Vehicles of the Soul from Plato to Philoponus

2021 ◽  
pp. 6-34
Author(s):  
Simon Cox
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Subtle Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History

This chapter traces the prehistory of the subtle body, developing out of late antique Neoplatonic conceptions of the ochema-pneuma, “vehicles of the soul,” which bear souls from one incarnation to the next. It goes through the entire history of late antique Neoplatonism surveying how major thinkers engaged with and formulated ideas about these soul-bearing vehicles, from the mystical existentialism of Porphyry and Iamblichus (third century) to the detailed and philosophically sophisticated descriptions of Damascius and John Philoponus (sixth century). It ends with the ascendance of Christianity for which this notion was no longer useful, jettisoning the subtle body and sending the idea into a thousand-year slumber.

Nicopolis ad Istrum: Backward and Balkan?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. WHITTOW
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of

The story of Nicopolis ad Istrum and its citizens exemplifies much that is common to the urban history of the whole Roman Empire. This chapter reviews the history of Nicopolis and its transition into the small fortified site of the fifth to seventh centuries and compares it with the evidence from the Near East and Asia Minor. It argues that Nicopolis may not have experienced a cataclysm as has been suggested, and that, as in the fifth and sixth century west, where landowning elites showed a striking ability to adapt and survive, there was an important element of continuity on the lower Danube, which in turn may account for the distinctive ‘Roman’ element in the early medieval Bulgar state. It also suggests that the term ‘transition to Late Antiquity’ should be applied to what happened at Nicopolis in the third century: what happened there in the fifth was the transition to the middle ages. This chapter also describes late antique urbanism in the Balkans by focusing on the Justiniana Prima site.

Archery in the Preface to Procopius' Wars

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-406
Author(s):  
Marion Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rhetorical Tradition ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military

Historians have long taken Procopius' description of heavily armored mounted archers in the opening of his Wars to be a more-or-less accurate depiction of contemporary military practice. This paper argues that Procopius employs archery as a metaphor for authorship by drawing on the techniques of figured writing (which include metaphor) as developed by the late antique rhetorical tradition in which he was trained. The comparison between Homeric and contemporary warriors at the opening of the Wars is therefore a figured way for Procopius to engage in a self-referential discussion concerning authorship and, in particular, to develop his agonistic relationship with his primary classical models, Herodotus and Thucydides. This conclusion requires a reevaluation of the military history of the sixth century.

Living and Working on the Capitoline Hill

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Moralee
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Hill

Chapter 2 surveys the evidence for the maintenance of the Capitoline Hill’s temples, statues, festivals, and administrative uses into the sixth century. While imperial rites celebrated at the Capitol faded in significance by the end of the third century, the hill was at the heart of the social and administrative worlds of late antique Rome. The chapter thus turns to the ways in which the hill was embedded in multiple late Roman neighborhoods and used for administrative purposes. Even as Rome’s urban environment was undergoing serious transformations in the use of public spaces, archaeology, epigraphy, and literary sources demonstrate that the Capitoline Hill was surrounded by neighborhoods displaying a high degree of sociability and commerce throughout this period.

The Provenance of Ecumenius' Commentary On the Apocalypse

1998 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-108
Author(s):  
John C. Lamoreaux
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Significant Source ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Severus Of Antioch ◽  
Textual Critic

AbstractThe earliest extant Greek commentary on the Apocalypse was written by a certain Ecumenius. Many questions surround the provenance of this commentary. Was it written early in the sixth century or does it rather stem from the later decades of that same century? Was it written by a Monophysite? or by a Chalcedonian? Was the author of this commentary a friend and ally of Severus of Antioch? If not, who then was he? Such questions are important because Ecumenius' commentary is important. It offers an early uncial text of the Apocalypse of great moment for the New Testament textual critic. It is a significant source for understanding late antique efforts to support the canonical authority of the Apocalypse.' It contains crucial evidence of developing Mariological doctrines. Even more interesting, however, is the commentary's place in the history of polemic against Origen. Such themes are subtle, yet so frequent that one could read the text primarily as an attempt to provide an eschatological vision orthodox enough to replace that of Origen and his followers. But these are matters for another time.2 Here our concern is that of establishing the provenance of this text-who wrote it? when? and where?

Economic Crises from the Third Century to the Present Day: Cyclicity, Nature and the Logic of Shocks of the Modern

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 27-72
Keyword(s):  
Global Market ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Economic Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Waves

From 2008 to 2009 and from 2013 to 2016, the world economy faced two waves of one of the most severe crises in history. This crisis was attributed to a number of mistakes made by financiers and regulators or given the usual explanation of overproduction (a crisis typical of the “ten-year” cycle). But the current crisis is due to a more complex cyclical feature of capitalism. It is one of the great crises that begin and end long waves in the development of capitalism and that first took hold in the 1770s. Nikolai Kondratiev suggested that the cycle (of upward and downward waves) begins with a major crisis in the economy. In reality, such crises are found at the junction of the waves. The author emphasizes that these crises emerge as part of a grand cycle within industrial capitalism. They alter the conditions for growth in the worldwide economy and in national ones while facilitating the development of new industries or the expansion of the global market. These crises alter the economic process so deeply that they play out over years rather than months, while ordinary commercial and industrial crises seldom match their severity and duration. Crises then come in two forms — major and ordinary. There are other economic crises parallel to these that restructure socio-economic relations. Crises of that kind took place in the 3rd and 14th centuries. This article examines crises throughout the entire history of market systems, including mercantile and industrial capitalism. Particular emphasis is given to the current global economic crisis, the contradictions that caused it, and the contradictions left in its wake. The author also identifies preconditions for overcoming those lingering contradictions and outlines the prospects for a new economic recovery.

scholarly journals The Date of the Bucolic Poet Martius Valerius

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 301-335
Author(s):  
Justin A. Stover
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bucolic Poetry

ABSTRACTThe collection of four Latin bucolics ascribed to one Martius Valerius was only published in the twentieth century; they have been widely considered as twelfth-century compositions. Picking up on suggestions proposed by François Dolbeau, this study presents evidence that Martius drew directly on the bucolics of Theocritus, and that his poems are late antique, not medieval, literary productions, probably written in the sixth century. Such a conclusion will require a revision of the history of post-Virgilian Latin bucolic poetry.

scholarly journals التاريخ العقدي في المذهب الشافعي

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-159
Author(s):  
Salahuddin Guntung Raden
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Inductive Method ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

This study aims to reveal the various patterns of belief in the internal of the Shafi'i school and also to explain the history of the emergence of these various forms of understanding after the early development of the Shafi'i school which is oriented towards pure salafi Sunni understanding. This research used the deductive inductive method. The results of this study show that the Shafi'i school as it develops in the aspect of fiqh through the hands of its figures, it also develops in the aspects of aqidah with quite rapid development. The Shafi'i school is no longer pure as it was in the days of its founder, Imam Al-Shafi'i, and his early figures. In the internal of the Shafi'i School, various forms of belief emerged which later became many different madrasas. Each madrasah produces a variety of views that are similar and are bound by the same ushul (principle) and their figures are connected with similar thoughts. The Shafi'i school was originally a pure Sunni school and could be called the Madrasah Syafi'iyyah Ahlussnnah. Then within the school, there appeared various types of understanding of the people of Kalam and Sufi. Then it became several madrasas with different styles of understanding. Within the schools, the concept of Kullabiyah Asy'ariyah emerged in the third century of hijriyyah where in the same century the people of Kalam and Sufi also emerged. Then in the fifth century, the concept of Asy'ariyah Muktazilah emerged. Then the concept of understanding of the Asy'ariyah Falsafi emerged and became grounded in the Shafi'i School in the sixth century of hijriyyah during the emergence of the concept of Kuburiyah which has survived to this day. However, the pure Sunni Salafi style remains in the internal Shafi'i school.

Lifting in early Greek Architecture

1974 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Coulton
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
History Of Technology ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Mechanical Advantage ◽  
Greek Architecture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Temple

In the standard handbooks on the techniques of Greek architecture, the problem of lifting heavy architectural members is considered mainly in terms of the various cranes and hoists based on compound pulley systems which are described by Vitruvius and Hero of Alexandria. It is assumed that the same basic method was employed also in the Archaic period, and that the use of an earth ramp by Chersiphron to raise the architraves of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos in the mid-sixth century was exceptional. If this is true, it is a matter of some interest in the history of technology. The simple pulley, used not to gain mechanical advantage but just to change the direction of pull, is first known from an Assyrian relief of the ninth century B.C., and may well have been known to the Greeks before they began to build in megalithic masonry in the late seventh century B.C.; but the earliest indisputable evidence for a knowledge of compound pulley systems is in the Mechanical Problems attributed to Aristotle, but more probably written by a member of his school in the early third century B.C. This is a theoretical discussion of a system which was already used by builders, but it is not so certain that practice preceded theory by three centuries or more. It is therefore worth looking again at the evidence for the use of cranes, hoists and pulleys in early Greek building.

Eclecticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Mcclellan
Keyword(s):  
Roman Period ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Entire Period ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
The Third ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History

Eclecticism in philosophy is the construction of a system of thought by combining elements of the established systems of a previous age. The term ‘eclecticism’ is derived from the Greek verb eklegein / eklegesthai: to pick out, choose, or select. Diogenes Laertius (c.ad 300–50) attributes an ‘eclectic school’ to Potamo of Alexandria (c. early 3rd century ad) ‘who made a selection from the tenets of all the existing sects’. Many philosophers of the Greco-Roman period are known as ‘eclectics’, and one can find the entire period of philosophy from the second century bc to the third century ad referred to as an age of ‘eclecticism’. In such cases the term is often used pejoratively to designate a discordant collection of unoriginal ideas. More recently, however, the French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792–1867) expressed an optimistic view of eclecticism while using the term in reference to his own philosophy. Cousin viewed the entire history of thought as dominated by the two competing philosophies of empiricism (or sensualism) and idealism (or rationalism). The true philosophy would eliminate conflicting elements and combine the remaining truths within a single, unified system. Cousin’s eclecticism, with its strong historical orientation, was the predominant school of thought in France throughout most of the nineteenth century and was also of considerable influence in Brazil.

Classical Conceptions of Visuality and Representation in John of Damascus' Defense of Holy Images1

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-308
Author(s):  
James A. Francis
Keyword(s):  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
John Of Damascus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Iconoclastic Controversy

The Defense of Holy Images by John of Damascus stands as the archetypal exposition of the Christian theology of images. Written at the outbreak of the Iconoclastic Controversy, it has been mostly valued for its theological content and given scholarly short shrift as a narrowly focused polemic. The work is more than that. It presents a complex and profound explication of the nature of images and the phenomenon of representation, and is an important part of the “history of looking”in western culture. A long chain of visual conceptions connects classical Greek and Roman writers, such as Homer and Quintilian, to John: the living image, the interrelation of word and image, and image and memory, themes elaborated particularly in the Second Sophistic period of the early Common Era. For John to deploy this heritage so skillfully to the thorny problem of the place of images in Christianity, at the outbreak of a violent conflict that lasted a further 100 years after his writing, manifests an intellect and creativity that has not been sufficiently appreciated. The Defense of Holy Images, understood in this context, is another innovative synthesis of Christianity and classical culture produced by late antique Christian writers.

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