Chapter 6. Larensius’ Circle The setting of the conversations is defined from the very first lines of the Deipnosophists: the banquets offered by Larensius, a rich Roman, to individuals endowed with the greatest experience in all fields of culture (1.1a). If Plutarch’s banquets brought together Greeks and Romans united by bonds of friendship or kinship, and therefore defining a relatively homogeneous social environment of professors… Read more
Chapter 7. Writing the Symposium In the literary tradition of the sumposion, writing fixes the ephemeral character of the conversation, and bestows upon live interaction the monumentality of a text that offers itself to reading, to repeated readings, to the intellectual participation at a distance of readers who, even though they did not participate in the symposium, and were not able to take part in the conversation,… Read more
Chapter 8. Forms of Collection There are words that allow one to obtain a view from above the labyrinth, to seize one of its principles of structural coherence. For example sunagōgē, which means “collection”. It is one of those keywords that invite one to unravel Ariadne’s thread in Athenaeus’ labyrinth. Indeed, not only does the activity of collection appear, it is one of its constitutive elements. … Read more
Chapter 9. Accumulation and Structure Athenaeus’ work, with everything it includes (objects, quotations, information, words), is indeed a collection that seems destined to perpetual growth. That collection, however, and the text within which it finds its space, are nevertheless organized on the basis of ordering principles. The work’s prologue, in so far as it is only preserved by the epitome, announces its content (1.1a–c): [Athenaeus]… Read more
Chapter 10. Serving the Dishes, Quoting the Texts: The Unfolding of the Banquet One of the threads of Ariadne that allow a reader to circulate within that labyrinth is constituted by the very development of the banquet and the parade of dishes. Athenaeus took care to underline the most important points of reference, in the form of a comprehensive account that delineates the general framework of the… Read more
Chapter 11. How to Speak at Table? All that is said in Homer is not always said by Homer” (5.178d). This critical insight, which explains the polyphony of the voices and the instances of enunciation in the epic, could be applied to Athenaeus himself: all that is said in Athenaeus is not always said by Athenaeus. First of all because he has chosen the formal and dramatic… Read more
1. Introduction Aaron P. Johnson Current study of the cultures and literatures of late antiquity continues to find attractive the interpretive polarity of tradition and innovation. [1] The spectrum containing these two poles has fruitfully functioned to gauge the complex ways in which the history, literature, and thought of late antiquity can be identified as a coherent and distinctive age. This… Read more
2. Genre and Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History: Toward a Focused Debate [1] David J. DeVore Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History is universally acknowledged as a watershed in historiographical presentation, the most innovative history since the fifth century BC: it quotes previous texts promiscuously, avoids placing orations into characters’ mouths, incorporates literary history, and lacks causal relations between successive episodes. But it is a priori… Read more
3. Mothers and Martyrdom: Familial Piety and the Model of the Maccabees in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History [1] James Corke-Webster Stories concerning family relationships in life-or-death situations possess both a peculiar magnetism and a surprising longevity. This is nowhere more true than the martyrdom of the Maccabean mother and her seven sons, which became a favorite literary motif of… Read more
4. The History of the Caesarean Present: Eusebius and Narratives of Origen Elizabeth C. Penland When Eusebius presents the life of Origen in Book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, he interrupts the narrative framework to present an extended biographical sub-narrative focused on Origen with interspersed details from other sources and from Origen’s writings. [1] Unlike the other books, where biographical details… Read more
