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Xenophon's Virtues
Gabriel Danzig, David M. Johnson, David Konstan
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While Plato’s and Aristotle’s theories of virtue have received
extensive scholarly attention, less work has been done on
Xenophon’s portraits of virtue and on his attitude towards the
theoretical issues connected with it. And yet, Xenophon offers one
of the best sources we have for thinking about virtue in ancient
Greece, because he combines the analytical interests of a Socratic
with a historian’s interest in real life. Until recently,
scholars of Xenophon tended to focus either on the
historiographical writings or on the philosophical writings
(chiefly Memorabilia, with some attention to the other Socratic
writings and Hiero). Cyropaedia was treated as a separate entity,
and Xenophon’s short and more technical treatises were generally
studied only by those with particular interest in their specialized
topics (such as horsemanship, hunting, and Athenian finances). But
recent work by Vincent Azoulay and by Vivienne Gray have shown the
essential unity of his writings. This volume continues this
pan-Xenophontic trend by studying the virtues across Xenophon’s
oeuvre and connecting them with a wide range of Greek literature,
from Homer and the tragedians to Herodotus and Thucydides, the
orators, Plato, and Aristotle.
It is now recognized that emotions have a history. In this book,
eleven scholars examine a variety of emotions in ancient China and
classical Greece, in their historical and social context. A general
introduction presents the major issues in the analysis of emotions
across cultures and over time in a given tradition. Subsequent
chapters consider how specific emotions evolve and change. For
example, whereas for early Chinese thinkers, worry was a moral
defect, it was later celebrated as a sign that one took
responsibility for things. In ancient Greece, hope did not always
focus on a positive outcome, and in this respect differed from what
we call "hope." Daring not to do, or "undaring," was itself an
emotional value in early China. While Aristotle regarded the
inability to feel anger as servile, the Roman Stoic Seneca rejected
anger entirely. Hatred and revenge were encouraged at one moment in
China and repressed at another. Ancient Greek responses to tragedy
do not map directly onto modern emotional registers, and yet are
similar to classical Chinese and Indian descriptions. There are
differences in the very way emotions are conceived. This book will
speak to anyone interested in the many ways that human beings feel.
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.
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.
Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi
Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, the Complete Works of Lucius
Annaeus Seneca offers authoritative, modern English translations of
the writings of the Stoic philosopher and playwright (4 BCE 65 CE).
The two volumes of The Complete Tragedies presents all of his
dramas, expertly rendered by preeminent scholars and translators.
The first volume contains Medea, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, The
Trojan Women, and Octavia, the last of which was written in
emulation of Senecan tragedies and serves as a unique example of
political tragedy. This second volume includes Oedipus, Hercules
Mad, Hercules on Oeta, Thyestes, and Agamemnon. High standards of
accuracy, clarity, and style are maintained throughout the
translations, which render Seneca into verse with as close a
correspondence, line for line, to the original as possible, and
with special attention paid to meter and overall flow. In addition,
each tragedy is prefaced by an original translator's introduction
offering reflections on the work's context and meaning. Notes are
provided for the reader unfamiliar with the culture and history of
classical antiquity. Accordingly, The Complete Tragedies will be of
use to a general audience and professionals alike, from the
Latinless student to scholars and instructors of comparative
literature, classics, philosophy, drama, and more.
Several decades of scholarship have demonstrated that Roman
thinkers developed in new and stimulating directions the systems of
thought they inherited from the Greeks, and that, taken together,
they offer many perspectives that are of philosophical interest in
their own right. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy explores a
range of such Roman philosophical perspectives through thirty-four
newly commissioned essays. Where Roman philosophy has long been
considered a mere extension of Hellenistic systems of thought, this
volume moves beyond the search for sources and parallels and
situates Roman philosophy in its distinctive cultural context. The
Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy emphasizes four features of
Roman philosophy: aspects of translation, social context,
philosophical import, and literary style. The authors adopt an
inclusive approach, treating not just systematic thinkers such as
Cicero and Augustine, but also poets and historians. Topics covered
include ethnicity, cultural identity, literary originality, the
environment, Roman philosophical figures, epistemology, and ethics.
Karl Marx observed that "just when people seem engaged in
revolutionizing themselves..., they anxiously conjure up the
spirits of the past to their service." While the Greek east under
Roman rule was not revolutionary, perhaps, in the sense that Marx
had in mind, it was engaged in creating something that had not
previously existed, in part just through the millennia-long
involvement with its own tradition, which was continually being
remodelled and readapted. It was an age that was intensely
self-conscious about its relation to history, a consciousness that
manifested itself not only in Attic purism and a reverence for
antique literary models but also in ethnic identities, educational
and religious institutions, and political interactions with - and
even among - the Romans. In this volume, which represents a
selection of the papers presented at the colloquium, "Greeks on
Greekness: The Construction and Uses of the Greek Past among Greeks
under the Roman Empire," held at the Center for Hellenic Studies on
25-28 August 2001, seven scholars explore some of the forms that
this preoccupation with the Greek past assumed under Roman rule.
Taken together, the chapters in this volume offer a kaleidoscopic
view of how Greeks under the Roman Empire related to their past,
indicating the multiple ways in which the classical tradition was
problematised, adapted, transformed, and at times rejected. They
thus provide a vivid image of a lived relation to tradition, one
that was inventive rather than conservative and self-conscious
rather than passive. The Greeks under Rome played with their
heritage, as they played at being and not being the Greeks they
continually studied and remembered.
The second of two volumes collecting the complete tragedies of
Seneca. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi
Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, the Complete Works of Lucius
Annaeus Seneca offers authoritative, modern English translations of
the writings of the Stoic philosopher and playwright (4 BCE-65 CE).
The two volumes of The Complete Tragedies presents all of his
dramas, expertly rendered by preeminent scholars and translators.
The first volume contains Medea, The Phoenician Women, Phaedra, The
Trojan Women, and Octavia, the last of which was written in
emulation of Senecan tragedies and serves as a unique example of
political tragedy. This second volume includes Oedipus, Hercules
Mad, Hercules on Oeta, Thyestes, and Agamemnon. High standards of
accuracy, clarity, and style are maintained throughout the
translations, which render Seneca into verse with as close a
correspondence, line for line, to the original as possible, and
with special attention paid to meter and overall flow. In addition,
each tragedy is prefaced by an original translator's introduction
offering reflections on the work's context and meaning. Notes are
provided for the reader unfamiliar with the culture and history of
classical antiquity. Accordingly, The Complete Tragedies will be of
use to a general audience and professionals alike, from the
Latinless student to scholars and instructors of comparative
literature, classics, philosophy, drama, and more.
Classical Greece was permeated by a spirit of rivalry. Games and
sports, theatrical performances, courtroom trials, recitation of
poetry, canvassing for public office, war itself - all aspects of
life were informed by a competitive ethos. This pioneering book
considers how the Greeks viewed, explained, exploited and
controlled the emotions that entered into such rivalrous
activities, and looks at what the private and public effects were
of such feelings as ambition, desire, pride, passion, envy and
spite. Among the questions the authors address: How was envy
distinguished from emulation? Was rivalry central to democratic
politics? What was the relation between envy and erotic jealousy?
Did the Greeks feel erotic jealousy at all? Did the views of
philosophers correspond to those reflected in the historians,
tragic poets and orators? Were there differences in attitude
towards the rivalrous emotions within ancient Greece, or between
Greece and Rome? Did jealousy, envy and malice have bad effects on
ancient society, or could they be channelled to positive ends by
stimulating effort and innovation?Can the ancient Greek and Roman
views of envy, spite and jealousy contribute anything to our own
understanding of these universally troubling emotions? This is the
first book devoted to the emotions of rivalry in the classical
world taken as a whole. With chapters written by a dozen scholars
in ancient history, literature and philosophy, it contributes
notably to the study of ancient Greece and to the history of the
emotions more generally.
Broken Columns Two Roman Epic Fragments: "The Achilleid" of Publius
Papinius Statius and "The Rape of Proserpine" of Claudius
Claudianus Edited and Translated by David R. Slavitt. Afterword by
David Konstan "With unerring instinct Slavitt has juxtaposed two
witty and ironic post-Ovidian tales of coming of age, Statius's
unfinished "Deeds of Achilles" and Claudian's "Rape of Proserpina."
Those were the mythical days when teenagers were charming and rape
consensual (for Deidamia) or at least (for Proserpina) the path to
queenly power. Epic was never the same after Ovid, whether in
Statius's sentimental comedy of love and war or in Claudian's
darker divine intrigue sacrificing a mother's love to avert an
infernal coup d'etat. Slavitt's versatile idiom makes vivid the
personalities of Statius's drama and updates Claudian's
self-conscious poetics in versions that are both free and true to
the poets' art."--Elaine Fantham, Princeton University "Slavitt
does a real service by putting into English verse for the first
time this century two poems of great grace and charm. . . .
Konstan's afterword itself is a gem. . . . I would urge anyone who
thinks that Statius only wrote gruesome epic and Claudian only dull
panegyric to read this slim and sprightly volume."--"Bryn Mawr
Classical Review" "David Slavitt appears to be fluent not only in
Latin but also in hexameters. His translation seems to flow
effortlessly from his pen. His speech and vocabulary are
contemporary and easy to read. . . . This slim volume is further
enhanced by the brilliant essay by David Konstan that is appended
to it. The essay is reminiscent of the introductions written by R.
C. Jebb in his editions of the plays of Sophocles--a combination of
a scholarly discussion of the underlying myth in the text
interspersed with perceptive literary criticism."--"American Book
Review" There is more to classical literature than just the
classics. Here David Slavitt expands the canon by presenting vivid,
graceful, and amusing translations of two neglected fragmentary
works of Latin literature. The first is Publius Papinius Statius's
first-century epic "Achilleid," an extraordinary fusion of epic and
New Comedy sentiments and humor that may represent the earliest
literary imagining of the charm of adolescence. It relates the
story of the education of Achilles under the centaur Chiron, his
adopting the disguise of a girl during his sojourn at the court of
Lycomedes in Scyros, his love affair with Deidamia, his detection
by Ulysses and Diomedes, and his departure for Troy. The second
work is Claudius Claudianus's unfinished fourth-century epic
version of the rape of Proserpine. The two works together make a
delightful pair. The afterword by David Konstan explores the
traditions in which--and against which--Statius and Claudian
composed their versions of these well-known stories. David R.
Slavitt was educated at Andover and Yale and has published dozens
of books: original poetry, translations, novels, critical works,
and short stories. He worked for seven years as a journalist at
"Newsweek" and continues to do freelance reporting and reviewing.
With Palmer Bovie he coedited the Penn Greek Drama series and the
Complete Roman Drama in Translation. 1997 104 pages 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
ISBN 978-0-8122-1630-1 Paper $21.95s 14.50 World Rights Classics,
Literature Short copy: I would urge anyone who thinks that Statius
only wrote gruesome epic and Claudian only dull panegyric to read
this slim and sprightly volume."--"Bryn Mawr Classical Review"
Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued
book, David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman
texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian
writings, and argues that the fundamental idea of "sin" arose in
the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original
meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations.
Through close philological examination of the words for "sin," in
particular the Hebrew hata' and the Greek hamartia, he traces their
uses over the centuries in four chapters, and concludes that the
common modern definition of sin as a violation of divine law indeed
has antecedents in classical Greco-Roman conceptions, but acquired
a wholly different sense in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
"In the Greek romances," writes David Konstan, "sighs, tears, and
suicide attempts are as characteristic of the male as of the female
in distress; ruses, disguises, and outright violence in defense of
one's chastity are as much the part of the female as of the male."
Exploring how erotic love is represented in ancient amatory
literature, Konstan points to the symmetry in the passion of the
hero and heroine as a unique feature of the Greek novel: they fall
mutually in love, they are of approximately the same age and social
class, and their reciprocal attachment ends in marriage. He shows
how the plots of the novels are perfectly adapted to expressing
this symmetry and how, because of their structure, they differ from
classical epic, elegy, comedy, tragedy, and other genres, including
modern novels ranging from Sidney to Harlequin romances. Using
works like Chaereas and Callirhoe and Daphnis and Chloe, Konstan
examines such issues as pederasty, the role of eros in both marital
and nonmarital love, and the ancient Greek concept of fidelity. He
reveals how the novelistic formula of sexual symmetry reverses the
pattern of all other ancient genres, where erotic desire appears
one-sided and unequal and is often viewed as either a weakness or
an aggressive, conquering power. Konstan's approach draws upon
theories concerning the nature of sexuality in the ancient world,
reflected in the work of Michel Foucault, David Halperin, and John
Winkler. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library
uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available
previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of
Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original
texts of these important books while presenting them in durable
paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy
Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage
found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University
Press since its founding in 1905.
"In the Greek romances," writes David Konstan, "sighs, tears,
and suicide attempts are as characteristic of the male as of the
female in distress; ruses, disguises, and outright violence in
defense of one's chastity are as much the part of the female as of
the male." Exploring how erotic love is represented in ancient
amatory literature, Konstan points to the symmetry in the passion
of the hero and heroine as a unique feature of the Greek novel:
they fall mutually in love, they are of approximately the same age
and social class, and their reciprocal attachment ends in marriage.
He shows how the plots of the novels are perfectly adapted to
expressing this symmetry and how, because of their structure, they
differ from classical epic, elegy, comedy, tragedy, and other
genres, including modern novels ranging from Sidney to Harlequin
romances.
Using works like "Chaereas and Callirhoe" and "Daphnis and
Chloe," Konstan examines such issues as pederasty, the role of eros
in both marital and nonmarital love, and the ancient Greek concept
of fidelity. He reveals how the novelistic formula of sexual
symmetry reverses the pattern of all other ancient genres, where
erotic desire appears one-sided and unequal and is often viewed as
either a weakness or an aggressive, conquering power. Konstan's
approach draws upon theories concerning the nature of sexuality in
the ancient world, reflected in the work of Michel Foucault, David
Halperin, and John Winkler.
Originally published in 1993.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these
important books while presenting them in durable paperback
editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly
increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the
thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since
its founding in 1905.
Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued
book, David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman
texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian
writings, and argues that the fundamental idea of "sin" arose in
the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original
meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations.
Through close philological examination of the words for "sin," in
particular the Hebrew hata' and the Greek hamartia, he traces their
uses over the centuries in four chapters, and concludes that the
common modern definition of sin as a violation of divine law indeed
has antecedents in classical Greco-Roman conceptions, but acquired
a wholly different sense in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
Aside from the well-known plays of Aristophanes, many of the
comedies of ancient Greece are known only through fragments and
references written in Greek. Now a group of distinguished scholars
brings these nearly lost works to modern readers with lively
English translations of the surviving texts. The Birth of Comedy
brings together a wealth of information on the first three
generations of Western comedy. The translations, presented in
chronological order, are based on the universally praised scholarly
edition in Greek, Poetae Comici Graeci, by R. Kassel and C. A.
Austin. Additional chapters contain translations of texts relating
to comedy at dramatic festivals, staging, audience, and ancient
writers on comedy. The main text is supplemented by an introduction
assessing the fragments' contributions to the political, social,
and theatrical history of classical Athens and more than forty
illustrations of comic scenes, costumes, and masks. A glossary of
komoidoumenoi-the ancient word for "people mentioned in
comedies"-provides background information on the most notorious
comic victims. A full index includes not only authors, play titles,
and persons mentioned, but themes from the whole Greek comic sphere
(including politics, literature and philosophy, celebrities and
social scandals, cookery and wine, sex, and wealth).
This book explores the social institutions, the prevailing social
values, and the ideology of the ancient city-state as revealed in
Roman Comedy. "The very essence of comedy is social," writes David
Konstan, "and in the complex movement of its plots we may be able
to discern the lineaments and contradictions of the reigning ideas
of an age." David Konstan looks closely at eight plays: Plautus's
Aulularia, Asinaria, Captivi, Rudens, Cistellaria, and Truculentus,
and Terence's Phormio and Hecyra. Offering new interpretations of
each, he develops a "typology of plot forms" by analyzing
structural features and patterns of conventional behavior in the
plays, and he relates the results of his literary analysis to
contemporary social conditions. He argues that the plays address
tensions that were potentially disruptive to the ancient
city-state, and that they tended to resolve these tensions in ways
that affirmed traditional values. Roman Comedy is an innovative and
challenging book that will be welcomed by students of classical
literature, ancient social history, the history of the theater, and
comedy as a genre.
Latin plays were written for audiences whose gender perspectives
and expectations were shaped by life in Rome, and the crowds
watching the plays included both female citizens and female slaves.
Relationships between men and women, ideas of masculinity and
femininity, the stock characters of dowered wife and of
prostitute-all of these are frequently staged in Roman tragedies
and comedies. This is the first book to confront directly the role
of women in Roman Republican plays of all genres, as well as to
examine the role of gender in the influence of this tradition on
later dramatists from Shakespeare to Sondheim.
Those who study the nature of beauty are at once plagued by a
singular issue: what does it mean to say something is beautiful? On
the one hand, beauty is associated with erotic attraction; on the
other, it is the primary category in aesthetics, and it is widely
supposed that the proper response to a work of art is one of
disinterested contemplation. At its core, then, beauty is a
contested concept, and both sides feel comfortable appealing to the
authority of Plato, and via him, to the ancient Greeks generally.
So, who is right--if either?
Beauty offers an elegant investigation of ancient Greek notions of
beauty and, in the process, sheds light on modern aesthetics and
how we ought to appreciate the artistic achievements of the
classical world itself. The book begins by reexamining the commonly
held notion that the ancient Greeks possessed no term that can be
unambiguously defined as "beauty" or "beautiful." Author David
Konstan discusses a number of Greek approximations before
positioning the heretofore unexamined term kallos as the key to
bridging the gap between beauty and desire, and tracing its
evolution as applied to physical beauty, art, literature, and more.
Throughout, the discussion is enlivened with thought-provoking
stories taken from Homer, Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, and others.
The book then examines corresponding terms in ancient Latin
literature to highlight the survival of Greek ideas in the Latin
West. The final chapter will compare the ancient Greek conception
of beauty with modern notions of beauty and aesthetics. In
particular, the book will focus on the reception of classical Greek
art in the Renaissance and how Vasari and his contemporaries
borrowed from Plato the sense that the beauty in art was
transcendental, but left out the erotic dimension of viewing. A
study of the ancient Greek idea of beauty shows that, even if
Greece was the inspiration for modern aesthetic ideals, the Greek
view of the relationship between beauty and desire was surprisingly
consistent--and different from our own. Through this magisterial
narrative, it is possible to identify how the Greeks thought of
beauty, and what it was that attracted them. Their perceptions
still have something important to tell us about art, love,
desire--and beauty."
Until the launch of this series nearly twenty years ago, the 15,000
volumes of the ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle, written
mainly between 200 and 600 AD, constituted the largest corpus of
extant Greek philosophical writings not translated into English or
other European languages. Aspasius' commentary on the "Nicomachean
Ethics," of which six books have come down to us, is the oldest
surviving Greek commentary on any of Aristotle's works, dating to
the middle of the second century AD. It offers precious insight
into the thinking and pedagogical methods of the Peripatetic school
in the early Roman Empire, and provides illuminating discussions of
numerous technical points in Aristotle's treatise, along with
valuable excursuses on such topics as the nature of the emotions.
This is the first complete translation of Aspasius' work in any
modern language.
Book Six of Aristotle's Physics, which concerns the continuum,
shows Aristotle at his best. It contains his attack on atomism
which forced subsequent Greek and Islamic atomists to reshape their
views entirely. It also elaborates Zeno's paradoxes of motion and
the famous paradoxes of stopping and starting. This is the first
translation into any modern language of Simplicius' commentary on
Book Six. Simplicius, the greatest ancient authority on Aristotle's
Physics whose works have survived to the present, lived in the
sixth century A.D. He produced detailed commentaries on several of
Aristotle's works. Those on the Physics, which alone come to over
1300 pages in the original Greek, preserve not only a centuries-old
tradition of ancient scholarship on Aristotle but also fragments of
lost works by other thinkers, including both the Presocratic
philosophers and such Aristotalians as Eudemus, Theophrastus and
Alexander. The Physics contains some of Aristotle's best and most
enduring work, and Simplicius' commentaries are essential to an
understanding of it. This volume makes the commentary on Book Six
accessible at last to all scholars, whether or not they know
classical Greek. It will be indispensible for students of classical
philosophy, and especially of Aristotle, as well as for those
interested in philosophical thought of late antiquity. It will also
be welcomed by students of the history of ideas and philosophers
interested in problem mathematics and motion.
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