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
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
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
12. The Tools of Memory: Crafting Historical Legacy in Fourth-Century Greece Sarah Ferrario 1. Introduction Can individuals control the ways in which they are remembered? Achilles saw κλέος ἄφθιτον, ‘undying fame’, as a possible outcome of his own decisions; [1] Alexander undertook a complex campaign of self-promotion that was imitated by the Hellenistic monarchs [2]… Read more
11. Local History, Polis History, and the Politics of Place Rosalind Thomas The Greek polis was, as we all know, the central and abiding socio-political institution of the Greek world, continuing in the Hellenistic period and even into Roman times, but with vastly reduced political power. Yet it was inherently changeable in ways which make the identification of what constituted ‘the polis’ extraordinarily elusive; even identifying… Read more
10. The Sick Man of Asia? Christopher Tuplin If you will take, I don’t say unlimited time or many generations, but only these last fifty years immediately preceding our generation, you will be able to understand the cruelty of Fortune. For can you suppose, if some god had warned the Persians or their king, or the Macedonians or their king, that in fifty years… Read more
9. Greek Monographs on the Persian World: The Fourth Century BCE and its innovations Dominique Lenfant While it is the best-known Greek monograph on the Persian world, Ctesias’ Persica is often cited today as an illustration of the supposed decadence of the historical genre in the fourth century BCE. One symptom of this ‘decay’ is Ctesias’ choice of subject matter: rather than a politico-military history focused on… Read more
8. Ephorus, Polybius, and τὰ καθόλου γράφειν: Why and How to Read Ephorus and his Role in Greek Historiography without Reference to ‘Universal History’ [1] John Tully I would be making the understatement of the century if I were to say that universal history has never been a clear notion. Momigliano 1982:533 Ephorus, an… Read more
7. Ephorus in Context: The Return of the Heraclidae and Fourth-century Peloponnesian Politics [1] Nino Luraghi In a famous passage at the beginning of Book 4, Diodorus discusses the difficulties facing the historian who wants to include in his work what Diodorus himself calls “the ancient mythologiai,” i.e. the deeds of demigods, heroes, and great men of the most distant past. Read more
6. The Causes of the Peloponnesian War: Ephorus, Thucydides and Their Critics Giovanni Parmeggiani The causes of the Peloponnesian War constitute such a persistent theme in discussions of fifth-century Greek history, in part because of the complexity of the aetiological view of our earliest source, Thucydides. ἤρξαντο δὲ αὐτοῦ Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ Πελοποννήσιοι λύσαντες τὰς τριακοντούτεις σπονδὰς αἳ αὐτοῖς ἐγένοντο μετὰ Εὐβοίας ἅλωσιν. διότι δ’ ἔλυσαν,… Read more
