The Romance of Thebes (Roman de Thèbes), trans. by Joan M. Ferrante and Robert W. Hanning. The French of England Translation Series (FRETS), 11. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018, ix, 365.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 432-433
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
French Translation ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Renaissance Studies ◽  
Roman De Troie ◽  
Peasant Revolt ◽  
Roman De Thebes

Much of high medieval culture was deeply influenced by the reception of classical literature, as best represented by the genre of the romans antiques, the Roman de Thèbes, the Roman d’Enéas, and the Roman de Troie. These were based, in turn, on the Thebaid of Statius (92 C.E.), Vergil’s Aeneid (after 19 B.C.E.), and the story of Troy as retold by Dares Phrygias and Dictys Cretensis (in Greek, first century C.E., lost today; in Latin, fourth century C.E. [Dictys] and sixth century C.E. respectively [Dares]). Two of the most respected medieval French scholars, Joan M. Ferrante and Robert W. Hanning, now provide new access to the Roman de Thèbe through their English translation, which they have based on the personal copy owned by Henry Despenser (1370–1406), Bishop of Norwich, well known especially for his ruthless suppression of the Peasant Revolt in 1381. This manuscript is today housed in the British Library, London, under Add. 34114, fol. 164a-226d, and it was critically edited by Francine Mora-Lebrun with a facing page modern French translation in 1995. Ms. A (Paris, BnF, fr. 375) was recently edited by Luca di Sabatino (2016), which could not be consulted here for obvious reasons. Ms. C (Paris, BnF, fr. 784) was edited by Guy Reynaud de Lage in 1966, 1968, then re-edited along with a facing-page modern French translation by Aimé Petit in 2008).

The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte- Maure: A Translation. Translated by Glyn S. Burgess, Douglas Kelly. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Gallica, 41. 486 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 394-396
Author(s):  
Raymond J. Cormier
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
British History ◽  
Geoffrey Of Monmouth ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Trojan War ◽  
Roman De Troie ◽  
History Of ◽  
Extensive Introduction ◽  
Roman De Brut ◽  
Roman De Thebes

In his Roman de Brut (1155), the Norman Robert Wace of Caen recounts the founding of Britain by Brutus of Troy to the end of legendary British history, while adapting freely the History of the Kings of Britain (1136) by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Wace’s Brut inaugurated a new genre, at least in part, commonly known as the “romances of antiquity” (romans d'antiquité). The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, dating to around 1165, is, along with the Roman de Thèbes and the Roman d’Énéas, one of the three such romances dealing with themes from antiquity. These creations initiated the subjects, plots and structures of the genre, which subsequently flowered under authors such as Chrétien de Troyes. As an account of the Trojan War, Benoît’s version of necessity deals with war and its causes, how it was fought and what its ultimate consequences were for the combatants. How to explain its success? The author chose the standard and successful poetic form of the era—octosyllabic rhyming couplets; he was fond of extended descriptions; he could easily recount the intensity of personal struggles; and, above all he was fascinated by the trials and tribulations of love, a passion that affects several prominent warriors (among them Paris and his love for Helen, and Troilus and his affection for Briseida). All these elements combined to contour this romance in which events from the High Middle Ages were presented as a likeness of the poet’s own feudal and courtly spheres. This long-awaited new translation, the first into English, is accompanied by an extensive introduction and six-page outline of the work; two appendices (on common words, and a list of known Troie manuscripts); nearly twenty pages of bibliography; plus exhaustive indices of personal and geographical names and notes. As the two senior scholars assert (p. 3), By translating Benoît’s entire poem we seek to contribute to a greater appreciation of its composition and subject-matter, and thus to make available to a modern audience what medieval readers and audiences knew and appreciated.

Phoenicia in the Roman Empire

2019 ◽  
pp. 110-124
Author(s):  
Julien Aliquot
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Order ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Traditions

This chapter traces the history of Phoenicia from the advent of Rome in Syria at the beginning of the first century bce to the foundation of the Christian empire of Byzantium in the fourth century ce. It focuses on the establishment of Roman rule and its impact on society, culture, and religion. Special attention is paid to the establishment of Roman rule and its impact on society, culture, and religion. The focus is on provincial institutions and cities, which provided a basis for the new order. However, side trails are also taken to assess the flowering of Hellenism and the revival of local traditions in the light of the Romanization of Phoenicia and its hinterland.

Finding the Enemy

2013 ◽  
pp. 473-492
Author(s):  
Frank Russell
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Border Security ◽  
First Century ◽  
Military Intelligence ◽  
Hellenistic Greece

This chapter analyzes tactical intelligence, following a division by posture: offensive and mobile, and defensive or localized. There was an increase in the use of vanguards among the Greeks after the fourth century BC and among the Romans in the first. Cavalry widely used in this role. The role of reconnaissance in border security is then evaluated. It is noted that the speculatores who accompanied the legions left the field for the office sometime in the first century AD. Greek military intelligence never became professionalized, and did not ponder the sophistication of the prototypical organizations fielded by the tyrants of Cyprus and Sicily in the fourth century. Professionalism and unit identification in intelligence came neither to the poleis nor the kingdoms of Classical or Hellenistic Greece, and came finally to the Romans at least a century after they had pervaded the legions.

Personification Allegory in the Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses

Mnemosyne ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dunstan Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
First Century ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Important Stage ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Depth And Complexity ◽  
Roman Epic ◽  
Narrative Role

AbstractThis article will show that Ovid's well-known innovations in the use of personification allegory combine closely with those of Virgil, to form a distinctive 'Augustan' phase in the development of allegory in classical literature. Both Ovid and Virgil make fictional abstractions concrete and ontologically ambiguous. Innovations common to both the Aeneid and Metamorphoses constitute an important stage in the emergence of 'compositional allegory', in the wake of the Roman adoption of Stoicising interpretative reading practices in the course of the first century BC. Both epics involve Furies as models for their major personified abstractions, both in narrative role and in concrete detail. Uniquely in and to Roman literature, Furies changed from supernatural beings into personified abstractions. This change, enabled by the semantic replacement of proper names such as Erinys or Eumenis with the word Furia ('frenzy'), produced new depth and complexity in the form and metaliterary function of personifications in Roman epic and later literary traditions.

How Christianity Parted from Judaism

Early Judaism ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 97-120
Author(s):  
Adele Reinhartz
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Christian Community

Although Jesus and his earliest followers had seen themselves as Jews, by the fourth century the Christian community perceived itself as separate. Scholars have offered various views of how that took place. Some think of Christianity as having evolved out of Judaism, while others see them as different components within the same tradition that eventually went separate ways. There is also disagreement as to when the separation took place – whether around the end of the first century as a result of Christians’ understanding of Jesus and their outreach to gentiles or as a consequence of the fourth century Christianization of the Roman empire.

Zooming In Rome, the Middle Euphrates, and Dura

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Military

Dura-Europos was a product and ultimately a victim of the interaction of Mediterranean- and Iranian-centred imperial powers in the Middle East which began with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire in the later fourth century BC. Its nucleus was established as part of the military infrastructure and communications network of the Seleucid successor-state. It was expanding into a Greekstyle polis during the second century BC, as Seleucid control was being eroded from the east by expanding Arsacid Parthian power, and threatened from the west by the emergent imperial Roman republic. From the early first century BC, the Roman and Parthian empires formally established the Upper Euphrates as the boundary between their spheres of influence, and the last remnants of the Seleucid regime in Syria were soon eliminated. Crassus’ attempt to conquer Parthia ended in disaster at Carrhae in 53 BC, halting Roman ambitions to imitate Alexander for generations. The nominal boundary on the Upper Euphrates remained, although the political situation in the Middle East remained fluid. Rome long controlled the Levant largely indirectly, through client rulers of small states, only slowly establishing directly ruled provinces with Roman governors, a process mostly following establishment of the imperial regime around the turn of the millennia. However, some client states like Nabataea still existed in AD 100 (for overviews see Millar 1993; Ball 2000; Butcher 2003; Sartre 2005). The Middle Euphrates, in what is now eastern Syria, lay outside Roman control, although it is unclear to what extent Dura and its region—part of Mesopotamia, and Parapotamia on the west bank of the river—were effectively under Arsacid control before the later first century AD. For some decades, Armenia may have been the dominant regional power (Edwell 2013, 192–5; Kaizer 2017, 70). As the Roman empire increasingly crystallized into clearly defined, directly ruled provinces, the contrast with the very different Arsacid system became starker. The ‘Parthian empire’, the core of which comprised Iran and Mesopotamia with a western royal capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, was a much looser entity (Hauser 2012).

Greco-Roman Surgical Instruments

2018 ◽  
pp. 554-590
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Bliquez
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Surgical Instruments ◽  
First Century ◽  
Bladder Stones ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Fourth Century Bce

The chapter looks at Greek and Roman surgical instruments. The survival of Greco-Roman surgical instruments falls into two divisions: tools available in Hippocratic times (fifth to fourth century bce), and instruments at the disposal of surgeons, mostly Greek, from the late Republic through the Empire (first century bce to fifth century ce). From the former, most survivals are cupping vessels from graves. The texts suggest the Hippocratic physician often created his tool on the spot or had a tool prepared for an immediate need, whereas most of an Imperial surgeon’s repertoire consisted of instruments professionally made and sold by smiths. The various kinds of instruments are described, explained, and illustrated: cupping vessels, scalpels, phlebotomes (for phlebotomy), lithotomes (for bladder stones), needles, probes, cauteries, hooks, forceps, saws, drills, chisels, files, levers, tubes, douches, specula, and abortives.

Reviving the Memory of the Apostles: Apocryphal Tradition and Travel Literature in Late Antiquity

2008 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Travel Literature ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
First Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Greco Roman

In this essay I aim to consider the association of place with apostolic personae. The imaginative worlds generated between the time of the apostles in the first century and the rise of the medieval Christian world in the seventh and eighth centuries can be seen as an integral part of what we now label ‘late antiquity’. The period of late antiquity, roughly from 300 to 600 AD (from Constantine to Mohammed), is substantively a period of consolidation and reorientation: knowledge from the ancient Greco-Roman civilizations was queried, repackaged, and disseminated; classical literature was copied, commented upon, and imitated; Roman law was collected, rearranged, and declared authoritative. What has been less studied in this period is the reception of the apostolic world as a realm of knowledge in its own right.

Whose Theology? The Promise of Cognitive Theories and the Future of a Disputed Field

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 384-402
Author(s):  
Nickolas P. Roubekas
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Theory Of Religion ◽  
Cognitive Theories ◽  
Historical Theology

AbstractWithin a general attempt to reconceptualise theology and its position in the modern university, the paper argues that the cognitive science of religion offers a great opportunity to modern theology to engage into interdisciplinary research that could be proven especially profitable to its future. By drawing examples from contemporary Greece and a religious ritual that is disputed by the official Christian Orthodox Church as well as from historical theology and the Arian controversy in the fourth century CE, I argue that Justin Barrett’s cognitive theory of religion, known as ‘Theological Correctness’, can provide to theology a useful tool in understanding the religious beliefs of everyday believers. Without discounting other methodologies, theories, and interpretations, this paper argues that there is space for cognitive theories within theological research that could only benefit theology and its future in the twenty-first century.

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