribute to the construction of an authorial identity (that of kings, gods, or narrators). To this extent, the volume approaches miracles and wonders as counter intuitive phenomena, beyond cognitive grasp, which challenge the authenticity of human experience and knowledge and push forward the frontiers of intellectual and aesthetic experience. Some of the articles of the volume examine miracles on the basis of bewilderment that could lead to new factual knowledge; the supernatural is here registered as something natural (although strange); the rest of the articles treat miracles as an endpoint, where human knowledge stops and the unknown divine begins (here the supernatural is confirmed). Thence, questions like whether the experience of a miracle or wonder as a counter intuitive phenomenon could be part of long-term memory, i.e. if miracles could be transformed into solid knowledge and what mental functions are encompassed in this process, are central in the discussion.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110563559
ISBN:: 9783110563559
ISBN:: 9783110530469
ISBN:: 9783110562613
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Science and Medicine
Subject:: Ancient Religion
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Reperforming Greek Tragedy

Theater, Politics, and Cultural Mobility in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC

Anna A. Lamari

Volume 52 in this series

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An inexplicably understudied field of classical scholarship, tragic reperformance, has been surveyed in its true dimension only in the very recent years. Building on the latest discussions on tragic restagings, this book provides a thorough survey of reperformance of Greek tragedy in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, also addressing its theatrical, political, and cultural context. In the fifth and fourth centuries, tragic restagings were strongly tied to cultural mobility and exchange. Poets, actors, texts, vases, and vase-painters were traveling, bridging the boundaries between mainland Greece and Magna Graecia, boosting the spread of theater, facilitating theatrical literacy, and setting a new theatrical status quo, according to which popular tragic plays were restaged, by mobile actors, in numerous dramatic festivals, in and out of Attica, with or without the supervision of their composers. This book offers a holistic examination of ancient reperformances of tragedy, enhancing our perception of them as a vital theatrical practice that played a major part in the development of the tragic genre in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110561166
ISBN:: 9783110561166
ISBN:: 9783110559866
ISBN:: 9783110559934
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

The Literary Genres in the Flavian Age

Canons, Transformations, Reception

Federica Bessone, Marco Fucecchi

Volume 51 in this series

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The construction of a new Latin library between the end of the Republic and the Augustan Principate was anything but an inhibiting factor. The literary flourishing of the Flavian age shows that awareness of this canon rather stimulated creative tension. In the changing socio-cultural context, daring innovations transform the genres of poetry and prose. This volume, which collects papers by influential scholars of early Imperial literature, sheds light on the productive dynamics of the ancient genre system and can also offer insightful perspectives to a non-classicist readership.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110534436
ISBN:: 9783110534436
ISBN:: 9783110658514
ISBN:: 9783110533309
ISBN:: 9783110533224
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Poetry in Fragments

Studies on the Hesiodic Corpus and its Afterlife

Christos Tsagalis

Volume 50 in this series

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Next to the Theogony and the Works and Days stands an entire corpus of fragmentary works attributed to the Boeotian poet Hesiod that has during the last thirty years attracted growing scholarly interest. Whereas other studies have concentrated either on the interpretation of the best preserved work of this corpus, the Catalogue of Women, or have offered detailed commentaries, this volume aims at bringing together studies focusing on generic and contextual factors pertaining to the various works of the Hesiodic corpus, the Catalogue of Women included, and the corpus' afterlife in Rome and Byzantium.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110537581
ISBN:: 9783110537581
ISBN:: 9783110658576
ISBN:: 9783110536805
ISBN:: 9783110536218
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects

From Central Greece to the Black Sea

Georgios K. Giannakis, Emilio Crespo, Panagiotis Filos

Volume 49 in this series

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A new collective volume with over twenty important studies on less well-studied dialects of ancient Greek, particularly of the northern regions.

The book covers geographically a broad area of the classical Greek world ranging from Central Greece to the overseas Greek colonies of Thrace and the Black Sea. Particular emphasis is placed on the epichoric varieties of areas on the northern fringe of the classical Greek world, including Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia. Recent advances in research are taken into consideration in providing state-of-the art accounts of these understudied dialects, but also of more well-known dialects like Lesbian. In addition, other papers address special intriguing topics in these, but also in other dialects, such as Thessalian, Lesbian and Ionic, or focus on important multi-dialectal corpora such as the oracular tablets from Dodona. Finally, a number of studies examine broader topics like the supraregional Doric koinai or the concept of dialect continuum, or even explore the possibility of an ancient Balkansprachbund, which included Greek too.

This new reference work covers a gap in current research and will be indispensable for people interested in Greek dialectology and ancient Greek in general.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110532135
ISBN:: 9783110532135
ISBN:: 9783110531251
ISBN:: 9783110530810
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Redeeming Thucydides' Book VIII

Narrative Artistry in the Account of the Ionian War

Vasileios Liotsakis

Volume 48 in this series

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Since antiquity, Book 8 of Thucydides’ History has been considered an unpolished draft which lacks revision. Even those who admit that the book has some elements of internal coherence believe that Thucydides, if death had not prevented him, would have improved many chapters or even the whole structure of the book. Consequently, while the first seven books of the History have been well examined through the last two centuries, the narrative plan of Book 8 remains an obscure subject, as we do not possess an extensive and detailed presentation of its whole narrative design. Vasileios Liotsakis tries to satisfy this central desideratum of the Thucydidean scholarship by offering a thorough description of the compositional plan, which, in his opinion, Thucydides put into effect in the last 109 chapters of his work. His study elaborates on the structural parts of the book, their details, and the various techniques through which Thucydides composed his narration in order to reach the internal cohesion of these chapters as well as their close connection to the rest of the History. Liotsakis offers us an original approach not only of Book 8 but also of the whole work, since his observations reshape our overall view of the History.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110533071
ISBN:: 9783110533071
ISBN:: 9783110532098
ISBN:: 9783110532074
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Early Greek Epic Fragments I

Antiquarian and Genealogical Epic

Christos Tsagalis

Volume 47 in this series

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This book offers a new edition and comprehensive commentary of the extant fragments of genealogical and antiquarian epic dating to the archaic period (8th-6th cent. BC). By means of a detailed study of the multifaceted material pertaining to the remains of archaic Greek epic other than Homer, Hesiod, and the Homeric Hymns, it provides readers with a critical reassessment of the ancient evidence, allows access to new material hitherto unnoticed or scattered in various journals after the publication of the three standard editions now available to us, and offers a full-scale commentary of the extant fragments. This book fills a gap in the study of archaic Greek poetry, since it offers a guiding tool for the further exploration of Greek epic tradition in the archaic period and beyond.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110532876
ISBN:: 9783110532876
ISBN:: 9783110532111
ISBN:: 9783110531534
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Reading Eustathios of Thessalonike

Filippomaria Pontani, Vasileios Katsaros, Vasileios Sarris

Volume 46 in this series

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Despite the relevance of Eustathios to both Classical and Byzantine studies, no monograph and no collective volume in English has yet been devoted to his figure. This book attempts to fill in this gap by addressing the various facets of his output - above all his commentaries on Homer, Dionysius the Periegete, Pindar, and the Iambic Canon on the Pentecost; but also his historiographical work, his speeches and his theological production receive due attention. The book also tackles several aspects of Eustathios‘ style (proverbs, allusions, etc.), and the meaning of his work in the context of his historical moment. Addressed at specialists but also at graduate students with an interest in the reception of Classical antiquity and in Byzantine civilisation, the volume gathers papers by leading scholars from various countries, and it opens up new paths of research in several areas of philology and history, above all by interweaving and juxtaposing Eustathios‘ dimension as an Homerist and an immensely learned classical scholar with his capacities as an orator, a highly praised teacher, a rhetorically refined writer of Greek prose, an historian of his own turbulent times, and an archbishop who had to fulfil his everyday duties.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110524901
ISBN:: 9783110524901
ISBN:: 9783110522211
ISBN:: 9783110523201
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Byzantine Studies
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Theatre World

Critical Perspectives on Greek Tragedy and Comedy. Studies in Honour of Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos

Andreas Fountoulakis, Andreas Markantonatos, Georgios Vasilaros

Volume 45 in this series

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This collection of essays, published in honour of Professor Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos, addresses topics which lie at the forefront of current research on the fields of Greek drama and classical reception studies. It brings together internationally distinguished scholars who provide fresh insights into issues pertaining to the origins of Greek tragedy and comedy, their generic identity, the structure, the morality or the divine and human characters emerging from individual plays, the presence of Greek drama outside Athens in post-classical times, the associations between drama and genres such as epic and oratory or even the reception of Greek drama in operatic works such as Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Related art forms, such as music, receive particular attention. Focusing on either broader topics or specific texts, the essays of this volume provide a wide range of theoretical perspectives often combining modern critical trends such as reception studies, narratology or cultural studies with close and acute readings of individual passages. The volume is of particular interest to scholars and students of Greek drama and its reception as well as to anyone interested in Greek culture and its various manifestations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110519785
ISBN:: 9783110519785
ISBN:: 9783110514919
ISBN:: 9783110518962
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Panhellenes at Methone

Graphê in Late Geometric and Protoarchaic Methone, Macedonia (ca 700 BCE)

Jenny Strauss Clay, Irad Malkin, Yannis Z. Tzifopoulos

Volume 44 in this series

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This volume discusses the multidimensional aspects of the unique, and so far unprecedented for Macedonia, 191 sherds from Methone in Pieria, dated to ca 700 BCE, which bear inscriptions, graffiti, and (trade)marks inscribed, incised, scratched and rarely painted.

The 191 vessels were unearthed during excavations in ancient Methone in Pieria, the oldest colony of Greeks from Eretria in the north according to tradition. The Methone find is unique for two reasons. First, most of the pottery dates between 730 and 700 BCE, a period from which very few examples of Greek writing survives. And second, inscribed ceramics, scratched or painted, are extremely rare in Macedonia.

This new evidence of inscribed pottery from Methone is invaluable for classical studies, and the papers of this volume contribute notably to current discussions about: the Greeks and the Greek language in Macedonia; the Greek colonization; the pottery trade and the early Greek transport amphoras; trade, the symposium, and other contexts for the development of writing; the ‘alphabets’ of Methone and the introduction of the alphabet in Greece; the dialect(s) of Methone in relation to the Greek dialects; early Greek writing, literacy, and literary beginnings.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110515695
ISBN:: 9783110515695
ISBN:: 9783110501278
ISBN:: 9783110514674
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Epigraphy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Dialect, Diction, and Style in Greek Literary and Inscribed Epigram

Evina Sistakou, Antonios Rengakos

Volume 43 in this series

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Language and style of epigram is a topic scarcely discussed in the related bibliography. This edition aspires to fill the gap by offering an in-depth study of dialect, diction, and style in Greek literary and inscribed epigram in a collection of twenty-one contributions authored by international scholars. The authors explore the epigrammatic Kunstsprache and matters of dialectical variation, the interchange between poetic and colloquial vocabulary, the employment of hapax legomena, the formalistic uses of the epigrammatic discourse (meter, syntactical patterns, arrangement of words, riddles), the various categories of style in sepulchral, philosophical and pastoral contexts of literary epigrams, and the idiosyncratic diction of inscriptions. This is a book intended for classicists who want to review the connection between the stylistic features of epigram and its interpretation, as well as for scholars keen to understand how rhetoric and linguistics can be used as a heuristic tool for the study of literature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110498790
ISBN:: 9783110498790
ISBN:: 9783110496499
ISBN:: 9783110497021
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2017

Power Play in Latin Love Elegy and its Multiple Forms of Continuity in Ovid’s >Metamorphoses<

José Manuel Blanco Mayor

Volume 42 in this series

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Conceived as a necessary reconsideration of the pristine "elegiac question" in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this book intends to offer an analysis of the function of elegiac discourse within Ovid’s magnum opus from the perspective of metapoetics.

To that end, the author undertakes, in the first section, a close re-reading of some relevant passages of Latin love elegy. From a prism that takes into account the characteristically elegiac multivocality, the genre reveals itself as an agonistic discourse in which the poet dramatises his metaliterary power-relation with the puella, who is unveiled as the synthesis of the distinct sub-products of his poetic activity.

Thereupon, the author proceeds to scrutinise how elegiac elements are assimilated and transformed as they become integrated within the framework of Ovid’s poem of changing forms. Far from being a mere stylistic ornament, the presence of an elegiac register in many erotic passages tells us about Ovid’s stance towards love as a metapoetic trope. By reworking elegiac tradition to the point of transforming it into a novum corpus, the poet ultimately substantiates the mutability of generic categories.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110490282
ISBN:: 9783110490282
ISBN:: 9783110486612
ISBN:: 9783110488654
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

The Art of History

Literary Perspectives on Greek and Roman Historiography

Vasileios Liotsakis, Scott T. Farrington

Volume 41 in this series

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A significant trend in the study of Greek and Roman historiographers is to accept that their works are to a degree both science and fiction. As scholarly interest broadens, in addition to evaluating ancient historians on the basis of the reliability of the information they record, and verifying the narratives against various elements of the material (inscriptions, excavations, numismatics), new studies are beginning to elaborate on the stylistic and narrative qualities of the texts themselves. The present volume offers a fine collection of essays that on the whole emphasize the literary dimensions of the ancient Greek and Roman historians. Offering narratological, linguistic, and theoretical approaches to historiography, the contributors of the book elaborate on the intersections between historiography and other literary genres, the literary manipulation of military events and the criteria of selectivity, the reception of ancient historical texts in other genres, time and space in historical narrative, and plenty of other relevant topics. The shared belief of the authors is that there is a close interrelation between the literary features and the scientific value of ancient Greek and Roman historiography.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110496055
ISBN:: 9783110496055
ISBN:: 9783110493290
ISBN:: 9783110495263
ISBN:: 9783110611731
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2018

Cultural Crossroads in the Ancient Novel

Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, David Konstan, Bruce Duncan MacQueen

Volume 40 in this series

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The protagonists of the ancient novels wandered or were carried off to distant lands, from Italy in the west to Persia in the east and Ethiopia in the south; the authors themselves came, or pretended to come, from remote places such as Aphrodisia and Phoenicia; and the novelistic form had antecedents in a host of classical genres. These intersections are explored in this volume. Papers in the first section discuss “mapping the world in the novels.” The second part looks at the dialogical imagination, and the conversation between fiction and history in the novels. Section 3 looks at the way ancient fiction has been transmitted and received. Space, as the locus of cultural interaction and exchange, is the topic of the fourth part. The fifth and final section is devoted to character and emotion, and how these are perceived or constructed in ancient fiction. Overall, a rich picture is offered of the many spatial and cultural dimensions in a variety of ancient fictional genres.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501503986
ISBN:: 9781501503986
ISBN:: 9781501511950
ISBN:: 9781501519420
ISBN:: 9781501504020
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Comparative Literary Studies
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Greek Texts and Armenian Traditions

An Interdisciplinary Approach

Francesca Gazzano, Lara Pagani, Giusto Traina

Volume 39 in this series

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An interdisciplinary approach, crucial as it is in most fields of research, proves itself to be unescapable in the study of interactions between the ancient Armenian and Greek worlds and literatures.

The volume arises from such an awareness and collects papers presented in a conference which has been organized in 2013 at the University of Genova, thanks to a cooperation with the Université Paris-Sorbonne, following in the footsteps of a tradition inaugurated by Giancarlo Bolognesi in the years '80 and '90. The subject is explored from many points of view: the topic of Armenian translations of Greek texts – with considerations of a methodological nature and the discussion of case-studies –, aspects which pertain to the historical context and the historiographical sources, the wide theme of the Armenian reception of Biblical, Christian and Byzantine literature, and finally philological, linguistic and lexical problems.

The aim of this kind of research is to exploit the cooperation among classical philologists, linguists and Armenologists, in order to face the challenge of investigating a subject which requires many different competences.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110489941
ISBN:: 9783110489941
ISBN:: 9783110488661
ISBN:: 9783110479119
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Tragic Failures

Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic

Evina Sistakou

Volume 38 in this series

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This is the first study considering the reception of Greek tragedy and the transformation of the tragic idea in Hellenistic poetry. The focus is on third-century Alexandria, where the Ptolemies fostered tragedy as a theatrical form for public entertainment and as an official genre cultivated by the Pleiad, whereas the scholars of the Museum were commissioned to edit and comment on the classical tragic texts. More importantly, the notion of the tragic was adapted to the literary trends of the era. Released from the strict rules established by Aristotle about what makes a good tragedy, the major poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde struggled to transform the tragic idea and integrate it into non-dramatic genres. Tragic Failures traces the incorporation of the tragic idea in the poetry of Callimachus and Theocritus, in Apollonius’ epic Argonautica, in the iambic Alexandra, in late Hellenistic poetry and in Parthenius’ Erotika Pathemata. It offers a fascinating insight into the new conception of the tragic dilemmas in the context of Alexandrian aesthetics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110482324
ISBN:: 9783110482324
ISBN:: 9783110480634
ISBN:: 9783110479126
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Homeric Receptions Across Generic and Cultural Contexts

Athanasios Efstathiou, Ioanna Karamanou

Volume 37 in this series

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This collective volume provides a fresh perspective on Homeric reception through a methodologically focused, interdisciplinary investigation of the transformations of Homeric epic within varying generic and cultural contexts. It explores how various aspects of Homeric poetics appeal and can be mapped on to a diversity of contexts under different socio-historical, intellectual, literary and artistic conditions. The volume brings together internationally acclaimed scholars and acute young researchers in the fields of classics and reception studies, yielding insight into the varied strategies and ideological forces that define Homeric reception in literature, scholarship and the performing arts (theatre, film and music) and shape the ‘horizon of expectations’ of readers and audience. This collection also showcases that the wide-ranging ‘migration’ of Homeric material through time and across place holds significant cultural power, being instrumental in the construction of new cultural identities. The volume is of particular interest to scholars in the fields of classics, reception and cultural studies and the performing arts, as well as to readers fascinated by ancient literature and its cultural transformations.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110479799
ISBN:: 9783110479799
ISBN:: 9783110611724
ISBN:: 9783110479188
ISBN:: 9783110477832
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry

Phillip Mitsis, Ioannis Ziogas

Volume 36 in this series

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The political allegiances of major Roman poets have been notoriously difficult to pin down, in part because they often shift the onus of political interpretation from themselves to their readers. By the same token, it is often difficult to assess their authorial powerplays in the etymologies, puns, anagrams, telestichs, and acronyms that feature prominently in their poetry. It is the premise of this volume that the contexts of composition, performance, and reception play a critical role in constructing poetic voices as either politically favorable or dissenting, and however much the individual scholars in this volume disagree among themselves, their readings try to do justice collectively to poetry’s power to shape political realities. The book is aimed not only at scholars of Roman poetry, politics, and philosophy, but also at those working in later literary and political traditions influenced by Rome's greatest poets.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110475876
ISBN:: 9783110475876
ISBN:: 9783110472523
ISBN:: 9783110474176
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

T. Calpurnius Siculus

A Pastoral Poet in Neronian Rome

Evangelos Karakasis

Volume 35 in this series

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T. Calpurnius Siculus: A Pastoral Poet in Neronian Rome is the first ever detailed examination of the whole of Calpurnius' pastoral corpus in English. It aims to offer an overall picture of Calpurnius’ epigonal and generically transcending poetics and meta-poetics through a thorough comparative analysis of the generic interfaces between the bucolic host genre (as bequeathed to Siculus from Theocritus to Vergil) and various generic modes which operate in Calpurnius’ eclogues, such as epic, panegyric, elegiac, didactic/georgic. The analysis includes themes/motifs, intertexts and allusion, narrative sequences, diction and metre as well as meta-generic/meta-poetic signs, including Calpurnius' redirection and inversion of the Callimachean-neoteric poetological meta-language. The study’s interests also revolve around the ways in which Neronian ideology and imperial politics inform the pastoral narrative and often account for the formalistic change discerned as well as the manner in which Post-Classical diction functions as a targeted, self-conscious linguistic tell-tale of generic evolution. The book is intended for students or scholars working on or interested in Roman pastoral and its generic evolution as well as Neronian Literature.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110473254
ISBN:: 9783110473254
ISBN:: 9783110611717
ISBN:: 9783110472691
ISBN:: 9783110468045
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Roman Drama and its Contexts

Stavros Frangoulidis, Stephen J. Harrison, Gesine Manuwald

Volume 34 in this series

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Roman plays have been well studied individually (even including fragmentary or spurious ones more recently). However, they have not always been placed into their ‘context’, though plays (just like items in other literary genres) benefit from being seen in context. This edited collection aims to address this issue: it includes 33 contributions by an international team of scholars, discussing single plays or Roman dramatic genres (including comedy, tragedy and praetexta, from both the Republican and imperial periods) in contexts such as the literary tradition, the relationship to works in other literary genres, the historical and social situation, the intellectual background or the later reception. Overall, they offer a rich panorama of the role of Roman drama or individual plays in Roman society and literary history. The insights gained thereby will be of relevance to everyone interested in Roman drama or literature more generally, comparative literature or drama and theatre studies. This contextual approach has the potential of changing the way in which Roman drama is viewed.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110456509
ISBN:: 9783110456509
ISBN:: 9783110580686
ISBN:: 9783110455588
ISBN:: 9783110455571
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book Print Only 2016

Archaic and Classical Attic Dedicatory Epigrams

An Epigraphic, Literary, and Linguistic Commentary

Sara Kaczko

Volume 33 in this series

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Despite the large number of early Greek inscribed epigrams and their historical and social importance, modern studies have focused either on the literary epigram or (especially after the publication of Hansen’s Carmina Epigraphica Graeca) on the inscribed funerary epigram. The dedicatory inscribed epigram, on the other hand, has received little scholarly attention. As a result, neither a comprehensive commentary nor a study of the different features (archaeological, epigraphical, literary and linguistic) of Archaic and Classical inscribed verse dedications has appeared to date. This book aims to fill such a significant void by offering an interdisciplinary commentary on all the early Attic dedicatory epigrams, i.e. those dating from the 7th through the 5th century BCE. Since the message conveyed by an inscribed epigram can be understood only by taking into account three different semantic systems — that of art and archaeology, epigraphy, and that of language and style — at the same time, this commentary will combine a description of the morphology of the monuments on which the epigrams were engraved with an analysis of the alphabets and dialects used in the poems, while making observations on stylistic and literary data.

ISBN:: 9783110402551
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Epigraphy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Knowing Future Time In and Through Greek Historiography

Alexandra Lianeri

Volume 32 in this series

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From the early modern period, Greek historiography has been studied in the context of Cicero's notion historia magistra vitae and considered to exclude conceptions of the future as different from the present and past. Comparisons with the Roman, Judeo-Christian and modern historiography have sought to justify this perspective by drawing on a category of the future as a temporal mode that breaks with the present. In this volume, distinguished classicists and historians challenge this contention by raising the question of what the future was and meant in antiquity by offering fresh considerations of prognostic and anticipatory voices in Greek historiography from Herodotus to Appian and by tracing the roots of established views on historical time in the opposition between antiquity and modernity. They look both at contemporary scholarly argument and the writings of Greek historians in order to explore the relation of time, especially the future, to an idea of the historical that is formulated in the plural and is always in motion. By reflecting on the prognostic of historical time the volume will be of interest not only to classical scholars, but to all who are interested in the history and theory of historical time.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110430783
ISBN:: 9783110430783
ISBN:: 9783110578218
ISBN:: 9783110439533
ISBN:: 9783110430820
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

Wisdom and Folly in Euripides

Poulheria Kyriakou, Antonios Rengakos

Volume 31 in this series

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A major, defining polarity in Euripidean drama, wisdom and folly, has never so far been the subject of a book-length study. The volume aims at filling this gap. Virtually all Euripidean characters, from gods to slaves, are subject to some aspect of folly and claim at least some measure of wisdom. The playwright’s sophisticated handling of the tradition and the pervasive ambiguity in his work add extra layers of complexity. Wisdom and folly become inextricably intertwined, as gods pursue their agendas and mortal characters struggle to control their destiny, deal with their troubles, confront their past, and chart their future. Their amoral or immoral behavior and various limitations often affect also their families and communities. Leading international scholars discuss wisdom and folly from various thematic angles and theoretical perspectives. A final section deals with the polarity’s reception in vase-painting and literature. The result is a wealth of fresh insights into moral, social and historical issues. The volume is of interest to students and scholars of classical drama and its reception, of philosophy, and of rhetoric

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110453140
ISBN:: 9783110453140
ISBN:: 9783110452259
ISBN:: 9783110452280
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2016

From Agent to Spectator

Witnessing the Aftermath in Ancient Greek Epic and Tragedy

Emily Allen-Hornblower

Volume 30 in this series

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This book looks at witnesses to suffering and death in ancient Greek epic (Homer’s Iliad) and tragedy. Internal spectators abound in both genres, and have received due scholarly attention. The present monograph covers new ground by dealing with a specific subset of characters: those who are put in the position of spectator to (and, often, commentator on) their own deed(s). By their very nature, protagonists are confined to the role of witness to the suffering (or deaths) they have caused only for brief stretches of time — often a single scene or even just the length of a speech — but every instance is of central importance, not just to our understanding of the characters in question, but also to the articulation of fundamental themes within the poetic works under examination. As they shift from the status of agent to that of witness, these protagonists, qua spectators to the consequences of their actions, give voice to, dramatize, and enact the tragic motifs of human helplessness and mortal fallibility that lie at the core of Homeric epic and Greek tragedy and that define the human condition, in a manner that leads the audience looking on to ponder their own.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110430042
ISBN:: 9783110430042
ISBN:: 9783110578188
ISBN:: 9783110439069
ISBN:: 9783110430097
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Plautine Trends

Studies in Plautine Comedy and its Reception

Ioannis N. Perysinakis, Evangelos Karakasis

Volume 29 in this series

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Plautine Trends: Studies in Plautine Comedy and its Reception, a collective volume published as a Festschrift in honour of Prof. D. Raios (University of Ioannina), aims to contribute to the current, intense discussion on Plautine drama and engage with most of the topics which lie at the forefront of recent scholarship on ‘literary Plautus’. 13 papers by experts on Roman Comedy address issues concerning a) the structure of Plautine plot in its social, historical and philosophical contexts, b) the interfaces between language and comic plot, and c) plot and language as signs of reception. Participants include (in alphabetical order): A. Augoustakis, R.R. Caston, D.M. Christenson, M. Fontaine, S. Frangoulidis, M. Hanses, E. Karakasis, D. Konstan, K. Kounaki–Philippides, S. Papaioannou, A. Sharrock, N.W. Slater, and J.T. Welsh. The papers of the volume are preceded by an introduction offering a review of the extensive literature on the subject in recent years and setting the volume in its critical context. The preface to the volume is written by R.L. Hunter. The book is intended for students or scholars working on or interested in Plautine Comedy and its reception.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110368925
ISBN:: 978-3-11-037365-3
ISBN:: 978-3-11-036892-5
ISBN:: 9783110392722
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Drama, Theater
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Lysias 21

A Commentary

Aggelos Kapellos

Volume 28 in this series

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Lysias’ 21^st speech “On a charge of taking bribes” is an important example of Attic oratory that sheds significant light on Classical history and society. Delivered after the restoration of democracy in 402 B.C.E., this speech provides information that is critical for our understanding of the relationship between the Athenian demos and aristocrats, Athenian civic institutions (e.g., taxation, liturgies and conscription), religious beliefs, moral values, political behavior, and, in particular, of the legal and rhetorical treatment of embezzlement and bribery. It also supplies unique information about the military engagement of the Athenians at Aegospotami and the role of Alcibiades in the political life of Athens. Despite its importance, however, Lysias’ speech has never been the subject of an extensive study in its own right. This volume seeks to fill that gap by presenting the first systematic commentary on this speech. The author puts much emphasis on its structure, strategy, and argumentation, focusing especially on the tension between the actual practices of the anonymous client of the logographer and civic ideals invoked in the present case. The book is intended to be of interest to classicists, ancient historians and political theorists, but also to the general reader.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110362268
ISBN:: 978-3-11-035433-1
ISBN:: 978-3-11-036226-8
ISBN:: 9783110391114
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Seneca Philosophus

Jula Wildberger, Marcia L. Colish

Volume 27 in this series

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Addressing classicists, philosophers, students, and general readers alike, this volume emphasizes the unity of Seneca's work and his originality as a translator of Stoic ideas in the literary forms of imperial Rome. It features a vitalizing diversity of contributors from different generations, disciplines, and research cultures. Several prominent Seneca scholars publishing in other languages are for the first time made accessible to anglophone readers.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110349863
ISBN:: 978-3-11-034983-2
ISBN:: 978-3-11-034986-3
ISBN:: 9783110554939
ISBN:: 9783110373554
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Subject:: Philosophy
Subject:: History of Philosophy
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

The Play of Words

Blood Ties and Power Relations in Aeschylus' "Oresteia"

Giulia Maria Chesi

Volume 26 in this series

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"The play of words" examines the dynamics of interfamilial violence in the Oresteia. It argues that the key element of the play's discourse about violence is to be found in the inquiry for a definition of Clytemnestra's motherhood. The failure of this research challenges the reader with some open questions: who is Clytemnestra? Where is justice if a mother dies? By reading the play's narrative on interfamilial violence and matricide as a narrative of uncertainties in terms of the role of the mother figure, this book illustrates the complexity of the maternal role of Clytemnestra. It also breaks silence among scholars, who have generally portrayed Clytemnestra as the bad mother who kills the children's father and as the bad wife who betrays her husband.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110334333
ISBN:: 978-3-11-033431-9
ISBN:: 978-3-11-033433-3
ISBN:: 9783110390216
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Theory
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies and Linguistics
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads

Exploring Texts, Contexts and Metatexts

Richard Hunter, Antonios Rengakos, Evina Sistakou

Volume 25 in this series

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This volume is a collection of fifteen papers written by a team of international experts in the field of Hellenistic literature. In an attempt to reassess methods such as the detection of intertextual allusions or the general notion of neoteric poetics, the authors combine current critical trends (narratology, genre-theory, aesthetics, cultural studies) with a close reading of Hellenistic texts. Contributions address a wealth of topics in a variety of texts which include not only poems by the major Alexandrians but also prose works, epigrams, epigraphic material and scholia. Perspectives range from linguistic analysis to interdisciplinary studies, whereas post-classical literature is also seen against the background of the cultural and ideological contexts of the era. Besides reviewing preconceptions of Hellenistic scholarship, this volume aims at providing fresh insights into Hellenistic literature and aesthetics.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110342949
ISBN:: 978-3-11-034289-5
ISBN:: 978-3-11-034294-9
ISBN:: 9783110554922
ISBN:: 9783110368130
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Poetics
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Nonnus of Panopolis in Context

Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity with a Section on Nonnus and the Modern World

Konstantinos Spanoudakis

Volume 24 in this series

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Nonnus of Panopolis (fifth century CE) composed two poems once thought to be incompatible: the Dionysiaca, a mythological long epic with a marked interest in astrology, the occult, the paradox and not least the beauty of the female body, and a pious and sublime Paraphrase of the Gospel of St John. Little is known about the man, to whom sundry identities have been attached. The longer work has been misrepresented as a degenerate poem or as a mythological handbook. The Christian poem has been neglected or undervalued. Yet, Nonnus accomplished an ambitious plan, in two parts, aiming at representing world-history. This volume consists mainly of the Proceedings of the First International Conference on Nonnus held in Rethymno, Crete in May 2011. With twentyfour essays, an international team of specialists place Nonnus firmly in his time's context. After an authoritative Introduction by Pierre Chuvin, chapters on Nonnus and the literary past, the visual arts, Late Antique paideia, Christianity and his immediate and long-range afterlife (to modern times) offer a wide-ranging and innovative insight into the man and his world. The volume moves on beyond stereotypes to inaugurate a new era of research for Nonnus and Late Antique poetics on the whole.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110339420
ISBN:: 978-3-11-033937-6
ISBN:: 978-3-11-033942-0
ISBN:: 9783110368116
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Subject:: Byzantine Studies
Subject:: Philosophy
Subject:: History of Philosophy
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

The Shaping of Narrative in Polybius

Nikos Miltsios

Volume 23 in this series

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The narrative artistry of Polybius has received relatively little scholarly attention. Critics have tended to discuss his reflections on the various issues presented in his work or to use him as a source of valuable information about the historical period that he records. This volume, which draws on narratology’s analytical tools, focuses instead on the narrative of the Histories, exploring the sophisticated narrative techniques that have gone into shaping it. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the ways the formal aspects of the text contribute to promoting Polybius’ thematic concerns. Its aim is not only to present the Histories as the work of an author who has taken pains to provide us with a carefully structured story, but also to illustrate how interpretations of this story can be enriched by a sensitivity to factors such as chronological displacements and variations of focalization.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110330298
ISBN:: 978-3-11-033001-4
ISBN:: 978-3-11-033029-8
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2014

Geography, Topography, Landscape

Configurations of Space in Greek and Roman Epic

Marios Skempis, Ioannis Ziogas

Volume 22 in this series

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By introducing a multifaceted approach to epic geography, the editors of the volume wish to provide a critical assessment of spatial perception, of its repercussions on shaping narrative as well as of its discursive traits and cultural contexts. Taking the genre-specific boundaries of Greco-Roman epic poetry as a case in point, a team of international scholars examines issues that lie at the heart of modern criticism on human geography. Modern and ancient discourse on space representations revolves around the nation-shaping force of geography, the gendered dynamics of landscapes, the topography of isolation and integration, the politics of imperialism, globalization, environmentalism as well as the power of language and narrative to turn space into place. One of the major aims of the volume is to show that the world of the Classics is not just the origin, but the essence of current debates on spatial constructions and reconstructions.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110315318
ISBN:: 978-3-11-031473-1
ISBN:: 978-3-11-031531-8
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Flavian Epic Interactions

Gesine Manuwald, Astrid Voigt

Volume 21 in this series

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This volume on the three Flavian epic poets (Valerius Flaccus, Statius and Silius Italicus) for the first time critically engages with a unique set-up in Roman literary history: the survival of four epic poems from the same period (Argonautica; Thebaid, Achilleid; Punica). The interactions of these poems with each other and their contemporary context are explored by over 20 experts and emerging scholars. Topics studied include the political dimension of the epics, their use of epic themes and techniques and their intertextual relationship among each other and to predecessors. The recent upsurge of interest in Flavian epic has been focussed on the analysis of individual works. Looking at these poems together now allows the appreciation of their similarities and nuanced differences in the light of their shared position in literary and political history and gives insights into the literary culture of the period. The different approaches and backgrounds of the contributors ensure the presentation of a range of viewpoints. Together they offer new perspectives to the still increasing readership of Flavian epic poetry but also to anyone interested in the epic genre within Roman literature or other cultures more generally.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110314304
ISBN:: 978-3-11-031427-4
ISBN:: 978-3-11-031430-4
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Generic Interfaces in Latin Literature

Encounters, Interactions and Transformations

Theodore D. Papanghelis, Stephen J. Harrison, Stavros Frangoulidis

Volume 20 in this series

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Neither older empiricist positions that genre is an abstract concept, useless for the study of individual works of literature, nor the recent (post) modern reluctance to subject literary production to any kind of classification seem to have stilled the discussion on the various aspects of genre in classical literature. Having moved from more or less essentialist and/or prescriptive positions towards a more dynamic conception of the generic model, research on genre is currently considering "pushing beyond the boundaries", "impurity", "instability", "enrichment" and "genre-bending". The aim of this volume is to raise questions of such generic mobility in Latin literature. The papers explore ways in which works assigned to a particular generic area play host to formal and substantive elements associated with different or even opposing genres; assess literary works which seem to challenge perceived generic norms; highlight, along the literary-historical, the ideological and political backgrounds to "dislocations" of the generic map.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110303698
ISBN:: 978-3-11-030368-1
ISBN:: 978-3-11-030369-8
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Plato's "Sophist" Revisited

Beatriz Bossi, Thomas M. Robinson

Volume 19 in this series

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This book consists of a selection of papers which throw new light on old problems in one of Plato's most difficult dialogues. The papers included fall into three broad categories: a) those dealing directly with the ostensible aim of the dialogue, the various definitions of a sophist from different perspectives (T. Robinson, F. Casadesús, J. Monserrat-P. Sandoval, A. Bernabé, M. Narcy and K. Dorter ; b) a number which tackle a specific question brought up in the dialogue, and that is, how Plato relates to Heraclitus and to Parmenides in the matter of his understanding of being and non-being (E. Hülsz, D. O'Brien, B. Bossi, P. Mesquita and N. Cordero) ; and c) those discussing various other broad issues brought to the fore in the dialogue, such as the 'greatest kinds', true and false statement, difference and mimesis (F. Fronterotta, J. de Garay, D. Ambuel and L. Palumbo).The variety of schools and backgrounds of the authors makes this book unique as a tool for the appreciation of the different approaches possible to well-known hermeneutical problems.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110287134
ISBN:: 978-3-11-028695-3
ISBN:: 978-3-11-028713-4
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Subject:: Philosophy
Subject:: History of Philosophy
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Noscendi Nilum Cupido

Imagining Egypt from Lucan to Philostratus

Eleni Manolaraki

Volume 18 in this series

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What significations did Egypt have for the Romans a century after Actium and afterwards? How did Greek imperial authors respond to the Roman fascination with the Nile? This book explores Egypt's aftermath beyond the hostility of Augustan rhetoric, and Greek and Roman topoi of Egyptian "barbarism." Set against history and material culture, Julio-Claudian, Flavian, Antonine, and Severan authors reveal a multivalent Egypt that defines Rome's increasingly diffuse identity while remaining a tertium quid between Roman Selfhood and foreign Otherness.
Vespasian's Alexandrian uprising, his recognition of Egypt as his power basis, and his patronage of Isis re-conceptualize Egypt past the ideology of Augustan conquest. The imperialistic exhilaration and moral angst attending Rome's Flavian cosmopolitanism find an expressive means in the geographically and semantically nebulous Nile. The rapprochement with Egypt continues in the second and early third centuries. The "Hellenic" Antonines and the African-Syrian Severans expand perceptions of geography and identity within an increasingly decentralized and diverse empire. In the political and cultural discourses of this period, the capacious symbolics of Egypt validate the empire's religious and ethnic pluralism.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110297737
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029767-6
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029773-7
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2013

Thucydides Between History and Literature

Antonis Tsakmakis, Melina Tamiolaki

Volume 17 in this series

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This volume brings together scholars from various areas (history, philology, linguistics, history of political ideas) and attempts a fresh survey of current trends in the analysis of Thucydides' historical narrative. Individual contributions range from a general outlook of Thucydides' historical and historiographical concepts to detailed analysis of narrative strategies, linguistic features and stylistic devices. Special attention is given to questions such as the representation of character, the role of individuals, the interaction between leaders and masses in Athenian democracy, the construction of speeches in Thucydides' work, etc. The analysis of language, style and narrative properties is related to the construction of meaning according to current standards of textual analysis and interpreation.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110297751
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029768-3
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029775-1
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2012

Of Golden Manes and Silvery Faces

The Partheneion 1 of Alcman

Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou

Volume 16 in this series

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Ever since the papyrus containing Alcman’s Partheneion was first published in 1863, classicists have been faced with one of the hardest riddles of their scholarship. Although the language was more or less clear, the meaning of many verses and the character of the poem remained elusive. Therefore it is not surprising that during the century and a half that has elapsed since then, a large bibliography has piled up, disproportionate to the mere 101 surviving verses of the enigmatic poem. This book presents a verse-by-verse commentary to the text with a number of new textual and interpretative proposals based on a detailed inspection of the papyrus. Numerous new readings are made in particular to the Scholia to the Partheneion, greatly elucidating not only questions of interpretation but also problems concerning the composition of the chorus, the number of its members, the identity of the protagonist girls, the social context, as well as questions of performance. The girlish story that lurks in the background but actually forms the framework of the poem now becomes more clear, revealing at the same time the didactic objective of the poet. A new edition of the Partheneion and the Scholia is offered at the end, together with a new translation of the poem.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110292008
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029182-7
ISBN:: 978-3-11-029200-8
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Papyrology
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2012

The Versatile Needle

Hosidius Geta’s Cento "Medea" and Its Tradition

Anke Rondholz

Volume 15 in this series

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The cento-tragedy Medea usually attributed to Hosidius Geta was transmitted in the Codex Salmasianus (now Codex Parisinus 10318). This is a comprehensive study and reevaluation of the text against the background of the ancient cento tradition, also providing a new English translation. After developing a new definition of the ancient conception of the cento in general, Geta’s cento technique and his use of the Vergilian text as well as his relation to the Greek and Roman models for his Medea are examined. It is shown that his play is innovative and sophisticated in both technique and content.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110283860
ISBN:: 978-3-11-028381-5
ISBN:: 978-3-11-028386-0
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2012

Narrating Desire

Eros, Sex, and Gender in the Ancient Novel

Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, Marilyn B. Skinner, Froma I. Zeitlin

Volume 14 in this series

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Representation of desiring subjects in the novel is one of the most illuminating issues in the area of ancient gender and sexuality, for such narratives subject societal norms to acute critique. This volume brings together fourteen essays originally given as oral presentations at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN IV), held in Lisbon in July 2008. Employing feminist and psychoanalytic approaches, each offers a provocative investigation of sexual subjectivity as presented in the text or texts under discussion. The collection as a whole demonstrates the gradual convergence of formerly distinct norms of gendered behavior under pressure of emerging social realities.The editors of this volume are all well-known scholars in the fields of ancient narrative and/or ancient sexuality. Contributors include leading experts in these fields and emerging scholars whose research suggests directions for future exploration.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110282047
ISBN:: 978-3-11-028182-8
ISBN:: 978-3-11-028204-7
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2012

Crisis on Stage

Tragedy and Comedy in Late Fifth-Century Athens

Andreas Markantonatos, Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 13 in this series

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This volume explores the relationships between masterworks of Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes and critical events of Athenian history, by bringing together internationally distinguished scholars with expertise on different aspects of ancient theatre. These specialists study how tragic and comic plays composed in late fifth century BCE mirror the acute political and social crisis unfolding in Athens in the wake of the military catastrophe in 413 BCE and the oligarchic revolution in 411 BCE. With events of such magnitude the late fifth century held the potential for vast and fast cultural and intellectual change. In times of severe emergency humans gain a more conscious understanding of their historically shaped presence; this realization often has a welcome effect of offering new perspectives to tackle future challenges. Over twenty academic experts believe that the Attic theatre showed increased responsiveness to the pressing social and political issues of the day to the benefit of the polis. By regularly promoting examples of public-spirited and capable figures of authority, Greek drama provided the people of Athens with a civic understanding of their own good.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110271560
ISBN:: 978-3-11-026960-4
ISBN:: 978-3-11-027156-0
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: History
Subject:: Historical Periods
Subject:: Ancient History
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2012

Homeric Contexts

Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry

Franco Montanari, Antonios Rengakos, Christos C. Tsagalis

Volume 12 in this series

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This volume aims at offering a critical reassessment of the progress made in Homeric research in recent years, focussing on its two main trends, Neonalysis and Oral Theory. Interpreting Homer in the 21st century asks for a holistic approach that allows us to reconsider some of our methodological tools and preconceptions concerning what we call Homeric poetry. The neoanalytical and oral 'booms', which have to a large extent influenced the way we see Homer today, may be re-evaluated if we are willing to endorse a more flexible approach to certain scholarly taboos pertaining to these two schools of interpretation. Song-traditions, formula, performance, multiformity on the one hand, and Motivforschung, Epic Cycle on the other, may not be so incompatible as we often tend to think.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110272017
ISBN:: 978-3-11-027195-9
ISBN:: 978-3-11-027201-7
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Authors
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2011

The Past in Aeschylus and Sophocles

Poulheria Kyriakou

Volume 11 in this series

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The book studies the past of the characters in Aeschylus and Sophocles, a neglected but crucial topic. The characters’ beliefs, values, and emotions bear on their view of the past. This view reinforces their beliefs and their conception of themselves and others as agents of free will and members of a family and/or community. The study reveals that, although the characters’ idea of the past is fixed, the impact of the past is not. The characters consider, review, and construct narratives of it, as they seek to mould a future they perceive as morally just for themselves and others.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110257564
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025752-6
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025756-4
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Individual Motifs, Motif Research
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2011

Archaic and Classical Choral Song

Performance, Politics and Dissemination

Lucia Athanassaki, Ewen Lyall Bowie

Volume 10 in this series

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This book addresses the many interlocking problems in understanding the modes of performance, dissemination, and transmission of Greek poetry of the seventh to the fifth centuries BC whose first performers were a choral group, sometimes singing in a ritual context, sometimes in more secular celebrations of victories in competitive games. It explores the different ways such a group presented itself and was perceived by its audiences; the place of tyrants, of other prominent individuals and of communities in commissioning and funding choral performances and in securing the further circulation of the songs' texts and music; the social and political role of choral songs and the extent to which such songs continued to be performed both inside and outside the immediate family and polis-community, whether chorally or in archaic Greece's important cultural engine, the elite male symposium, with the consequence that Athenian theatre audiences could be expected to appreciate allusion to or reworking of such poetic forms in tragedy and comedy; and how various types of performance contributed to transmission of written texts of the poems until they were collected and edited by Alexandrian scholars in the third and second centuries BC.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110254020
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025401-3
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025402-0
ISBN:: 9783110482379
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Papyrology
Subject:: Ancient Religion
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2011

From Scholars to Scholia

Chapters in the History of Ancient Greek Scholarship

Franco Montanari, Lara Pagani

Volume 9 in this series

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This book concerns the field of the history of philological-grammatical exegesis and ancient scholarship. Over recent decades this line of research has aroused lively interest, and noteworthy advances in knowledge have been achieved. In comparison with the state and trends of studies in the mid-20th century, the scenario now appears radically changed: editions of texts, preparation of reference tools, in-depth investigation on personalities, problems and movements have led to substantial progress in our understanding of these aspects of ancient literary culture.
The five articles that make up this book discuss both general questions and more specific points. Franco Montanari deals with the form of the Alexandrian ekdosis on the basis of the relationship between the library artefact on one hand and the text as an object of editing on the other. Lara Pagani treats the problem of the origins of the study of language in Greek Antiquity and specifically in Hellenistic scholarship. Paola Ascheri investigates the ideological position adopted by Rome in the age of Augustus in its relations with the Greek world, on the basis of her research into the Homeric scholia and in POxy. 3710. Silvia Consonni studies some specific aspects of Apollonius Dyscolus’ treatise On adverbs. Fausto Montana discusses the crucial point of the genesis of Greek scholiastic corpora.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110251630
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025162-3
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025163-0
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2011

Ancient Scholarship and Grammar

Archetypes, Concepts and Contexts

Stephanos Matthaios, Franco Montanari, Antonios Rengakos

Volume 8 in this series

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Ancient Greek scholarship is currently in the centre of a multi-faceted and steadily growing research activity. The volume aims at investigating archetypes, concepts and contexts of the ancient philological discipline from a historical, methodological and ideological perspective. It includes 26 contributions by leading scholars divided into four sections: The ancient scholars at work, The ancient grammarians on Greek language and linguistic correctness, Ancient grammar in historical context and Ancient grammar in interdisciplinary context. The period examined coincides with the establishment of scholarship as an autonomous discipline from the 3rd century BC to its peak in the first centuries AD. Archetypes and paradigms of philological activity during the classical era help investigate the origins of ancient scholarship, and the interdisciplinary discourse between scholarship, philosophy of language and rhetoric is illustrated. Thus, the thematic spectrum of the volume stretches from the 4th century BC to the Byzantine era. Apart from the Greek antiquity, central aspects of the Latin grammatical tradition are also being examined.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110254044
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025403-7
ISBN:: 978-3-11-025404-4
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2010

Allusion, Authority, and Truth

Critical Perspectives on Greek Poetic and Rhetorical Praxis

Phillip Mitsis, Christos Tsagalis

Volume 7 in this series

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Questions about how ancient Greek texts establish their authority, reflect on each other, and project their own truths have become central for a wide range of recent critical discourses. In this volume, an influential group of international scholars examines these themes in a variety of poetic and rhetorical genres. The result is a series of striking and original readings from different critical perspectives that display the centrality of these questions for understanding the poetic and rhetorical aims of ancient Greek texts. Characterized by a combination of close attention to philological detail and theoretical sophistication, the essays in this volume make a compelling case for this kind of focused, critically informed dialogue about the nature of ancient textual praxis. Students of classical literature will find a wealth of critical insights and challenging new readings of many familiar texts.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110245400
ISBN:: 978-3-11-024539-4
ISBN:: 978-3-11-024540-0
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Linguistics and Semiotics
Subject:: Other Languages of Europe
Subject:: Classical Languages, other
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2010

Narrative, Intertext, and Space in Euripides' "Phoenissae"

Anna A. Lamari

Volume 6 in this series

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Euripides’ Phoenissae bears one of the richest tragic plots: multiple narrative levels are interwoven by means of various anachronies, focalizers offer different and often challenging points of view, while a complex mythical matrix is deftly employed as the backdrop against which the exploration of the mechanics of tragic narrative takes place. After providing a critical perspective on the ongoing scholarly dialogue regarding narratology and drama, this book uses the former as a working tool for the study and interpretation of the latter. The Phoenissae is approached as a coherent narrative unit and issues like the use of myth, narrators, intertext, time and space are discussed in detail. It is within these contexts that the play is seen as a Theban mythical ‛thesaurus’ both exploring previous mythical ramifications and making new additions. The result is rewarding: Euripides constructs a handbook of the Theban saga that was informative for those mythically untrained, fascinating for those theatrically demanding, but also dexterously open upon each one’s reception.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110245936
ISBN:: 978-3-11-024592-9
ISBN:: 978-3-11-024593-6
Subject:: Linguistics and Semiotics
Subject:: Other Languages of Europe
Subject:: Classical Languages, other
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Genres and Media
Subject:: Drama, Theater
Subject:: Literary Theory
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2011

Song Exchange in Roman Pastoral

Evangelos Karakasis

Volume 5 in this series

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Agonistic or friendly song exchange in idyllic settings forms the very heart of Roman pastoral. It is also a key means of metapoetic stance-taking on the part of the long line of authors who have cultivated this “traditional” genre. The present book examines the motif of song exchange in Roman bucolic poetry under this double aspect: as a central theme with established or constantly forming sub-themes and paraphernalia (thus providing a comprehensive listing, description and analysis of such scenes in the totality of Roman literature), and as the locus where, thanks to its very traditionality, innovative generic tendencies are most easily expressed. Starting from Vergil, and continuing with Calpurnius Siculus, the Einsiedeln Eclogues and Nemesianus, the book focuses on how politics, panegyric, elegy, heroic and didactic poetry function as guest genres within the pastoral host genre, by tracing in detail the evolution of a wide variety of literary, linguistic, stylistic and metrical features.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110227079
ISBN:: 978-3-11-022706-2
ISBN:: 978-3-11-022707-9
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Authors
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Studies, general
Subject:: Topics in Literary Studies
Subject:: Poetics
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2009

Narratology and Interpretation

The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature

Jonas Grethlein, Antonios Rengakos

Volume 4 in this series

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The categories of classical narratology have been successfully applied to ancient texts in the last two decades, but in the meantime narratological theory has moved on. In accordance with these developments, Narratology and Interpretation draws out the subtler possibilities of narratological analysis for the interpretation of ancient texts. The contributions explore the heuristic fruitfulness of various narratological categories and show that, in combination with other approaches such as studies in deixis, performance studies and reader-response theory, narratology can help to elucidate the content of narrative form. Besides exploring new theoretical avenues and offering exemplary readings of ancient epic, lyric, tragedy and historiography, the volume also investigates ancient predecessors of narratology.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214536
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021452-9
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021453-6
ISBN:: 9783110482362
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Literary Studies
Subject:: Literary Theory
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2008

On Coming After

Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception

Richard Hunter

Volume 3 in this series

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This book gathers together many of the principal essays of Richard Hunter, whose work has been fundamental in the modern re-evaluation of Greek literature after Alexander and its reception at Rome and elsewhere. At the heart of Hunter’s work lies the high poetry of Ptolemaic Alexandria (Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius of Rhodes) and the narrative literature of later antiquity (‘the ancient novel’), but comedy, mime, didactic poetry and ancient literary criticism all fall within the scope of these studies. Principal recurrent themes are the uses and recreation of the past, the modes of poetic allusion, the moral purposes of literature, the intellectual context for ancient poetry, and the interaction of poetry and criticism. What emerges is not a literature shackled to the past and cowed by an ‘anxiety of influence’, but an energetic and constantly experimental engagement with both past and present.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110210309
ISBN:: 978-3-11-020441-4
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021030-9
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Subject:: Papyrology
Subject:: Ancient Philosophy
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2008

Witches, Isis and Narrative

Approaches to Magic in Apuleius' "Metamorphoses"

Stavros Frangoulidis

Volume 2 in this series

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This is the first in-depth study of Apuleius' Metamorphoses to look at the different attitudes characters adopt towards magic as a key to deciphering the complex dynamics of the entire work. The variety of responses to magic is unveiled in the narrative as the protagonist Lucius encounters an assortment of characters, either in embedded tales or in the main plot. A contextualized approach illuminates Lucius' relatively good fortune when compared to other characters in the novel ‒ this results from his involvement with the magic of a sorcerer's apprentice, rather than that of a real witch, and signals the possibility of eventual salvation. A careful investigation of Lucius' attitude towards Isis in book 11 and his relationship with the witch-slave girl Photis earlier on suggests that the novel's final book may be read as a second "Metamorphoses", consciously rewritten from a positive perspective. Last but not least, the book also breaks new ground by examining the narrative structure of the Metamorphoses against the background of the typical plotline found in the ideal romance. The comparison shows how Apuleius both follows and alters this plot, exploiting the genre to his own specific ends, in keeping with his central theme of metamorphosis.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110210033
ISBN:: 978-3-11-020594-7
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021003-3
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Latin
Subject:: Latin Language and Literature
Publisher:: De Gruyter

Book 2008

Inscribing Sorrow

Fourth-Century Attic Funerary Epigrams

Christos C. Tsagalis

Volume 1 in this series

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Fourth-century Attic grave epigrams reflect a transitional phase in the evolution of the genre of epigram. They testify to a shift of interest towards social issues such as the family, the deceased’s age and profession. In a turbulent period of restlessness and uncertainty that followed the devastating Peloponnesian war, the commemoration of the departed in private monuments became an effective mechanism of displaying publicly a new set of social concerns.
It is within these contexts that special emphasis has been put on the composition of sepulchral epigrams, their gradual autonomization and sophistication. This book explores this decisive phase in the evolution of the epigram by reconstructing as many ancient contexts as possible on the one hand, and studying sepulchral epigrams as a poetic art on the other.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110211658
ISBN:: 978-3-11-020132-1
ISBN:: 978-3-11-021165-8
Subject:: Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Subject:: Classical Studies
Subject:: Greek
Subject:: Greek Language and Literature
Subject:: Ancient History
Subject:: Epigraphy
Publisher:: De Gruyter