A Riddling Recipe?

Mnemosyne ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-615
Author(s):  
Floris Overduin
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Tone Of Voice ◽  
Detailed Interpretation

AbstractThis article provides a detailed interpretation and suggests a literary background for the brief (26 verses) elegiac recipe against colic (SH690), written by Philo of Tarsus in the first centuryAD. Although on one level it is a serious pharmacological prescription, on another level it is also a literary piece, concerned with a marked tone of voice, Homeric play, and general display ofpaideia. Particularly its play of substituting certain ingredients with mythological riddles is striking. Its appeal to both doctors and men of culture fits the intellectual pattern of the culture of the Second Sophistic. As a poetic hybrid it also plays on different genres inherited from the previous Hellenistic era. Moreover, it constitutes a telling example of the late subgenre of elegiac pharmacology, in an era in which elegiac had all but vanished from Greek literature.

The Paradox of the Easy Yoke: A Survey of χρηστός in Greek Literature and the Interpretational Implications for Matthew 11:30

2019 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-19
Author(s):  
Clark Bates
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
First Century ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Word Study ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Common ◽  
Apostolic Fathers

Matthew 11:30 could easily be considered one of the most recognizable passages of the New Testament. Many find comfort and fortitude in the words of Jesus, and warm to the idea that his ‘yoke’; is ‘easy’ and ‘burden’, ‘light’. However recognized and familiar this passage may be, it has not gone unnoticed throughout scholarship as a persistent word study in need of incessant explanation. While copious amounts of ink have been spilt discussing the nature of the ‘yoke’ in Matthew 11:30, it is the position of this article that the author of Matthew, had no intention of creating such a mystery. Rather, that the emphasis is to be found in the nature of the yoke itself and the attributive use of χρηστός in Greco-Roman literature, including that of the Greek Old Testament, and the writings of the first-century Christians. This article seeks to demonstrate that the use of χρηστός in the Matthean Gospel does not mean ‘easy’ by English standards, nor was this what the audience of this Gospel would have taken it to mean, given the common use of the term. This is accomplished through an engagement of the text and message of Matthew, followed by an examination of the word’s use in Classical Greek compositions and the Apostolic Fathers, as well as its use in the LXX and the New Testament.

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.

Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Dench
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
First Century ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Place Of Residence ◽  
Common Descent ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Literary Phenomenon

This chapter argues that certain traits associated with the Second Sophistic have attracted a disproportionate amount of scholarly attention in recent years: preoccupation with the past, Greekness, and the quirky performance of multiple identities. It emphasizes that these traits coexist with articulations of being and belonging that appeal less to early twenty-first-century sentiment, such as common descent, heredity, and “purity.” Finally, it focuses on the Second Sophistic not as a broad cultural or literary phenomenon reaching far beyond the individuals named by Philostratus, but as a group constructed by Philostratus, a variation on the proliferating contemporary groups in the Roman Empire that appealed to traditional modes of articulating being and belonging despite not being based primarily on fatherland, family descent, or place of residence.

A Sub-Christian Epistle? Appreciating 2 Peter as an Anti-Sophistic Polemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 0142064X2110481
Author(s):  
David K. Burge
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Per Se ◽  
2 Peter ◽  
The Way

Drawing from recent ancient historical, New Testament and Second-Sophistic scholarship, this article proposes that the enigmatic 2 Peter can be better understood with closer reference to anti-sophistic polemical writings. Increasing light has been shed on the sophists’ interest in wisdom, display and rhetoric in contexts such as Athens, Rome, Corinth and cities of Asia Minor in the first centuries CE. After introducing historical attempts to identify a worldview compatible with 2 Peter’s polemical response, this article (1) describes the nature of the Second Sophistic in the first century with reference to two contemporary anti-sophistic polemicists, Epictetus the Stoic and Philo the Jew, (2) highlights features of 2 Peter which resonate with contemporaneous anti-sophistic writings, beginning with 2 Pet. 1.16-21 and (3) observes the way in which the Ante-Nicene Fathers, when seeking to discredit later sophistic opposition, drew heavily from 2 Pet. 2–3. It may outrun the evidence to conclude that 2 Peter’s opponents were professional σοϕισταί‎ per se. It can be affirmed, however, that 2 Peter bears significant resemblance with first- and second-century anti-sophistic polemic and may be best understood with reference to it.

Grammar

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
P. H. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Technical Discipline ◽  
Detailed Interpretation ◽  
Academic Study

This chapter discusses grammar. The discipline of grammar is first described in detail by a Roman teacher of rhetoric, Quintilian, in the middle of the first century AD. It was divided ‘very briefly’, in his own words, into two parts. One was the knowledge of how to speak correctly (recte loquendi scientia). This part included, as he made clear, a mastery of speech as represented in writing. The other was ‘the detailed interpretation of poets’ (poetarum enarratio). It was not enough, however, to study poetry alone; other forms of literature also had to be examined thoroughly. Grammar as it is later perceived—as a technical discipline concerned with the categories and structure of a language—had emerged historically from one whose origins had lain in the academic study of literature.

scholarly journals APPIAN THE ARTIST: RHYTHMIC PROSE AND ITS LITERARY IMPLICATIONS

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 788-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.O. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
First Job

If we had no idea which parts of Greek literature in a certain period were poetry or prose, we would regard it as our first job to find out. How much of the Greek prose of the Imperial period is rhythmic has excited less attention; and yet the question should greatly affect both our reading of specific texts and our understanding of the whole literary scene. By ‘rhythmic’ prose, this article means only prose that follows the Hellenistic system of rhythm started, it is said, by Hegesias, and adopted by Cicero and by many Latin writers of the Imperial period. Estimates of how much Greek Imperial prose is rhythmic have long varied drastically. Some experts suggest that all or much artistic Greek prose in the period is rhythmic, others that what little there is fades out after the first century a.d., as part of the victory of Atticism. There has been fairly little substantial work on rhythmic prose in the first three centuries a.d. for over fifty years (more on accentual prose from the fourth). The object of this article is to investigate a large part of one author's work thoroughly, and to establish that that part is rhythmic. It will also aim to show how that conclusion should greatly affect our whole conception of the author as a writer, and our reading of his every sentence.

Catalogue Technique in Dionysius Periegetes

Ramus ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 11-31
Author(s):  
J.L. Lightfoot
Keyword(s):  
Roman Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
General Context ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Hellenistic Poetry

Dionysios gehört zu den interessantesten Problemen der griechischen Literaturgeschichte.Knaack (1905) 916.34f.Within the general context of increasing interest in Greek literature in the Roman period, interest in Dionysius the Periegete is certainly on the rise. Our knowledge of his extensive textual tradition is still expanding, and further editions are under way; the ideologies that structure his work have been explored in a series of publications by Christian Jacob (1990, 1991); and the welcome increase in the volume of publications over the last five years or so includes a collection of essays which is especially geared to one of my themes in this essay, Dionysius' relations with Hellenistic poetry and poets. Yet there are some basic aspects of his poetics that remain un-, or under-, studied. At the heart of the matter, I suggest, are two major backgrounds that need to be explored further.The first is the reception of Hellenistic poetry in the imperial period. Dionysius is a neo-Hellenistic poet. Indeed, he is so convincing a neo-Hellenistic poet that a critic as astute as Tycho Mommsen placed him in the first century BCE on the basis of a whole array of stylistic and metrical and other sorts of linguistic criteria. Dionysius' true date has been known for a century and a quarter; but we are really none the wiser about what it was that gave rise to this extraordinarily competent and convincing Hellenistic imitation. It is not only that he imitates Apollonius, Callimachus, Nicander, Aratus and others in purple passages of his own, but that so many of his techniques of composition and allusion, and—as this paper will demonstrate—his formal evocation of certain styles of writing, are thoroughly Hellenistic. So the first thing that is needed is an exploration of the various ways in which imperial writers respond to the masters of the high Hellenistic period, and their successors: is Dionysius a representative of a special and distinctive strain in imperial poetics, or is he a particular instance of something more multiform and complex?

scholarly journals Tamil, Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit: Sandalwood ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬(Σανταλόξυλο) and its Semantics in Classical Literatures

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
D Pugazhendhi
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Teak Wood ◽  
Medicinal Properties ◽  
Semantic Shift ◽  
Ancient Greek Literature

The Greek and Tamil people did sea trade from the pre-historic times. Sandalwood is seen only in Tamil land and surrounding places. It is also one of the items included in the trade. The Greek word ‘σανταλίνων’ is first mentioned in the ancient Greek works around the middle of the first century CE. The fact that the word is related to Tamil, but the etymologist did not acknowledge the same, rather they relate it to other languages. As far as its uses are concerned, it is not found in the ancient Greek literatures. One another type of wood ‘κέδρου’ cedar is also mentioned in the ancient Greek literature with the medicinal properties similar to ‘σανταλίνων’. In the same way the use of the Hebrew Biblical word ‘Almuggim -אַלְמֻגִּ֛ים’ which is the word used for sandalwood, also denotes teak wood. This shows that in these words, there are possibilities of some semantic changes such as semantic shift or broadening. Keywords: biblical word, Greek, Hebrew, Sandalwood, Tamil

Epistolography

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Owen Hodkinson
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Epistolary Novels ◽  
Letter Form

This chapter examines the genre of epistolography, which flourished and proliferated in the variety of its forms and uses in the Empire. The epistolary genre in the Second Sophistic is first briefly situated within rhetorical theory and practice, then contextualized within both earlier Greek literature and developments in Latin letters. The variety of Greek literary uses of the letter form in the Second Sophistic is then illustrated with a series of subgenres and examples. Surveyed are collections of fictional and pseudonymous letters (including Aelian, Alciphron, Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana), epistolary novels (Chion of Heraclea, Themistocles), shorter narratives in letter form, and letters embedded in longer narratives (including the Greek novels and Lucian’s Verae Historiae).

Greek History

2013 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-330
Author(s):  
Kostas Vlassopoulos
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Greek History ◽  
Nicolaus Of Damascus ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Significant Attention

The study of ethnicity and the interaction between cultures has been a popular topic with ancient historians recently, and this trend continues. While the interconnection between Greek identity and culture and Roman power during the Second Sophistic has attracted significant attention in the last few decades, the earlier periods have remained relatively unexamined. This is now nicely redressed by an important collection of essays edited by Thomas Schmitz and Nicolas Wiater, which focuses on the first century bce. One main theme of the volume concerns the interaction between Greek and Roman identities, and the ways in which authors reinterpret and destabilize them: the interaction between Rome and Greek classicism (Dihle), the rethinking of Greek and Roman cultures and identities in Dionysius (Wiater), the impact of Rome on its resident Greek authors (Hibder), the interpretatio graeca of Augustus by Nicolaus of Damascus (Pausch), the Roman context of Mytilenean intellectuals and their self-fashioning (Bowie), and Greek poets and their Roman patrons (Whitmarsh). A second main theme concerns the interaction with the Greek past and its classics, and the extent to which the classicist approaches of the Second Sophistic are already present in the first century. This is variously explored, from Dionysius’ exploration of stylistic models (Fox), Diodorus’ image of Athens (Schmitz), the tendency to systematization in various intellectual fields on the basis of the classics (Most), the grammarians’ attitude to Greek dialect (Hintzen), and the Homeric quotations in Chariton (Baumbach), to the (re)building projects in Athens (Borg).

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