Greek

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Morales
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Romance Novels ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
The Third ◽  
Critical Issues

This article offers an overview of Greek literature of the Roman Empire. The first section discusses ways in which Greek writing responds to Roman rule. This section ranges widely and takes snapshots from six writers—Artemidorus, Plutarch, Lucian, Basil of Caesarea, Galen, and Josephus—from which to show the complexities involved in thinking about Greek literature and its attendant critical issues, including how we might read ‘resistance’ and how Hellenisms relate to Christianities, and Jewish and other identities. The second section focuses more closely on Greek poetry and pantomime, and the third section on the romance novels and Greek prose fiction, including a brief look at a couple of texts that possibly show Egyptian influences.

Changing Fashions in Ancient Drama–II

1960 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-154
Author(s):  
Edna M. Hooker
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Native Form ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
The Third ◽  
Greek Comedy ◽  
Didactic Poetry ◽  
Variety Show ◽  
New Comedy

This, then, was the state of the theatre when the Romans first came into direct contact with the Greeks in the middle of the third century: revivals of fifth-century melodramas and romantic tragedies, especially those of Euripides, and revivals of the New Comedy of the late fourth and early third centuries, especially the plays of Menander, held the stage. The Romans themselves had nothing quite like this in their own popular entertainment. They had stage-shows of a sort, of course. Their own native form of entertainment was the satura, which seems to have been some sort of variety show; and they had imported Etruscan ludi, consisting mainly of music and dancing, and the Campanian Atellane farce, which was something rather similar to a harlequinade. The Greek theatre, which at this period was outwardly more splendid than ever before, was to the Romans an impressive and fascinating novelty; and, when Livius Andronicus in 240 B.c. translated a Greek tragedy and a Greek comedy for the Roman stage, he achieved an immediate success and started a vogue for drama in the Greek style at Rome which ousted the old satura from the stage. It is sometimes regarded as a reflection on Roman taste that the Roman theatre in the third and second centuries B.c. should have concentrated on Euripidean melodrama and Menandrean New Comedy to the exclusion of the greater works of the fifth-century Greek dramatists. But this is an unjustified conclusion. The choice of models represents not the taste of the Romans—for in fact Greek-style drama failed to achieve lasting popularity at Rome—but that of the contemporary Greek theatre, which was the only guide that the Romans had at that date. At this period Rome imitated the literature which was currently fashionable in the Greek world. It was not until the time of Catullus and the ‘learned’ poets that the Romans, following the lead of the Alexandrine scholars, made a systematic study of Greek literature. It was only then that the Romans made the acquaintance of those works which had become the province of the scholar, and so were able to draw upon the whole range of Greek literature for their models. The inspiration derived from studying Greek poetry of the finest periods was to lead to great developments in lyric and elegy and in pastoral and didactic poetry, but it came too late for drama, which was by that time fast disappearing from the Roman theatre.

Plutarch's Rhythmic Prose

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Prose Rhythm ◽  
First Time

Greek literature is divided, like many literatures, into poetry and prose; but in the earlier Roman Empire, 31 BC to AD 300, much Greek (and Latin) prose was written in one organized rhythmic system. Whether most, or hardly any, Greek prose adopted this patterning has been entirely unclear; this book for the first time adequately establishes an answer. It then seeks to get deeper into the nature of prose-rhythm through one of the greatest Imperial works, Plutarch’s Lives. All its phrases, almost 100,000, have been scanned rhythmically. Prose-rhythm is revealed as a means of expression, which draws attention to words and word-groups. (Online readings are offered too.) Some passages in the Lives pack rhythms together more closely than others; the book looks especially at rhythmically dense passages. These do not occur randomly; they attract attention to themselves, and are marked out as climactic in the narrative, or as in other ways of highlighted significance. Comparison emerges as crucial to the Lives on many levels. Much of the book closely discusses particular dense moments, in commentary form, to show how much rhythm contributes to understanding, and is to be integrated with other sorts of criticism. These remarkable passages make apparent the greatness of Plutarch as a prose-writer: a side not greatly considered amid the huge resurgence of work on him. The book also analyses closely rhythmic and unrhythmic passages from three Greek novelists. Rhythm illuminates both a supreme Greek writer, Plutarch, and three prolific centuries of Greek literary history.

Explaining the Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire: The Evidence of Epitaphs

1990 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Over Time

It is now notorious that the production of inscriptions in the Roman Empire was not constant over time, but rose over the first and second centuries A.D. and fell in the third. Ramsay MacMullen pointed this out more than five years ago, with conclusions more cautionary than explanatory: ‘history is not being written in the right way’, he said, for historians have deduced Rome's decline from evidence that–since it appears only epigraphically–has merely disappeared for its own reasons, or have sought general explanations of decline in theories political, economic, or even demographic in nature, none of which can, in turn, explain the disappearance of epigraphy itself. Why this epigraphic habit rose and fell MacMullen left open to question, although he did postulate control by a ‘sense of audience’. The purpose of this paper is to propose that this ‘sense of audience’ was not generalized or generic, but depended on a belief in the value of romanization, of which (as noted but not explained by MacMullen's article) the epigraphic habit is also a rough indicator. Epitaphs constitute the bulk of all provincial inscriptions and in form and number are (generally speaking) the consequence of a provincial imitation of characteristically Roman practices, an imitation that depended on the belief that Roman legal status and style were important, and that may indeed have ultimately depended, at least in North Africa, on the acquisition or prior possession of that status. Such status-based motivations for erecting an epitaph help to explain not only the chronological distribution of epitaphs but also the differences in the type and distribution of epitaphs in the western and eastern halves of the empire. They will be used here moreover to suggest an explanation for the epigraphic habit as a whole.

scholarly journals The Making of a Canon: Impact of the Old Testament Scriptures in the Christian Canon Development

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
Kwaku Boamah
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Linear Process ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Christian Formation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Church

The formation of the Christian canon was not a one day venture. Some scholars maintain it spanned from the first up to about the fourth centuries. This paper has three main parts: the first draws a linear process of canon generation, beginning from text to scripture and possibly becoming canonical. The second focuses on the creation of the Christian canon by exploring the stages and the implications of naming the canon as `Testaments`. At the heart of the study is a consideration of the use and inclusion or exclusion of the Jewish scripture by Christians as discussed by a heretic (Marcion) and three Anti-heretics (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian) in the 2nd and/or 3rd centuries of the Roman Empire. The third part takes an example of a modern church (Church of Christ) whose reception to the Old Testament is one of skepticism. Furthermore, the level of usage of the Old Testament by the Church of Christ is key for the thesis of this paper. It is, therefore, important to assess a possible relationship between Marcion and the Church of Christ. Historical, theological and an interview are employed to explore these developments. The paper concludes that by the naming of the Christian canon and inclusion of the Jewish scriptures, the Christian identity can be described as Judeo-Christian. This description has impacted Christian formation and development a great deal from antiquity to the modern era. Marcion and his followers did not take this lightly in the first four centuries of the Christian history. On the other hand, in the nineteenth century the Church of Christ seemingly follows this example in antiquity on including the Old Testament as part of the Christian canon.

scholarly journals Jeden z herezjarchów? Przedstawienia ikonograficzne Mahometa w rękopisie Рнб, f.IV.151 w kontekście staroruskich narracji na jego temat

Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 449-469
Author(s):  
Zofia Brzozowska
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Extensive Sequence ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
The Third ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Identical Manner ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ivan The Terrible

The РНБ, F.IV.151 manuscript is the third volume of a richly illustrated his­toriographical compilation (so-called Лицевой летописный свод – Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible), which was prepared in one copy for tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in 1568-1576 and represents the development of the Russian state on the broad background of universal history. The aforementioned manuscript, which contains a description of the history of the Roman Empire and then the Byzantine Empire between the seventies of the 1st century A.D and 919, includes also an extensive sequence devoted to Muhammad (Ѡ Бохмите еретицѣ), derived from the Old Church Slavonic translation of the chronicle by George the Monk (Hamartolus). It is accompanied by two miniatures showing the representation of the founder of Islam. He was shown in an almost identical manner as the creators of earlier heterodox trends, such as Arius or Nestorius. These images therefore become a part of the tendency to perceive Muhammad as a heresiarch, a false pro­phet, and the religion he created as one of the heresies within Christianity, which is also typical of the Old Russian literature.

Vegetation of Australian Riverine Landscapes

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Plant Communities ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
The Third ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Riverine Vegetation ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
First Time ◽  
Conservation And Management ◽  
Riverine Landscapes

Vegetation communities in Australia's riverine landscapes are ecologically, economically and culturally significant. They are also among the most threatened ecosystems on the continent and have been dramatically altered as a result of human activities and climate change. Vegetation of Australian Riverine Landscapes brings together, for the first time, the results of the substantial amount of research that has been conducted over the last few decades into the biology, ecology and management of these important plant communities in Australia. The book is divided into four sections. The first section provides context with respect to the spatial and temporal dimensions of riverine landscapes in Australia. The second section examines key groups of riverine plants, while the third section provides an overview of riverine vegetation in five major regions of Australia, including patterns, significant threats and management. The final section explores critical issues associated with the conservation and management of riverine plants and vegetation, including water management, salinity, fire and restoration. Vegetation of Australian Riverine Landscapes highlights the incredible diversity and dynamic nature of riverine vegetation across Australia, and will be an excellent reference for researchers, academics and environmental consultants.

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