Narrative Technique in The Lives of the Ten Orators

This chapter discusses Dio Chrysostom’s ‘Libyan myth’, which tells of savage serpent-women who ate any man they found, until they were destroyed by Heracles; Dio explains that this myth is an allegory about destructive passions in the human soul. The chapter discusses the narrative technique with which Dio tells a story which mixes mythic and historical time; the chapter also traces the intellectual roots of the essay back to Plato and discusses what it can teach us about how myth was understood and used in antiquity. In addition, the chapter considers the relation between Dio’s myth and the scenes in the Libyan desert in Apollonius’ Argonautica and Lucan’s Civil War.

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Deictic Shifting in Greek Contractual Writing (I–IV AD)

Philologus ◽

10.1515/phil-2020-0100 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 164 (1) ◽

pp. 83-106

Author(s):

Klaas Bentein

Keyword(s):

Literary Texts ◽

Ancient Greek ◽

Narrative Technique ◽

The Third ◽

Third Person ◽

The Third Person

AbstractMuch attention has been paid to ‘deictic shifts’ in Ancient Greek literary texts. In this article I show that similar phenomena can be found in documentary texts. Contracts in particular display unexpected shifts from the first to the third person or vice versa. Rather than constituting a narrative technique, I argue that such shifts should be related to the existence of two major types of stylization, called the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective’ style. In objectively styled contracts, subjective intrusions may occur as a result of the scribe temporarily assuming himself to be the deictic center, whereas in subjectively styled contracts objective intrusions may occur as a result of the contracting parties dictating to the scribe, and the scribe not modifying the personal references. There are also a couple of texts which display more extensive deictic alternations, which suggests that generic confusion between the two major types of stylization may have played a role.

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Inscriptional Intermediality in Livy

Trends in Classics ◽

10.1515/tc-2019-0005 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 74-95

Author(s):

Morgan E. Palmer

Keyword(s):

Real World ◽

Literary Work ◽

Latin Literature ◽

Literary Works ◽

Narrative Technique ◽

Ab Urbe Condita

Abstract The term monumentum is used in Latin literature to describe a range of monuments across media, including temples, literary works, statues, and inscriptions. This article surveys the variety of monumenta in Livy’s Ab urbe condita, which range from the text itself to victory inscriptions and bronze sculptures meant to commemorate military as well as political achievements. The borders between historiography and physical artefacts are often blurred by Livy through inscriptional intermediality, a phenomenon defined as the mixing of visual and textual media. By outlining how Livy achieves this combination, and demonstrating how the specific ratio of literary, linguistic, and topographical features in his ekphrases generate unique impressions of real-world monuments, this chapter re-reads Livy’s history from the perspective of intermedial theory. This process not only advances our understanding of the Ab urbe condita as a literary work, but also thrusts individual aspects of Livy’s narrative technique – including visuality and unique formulae such as the introductory formula tabula … cum indice hoc posita est (Livy 41.28.8) – into the spotlight.

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