scholarly journals Greek High Culture in Hellenistic and Early Imperial Bithynia

Mnemosyne ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-112
Author(s):  
Ewen Bowie

Abstract The article attempts to set out evidence for various forms of Greek high culture in Bithynia from the fifth century BC to the middle of the third century AD, taking as a cut-off point the tetrarchic period in which Diocletian’s choice of Nicomedia as a capital had a marked impact on its and other Bithynian cities’ cultural life. The preliminary prosopography lists representatives of Greek culture by city, subdividing into the categories doctor, grammaticus, historian, philosopher, poet, rhetor or sophist, and scholar (with a sprinkling of other performers). Only Nicaea, with 30 names, makes a strong and persistent showing; of other cities only Nicomedia musters more than 10 names, though Prusa and Prusias ad mare produce several doctors. Prusias ad Hypium, by contrast, can boast only a single philosopher, perhaps a rhetor who moved to Nicaea, and a visiting tragic performer.

1990 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 553-557
Author(s):  
M. L. West

In CQ 20 (1970), 277–87, 1 argued for dating Corinna to the third century B.C. In my Greek Metre (1982), p. 141, I continued to assume this date, observing that not everyone accepted it but that I knew of no attempt to answer my arguments. I must confess to having overlooked at least one such attempt, by A. Allen in CJ 68 (1972/3), 26–8; and now M. Davies has mounted another in SIFC 81 (1988), 186–94, largely repeating Allen's points but with some new touches. Allen upholds the traditional fifth-century date. Davies has yet to come to a decision, but meanwhile he is eager to discredit what he regards as an unsatisfactory case for a Hellenistic dating.


1976 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Cunliffe

SummaryThe results of five seasons of excavation (1971–5) are summarized. A continuous strip 30–40 m. wide extending across the centre of the fort from one side to the other was completely excavated revealing pits, gullies, circular stake-built houses, rectangular buildings, and 2-, 4-, and 6-post structures, belonging to the period from the sixth to the end of the second century B.C. The types of structures are discussed. A sequence of development, based largely upon the stratification preserved behind the ramparts, is presented: in the sixth–fifth century the hill was occupied by small four-post ‘granaries’ possibly enclosed by a palisade. The first hill-fort rampart was built in the fifth century protecting houses, an area of storage pits, and a zone of 4-and 6-post buildings laid out in rows along streets. The rampart was heightened in the third century, after which pits continued to be dug and rows of circular houses were built. About 100 B.C. rectangular buildings, possibly of a religious nature, were erected, after which the site was virtually abandoned. Social and economic matters are considered. The excavation will continue.


Author(s):  
Andrew Chittick

Chapter 10, “The Buddhist Repertoire, Part 1: The Era of Pluralist Patronage,” is the first half of the third study of various repertoires of political legitimation. This chapter focuses on the development of Buddhist institutions and historiography in the fifth century, a period of pluralist patronage under the banner of Sinitic universalism. The Buddhist repertoire in maritime diplomatic relations with South Seas regimes proved an important staging ground for the ruler’s performance as a cakravartin, or Buddhist universal ruler, as well as a conduit for Buddhist expertise. By the end of the fifth century, Jiankang elites had developed Buddhist legends and practices that asserted that the Jiankang regime’s legitimacy derived, not from the Han Empire, but from its direct inheritance of legitimacy from the cakravartin Asoka, who had ruled in northern India in the third century BCE. This set the stage for the striking developments of the sixth century.


2017 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Corke-Webster

In 1967 Alan Cameron published a landmark article in this journal, ‘The fate of Pliny'sLettersin the late Empire’. Opposing the traditional thesis that the letters of Pliny the Younger were only rediscovered in the mid to late fifth century by Sidonius Apollinaris, Cameron proposed that closer attention be paid to the faint but clear traces of the letters in the third and fourth centuries. On the basis of well-observed intertextual correspondences, Cameron proposed that Pliny's letters were being read by the end of the fourth century at the latest. That article now seems the vanguard of a rise in scholarly interest in Pliny's late-antique reception. But Cameron also noted the explicit attention given to the letters by two earlier commentators—Tertullian of Carthage, in the late second to early third century, and Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early fourth. The use of Pliny in these two earliest commentators, in stark contrast to their later successors, has received almost no subsequent attention.


1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. T. Salmon

One of the most recent writers on the early history of Rome has shown that the framework of the traditional story is perhaps to be trusted, even though there are many details, inconsistent and self-contradictory, which are obviously to be rejected. In view of this fact, it might be worth while to reconsider the Coriolanus story, the prevailing opinion concerning which is that vouchsafed by Mommsen many years ago: ‘die Erzählung ist ein spät, in die Annalen eingefügtes, darum in alien Stücken denselben ungleichartiges und widersprechendes Einschiebsel.’ The reasons for arriving at such an opinion are sufficiently obvious to warrant their receiving but the barest recital. First, it is incredible that the Volsci would either choose a renegade Roman to be their general, or, even if they did, allow him at the last minute to rob them of the fruits of victory. Secondly, inconsistencies in the version of the story which we possess induce us to suspect its historicity; for example, Dionysius of Syracuse is made to send corn to the starving Romans'—yet Dionysius lived some hundred years later; a youthful Coriolanus is represented as having considerable influence in the senate—yet in those early days the senate was essentially a gathering of venerable men; the Roman populace learns immediately the gist of Coriolanus' remarks in the senate—yet senate meetings were held in secret; Volsci are allowed to attend the ‘ludi’ and to meet at the Spring of Ferentina—yet in the fifth century none but Latini could do this; the Roman Marcius is given an honorific cognomen, Coriolanus, because of his behaviour at the capture of Corioli—yet such cognomina were not granted until the third century or even later and even then only to the general and not to the subordinate; the plebs is represented as wielding great power in the assembly1—yet we know that in the fifth century it did nothing of the kind.


1911 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 56-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. F. Hill

With but two exceptions, no trace now remains of the shrines with which this paper deals, or at least no trace has been revealed by excavation. Practically the sole record of these buildings is to be found on the coins struck in the district during the period of the Roman Empire, and more especially during the third century of our era. The earlier coins, from the beginning of the coinage towards the end of the fifth century B.C., tell us something about the cults, but little of their furniture. But in the Roman age, especially during the time of the family of Severus and Elagabalus, there was a considerable outburst of coinage, which, in its types, reveals certain details interesting to the student of the fringe of Greek and Roman culture.The evidence thus provided is necessarily disjointed, and concerns only the external, official aspects of the Phoenician religion. The inner truth of these things, it is safe to say, is hidden for ever: even the development from the primitive religion to the weird syncretistic systems of the Roman age is hopelessly obscure. One can only see dimly what was the state of things during the period illustrated by the monuments.


1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rankin

The Christological doctrine of the “communicatio idiomatum” requires that whatever is predicated of one nature of Christ — human or divine — may be predicated of either. It was a major feature of the thought of Cyril of Alexandria and the Alexandrian school generally but denied by most of the Antiochene school. It was accepted in a restricted sense by Leo of Rome but largely ignored in the documents of the mid-fifth century Council of Chalcedon. It appears nowhere in that council's Definition of Faith. This paper suggests that an early form of the doctrine is evident in the works of Tertullian of Carthage, writing in the early years of the third century. Whether Tertullian understood the full, logical implications of what he wrote in relation to the “communicatio”, however, cannot be said with any certainty.


1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. L. West

In the controversy over the date of Corinna, the following points may be taken as agreed:1. An edition was made in Boeotia about the end of the third or beginning of the second century B.C.2. The texts of Corinna current in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods were all descended from that Boeotian edition.3. Before its dissemination, Corinna was unknown in Greece at large. If she wrote at an earlier period, she must have been remembered only locally.The difference between Boeotian spelling of the fifth century and that of the fourth is very great: but the difference in this respect between the mid-fourth century and the late third or early second is comparatively slight. It is therefore tenable that whereas there would be a good reason for the re-spelling of fifth-century Boeotian into the later convention of any period, there would be no obvious or adequate reason for re-spelling Boeotian of the fourth century into the orthography of the third, or that of the third into that of the second. Even those features of fourth-century spelling which have ceased to preponderate are by no means unknown or even uncommon at the end of the third century.


2002 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 57-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mackensen

AbstractA central Tunisian red slip ware lamp from Sabratha, published by D. M. Bailey in 1994, should be classified as Type Salomonson I/Atlante I. Its discus decoration is a personification of Autumn, a standing female figure with a basket of fruit as a seasonal attribute and a Cupid (Eros) sitting on it. The prototype of the moulded decoration motif appears as an appliqué on a Hayes 171 el-Aouja sigillata jug of C1 quality. The lamp, which probably dates from the third quarter of the third century or the late third century AD, was subjected to chemical analysis and comparison with recently published reference groups from central Tunisian pottery-making centres showed that it was made at the central Tunisian fine-ware potteries at Henchir el Guellal near Djilma. A/D and C1-C4 sigillata as well as Type Atlante IV A, VI B, VII A1, VII A2 and VIII C1a lamps were produced there from about the second quarter of the third century until the mid fifth century AD.


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