Atticism and Asianism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Kim
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Positive Light

This chapter treats two imperial Greek phenomena that have often been paired, usually in opposition: Atticism and Asianism. It first describes the theory, practice, and development of Atticism, the attempt by imperial Greeks to write in the language of the fifth and fourth century bce, treating its stylistic and grammatical variants and outlining its relation to imperial classicism. The second part treats the so-called “Asian” prose style associated primarily with the Hellenistic writer Hegesias of Magnesia and reminiscent of Gorgias and the first sophistic. The term itself is not current in the Second Sophistic, but the chapter argues that the style and aesthetic to which it refers are not only present in the work of many writers, but are also portrayed in a positive light by Philostratus. The tension between the classicizing tendencies of Atticism and the unclassical flavor of Asianism is an essential component of imperial Greek culture.

V. The Second Sophistic and Imperial Greek Literature

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 74-89
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Roman Greece ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

This book has focused so far upon the extraordinary popularity of epideictic oratory in the first three centuries of the Roman empire, the ‘Second Sophistic’ in Philostratus’ sense (notwithstanding its distant roots in the fourth century BCE). We have seen that these declamations were performance pieces, and that issues of identity were explored through the observation of the sophist’s body; that language and style were heavily theorized, but also highly experimental; and that the interpretation of these ingenious, mobile texts demands considerable resourcefulness and attentiveness. What I want to explore in this final chapter is the points of intersection between these aspects of sophistic literature and the wider literary culture of Roman Greece. I shall focus particularly on two areas, which are central to both oratorical declamation and wider literary culture: ‘the self and exotic narrative.

The Greek Impact in Asia Minor 400–250 BCE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Political Objective ◽  
The Impact

Until the end of the fourth century BCE the impact of Greek culture in Asia Minor was limited. Lykians, Karians, and Lydians offered alternatives to Hellenism and preserved their own languages until the end of the fourth century BCE. However, by 250 BCE these Anatolian languages ceased to be used in public or private documents, and polis organization became normative. After the overthrow of the Persian Empire the autonomy of Greek cities became the highest political objective. Greek civic decrees in the early Hellenistic period emphasized that democratic legitimacy depended on quorate citizen votes, the Greek language became the only medium for official public communication, and the native populations maintained their identity and independence by adopting polis organization. Between 400 and 250 BCE these populations did not merely absorb Greek cultural influence but underwent the encompassing experience of becoming Greek.

Prose versus Poetry in Early Greek Theories of Style

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Graff
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Acceptable Level ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Rhetorical Performance ◽  
Poetic Style

Abstract The rise of prose in Greece has been linked to broader cultural and intellectual developments under way in the classical period. Prose has also been characterized as challenging poetry's traditional status as the privileged expression of the culture. Yet throughout the classical period and beyond, poetry was still regularly invoked as the yardstick by which innovation was measured. This paper investigates how poetry figures in the earliest accounts of prose style. Focusing on Isocrates, Alcidamas, and Aristotle, it argues that although each author distinguishes between the styles of prose and poetry, none is able to sustain the distinction consistently. The criteria for what constitutes an acceptable level of poeticality in prose were unstable. The diverse conceptions of poetic style were tied to intellectual polemics and professional rivalries of the early- to mid-fourth century bce and reflect competing aims and ideals for rhetorical performance in prose.

Hesiod and Comedy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Cultural Currency ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

Comic dramas, attested as early as the later sixth century bce in Sicily and from ca. 486 bce in Attica, reflect familiarity with Hesiodic poetry from the time our actual documentation begins in the 470s for Sicily and 430s for Attica and into the mid-fourth century bce. Comic poets engaged with Hesiodic poetry at the level of specific allusion or echo and (more frequently) with Hesiodic stories, thought, themes, ideas, and style, now common cultural currency. They also engaged with the poet and his poetic persona, whether bracketed with Homer as a great cultural authority, distinguished as the anti-Homer in subjects or style, or showcased as an emblematic persona of poet and (didactic) sage. Aristophanes, for one, adopted elements of the Hesiodic persona in fashioning his own.

Plato’s Hesiods

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Folch
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
The Status

This chapter surveys Hesiodic reception in fourth-century bce prose, with emphasis on Plato and especially the Laws. Passages of the Laws are read in context and used to illuminate the status of Hesiodic poetry in the fourth century. Topics discussed include rhapsodic performance, Hesiod’s relationship to Homer, study of Hesiodic poetry in schools, the fourth-century manuscript tradition, citation of Hesiod’s poems in conversation and Athenian courtrooms, and the politics of Hesiodic quotation. Whether understood as part of the rhapsode’s canon, a gnomic poet, a proto-sophist or proto-philosopher, or an allegorist, Hesiod remained a dynamic site for the production of the philosophical, literary, and political debates that animated fourth-century prose.

Rhetors at the wedding

1979 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 104-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
High Class ◽  
Main Motive ◽  
Greek Rhetoric ◽  
Early Byzantine

In Lucian's Symposium, one of the wedding guests is a philosopher and another is a grammatikos. The grammatikos provides a bad elegiac epithalamium; the philosopher, who is called Ion, improves the occasion with a speech in which he declares that pederasty offers the best way of life, and the system of communal wives, as recommended in Plato's Republic, is the next best thing.This fantasy, of course, tells us nothing about what went on at weddings. Lucian's main motive is literary parody, of Plutarch's Erotikos or something of the kind. But it may serve to recall something of which we have evidence enough in Greek rhetoric, namely the practice of delivering speeches of some literary pretention at high-class weddings. The educated classes of the cities of the eastern provinces evidently cherished this habit: a display of culture, as well as of wealth, was admired, and elaborate orations took their place, alongside abundance of food and wine, music and song, elaborately decorated bridal chambers and beds, as concomitants of a wedding that was to do both families credit. This is true of the period of the ‘Second Sophistic’, and of its fourth-century and early Byzantine continuations. How far the practice was common before, say, the Antonine age is much less clear.

scholarly journals From Commentary to paribhāṣās: Kātyāyana and Patañjali vis-à-vis Vyāḍi

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-566
Author(s):  
Maria Piera Candotti ◽  
Tiziana Pontillo
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

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.

The Archeology of Divine Guidance in Corinth

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
John A. Jillions
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Healing Cult ◽  
Household Shrines ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Divine Guidance

This chapter looks at some of the archeological discoveries in Corinth that reflect popular attitudes toward the gods, religious experience, and divine guidance. The most prominent was the healing cult centered in the Temple of Asklepios, where interpretation of dreams was a key feature. Other sites and household shrines would have brought to mind Fortuna, family ancestors, the oracle of Delphi, and mythical stories of divine intervention with a Corinthian slant (Venus, Medea, Glauce, Bellerophon, Sisyphus, Dionysus). But for an alternative point of view, there was the tomb of Diogenes the Cynic (fourth century BCE), who settled in Corinth “to be where fools were thickest.” He was highly critical of superstitious piety and advised instead to follow the inscription at Delphi, “Know Thyself.” He concluded that oracles are deceptive not because the gods are deceitful but because human beings are incapable of properly understanding the gods.

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