Maximus the Confessor and his Companions provides the first English translations of seven documents from the seventh century which recount the legal trials, banishment, and deaths of the monk Maximus the Confessor, his disciples and friends, and Pope Martin I. The background to these documents is formed by Byzantine imperial religious policy, radical change in the Byzantine empire, Arab and Persian attacks, and the close ties which existed between Maximus and his followers and the West.

The perception of demons in late antiquity was determined by the cultural and religious contexts. Therefore the authors of this volume take into consideration a wide variety of texts stemming from different religious milieus ranging from spells, apocalypses, martyrdom literature to hagiography and focus specifically on the literary aspects of the transformation of the demonic in this period of transition.

This comprehensive study offers a critical, comparative analysis of the sources available on Bardaisan and a reinterpretation of his thought. The study highlights the profound points of contact between Bardaisan, Origen, and their schools; the role of Plato's Timaeus and Middle Platonism in Bardaisan's thought, and Stoicism. Bardaisan's thought emerges as a deeply Christian one, depending on the exegesis of Scripture read in the light of Greek philosophy. Positive ancient sources present him as a deacon or even a presbyter, as an author of refutations of Marcionism and Gnosticism, and as a confessor of the faith during persecution.

In the Roman republic, only the People could pass laws, only the People could elect politicians to office, and the very word republica meant 'the People's business'. So why is it always assumed that the republic was an oligarchy? The main reason is that most of what we know about it we know from Cicero, a great man and a great writer, but also an active right-wing politician who took it for granted that what was good for a small minority of self-styled 'best people' (optimates) was good for the republic as a whole. T. P. Wiseman interprets the last century of the republic on the assumption that the People had a coherent political ideology of its own, and that the optimates, with their belief in justified murder, were responsible for the breakdown of the republic in civil war.

The essays in this interdisciplinary volume explore language, broadly construed, as part of the continued interrogation of the boundaries of human and nonhuman animals in the Middle Ages. Uniting a diverse set of emerging and established scholars, Animal Languages questions the assumed medieval distinction between humans and other animals. The chapters point to the wealth of non-human communicative and discursive forms through which animals function both as vehicles for human meaning and as agents of their own, demonstrating the significance of human and non-human interaction in medieval texts, particularly for engaging with the Other. The book ultimately considers the ramifications of deconstructing the medieval anthropocentric view of language for the broader question of human singularity.

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.

Fragmented, buried, and largely lost, the classical past presents formidable obstacles to anyone who would seek to know it. 'Deep Classics' is the study of these obstacles and, in particular, of the way in which the contemplation of the classical past resembles - and has even provided a model for - other kinds of human endeavor. This volume offers a new way to understand the modalities and aims of Classics itself, through the ages. Its individual chapters draw fruitful connections between the reception of the classical and current concerns in philosophy of mind, cognitive theory, epistemology, media studies, sense studies, aesthetics, queer theory and eco-criticism. What does the study of the ancient past teach us about our encounters with our own more recent but still elusive memories? What do our always partial reconstructions of ancient sites tell us about the limits of our ability to know our own world, or to imagine our future? What does the reader of the lacunose and corrupted literatures of antiquity learn thereby about literature and language themselves? What does a shattered statue reveal about art, matter, sensation, experience, life? Does the way in which these vestiges of the past are encountered - sitting in a library, standing in a gallery, moving through a ruin - condition our responses to them and alter their significance? And finally, how has the contemplation of antiquity helped to shape seemingly unrelated disciplines, including not only other humanistic and scientific epistemologies but also non-scholarly modes and practices? In asking these and similar questions, Deep Classics makes a pointed intervention in the study of the classical tradition, now more widely known as 'reception studies'.

The first translation, produced by a team of eight scholars, of the Declamations and Preliminary Talks of the sixth-century sophist Choricius of Gaza. Declamations, deliberative or judicial orations on fictitious themes, were the fundamental advanced exercises of the rhetorical schools of the Roman Empire, of interest also to audiences outside the schools. Some of Choricius' declamations are on generic themes (e.g. a tyrannicide, a war-hero), while others are based on specific motifs from Homeric times or from classical Greek history. The Preliminary Talks were typical prefaces to orations of all kinds. This volume also contains a detailed study of Choricius' reception in Byzantium and Renaissance Italy. It will be of interest to students of late antiquity, ancient rhetoric, and ancient education.

Philippe de Commynes, a diplomat who specialized in clandestine operations, served King Louis XI during his campaign to undermine aristocratic resistance and consolidate the sovereignty of the French throne. He is credited with inventing the political memoir, but his reminiscence has also been described as 'the confessions of a traitor': Commynes had abandoned Louis' rival, the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold, before joining forces with the king. This study provides a literary re-evaluation of Commynes' text - a perennial subject of scandal and fascination - while questioning what the terms 'traitor' or 'betrayed' meant in the context of fifteenth-century France. Drawing on diplomatic letters and court transcripts, Irit Kleiman examines the mutual connections between writing and betrayal in Commynes' representation of Louis' reign, the relationship between the author and the king, and the emergence of the memoir as an autobiographical genre. This study significantly deepens our understanding of how historical narrative and diplomatic activities are intertwined in the work of this iconic, iconoclastic figure.

This is the first full-scale, verse-by-verse commentary on 4 Baruch. The pseudepigraphon, written in the second century, is in large measure an attempt to address the situation following the destruction of the temple in 70 CE by recounting legends about the first destruction of the temple, the Babylonian captivity, and the return from exile. 4 Bruch is notable for its tale about Jeremiah's companion, Abimelech, who sleeps through the entire exilic period. This tale lies behind the famous Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and is part of the genealogy of Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle." Allison's commentary draws upon an exceptionally broad range of ancient sources in an attempt to clarify 4 Baruch's original setting, compositional history, and meaning.

'Dialogue' was invented as a written form in democratic Athens and made a celebrated and popular literary and philosophical style by Plato. Yet it almost completely disappeared in the Christian empire of late antiquity. This book, the first general and systematic study of the genre in antiquity, asks: who wrote dialogues and why? Why did dialogue no longer attract writers in the later period in the same way? Investigating dialogue goes to the heart of the central issues of power, authority, openness and playfulness in changing cultural contexts. This book analyses the relationship between literary form and cultural authority in a new and exciting way, and encourages closer reflection about the purpose of dialogue in its wider social, cultural and religious contexts in today's world.

The Essential Isocrates is a comprehensive introduction to Isocrates, one of ancient Greece's foremost orators. Jon D. Mikalson presents Isocrates largely in his own words, with original English translations of selections of his writings on his life and times and on morality, religion, philosophy, rhetoric, education, political theory, and Greek and Athenian history. In Mikalson's treatment, Isocrates receives his due not only as a major thinker but as one whose work has resonated across time, influencing even modern education practices and theory. Isocrates wrote extensively about Athens in the fourth century BCE and before, and his speeches, letters, and essays provide a trove of insights concerning the intellectual, political, and social currents of his time. Mikalson details what we know about Isocrates's long, eventful, and complicated life, and much can be gleaned on the personal level from his own writings, as Isocrates was one of the most introspective authors of the Classical Period. By collecting the most representative and important passages of Isocrates's writings, arranging them topically, and placing them in historical context, The Essential Isocrates invites general and expert readers alike to engage with one of antiquity's most compelling men of ideas.

Many cultures, including Greeks, Romans, French, and British, have taken great pride in legends that recount the foundation of their society. This book demonstrates the contexts in which a medieval British matriarchal legend, the Albina narrative, was paired over time with a patriarchal narrative, which was already widely disseminated, leading to the attribution of British origins to the warrior Brutus. By the close of the Middle Ages, the Albina tale had appeared in multiple versions in French, Latin, English, Welsh, and Dutch. This study investigates the classical roots of the narrative and the ways it was manipulated in the Middle Ages to function as a national foundation legend. Of especial interest are the dynamic qualities of the text: how it was adapted over the span of two centuries to meet the changing needs of medieval writers and audiences. The currency in the Middle Ages of the Albina narrative is attested to by its inclusion in nearly all the extant manuscripts of the Middle English Prose Brut, many of the French and Latin Bruts, and in a variety of other chronicles and romances. In total, there are over 230 manuscripts surviving today that contain versions of the Albina tale. Despite this, however, relatively little modern scholarship has focused on this widely disseminated and adapted legend. This book provides the first-ever overview of the entire Albina tradition, from its roots to its eventual demise as a popularly accepted narrative. The Classical basis of the narrative in the Hypermnestra story and the ways it was manipulated in the medieval era to function as a national foundation legend are considered. Folkloric, biblical, and legal influences on the development of the tradition are addressed. The tale is viewed through a variety of lenses to suggest ways it may have functioned or was put to use in the Middle Ages. The study concludes with an overview of the narrative's demise in the Renaissance. This is a useful reference source for medievalists and other scholars interested in chronicle studies, literature, folklore, foundation narratives, manuscript studies, and historiography. It will also be useful to art historians who wish to study the various depictions of the Albina narrative in illuminated texts. The tale's emphasis on matriarchy and its subversion of the accepted societal norm will attract the interest of scholars in feminist studies. As the first analysis of the Albina tradition as a whole, it will be a valuable cornerstone for later studies.

This volume explores the tremendous influence of Plato's Phaedrus on the philosophical, religious, scientific and literary discussions in the West. Ranging from Plato's first readers, over the Church Fathers and the Platonic commentators, to Byzantine and Renaissance thinkers, the papers collected here introduce the reader to the first two millennia of the dialogue's reception history. Thirteen contributions by both junior and established scholars study the engagement with the Phaedrus by such major figures as Aristotle, Galen, Origen, Clemens of Alexandria, Plotinus, Augustine, Proclus, Psellus, Ficino, Erasmus, and many others. Together, they cover the wide range of topics discussed in the dialogue: the value of myth and allegory, religion and theology, love and beauty, the soul and its immortality, teaching and learning, metaphysics and epistemology, rhetoric and dialectic, as well as the role and the limits of writing. By placing the dialogue in this broad perspective, the volume will appeal to readers interested in the Phaedrus itself, as well as to classicists, literary theorists, and historians of philosophy, science and religion concerned with the dialogue's reception history and its main protagonists.

Exploration of the reception of Ovid's myth thorughout history in fiction, film and television. Why has the myth of Pygmalion and his ivory statue proved so inspirational for writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and directors and creators of films and television series? The 'authorised' version of the story appears in the epic poem of transformations, "Metamorphoses", by the first-century CE Latin poet Ovid; in which the bard Orpheus narrates the legend of the sculptor king of Cyprus whose beautiful carved woman was brought to life by the goddess Venus. Focusing on screen storylines with a "Pygmalion" subtext, from silent cinema to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Lars and the Real Girl", this book looks at why and how the made-over or manufactured woman has survived through the centuries and what we can learn about this problematic model of 'perfection' from the perspective of the past and the present. Given the myriad representations of Ovid's myth, can we really make a modern text a tool of interpretation for an ancient poem? This book answers with a resounding 'yes' and explains why it is so important to give antiquity back its future. "Continuum Studies in Classical Reception" presents scholarly monographs offering new and innovative research and debate to students and scholars in the reception of 'Classical Studies'. Each volume will explore the appropriation, reconceptualization and recontextualization of various aspects of the Graeco-Roman world and its culture, looking at the impact of the ancient world on modernity. Research will also cover reception within antiquity, the theory and practice of translation, and reception theory.

For nearly nineteen hundred years, few have questioned the single authorship of Luke and Acts. A careful reassessment of the internal and external evidence, however, reveals this assumption to be built on a shakier foundation than was previously thought. Patricia Walters's innovative study offers a newly designed statistical analysis of Luke and Acts, pointing to the existence of highly significant differences in their prose style. In particular, a comprehensive survey and re-examination of the two books' least contested authorial stratum - their seams and summaries - brings to light ancient prose compositional patterns that distinguish Luke and Acts beyond a reasonable doubt. Walters's application of statistical analysis is unique in biblical scholarship, and will provide impetus for using similar methods in other areas of the field. This book will therefore be of great interest to academic researchers and students of early Christianity, classical literature and rhetoric, and New Testament studies.

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.

This book examines ideas of spiritual nourishment as maintained chiefly by Patristic theologians -those who lived in Byzantium. It shows how a particular type of Byzantine frescoes and icons illustrated the views of Patristic thinkers on the connections between the heavenly and the earthly worlds. The author explores the occurrence, and geographical distribution, of this new type of iconography that manifested itself in representations concerned with the human body, and argues that these were a reaction to docetist ideas. The volume also investigates the diffusion of saints' cults and demonstrates that this took place on a North-South axis as their veneration began in Byzantium and gradually reached the northern part of Europe, and eventually the entirety of Christendom.

This book examines how the experiences of hearing voices and seeing visions were understood within the cultural, literary, and intellectual contexts of the medieval and early modern periods. In the Middle Ages, these experiences were interpreted according to frameworks that could credit visionaries or voice-hearers with spiritual knowledge, and allow them to inhabit social roles that were as much desired as feared. Voice-hearing and visionary experience offered powerful creative possibilities in imaginative literature and were often central to the writing of inner, spiritual lives. Ideas about such experience were taken up and reshaped in response to the cultural shifts of the early modern period. These essays, which consider the period 1100 to 1700, offer diverse new insights into a complex, controversial, and contested category of human experience, exploring literary and spiritual works as illuminated by scientific and medical writings, natural philosophy and theology, and the visual arts. In extending and challenging contemporary bio-medical perspectives through the insights and methodologies of the arts and humanities, the volume offers a timely intervention within the wider project of the medical humanities. Chapters 2 and 5 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Ancient epistolary fiction is a still largely under-explored field of research, at the intersection of studies on epistolography and on pseudepigraphy. The present volume sketches out a broad panorama of ancient fiction in letters. It covers a large period of time up to late Antiquity, with a main focus on letters from the imperial era. Epistolary fiction is examined as a mainly Greek phenomenon (there are few Latin equivalents) that was characteristic of both pagan and Christian literature. The material investigated falls within two categories: fictional letter collections from well-known authors of the Second Sophistic and their successors (Lucian, Alciphron, Philostratus, Aristaenetus); letters attributed to famous historical or legendary characters (pseudonymous letters). Focusing on the specific features of epistolary fiction, the book aims to analyse its forms, its functions as well as its effects. It gathers a series of 11 state-of-the art essays, all tackling the same important issues: the manuscript and printed tradition, the form of epistolary fictions and the universe they build, the arrangement of the letters and their overall structure, the relation between the author and his external readers.

Anonymous' and Stephanus' commentaries, written in the 12th century AD, are the first surviving commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Their study, including the environment in which they were written and the philosophical ideas expressed in them, provides a better understanding of the reception of Aristotle's Rhetoric in Byzantium, the Byzantine practice of commenting on classical texts, and what can be called "Byzantine philosophy". For the first time, this book explores the context of production of the commentaries, discusses the identity and features of their authors, and reveals their philosophical and philological significance. In particular, I examine the main topics discussed by Aristotle in the Rhetoric as contributing to persuasion, namely valid and fallacious rhetorical arguments, ethical notions, emotional response and style, and I analyse the commentators' interpretations of these topics. In this analysis, I focus on highlighting the value of the philosophical views expressed, and on creating a discussion between the Byzantine and the modern interpretations of the treatise. Conclusively, the two commentators need to be considered as independent thinkers, who aimed primarily at integrating the treatise within the Aristotelian philosophical system.

"Situational Poetics is a deep, cultural history of Henryson's problematic Testament of Cresseid. This book offers wonderful insights throughout, from its analysis of the hybrid "dislocations and double consciousness" of late medieval Scottish literature, Henryson's "Virgilian" career, his admixture of tragedy and satire in the Testament, and the anamorphic temporalities that link Chaucer, Henryson and Shakespeare in their telling and re-telling of the Troilus and Criseyde story. This is an utterly compelling study of Henryson's Testament, one that promises to re-shape completely our understanding of the poem." --Stephanie Trigg, Professor of English, University of Melbourne "A remarkably ambitious attempt to re-situate Henryson's Testament of Cresseid within literary history and to recover the author's deliberately constructed career-profile from the many accidents of transmission. ... the first ever view of Henryson "in the round." --Tom Shippey, Professor Emeritus, St. Louis University "Nickolas Haydock's new book on the great Scot poet Robert Henryson manages to do several things at once that seemed to the rest of us to be incompatible. He firmly places Henryson's work in literary history, but renders him accessible and even in dialogue with new ways of thinking about literature and culture. He is respectful of Henryson's canonical place in Scottish identity but raises questions about how literature works in making national and ethnic identities. Haydock gives us a Henryson for the twenty-first century." --John M. Ganim, Professor of English, University of California, Riverside

Although repetition is found in all ancient literary genres, it is especially pervasive in epic poetry. Ovid's Metamorphoses exploits this dimension of the epic genre to such an extent that past critics have faulted it as too filled with recycled themes and language. This volume seeks a deeper understanding of Ovidian repetitiveness in the context of new scholarship on intertextuality and intratextuality, examining the urposeful reuse of previous material and the effects produced by a text's repetitive gestures. Uniting the essays is a shared vision of the possibilities of Latin epic poetry and a series of attempts to realize those possibilities. Some of the pieces fall into a traditional vein of allusion and intertextuality; others are more innovative in their approaches. Each, in a sense, stands as a placeholder for a methodology of theorizing the repetitive practices of poetry, of epic, and of Ovid in particular. All citations from Greek and Latin are translated into English, rendering the book accessible to scholars of literature beyond classical studies.