13. Aristotle and History Lucio Bertelli The title of my paper may wrongly suggest that I am going to discuss Aristotle’s famous—I should perhaps say infamous—comparison in the Poetics between tragedy and history (Poetics 9). In fact, this passage from the Poetics, one of the rare occasions where Aristotle uses the word historia to refer to historiography, is perhaps so famous precisely because of the tendency… Read more
Everything is in a way less deep and deeper than you think. You want a long explanation, but in the end your explanation repeats what you knew at the start. You said yourself it was like remembering. Socrates to Plato Iris Murdoch “Art and Eros: A Dialogue About Art” Amongst the unhappy delusions of mankind is the belief that a… Read more
Introduction This book is about a particular form of writing by Christians in late antiquity, sometimes referred to as “the philosophical dialogue”—although by no means all the dialogues in question can be regarded as philosophical. The subject is central to the much wider question of the development of a specifically Christian rhetoric, especially in Perelman’s sense in which “the realm of rhetoric” constitutes “the entire universe of… Read more
Chapter 1. Did Christians “Do Dialogue”? The attraction of Plato was felt powerfully in late antiquity, and is still felt today. As one illustration, the novelist Iris Murdoch was also a teacher of philosophy in Oxford, and deeply interested in Plato. [1] She even composed two Platonic dialogues, on the themes of art and religion, in which she introduced the figure of… Read more
Chapter 2. Dialogue and Debate in Late Antiquity If, in the words of the late Keith Hopkins, the Roman empire was a world full of gods, [1] late antiquity was a world full of talk. The known religious debates and discussions ranged from the discussions in major church councils and local synods, through public debates between Chalcedonians and Syrian Orthodox, against Manichaeans,… Read more
Chapter 3. Writing Dialogue In my final chapter I will discuss three very different examples of Greek Christian dialogue-writing, two of them from the late antique period, the third composed later, but with a dramatic date in late antiquity. The first has attracted attention already, but is so unusual that it deserves its place here. The second also seems unusual, but was followed by other examples of… Read more
Conclusion. The Byzantine Future I have made a case here for Christian dialogues in late antiquity and beyond as a large and fruitful field of research, over and above comparisons with Socratic or Ciceronian dialogues, and at the same time indicated something of the richness of the available material. Many more dialogues were composed than I have had the space to consider here. Dialogue and debate were… Read more
Bibliography Editions and Translations of Primary Sources Allen, P. 2009. Sophronius of Jerusalem and Seventh-Century Heresy: The Synodical Letter and Other Documents; Introduction, Texts, Translations and Commentary. Oxford. Allen, P., and B. Neil. 1999. Scripta Saeculi VII Vitam Maximi Confessoris Illustrantia. Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca 39. Turnhout. ———. 2002. Maximus the Confessor and his Companions: Documents from… Read more
Foreword Leonard Muellner Brandeis University Center for Hellenic Studies This volume has both a history and a future. The conference in July 2008 that produced the papers appearing here was a consequence of the permission granted to the Center for Hellenic Studies in 2006 by Leo S. Olschki Editore in Florence to publish online the text of the Derveni Papyrus as presented in its… Read more
Introduction [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] Testing Our Tools: Open Questions on the… Read more
