Ariston of Chios (early to mid 3rd century BC)

Author(s):  
David Sedley

The Greek philosopher Ariston (alternatively Aristo), from the Aegean island of Chios, was an exceptionally independent-minded member of the early Stoic school. A pupil of the founder Zeno of Citium, he was among the most prominent philosophers working at Athens in the mid-third century bc. He concentrated on ethics, dismissing logic and physics as irrelevant. Like many contemporary philosophers, including Zeno, Ariston undoubtedly saw his own views as the ones most authentically capturing those of Socrates. Virtue he considered a unitary intellectual state, its conventional fragmentation into kinds being misleading at best. He resisted Zeno’s doctrine that nonmoral desiderata like health, although indifferent, were naturally ‘preferable’. Total indifference to them, rather than rationally choosing between them, was the true goal of life. He rejected rules of conduct – much favoured by Zeno – as founded on the same mistake of treating indifferent things as if they could be ranked in terms of intrinsic values.

1997 ◽  
Vol 117 ◽  
pp. 22-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Elsner

In this paper I shall explore the motif of travel in theLife of Apollonius of Tyana, composed by Philostratus in the first half of the third century AD and published after 217. This text, apart from its novelistic, hagiographic and apologetic features, is an exemplary portrait of an ideal life. One aspect of its appeal (rather ignored in modern scholars' keenness to assess its veracity and the extent of Philostratus' elaboration) is the metaphorical nature of much of the work's content—designed to create an ideal literary image of the Greek philosopher in the Roman empire. I examine the theme of travel (with its deep debts to ancient ethnography, pilgrimage writing and the novel) as a masterly rhetorical device on the part of Philostratus by which to establish and demonstrate the superiority of Apollonius.


Humanitas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 93-120
Author(s):  
Ehud Fathy

The asàrotos òikos or “unswept floor” is a decorative theme found in Roman mosaics. The theme depicts scraps of food along other items, as if scattered across the room’s floor. According to Pliny the theme was first created by Sosus in Pergamon. The mosaic Pliny is referring to was never discovered; however, later Roman variations on this theme were discovered in both Italy and Tunisia. This article seeks to examine the changes made to the asàrotos òikos motif when it transitions from centre to periphery and from the first to the sixth century CE. This article explores the functions and meanings the theme has held in Roman thought during the first and second century CE, the change in perception and use of the theme during the third century in the provincial Roman towns of North Africa, the influence of the theme on Early Christian art – both in style and iconography, and the new meanings possibly assigned to the theme upon its later use in a Byzantine basilica.


2016 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastiana Nervegna
Keyword(s):  

In his biography of Polemon, head of the Academy from 313 to 269, Diogenes Laertius comments on Polemon's fondness for Sophocles after detailing Polemon's relationship with his predecessor, Xenocrates (4.19–20): ἐῴκει δὴ ὁ Πολέμων κατὰ πάντα ἐζηλωκέναι τὸν Ξενοκράτην· καὶ ἐρασθῆναι αὐτοῦ φησιν Ἀρίστιππος ἐν τῷ τετάρτῳ Περὶ παλαιᾶς τρυφῆς. ἀεὶ γοῦν ἐμέμνητο ὁ Πολέμων αὐτοῦ, τήν τ' ἀκακίαν καὶ τὸν αὐχμὸν ἐνεδέδυτο τἀνδρὸς καὶ τὸ βάρος οἱονεὶ Δώριός τις οἰκονομία. ἦν δὲ καὶ φιλοσοφοκλῆς, καὶ μάλιστα ἐν ἐκείνοις ὅπου κατὰ τὸν κωμικὸν τὰ ποιήματα αὐτῷκύων τις ἐδόκει συμποιεῖν Μολοττικός,καὶ ἔνθα ἦν κατὰ τὸν Φρύνιχονοὐ γλύξις οὐδ' ὑπόχυτος, ἀλλὰ Πράμνιος.ἔλεγεν οὖν τὸν μὲν Ὅμηρον ἐπικὸν εἶναι Σοφοκλέα, τὸν δὲ Σοφοκλέα Ὅμηρον τραγικόν.It would seem that Polemon imitated Xenocrates in all respects. In the fourth book of On the Luxury of the Ancients, Aristippos says that he loved him. Certainly Polemon kept him in mind and, like him, wore that simple, dry dignity that is proper of the Dorian mode. He also loved Sophocles, particularly in those passages where it seemed as if, in the words of the comic poet, ‘a Molossian dog co-authored’ plays with him and where the poet was, in the words of Phrynichus, ‘neither bland nor doctored but Pramnian’. Thus he would call Homer the epic Sophocles and Sophocles the tragic Homer. The main source of Diogenes Laertius' Life of Polemon is Antigonus of Carystus, who was active in Athens and (apparently) Pergamon around the mid third century. In addition to being generally considered a reliable author, Antigonus is also chronologically close to Polemon's lifetime. He is also the source of Philodemus' History of Philosophers, a work preserved by two important papyri from Herculaneum. Philodemus, too, mentions Polemon's admiration for Sophocles, although he gives a shorter version than Diogenes Laertius: λέγεται δὲ καὶ φιλοσοφοκλῆς γενέσθαι καὶ μά || λιστα τὸ ΠΑ[.]Α[……….] | τῆς φωνῆς καὶ παρα[….] ἀποδέχεσθαι. In Dorandi's translation, Philodemus records that ‘si dice che [Polemone] fu ammiratore di Sofocle e soprattutto ne apprezzò l'audacia (del suono della lingua) e ciò che suonava duro’.


Author(s):  
Wannes Gyselinck

This paper examines the literary strategies with which Philostratusquestions, constructs and affirms a Greek universalising identity in his VitaApollonii. Despite the rapidly changing position of pagan Greeks and the riseof Christianity in the third century A.D., Philostratus constructs in hisfictionalised biography an idealised Greek identity, embodied by the protagonist,Apollonius of Tyana. This idealised identity is confirmed byApollonius' confrontation with "alterity" during his travels around the world:he finds Greece everywhere. A discussion of the issue of "Greekness" in theSecond Sophistic is revealing for Philostratus' characterisation of both hisGreek hero and the various forms of "otherness" he encounters. Perhaps themost important "other" for a Greek of the Imperial period was the Romanemperor. His dealing with the "good" emperor Vespasian is presented as aparadigmatic relationship between a Greek philosopher and a Roman emperor.His conflict, on the other hand, with the "evil" Roman emperor Domitian,whom he gloriously overcomes by his miraculous disappearance, demonstratesthe superiority of Philostratus' superhero. This ultimate divinisation of hishero reveals certain tensions between literary fiction and the historical positionof a Greek elite under Roman rule.


Author(s):  
G. D. Gagne ◽  
M. F. Miller

We recently described an artificial substrate system which could be used to optimize labeling parameters in EM immunocytochemistry (ICC). The system utilizes blocks of glutaraldehyde polymerized bovine serum albumin (BSA) into which an antigen is incorporated by a soaking procedure. The resulting antigen impregnated blocks can then be fixed and embedded as if they are pieces of tissue and the effects of fixation, embedding and other parameters on the ability of incorporated antigen to be immunocyto-chemically labeled can then be assessed. In developing this system further, we discovered that the BSA substrate can also be dried and then sectioned for immunolabeling with or without prior chemical fixation and without exposing the antigen to embedding reagents. The effects of fixation and embedding protocols can thus be evaluated separately.


1956 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore R. Sarbin ◽  
Donal S. Jones
Keyword(s):  

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