Rhetoric and Pedagogy

Author(s):  
Malcolm Heath

This chapter traces the development of rhetorical pedagogy from Homer to late antiquity. It is clear from Homer that effective public speaking was valued in archaic Greece and was seen as a teachable skill. Fifth- and early fourth-century B.C.E. sophists gradually developed formalized and theorized rhetorical pedagogy, but the evidence for their work is very limited. Isocrates and the author of the Rhetoric to Alexander build on earlier sophistic rhetoric in different ways. Evidence becomes most abundant in late antiquity, from the second century C.E. onward. Innovations in rhetorical theory and concurrent changes in the structure of pedagogical practice in this period reflect the perennial responsiveness of rhetoric as a practical discipline to its sociocultural context.

Author(s):  
Kate Cooper

Christian literature in late antiquity offered contrasting models of female sanctity, emphasizing alternately the gender ambiguity of the young woman dressed as a man, and the nuptial imagery of the bride of Christ. Three texts, the second-century Acts of Paul and Thecla, the fourth-century Letter 22 to Eustochium by Saint Jerome, and the fifth- or sixth-century Passion of Eugenia, illustrate contrasting ways of thinking about how Christian literature could allow a young woman to reinvent herself.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-172
Author(s):  
John F. Lingelbach

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.


Author(s):  
Michael Lapidge

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).


Author(s):  
Tim Whitmarsh

In the light of the findings of this book, the ‘Hellenocentric’ romances of Chariton and Xenophon look less like a point of origin for the Greek romance and more an exception against the larger backdrop of an ongoing interest in cultural blending and intermarriage. This chapter looks briefly at Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon (second century CE) and Heliodorus’s Charicleia and Theagenes (fourth century CE), reading them in terms of continuation of the intercultural themes found in earlier, Hellenistic ‘novels’.


Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-204
Author(s):  
Timothy A. Gabrielson

Since the early 1990s, ‘the parting of the ways’ has become academic shorthand, especially in anglophone scholarship, for the separation of Jews and Christians in antiquity. Often it is associated with a onetime, global break that occurred by the end of the second century, particularly over one or more theological issues. This model has been challenged as being too tidy. Other images have been offered, most notably that of ‘rival siblings’, but the ‘parting’ model remains supreme. Consensus has shifted in other ways, however. The ‘parting’, or better, ‘partings’, is now understood to be a localized, protracted, and multifaceted process that likely began in the second century and continued into or past the fourth century. It is also suggested here that the current debate covers five distinguishable topics: (1) mutual religious recognition, (2) the continued existence of ‘Jewish Christians’, (3) religious interaction, (4) social concourse, and (5) outsider classification.


2011 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 185-205
Author(s):  
Peter Thonemann

AbstractNon-orthodox Christian asceticism in Late Antiquity is known to us largely through the distorting lens of orthodox heresiology. This paper aims to reassess the character of the ascetic communities of rural Lycaonia in the fourth century a.d. in the light of the surviving funerary and ecclesiastical epigraphy, including three inscriptions published here for the first time. We are fortunate to be able to read these texts in the light of a neglected work of orthodox polemic, Amphilochius’ Against False Asceticism, the work of an embattled orthodox bishop at Iconium in the late 370s a.d. This treatise formed part of a successful campaign to stigmatize the Lycaonian ascetics as heretics, a position which was enshrined in Theodosius’ anti-heretical legislation of a.d. 381–3.


1996 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. M. Stead ◽  
N. D. Meeks

In 1960 and 1961 Ole Klindt-Jensen published two short notes about a golden statuette of a Celtic warrior, soldered to a fine brooch. He was convinced that the warrior did not belong to the brooch, and thought that they had been combined fairly recently. J. M. de Navarro added a comment to the 1961 note, concluding: ‘My impression (from photographs only) is that the brooch might date from the fourth century BC and the figure not before the latter half of the third or the second century BC, i.e. that it was added later.’ Klindt-Jensen's notes were accompanied by plates, and at the same time another photograph was published on the front cover ofCelticum, volume I. A decade later the brooch was shown at the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, and at the Hayward Gallery, London, as item no. 35 in the Early Celtic Art exhibition held in 1970. The catalogue entry was based on Klindt-Jensen's note, but no photograph was published. In the mid 1970s R. M. Rowlett prepared a paper on the authenticity of the brooch, including metal analyses and a comparison of its proportions with those of some La Tène II brooches: Rowlett considered that the figure of the warrior was contemporary with the rest of the brooch, which he accepted as an authentic antiquity. His paper was eventually published about twenty years later.


2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-566
Author(s):  
Maria Piera Candotti ◽  
Tiziana Pontillo

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.


Britannia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 313-322
Author(s):  
David Hopewell

ABSTRACTA series of projects by Gwynedd Archaeological Trust has identified two significant sites on the island of Anglesey. The first is a trading settlement on the shore of the Menai Strait which provides evidence for a hitherto unknown level of Romanisation in the remote west of the province. The second is a late first- to early second-century fortlet on the northern coast of the island that probably functioned as both a navigational aid and a point of strength at a landing place. The presence of a fourth-century watchtower on Carmel Head was also confirmed by excavation and its role in the late Roman coastal defence system is considered.


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