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Polemon of Laodicea (near modern Denizli, south-west Turkey) was a
wealthy Greek aristocrat and a key member of the intellectual
movement known as the Second Sophistic. Among his works was the
Physiognomy, a manual on how to tell character from appearance,
thus enabling its readers to choose friends and avoid enemies on
sight. Its formula of detailed instruction and personal
reminiscence proved so successful that the book was re-edited in
the fourth century by Adamantius in Greek, translated and adapted
by an unknown Latin author of the same era, and translated in the
early Middle Ages into Syriac and Arabic. The surviving versions of
Adamantius, Anonymus Latinus, and the Leiden Arabic more than make
up for the loss of the original.
The present volume is the work of a team of leading Classicists
and Arabists. The main surviving versions in Greek and Latin are
translated into English for the first time. The Leiden Arabic
translation is authoritatively re-edited and translated, as is a
sample of the alternative Arabic Polemon. The texts and
translations are introduced by a series of masterly studies that
tell the story of the origins, function, and legacy of Polemon's
work, a legacy especially rich in Islam. The story of the
Physiognomy is the story of how one man's obsession with
identifying enemies came to be taken up in the fascinating
transmission of Greek thought into Arabic.
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