Literature of the Jews, Fourth Century bce to Second Century ce

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Eva Mroczek
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

scholarly journals From Commentary to paribhāṣās: Kātyāyana and Patañjali vis-à-vis Vyāḍi

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-566
Author(s):  
Maria Piera Candotti ◽  
Tiziana Pontillo
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

Abstract The present paper is targeted on three landmarks in the long story of the paribhāṣās’ development. Two of these landmarks descended from the earliest testimony of Vyākaraṇa meta-rules, i. e. those included in Pāṇini’s grammar (fifth–fourth century BCE), and one which has been handed down as the first independent collection of paribhāṣās and attributed to Vyāḍi. In particular a shift is highlighted between Kātyāyaṇa’s (third century BCE) integrative approach (vacana) and Patañjali’s (second century BCE) recourse to implicit paribhāṣās in the Aṣṭādhyāyī as a powerful hermeneutical tool. A shift that helps in interpreting the need for a validation and collection of implicit pāṇinian paribhāṣās as carried out by authors such as Vyāḍi.

Plutarch and the Persica

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eran Almagor
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Achaemenid Empire ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Ancient Persia

This book addresses two historical mysteries. The first is the content and character of the fourth century BCE Greek works on the Persian Achaemenid Empire treatises called the Persica. The second is the method of work of the second century CE biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea (CE 45-120) who used these works to compose his biographies, in particular the Life of the Persian king Artaxerxes. By dealing with both issues simultaneously, Almagor proposes a new way of approaching the two entangled problems, and offers a better understanding of both the portrayal of ancient Persia in the lost Persica works and the manner of their reception and adaptation nearly five hundred years later. Intended for both scholars and students of the Achaemenid Empire and Greek imperial literature, this book bridges the two worlds and two important branches of scholarship. The book builds a picture of the character and structure of the lost Persica works by Ctesias of Cnidus, Deinon of Colophon, Heracleides of Cyme. While focusing on the Artaxerxes (and certain other passages), it shows how Plutarch used the Persica.

An Athenian Tradition of Dactylic Paeans to Apollo and Asclepius: Choral Degeneration or a Flexible System of Non-Strophic Dactyls?

Mnemosyne ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.A. Faraone
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Classical Version ◽  
Flexible System ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Varying Length

AbstractThe different epigraphic versions of the so-called Erythraean Paean date from the early fourth century BCE to the mid-second century CE and are generally thought to trace the degeneration of an original monostrophic lyric poem attested in the eponymous late-classical version. I argue that such an approach is inadequate and that the later versions of this poem are witnesses to a hitherto unappreciated genre of paean to Apollo and Asclepius composed almost entirely in dactyls and organized into segments of varying length, which generally begin with a dactylic tetrameter and end with a version of the traditional paeonic cry (the so-called epiphthegma): Παιν or Παιν. The space between the opening tetrameter and the closing cry can, however, accommodate between four to eight additional dactylic feet. The late Hellenistic paean composed in Athens by Macedonicus of Amphipolis is yet another witness to this tradition, which probably dates back at least as early as a famous—albeit almost entirely lost—paean of Sophocles and is reflected in the first two strophes of the parodos of his Oedipus Rex.

The Aftermath of Paracomedy

Paracomedy ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 248-264
Author(s):  
Craig Jendza
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

This chapter explores three cases where authors engage with paracomedy after the fifth century BCE. It proposes that the anonymous fourth-century BCE tragedy Rhesus employs paracomedy and that it does so either because the author was indiscriminately copying from fifth-century drama or because he wanted to imitate Euripides’s penchant for paracomedy. It investigates the highly fragmentary evidence for Rhinthon’s third-century BCE hilarotragedies, normally thought to be theatrical farces, and posits that Rhinthon was utilizing a more explicit type of paracomedy than in the fifth century. It also provides an explanation for the surprising assertion from the second-century CE scholar Pollux that Euripides and Sophocles frequently employed a comic parabasis. The chapter argues that these cases of reception highlight paracomedy’s importance in antiquity and indicate that paracomedy was a noted hallmark of Euripidean stagecraft that had an indelible effect on the genre of tragedy.

Fantasising Phryne: The psychology and ethics of ekphrasis

2011 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 71-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Morales
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Significant Aspect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Contemporary Writers

‘It's such a pity that we don't haveAnything like a photographOf her about whom the ancients rave …’…Fragments, copies, our museums still holdOf statues she modelled, or so we're told(from Phryne by Robert Conquest, 2000)Phryne, the celebrity hetaira who is said to have lived and loved some time during the fourth century BCE, was reputed to be ‘by far the most phenomenal of the hetairai’ (ἐπιφανεστάτη πολὺ τῶν ἑταίρων). This article aims to examine the anecdotes told about Phryne and argues that collectively they constitute a discourse on viewing that illuminates a significant aspect of the production and interpretation of art: the ethical and aesthetic problems involved (for the artist, subject, model and other viewers) in making and describing naturalistic art, especially that which represents the gods. A rich repertoire of written material on Phryne, and on the statue of the Aphrodite of Cnidus for which she was said to have been the model, has survived, although mostly by later rather than contemporary writers. Among the descriptions of the statue there is a group of epigrams collected in the Greek Anthology whose authorship and dating are largely uncertain. On Phryne we have accounts and imaginative scenarios in Alciphron, Lucian and Pausanias, all presumed to be writing in the second century CE; Athenaeus, who most probably wrote in the third century CE; and quotations from earlier writers.

scholarly journals The genomes of ancient date palms germinated from 2,000 y old seeds

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (19) ◽  
pp. e2025337118
Author(s):  
Muriel Gros-Balthazard ◽  
Jonathan M. Flowers ◽  
Khaled M. Hazzouri ◽  
Sylvie Ferrand ◽  
Frédérique Aberlenc ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Date Palm ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Genomic Analysis ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Phoenix Dactylifera ◽  
Crop Evolution ◽  
Second Century ◽  
North African ◽  
Date Palms ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

Seven date palm seeds (Phoenix dactylifera L.), radiocarbon dated from the fourth century BCE to the second century CE, were recovered from archaeological sites in the Southern Levant and germinated to yield viable plants. We conducted whole-genome sequencing of these germinated ancient samples and used single-nucleotide polymorphism data to examine the genetics of these previously extinct Judean date palms. We find that the oldest seeds from the fourth to first century BCE are related to modern West Asian date varieties, but later material from the second century BCE to second century CE showed increasing genetic affinities to present-day North African date palms. Population genomic analysis reveals that by ∼2,400 to 2,000 y ago, the P. dactylifera gene pool in the Eastern Mediterranean already contained introgressed segments from the Cretan palm Phoenix theophrasti, a crucial genetic feature of the modern North African date palm populations. The P. theophrasti introgression fraction content is generally higher in the later samples, while introgression tracts are longer in these ancient germinated date palms compared to modern North African varieties. These results provide insights into crop evolution arising from an analysis of plants originating from ancient germinated seeds and demonstrate what can be accomplished with the application of a resurrection genomics approach.

The Population of the Piraeus in the Roman Period: A Re-Assessment of the Evidence of Funerary Inscriptions

2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIMITRIS GRIGOROPOULOS
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Funerary Inscriptions ◽  
Augustan Age ◽  
The Town

In 87–86 BCE, the Roman army under L. Cornelius Sulla invaded Attica and, after a long siege, sacked Athens and the Piraeus. In both ancient and modern eyes, Sulla's sack has been seen as a key event, which marked not only the end of Athenian independence but also the beginning of an irreversible decline for its port, the Piraeus, in antiquity. Ancient literary testimonies in the decades following the Sullan sack portray the Piraeus as an urban wasteland, crammed with ruins but devoid of life. Strabo, writing in the Augustan age, notes that the town of his time endured, but had shrunk between the two harbours (the Kantharos and Zea); Pausanias, writing later in the second century CE, mentions a number of monuments but pays more attention to the old, ‘Classical’, town than to the contemporary ‘Roman’ Piraeus. Rescue excavations in the last few decades have provided corroboration for Strabo's remark. Building remains dating to the Classical period (mainly the fourth century BCE) extend over a larger area than those of Roman date, which tend to concentrate on the isthmus between the Kantharos and Zea harbours. Nevertheless, more recent finds and a reconsideration of the available archaeological evidence has shown that settlement clustering around the main harbour did not result from the destruction of the port by Sulla but had started in Hellenistic times and was intensified in the Roman period.

Innus: A God of Archaic Latium and His Sanctuary at Fosso dell’Incastro (Ardea)

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-286
Author(s):  
Mario Torelli
Keyword(s):  
Sand Dunes ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Ancient Site ◽  
The Temple

Abstract In 2006, the Soprintendenza Archeologica del Lazio began an excavation at the site of Fosso dell’Incastro on the coastline of Ardea. A well-preserved settlement buried under huge sand dunes was discovered, featuring a Roman castrum created in the fourth century BCE around a sanctuary dating back to the mid-sixth century BCE. Its characteristics not only suggested that the ancient site was Castrum Inui, previously known only through the ancient literary sources (e.g., Virgil, Servius and Macrobius), but also that its sanctuary could be attributed to an inconspicuous local deity, Inuus—often correlated with Pan and Sol. In its final phase (the early Imperial period), the sanctuary housed three sacred buildings: Temple A, Temple B, and a small shrine dedicated to Aesculapius. Temple B, the site of Inuus’ worship, was constructed in the Etrusco-Italic style during the first quarter of the fifth century BCE, while Temple A was built during the mid-second century BCE. Temple B was oriented to the southwest, one typical for religious buildings connected to chthonic cults; two altars built during the fourth century BCE were placed along the façade of the temple, one facing the east and on the axis of the temple, the second close to its southwest corner. It was also enhanced with an acroterion depicting the head of a warrior with the skin and horns of a goat or cow over his helmet, a motif that establishes a connection between Innus, Pan and Faunus. Temple A, on the other hand, faced the northeast and was enhanced with a sculpted pediment in high relief showing an assembly of gods and possibly Aeneas. Both its orientation and the iconography of the pediment suggest that it was dedicated to Aeneas Indiges, a pan-Latin version of the old cult of Inuus.

The Date of the Muratorian Fragment

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-172
Author(s):  
John F. Lingelbach
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Church History ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
First Time ◽  
Objective Methodology

Three hundred years after its discovery, scholars find themselves unable to determine the more likely of the two hypotheses regarding the date of the Muratorian Fragment, which consists of a catalog of New Testament texts. Is the Fragment a late second- to early third-century composition or a fourth-century composition? This present work seeks to break the impasse. The study found that, by making an inference to the best explanation, a second-century date for the Fragment is preferred. This methodology consists of weighing the two hypotheses against five criteria: plausibility, explanatory scope, explanatory power, credibility, and simplicity. What makes this current work unique in its contribution to church history and historical theology is that it marks the first time the rigorous application of an objective methodology, known as “inference to the best explanation” (or IBE), has been formally applied to the problem of the Fragment’s date.

The Roman Martyrs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lapidge
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church

The Roman Martyrs contains translations of forty Latin passiones of saints who were martyred in Rome or its near environs, during the period before the ‘peace of the Church’ (c. 312). Some of these Roman martyrs are universally known — SS. Agnes, Sebastian or Laurence, for example — but others are scarcely known outside the ecclesiastical landscape of Rome itself. Each of the translated passiones, which vary in length from a few paragraphs to over ninety, is accompanied by an individual introduction and commentary; the translations are preceded by an Introduction which describes the principal features of this little-known genre of Christian literature. The Roman passiones martyrum have never previously been collected together, and have never been translated into a modern language. They were mostly composed during the period 425 x 675, by anonymous authors who who were presumably clerics of the Roman churches or cemeteries which housed the martyrs’ remains. It is clear that they were composed in response to the huge explosion of pilgrim traffic to martyrial shrines from the late fourth century onwards, at a time when authentic records (protocols) of their trials and executions had long since vanished, and the authors of the passiones were obliged to imagine the circumstances in which martyrs were tried and executed. The passiones are works of pure fiction; and because they abound in ludicrous errors of chronology, they have been largely ignored by historians of the early Church. But although they cannot be used as evidence for the original martyrdoms, they nevertheless allow a fascinating glimpse of the concerns which animated Christians during the period in question: for example, the preservation of virginity, or the ever-present threat posed by pagan practices. And because certain aspects of Roman life will have changed little between (say) the second century and the fifth, the passiones throw valuable light on many aspects of Roman society, not least the nature of a trial before an urban prefect, and the horrendous tortures which were a central feature of such trials. Above all, perhaps, the passiones are an indispensable resource for understanding the topography of late antique Rome and its environs, since they characteristically contain detailed reference to the places where the martyrs were tried, executed, and buried. The book contains five Appendices containing translations of texts relevant to the study of Roman martyrs: the Depositio martyrum of A.D. 354 (Appendix I); the epigrammata of Pope Damasus d. 384) which pertain to Roman martyrs treated in the passiones (II); entries pertaining to Roman martyrs in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (III); entries in seventh-century pilgrim itineraries pertaining to shrines of Roman martyrs in suburban cemeteries (IV); and entries commemorating these martyrs in early Roman liturgical books (V).

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