Zoanne Pencaro, an Early Modern Italian Reader of the Ancient Near East in Herodotus

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Dennis Looney
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Manuscript Copy

Early modern readers of Herodotus, especially those in the Italian peninsula, on occasion established an analogy between their situation in relation to the expanding Turkish empire in the sixteenth century and that of the eastern Mediterranean world, especially the Greek world, in relation to the Persian empire as outlined in Herodotus’ Histories. Readers used their encounter with the Herodotean text as a filter through which to comment on and make sense of what at times must have appeared to them to be the beginning of the end of western culture as they knew it. In 1491, not long after the Este court in Ferrara sponsored Matteo Maria Boiardo’s translation of Herodotus into Italian, Zoanne Pencaro, a minor figure in the court, commissioned the production of a manuscript copy in which he made a remarkable set of annotations in the vernacular (nearly 2500 words) that show a growing awareness of the ancient near east.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jane Grogan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
European Engagement ◽  
The Many

The Introduction maps out the ambitions and challenges for the collection of essays as a whole in foregrounding the many and varied significances of the ancient near east in early modern European classicism, across a range of disciplines. It describes the context of renewed European engagement—commercial, diplomatic, cultural—and exchange with the eastern Mediterranean, and the continued appeal of a host of classical works and authors describing that world in ancient times. It studies European familiarity with the material traces of that history—archaeological as well as textual—as well as the complex, often mediated routes of reception that texts of and about the ancient near east took. It highlights four key concepts or approaches to early modern studies that would benefit from closer attention to early modern familiarity with the ancient near east, and concludes by summarizing the key contributions of each essay in the collection.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Judith Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Near East ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Modern Period

The Introduction situates the myth of the descent to the underworld (catabasis) in a broad historical context beginning with Ancient Near East traditions, including the Sumerian poem preserved in cuneiform, “The Descent of Inanna,” and extending to medieval treatments such as “The Visions of the Knight Tondal”, and those of the early modern period. It includes a survey of other scholarly treatments of the underworld theme in recent literature. A brief overview of the volume explains how it fills a gap in the scholarship by focusing on the adaptation of the theme of a visit to Hades in postmodern, feminist, and postcolonial fiction.

The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Significant Period ◽  
Oxford Dictionary

Over 5,000 entriesThe first comprehensive, multi-disciplinary reference work covering every aspect of history, culture, religion, and life in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East (including the Persian Empire and Central Asia) between c. AD 250 to 750, the era now generally known as Late Antiquity. This period saw the re-establishment of the Roman Empire, its conversion to Christianity and its replacement in the West by Germanic kingdoms, the continuing Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Sassanian Empire, and the rise of Islam.Consisting of more than 1.5 million words, drawing on the latest scholarship, and written by more than 400 contributors, it bridges a significant period of history between those covered by the acclaimed Oxford Classical Dictionary and The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, and aims to establish itself as the essential reference companion to this period.

Oral Tradition and Chronology

1971 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Henige
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Near East ◽  
Common Method ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Accurate Assessment ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Folk Hero

Perhaps the weakest aspect of oral tradition is its inability to establish and maintain an accurate assessment of the length of the past it purports to relate. As time passes, societies without calendrical systems tend to become either very vague about this time depth or to relate it to present, changing circumstances. The most common method of measuring the past in many societies is in terms of king lists or genealogies. A comparison of orally transmitted king lists and genealogies in various places and times, for example, the early Mediterranean world and the Ancient Near East, the native states of India, Africa and Oceania, indicates that certain patterns of chronological distortion seem to emerge, sometimes telescoping but more often lengthening the past.The former may occur through omission of usurpers, however defined, periods of chaos or foreign domination, or by the personification of an entire epoch by a founding folk-hero. If the reasons for artificial lengthening are obvious, the mechanisms are less so. In this respect a survey of both welldocumented cases and of orally transmitted lists can be instructive. Lengthening is often the result of euhemerism; more often subtler themes emerge. These include longer reigns in the earlier, less known period, the arranging of contemporary rulers as successive ones and, most importantly, extended father/son succession throughout the list or genealogy. This last is of direct and profound chronological importance, and its occurrence is widespread enough to be termed stereotypical. Yet it is not often recognized as aberrant, even though its documented occurrence is exceedingly rare. The consequent equation of reigns with generations will almost always result in an exaggerated conception of the antiquity of the beginning of the genealogy. Other weaknesses of orally transmitted king lists include lack of multiple reigns and dynastic changes, and suspiciously perfect rotational succession systems.Within its scope this article only attempts to hint at the origin, shape and effects of these distortions. Its main thesis is that much light can be cast on African cases of this nature through a comparative analysis drawing from a whole range of societies and sources.

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