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… 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… 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. … 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… Read more
5. A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum Ken Olson In his laudatory Life of Constantine, written shortly after the emperor’s death in 337, Eusebius of Caesarea gives an account of a battle Constantine fought against his colleague and rival, Licinius, the emperor of the eastern… Read more
