There are signs that a list of parallelisms containing quite lengthy citations of republican works in prose and all kinds of verse, as well as remarks highly critical of Virgil, provided the material of Saturnalia 6. 2, Saturnalia 6. 3, and Saturnalia 6. 1. 55–65.1 Whereas Macrobius transmits the uersus parallelisms practically without comment, the locus parallelisms have a certain amount of discussion clustered at the beginning and at the end. This is for the most part neutral and matter of (...) fact but in 6. 2. 33 the harsh tone of an obtrectator makes itself heard: nee Tullio conpilando, dummodo undique ornamenta sibi conferret, abstinuit. The original list was excerpted very carelessly: in 6. 2. 29 the Virgil citation ought to continue for two more verses; in 6. 2. 7, 9, and 24 the Lucretius citations are likewise defective. (shrink)

From the scholarly activity of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. stem several collections of scholia to the poems of Virgil, most of which make copious reference to prose and verse composed in Latin before Virgil's time. The authors of these scholia were the last of a long line of commentators whose labours began soon after Virgil's death. Just as Virgil walked in the tracks of Theocritus, Hesiod, Aratus, Nicander, Homer, and Apollonius, so did his students in the tracks of (...) the great Alexandrian expositors of the Greek poets. They sought to explain Virgil not only through Virgil himself, but also through the poets and prose writers, Greek and Latin, whom they imagined Virgil to have read. Thus we have scholia citing early republican literature in order to parallel words uncommon in or absent from the fourth-century classical syllabus, as well as unclassical usages, inflections, and constructions; in order to demonstrate ‘imitations’ on the part of Virgil; and in order to elucidate the structure of episodes of the three poems where Virgil appears to depart from the most commonly known versions of myth and history. Argument concerning the text or interpretation of a disputed passage is frequently based on appeal to the usage of Virgil's Latin predecessors. (shrink)

Ancient greek sholarship constitutes a precious resource for classicists, but one that is underutilized because graduate students and even mature scholars lack familiarity with its conventions. The peculiarities of scholarly Greek and the lack of translations or scholarly aids often discourages readers from exploiting the large body of commentaries, scholia, lexica, and grammatical treatises that have been preserved on papyrus and via the manuscript tradition. Now, for the first time, there is an introduction to such scholarship that will (...) enable students and scholars unfamiliar with this material to use it in their work. Ancient Greek Scholarship includes detailed discussion of the individual ancient authors on whose works scholia, commentaries, or single-author lexica exist, together with explanations of the probable sources of that scholarship and the ways it is now used, as well as descriptions of extant grammatical works and general lexica. These discussions, and the annotated bibliography of more than 1200 works, also include evaluations of the different texts of each work and of a variety of electronic resources.This book not only introduces readers to ancient scholarship, but also teaches them how to read it. Here readers will find a detailed, step-by-step introduction to the language, a glossary of over 1500 grammatical terms, and a set of more than 200 passages for translation, each accompanied by commentary. The commentaries offer enough help to enable undergraduates with as little as two years of Greek to translate most passages with confidence; in addition, readers are given aids to handling the ancient numerical systems, understanding the references found in works of ancient scholarship, and using an apparatus criticus. Half the passages are accompanied by a key, so that the book is equally suitable for those studying on their own and for classes with graded homework. (shrink)

Ancient greek sholarship constitutes a precious resource for classicists, but one that is underutilized because graduate students and even mature scholars lack familiarity with its conventions. The peculiarities of scholarly Greek and the lack of translations or scholarly aids often discourages readers from exploiting the large body of commentaries, scholia, lexica, and grammatical treatises that have been preserved on papyrus and via the manuscript tradition. Now, for the first time, there is an introduction to such scholarship that will (...) enable students and scholars unfamiliar with this material to use it in their work. Ancient Greek Scholarship includes detailed discussion of the individual ancient authors on whose works scholia, commentaries, or single-author lexica exist, together with explanations of the probable sources of that scholarship and the ways it is now used, as well as descriptions of extant grammatical works and general lexica. These discussions, and the annotated bibliography of more than 1200 works, also include evaluations of the different texts of each work and of a variety of electronic resources.This book not only introduces readers to ancient scholarship, but also teaches them how to read it. Here readers will find a detailed, step-by-step introduction to the language, a glossary of over 1500 grammatical terms, and a set of more than 200 passages for translation, each accompanied by commentary. The commentaries offer enough help to enable undergraduates with as little as two years of Greek to translate most passages with confidence; in addition, readers are given aids to handling the ancient numerical systems, understanding the references found in works of ancient scholarship, and using an apparatus criticus. Half the passages are accompanied by a key, so that the book is equally suitable for those studying on their own and for classes with graded homework. (shrink)

This article provides a comprehensive review of the rather intricate relationship between contemporary environmental ethics, understood as a philosophical branch, and ancient philosophy. While its primary focus is on Western philosophy, it also includes some brief yet crucial considerations about the influence of Eastern traditions of thought on environmental ethics. Aside from the introduction in the first section, the discussion is organised into three main sections. In the Reception: Ancient philosophy in environmental ethics section, I review the initial (...) reception of ancient philosophy in contemporary environmental ethics. Next, in the Reaction: Environmental ethics in ancient philosophy scholarship section, I examine how the scholarship in AP responded to this early reception. I conclude, in the final section, with some constructive suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Covers all philosophers appearing in standard textbooks, from Thales to Augustine . A brief introduction to each thinker or school summarizes their major themes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Vexed Pharmacopeia: Musings on Two Thousand Years of Scholarship Regarding the Ancient Spice Trade ROGER MICHEL ALEXY KARENOWSKA GEORGE ALTSHULER MATTHEW COBB Alice went back to the table. She found a little bottle on it, and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “DRINK ME” beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say “Drink (...) me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not.” However, the bottle was not marked “poison,” so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast), she very soon finished it off. “What a curious feeling!” said Alice. —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) যে ব্যামোর দেখবেন সাতান্ন রকমের ওষুধ, বুঝে নেবেন, সে ব্যামো ওষুধে সারে না।1 —Syed Mujtaba Ali, চাচা কাহিনী (1955) introduction Mankind’s fascination with spice dates back at least 8,000 years—both culinary and medicinal herbs are referenced in the Vedas, Hinduism’s oldest religious text. Spice is also peppered throughout the Old Testament.2 The Song of Solomon recites: “Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikearion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 2 a vexed pharmacopeia nard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.”3 Every one of these fruits, plants and spices remained popular in the West throughout antiquity, into the Middle Ages, and beyond. As early as 3000 bc, trade routes had connected the Mediterranean to the near east. Courtesy of this “Spice Road,” ancient Mediterranean civilizations had access to a wide range of horseradishes, mustards, peppers, gingers and other spices. The Greeks and Romans had a special relationship with black pepper—so much so that four out of five recipes in Apicius’s famous 1st century cookbook4 called for a sprinkling of this sometimes-costly commodity. It is perhaps not coincidental that black pepper contains heat-producing alkaloids very similar to those found in New World chili peppers. Much has been written about the important role of chilis in South and Central American culture—a region that, by the Middle Ages, was in many respects the equal of Europe in “artistic sensibility, social complexity, and political organization.”5 The habanero and its capsainoid cousins were at the heart of the culinary and ceremonial customs of Mesoamerica, their biting heat and florid livery an apt metaphor for the “extravagant feats of human butchery”6 —very much in the tradition of the spectacular venationes of ancient Rome—for which the Aztecs at least were well known. To what extent was hot spice also a significant part of the culinary, medical and cultural landscape of the Old World? At a conference hosted by the Institute for Digital Archaeology at the University of Oxford last December, experts from Europe and North America examined the literary, historical, archaeological and scientific evidence around these questions. Their inquiry received a boost from new and rapidly developing techniques for examining the physical evidence of ancient diet and food production—laboratory techniques not available even five years ago. There was also fresh medical evidence to consider: significant research is being done in the area of chemosensation in the context of spicy foods. This Roger Michel, Alexy Karenowska, George Altshuler, Matthew Cobb 3 includes trying to understand how different so-called “TRP channels” in the nervous system process spice information— in particular, the connection between spice and endorphin levels. It appears that many of the hot spices available in antiquity could potentially trigger the same TRP channels as the capsaicin-charged Mesoamerican peppers. This creates a nice connection between old and new world spice that helps to explain and contextualize both. However, in the end, firm conclusions at the Oxford conference were scarce. It quickly became clear that more work, a greater diversity of viewpoints, better refined questions, and a change of venue were required to make additional progress. To paraphrase William Boot, the accidental protagonist of Evelyn Waugh’s autobiographical Scoop (wherein events around... (shrink)

Interest in νομαστìκωμδєȋν began early. Even before the compilation of prosopo-graphical κωμδούμєνο in the second century B.C., Hellenistic study of Aristophanes had devoted attention to the interpretation of personal satire. The surviving scholia contain references to Alexandrian scholars such as Euphronius, Eratosthenes and Callistratus which show that in their commentaries and monographs these men had dealt with issues of νομαστì κωμδєȋν Much material from Hellenistic work on Old Comedy was transmitted by later scholars, particularly by Didymus and Symmachus in their (...) variorum editions, and was eventually embodied in the scholia, though of course in an abridged and sometimes distorted form. Many of our fragments of Old Comedy, preserved in the scholia or in medieval works of reference as parallels to passages in Aristophanes, are direct evidence of the long ancient tradition of interest in the genre's large element of personal satire. What we find in the scholia should not therefore be treated as representative only of the latest and most derivative stages of ancient scholarship. It is the purpose of this article to argue that the scholia on Aristophanes allow us to see that in matters of νομαστì κωμδєȋν certain assumptions about the nature of this type of comic material were persistently made by ancient scholars, and that certain interpretative habits were consequently developed from them. It is my further aim to suggest that this pattern of interpretation has been widely but unjustifiably perpetuated in later work on Aristophanes. (shrink)

This article responds to Jeffrey Perl's argument that, while there is a “paradigm shift” at Ise every twenty years, when the enshrined deity Amaterasu “shifts” from the current site to an adjacent one during the rite of shikinen sengū, the Jingū paradigm itself never changes and never ages. The author confirms Perl's conclusion by examining the politicized scholarship, written since the 1970s, maintaining that Shinto is a faux religion, invented prior to World War II as a means of unifying (...) Japan behind government policies of ultranationalism and international expansion. This article shows, instead, how emperors—who are not political but religious figures in Japan—and the Jingū priesthood have acted together over the past thirteen hundred years to sustain the imperial shrine at Ise and its ancient rites. The so-called Meiji Restoration actually continued an imperial policy of restoring and intensifying the observance of Shinto rituals that were threatened by neglect. Meiji intervened personally in 1889 to ensure the continuity of hikyoku, an unvoiced and secret serenade to Amaterasu, by extending its venue from the imperial palace shrine to performance at Jingū as well. The author's archival and ethnographic research at Ise and in the National Archives shows how the arguments that Shinto is a modern invention are punitive rather than dispassionately historical. (shrink)

This article responds to Jeffrey Perl’s argument that, while there is a “paradigm shift” at Ise every twenty years, when the enshrined deity Amaterasu “shifts” from the current site to an adjacent one during the rite of shikinen sengū, the Jingū paradigm itself never changes and never ages. The author confirms Perl’s conclusion by examining the politicized scholarship, written since the 1970s, maintaining that Shinto is a faux religion invented prior to World War II as a means of unifying (...) Japan behind government policies of ultranationalism and international expansion. This article shows, instead, how emperors—who are not political but religious figures in Japan—and the Jingū priesthood have acted together over the past thirteen hundred years to sustain the imperial shrine at Ise and its ancient rites. The so-called Meiji Restoration actually continued an imperial policy of restoring and intensifying the observance of Shinto rituals that were threatened by neglect. Meiji intervened personally in 1889 to ensure the continuity of hikyoku, an unvoiced and secret serenade to Amaterasu, by extending its venue from the imperial palace shrine to performance at Jingū as well. The author’s archival and ethnographic research at Ise and the National Archives shows how the arguments that Shinto is a modern invention are punitive rather than dispassionately historical. (shrink)

A Handbook of Modern Arabic Historical Scholarship on the Ancient and Medieval Periods. Edited by Amar S. Baadj. Handbook of Oriental Studies, The Near and Middle East, vol. 155. Leiden: Brill 2021. Pp. xxix + 653. $209, €175.

This book revisits, and sheds fresh light on, some key texts and debates in ancient philosophy. Its twin targets are 'Old Chestnuts' – well-known passages in the works of ancient philosophers about which one might have thought everything there is to say has already been said – and 'Sacred Cows' – views about what ancient philosophers thought, on issues of philosophical importance, that have attained the status of near-unquestioned orthodoxy. Thirteen leading scholars respond to these challenges by (...) offering new perspectives on familiar material and challenging some prevailing orthodoxies. On authors ranging from the Presocratics to Plotinus, the book represents a snapshot of contemporary scholarship in ancient philosophy, and a vigorous and illuminating affirmation of its continuing interest and power. The volume is dedicated to Professor M. M. McCabe, an inspiring scholar and teacher, colleague and friend to both the editors and the contributors. (shrink)

Scholarship on ancient Pyrrhonism has made tremendous advances over the past three decades, thanks especially to the careful reexamination of Sextus Empiricus’ extant corpus. Building on this momentum, the authors of the eight essays collected here examine some of the most vexed and intriguing exegetical and philosophical questions posed by Sextus’ presentation of this form of skepticism. The essays explore in a new light the skeptical interpretation of Plato, the differences between Pyrrhonism and Cyrenaicism, the Pyrrhonist’s stance on (...) ordinary life, religion, language, and ethics, Sextus’ discussion of our access to our own mental states, and the relationship between Pyrrhonism and epistemic internalism and externalism. These new essays represent a substantial contribution to the advancement of scholarship on Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

This provocative collection of essays written by the influential Greek scholar E. R. Dodds between 1929 and 1971. represents the wide range of his literary and philosophical interests. Insightful and learned, the essays combine profound scholarship with the lucid humanity of a teacher awareof the special value of Greek studies in the modern world.

Born in a small town in Lithuania, Rabbi Reuven Agushewitz emigrated to the United States in 1929. A Talmudic genius and an autodidact in philosophy, Rabbi Agushewitz published three philosophical works in Yiddish. Ancient Greek Philosophy, the first published but the last to be translated into English, offers a unique blend of clear philosophical principles and a flavorful Yiddish style, which Mark Steiner's translation preserves. Rabbi Agushewitz not only explains what the early Greek philosophers said, he also amplifies their (...) arguments with creative proofs that the ancients themselves did not offer. His attempts to correlate ancient philosophical statements with monotheism will resonate with the modern religious reader. In addition to the present volume, R. Agushewitz's philosophical books are Faith and Heresy and Principles of Philosophy, both published in translation under the auspices of the Michael Scharf Publication Trust of Yeshiva University Press. His volume of Talmudic novellae on Bava Kamma, "Bi'ur Reuven," was published with approbation from both Rabbi Aharon Kotler and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. These Talmudic giants differed sharply on their attitude toward the study of philosophy, but they concurred wholeheartedly on the scholarship of R. Agushewitz. (shrink)

Scholarship on ancient skepticism has undergone a remarkable renaissance in the last three decades. Specialists in ancient philosophy have explored the complex history of the Greco‐Roman skeptical traditions and discussed difficult philological and exegetical issues. But they have also assessed the philosophical significance of the various ancient skeptical outlooks. In this first paper, I provide a general presentation of this area of study, while in the two subsequent articles I will focus on some of the topics (...) that have been the object of much attention in the recent literature on ancient skepticism. (shrink)

An eighth-century Latin version of a Greek edition of Aratus preserves valuable ancient scholarship on the Phaenomena, including material not preserved in Greek. Examination of over thirteen thousand Latin–Greek correspondences enables one to interpret passages of the Latin that have so far resisted analysis, including information about an ancient edition equipped with critical signs and commentary, ancient discussion of the primary narratee in Aratus and Homer, and the alternative proem to Anclides (SH 84).

This provocative collection of essays written by the influential Greek scholar E. R. Dodds between 1929 and 1971. represents the wide range of his literary and philosophical interests. Insightful and learned, the essays combine profound scholarship with the lucid humanity of a teacher aware of the special value of Greek studies in the modern world.

"Hegel's debts to ancient philosophy are widely acknowledged by scholars, and by the philosopher himself. Roughly half of his Lectures on the History of Philosophy is devoted to ancient philosophy, and throughout his work Hegel frequently frames his positions in relation to the thinkers and movements of antiquity. This volume presents original essays from leading scholars dealing with Hegel's debts to ancient thinkers, as well as his own, often problematic readings of ancient philosophy. While around half (...) of the chapters discuss Hegel's treatment of Aristotle--a topic that has long been at the forefront of scholarship--the other half explore his relationship to such ancient figures as Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Sextus Empiricus, and the Stoics. The essays challenge a number of longstanding scholarly assumptions regarding, for example, Hegel's denigration of the "mythical," his developmentalist approach to ancient thought, his conception of the state in relation to the Greek polis, his "hermeneutic" of the Platonic dialogues, and his use of Aristotelian concepts in arguments concerning the psyche, the body, and their unity and distinction.?"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Notably since Thomas Hobbes, canonically with Benjamin Constant, and conventionally amid Nietzschean, Popperian, Straussian, Arendtian, liberal, republican, political, and sociological readings of ancient texts, contemporary scholarship on the ancients often has employed some version of the dichotomous ancient/modern or ancient/contemporary contrast as a template for explaining, understanding, and interpretively appropriating ancient texts and political practices – particularly those of ancient Greek philosophy and democracy. In particular, this has been done to argue for some conception (...) of political ethics and democracy. I argue that this rhetorical trope, often using Athens and Europe/America as synecdoches for antiquity and modernity, has generated narrow and distorted views of ancient texts and political practices, on the one hand, and their contemporary relevance, on the other – views that misinterpret the theoretical significance of historical phenomena and misread the potential lessons of ancient authorities. Instead, texts and practices should be read either with more qualifications or more fully against a historical dynamic of critical philosophy and political power – including its ethical, cultural, institutional, and governing elements – that is not framed by this dichotomy. (shrink)

In 1988 the philosopher Gilles Deleuze remarked that throughout his career he had always been 'circling around' a concept of nature. Showing how Deleuze weaves original readings of Plato, the Stoics, Aristotle, and Epicurus into some of his most famous arguments about event, difference, and problem, Michael James Bennett argues that these interpretations of ancient Greek physics provide vital clues for understanding Deleuze's own conception of nature. -/- "Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics" delves into the original Greek and (...) Latin texts and situates Deleuze's interpretations in relation to contemporary scholarship on ancient philosophy. It reveals that these readings are both more complex and controversial than they may at first appear. Generating both new critical analyses of Deleuze and an appreciation for his classical erudition, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in ancient Greek philosophy, Deleuze's philosophical project, or his unique methodology in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and Aristotle, but also in later Greco-Roman philosophy and criticism, and subsequently in many areas of aesthetic controversy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Combining classical scholarship, philosophical analysis, and the history of ideas--and ranging across discussion of poetry, (...) painting, and music--Stephen Halliwell shows with a wealth of detail how mimesis, at all stages of its evolution, has been a more complex, variable concept than its conventional translation of "imitation" can now convey. Far from providing a static model of artistic representation, mimesis has generated many different models of art, encompassing a spectrum of positions from realism to idealism. Under the influence of Platonist and Aristotelian paradigms, mimesis has been a crux of debate between proponents of what Halliwell calls "world-reflecting" and "world-simulating" theories of representation in both the visual and musico-poetic arts. This debate is about not only the fraught relationship between art and reality but also the psychology and ethics of how we experience and are affected by mimetic art. Moving expertly between ancient and modern traditions, Halliwell contends that the history of mimesis hinges on problems that continue to be of urgent concern for contemporary aesthetics. (shrink)

In both ancient tradition and modern research Pythagoreanism has been understood as a religious sect or as a philosophical and scientific community. Numerous attempts have been made to reconcile these pictures as well as to analyze them separately. The most recent scholarship compartmentalizes different facets of Pythagorean knowledge, but this offers no context for exploring their origins, development, and interdependence. This collection aims to reverse this trend, addressing connections between the different fields of Pythagorean knowledge, such as eschatology, (...) metempsychosis, metaphysics, epistemology, arithmology and numerology, music, dietetics and medicine as well as politics. In particular, the contributions discuss how the Pythagorean way of life related to more doctrinal aspects of knowledge, such as Pythagorean religion and science. The volume explores the effects of this interdependence between different kinds of knowledge both within the Pythagorean corpus and in its later reception. Chapters cover historical periods from the Archaic Period (6th century BC) to Neoplatonism, Early Christianity, the European and Arabic Middle Ages, and the Renaissance through to the Early Modern Period (17th century AD). (shrink)

Systematically reading Jewish exegesis in light of Homeric scholarship, this book argues that more than 2000 years ago Alexandrian Jews developed critical and literary methods of Bible interpretation which are still extremely relevant today. Maren R. Niehoff provides a detailed analysis of Alexandrian Bible interpretation, from the second century BCE through newly discovered fragments to the exegetical work done by Philo. Niehoff shows that Alexandrian Jews responded in a great variety of ways to the Homeric scholarship developed at (...) the Museum. Some Jewish scholars used the methods of their Greek colleagues to investigate whether their Scripture contained myths shared by other nations, while others insisted that significant differences existed between Judaism and other cultures. This book is vital for any student of ancient Judaism, early Christianity and Hellenistic culture. (shrink)

Interrogating received knowledge is constitutive to any critical project, and recently there has been a wave of scholarship which argues for locating the origin of racist-thinking prior to modern Europe—even prior to the Common Era—without any real consideration of the potential dangers accompanying such a seismic redefinition. By expanding “racism” to include potentially any pre-modern xenophobic or ethnicist atrocity, even well-meaning scholarship dilutes the peculiar injustice of modern Europe’s most successful epistemological weapon. As a result, we lose any (...) criteria to distinguish ubiquitous oppressive projects from specifically racist-projects of hegemony and domination. However laudable its intent, such scholarship falls prey to methodological, epistemological, and practical errors that hamstring the ameliorative impact of contemporary anti-racist work while ironically diminishing racism’s impact. For if every conflict is racist, then contemporary colorblindness is correct: if white supremacy isn’t particularly white, then racism is a distinction without a difference. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the work of John Moles, eminent classicist with a wide range of interests, as a historian of ancient philosophy. The article focuses on Moles’ studies of Dio Chrysostom, Cynicism, and Aristotle’s Poetics. In particular, the article presents Moles’ ever original interpretations, based on an exceptional knowledge of the ancient sources and modern scholarship. The article highlights the fundamental characteristics of Moles’ approach to the history of ancient philosophy, which is grounded in a firm (...) historical basis and in detailed, acute, and always rigorously demonstrative analyses of texts. Moles’ contribution to the history of ancient philosophy is marked by strong ethical motivations and a commitment to trace in classical texts not just mere data, but rather values and ideas to be preserved and reflected upon. (shrink)

The image of the Roman woman, which has survived to this day and imposed itself almost as the only possibility for the ancient scholarship, is the domiseda: the housewife, mother, and spinner. In addition to the investigations of this traditional depiction, which steered the research on Roman women, the issues of our time and the advances in scientific research constantly bring us new perspectives, approaches, and problems around this object of study. This inevitably motivates us to question the (...) role of women in the business and finance world in Ancient Rome. Is it possible to write an economic and financial history of Roman women? What are the limits of this endeavor? This article addresses the insertion of women in the business and finance world, as well as some of the multiple possibilities of writing the History of Women from the Economic and Social History viewpoint. The time frame is restricted to the end of the Republic and the imperial period. This article is therefore divided into three parts: first, an introduction to the discussion of the situation of women in the domus; secondly, methodological assumptions to the study of women and their placement in economic and financial life; and, finally, some examples ofwomen from three different social groups who appear involved in credit relations in the documentation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 463-482 [Access article in PDF] The "Antiquarianization" of Biblical Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653-57) Peter N. Miller The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the heroic age of the antiquaries. Roaming from text to context and back again, these scholars completed the revolution begun by the humanists who realized that Greek and Roman texts could never be understood isolated (...) from the men and societies that made them. These scholars, from Petrarch to Poggio, from Panvinio to Peiresc to Perizonius, looked beyond the page and collected, described, and compared the material remains of the ancient world. That these investigations transformed the understanding of the past and effected a revolution in the method of historical inquiry was insisted upon by Arnaldo Momigliano beginning half a century ago. 1 In recent years these antiquaries have also attracted the attention of historians of early modern art, science, archaeology, politics, and scholarship. 2 [End Page 463]This renewed focus on antiquaries as agents of late humanism has tended to concentrate on their contribution to understanding ancient Greece and Rome, but they were also responsible for the first generation of serious scholarship about the ancient and modern Near East. Drawing on the same methods to ask the same questions they had asked of classical antiquity these antiquaries directed their attention to the extra-European world. Like the study of the earlier Renaissance of Greece and Rome, that of Israel and Egypt was stimulated by a profusion of new materials, streaming back to scholars' studies from the missionaries, merchants, and diplomats traveling to the Ottoman East in greater and greater numbers. It is breadth of inquiry that characterizes this new approach--more texts in more languages--but also a much greater explanatory weight placed on objects as evidence and more confidence in using knowledge provided by people presently living in far-away places to shed light on those who lived there long ago. In this approach to a region and its culture as a whole early modern antiquaries created oriental studies.Because so much of the contemporary interest in the Near East was driven by the ingrained association of these lands and their peoples with the history narrated in the Bible, early oriental studies is inseparable from biblical scholarship. Pietro della Valle's letters from the East were, after all, signed "Il Pellegrino," and Fabri de Peiresc's efforts to recover the Samaritans and their history were triggered by his desire to contribute to the publication of their Pentateuch. It is because oriental studies like these were shaped by the ways and means of antiquaries that so much seventeenth-century biblical scholarship can be described as having been "antiquarianized." Like the earlier humanists who had given Virgil and Horace a context, those fascinated and obsessed with understanding every jot and tittle of the sacred text turned to the Bible's context for help: the history of the ancient Near East as it could be reconstructed from texts, objects, and the long-lived traditions preserved by marginal groups like the Samaritans or in out of the way places like the Coptic monasteries of Wadi Natrûn. This antiquarianization reflects the move from the word to the world that had begun with Petrarch. Early modern sacred philologists--the Englishman Thomas Fuller called this figure "The True Church Antiquary"--set out to prove, by the most sophisticated methods available, that sacred history was historical.At the heart of this inquiry lay a belief in historia sacra, understood as both a theory of providential history and a methodology of historical scholarship. The theory gave them the confidence to pursue with reason the truth of revelation because all had to reflect the plan of the One Creator. The practice encouraged scholars to recruit the evidence of history, philosophy, archaeology, and geography to the service of the sacred, all confirming the triumph of Christianity. They [End Page 464] were convinced that erudition could only amplify, and not undermine, the conclusions already reached by faith. 3 It was this... (shrink)

From ancient theorization about invisible forces to the advent of modern microbiology, the pursuit of a detailed understanding of organisms invisible to the human eye has been a recurrent focus in philosophical and scientific communities and beyond. This article interrogates some of the dominant themes of historical scholarship in this area, highlighting in particular the increasing recognition of the social dimension of microbes and microbial science. It also reflects on the porosity between pre- and post-bacteriological concepts of disease (...) and disease causation, noting the continuity of practice observed by many historians of the modern period. Since we are at present grappling with a crisis of antimicrobial resistance, long in the making, the article draws together scholarship which helps us to make sense of how science has framed microbial organisms and our interactions with them. This provides a platform for researchers to explore new responses to contemporary microbiology, as well as find new ways to interrogate past trends. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has held that De ciuitate Dei was aimed primarily at Christians. Through a comprehensive study of Augustine’s correspondence with known readers of De ciuitate Dei, this article argues that he in fact intended it for practical outreach. Beginning with the exchange with Volusianus and Marcellinus, it argues that the “circle of Volusianus” was not comprised of self-confident pagans but of a dynamic group of locals and émigrés, pagan and Christian, who had briefly coalesced around Volusianus and Marcellinus. (...) The Carthaginian social situation did not greatly change, therefore, after Marcellinus’s execution and Volusianus’s departure. Neither did Augustine’s aims, of which the same picture emerges from Augustine’s later correspondence with Macedonius, Evodius, Peter and Abraham, Firmus, and Darius, and from Orosius. Augustine intended, from the first inception of De ciuitate Dei to the eve of his death, to use it to equip Christians with arguments and, through those Christians’ efforts in turn, to convince once-reluctant pagans to embrace the truth of its claims. (shrink)

Knowledge, Nature, and the Good brings together some of John Cooper's most important works on ancient philosophy. In thirteen chapters that represent an ideal companion to the author's influential Reason and Emotion, Cooper addresses a wide range of topics and periods--from Hippocratic medical theory and Plato's epistemology and moral philosophy, to Aristotle's physics and metaphysics, academic scepticism, and the cosmology, moral psychology, and ethical theory of the ancient Stoics.Almost half of the pieces appear here for the first time (...) or are presented in newly expanded, extensively revised versions. Many stand at the cutting edge of research into ancient ethics and moral psychology. Other chapters, dating from as far back as 1970, are classics of philosophical scholarship on antiquity that continue to play a prominent role in current teaching and scholarship in the field. All of the chapters are distinctive for the way that, whatever the particular topic being pursued, they attempt to understand the ancient philosophers' views in philosophical terms drawn from the ancient philosophical tradition itself.Through engaging creatively and philosophically with the ancient texts, these essays aim to make ancient philosophical perspectives freshly available to contemporary philosophers and philosophy students, in all their fascinating inventiveness, originality, and deep philosophical merit. This book will be treasured by philosophers, classicists, students of philosophy and classics, those in other disciplines with an interest in ancient philosophy, and anyone who seeks to understand philosophy in philosophical terms. (shrink)

This distinctive collection of original articles features contributions from many of the leading scholars of ancient Greek philosophy. They explore the concept of reason and the method of analysis and the central role they play in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They engage with salient themes in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political theory, as well as tracing links between each thinker’s ideas on selected topics. The volume contains analyses of Plato’s Socrates, focusing on his views of moral (...) psychology, the obligation to obey the law, the foundations of politics, justice and retribution, and Socratic virtue. On Plato’s Republic, the discussions cover the relationship between politics and philosophy, the primacy of reason over the soul’s non-rational capacities, the analogy of the city and the soul, and our responsibility for choosing how we live our own lives. The anthology also probes Plato’s analysis of logos which underlies his philosophy including the theory of forms. A quartet of reflections explores Aristotelian themes including the connections between knowledge and belief, the nature of essence and function, and his theories of virtue and grace. The volume concludes with an insightful intellectual memoir by David Keyt which charts the rise of analytic classical scholarship in the past century and along the way provides entertaining anecdotes involving major figures in modern academic philosophy. Blending academic authority with creative flair and demonstrating the continuing interest of ancient Greek philosophy, this book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of all those studying and researching the origins of Western philosophy. (shrink)