"Words Flowing Like Gold Fringes" An Anonymous Letter-Writer of the Sixth Century Eucheria of Marseilles

2013 ◽  
pp. 146-154
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
Letter Writer

Late Antique Letter Collections

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Letter Writer ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Letter Collection ◽  
Latin Letter

This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300-600 C.E.). Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, it illustrates how letter collections advertised an image of the letter writer and introduces the social and textual histories of each collection. Nearly every chapter focuses on the letter collection of a different late ancient author—from the famous (or even infamous) to the obscure—and investigates its particular issues of content, arrangement, and publication context. On the whole, the volume reveals how late antique letter collections operated as a discrete literary genre with its own conventions, transmission processes, and self-presentational agendas while offering new approaches to interpret both larger letter collections and the individual letters contained within them. Each chapter contributes to a broad argument that scholars should read letter collections as they do representatives of other late antique literary genres, as single texts made up of individual components, with larger thematic and literary characteristics that are as important as those of their component parts.

A “Roman” Wedding in Vandal Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-132
Author(s):  
Raphael Schwitter
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
Elite Culture ◽  
Hybrid Character

The Epithalamium Fridi is a sixth-century Virgilian cento that commemorates the marriage of the Vandal noble Fridus with his unnamed bride. Its author, the African poet Luxurius, engages in versatile poetic play fusing Virgil with multiple epithalamial models such as Statius, Claudian, and Ausonius. Through the dynamics of triangular intertextuality the centonist is able to strengthen the wedding poem's generic bonds and to connect himself and his work firmly to the classical Roman tradition. At the same time, echoes of distinctive African idiosyncrasies as prefigured by Dracontius highlight the hybrid character of sixth-century Romano-Vandal elite culture and its celebration of what appears to be a distinctive African Romanness.

THE HIMYARITE KINGDOM ON THE EVE OF AND AFTER THE ETHIOPIAN DOMINANCE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY A.D. IN THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. ARETHAS AND HIS COMPANIONS AND IN THE ACTS OF ST. GREGENTIUS

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 678-700
Author(s):  
V Christides
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Present Author ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
South Arabia ◽  
The Social ◽  
Preliminary Study

Based on two important hagiographical works written in Greek, the Martyrdom of St. Arethas and his companions and the Acts of St. Gregentius, the aim of this paper is to continue my preliminary study of the countries around the Red Sea in pre-Islamic times, especially in the sixth century A.D. The most valuable information in the Martyrdom concerns the hazardous voyage of the Ethiopian army from the main port of Adulis across the Red Sea to South Arabia (ca 525 A.D.). This work illuminates aspects of that expedition which do not appear in such detail in any other source. In addition, it describes the ports of the Red Sea in the sixth century, i.e., Klysma, Bereniki, Adulis, etc., corroborating the finds of archaeology and epigraphy. Concerning the controversial Acts of St. Gregentius, the present author has tried to discuss only some vital information reflecting the social structure of South Arabia during its Ethiopian occupation until the Persian conquest of it (ca 525 A.D. – ca 570 A.D.), and attempted to trace the origin of just one law (the treatment of animals) among those supposedly imposed on the Himyarites by the so-called archbishop Gregentius.

Inventing Synagogue Conversion

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-416
Author(s):  
Shira L. Lander
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Building Structures ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Space Transformation

Historians of the ancient synagogue often use the term “conversion” to describe any kind of adaptation of a building once designated as a synagogue into a church. This label oversimplifies and misconstrues complex processes, both rhetorical and architectural, that were at work in transforming the landscape of the late antique Mediterranean. I explore the dynamic of this triumphalist rhetoric and architectural strategy, showing that Christian writers meant something very specific by the term “conversion,” and that they invented the paradigm of synagogue conversion in order to interpret the changing landscape to their readers. The architectural program of replacement as a strategy for converting subject populations to Christianity emerged in the sixth century. By characterizing changes made to building structures and changes in religious belief as “conversion,” imperial policy concretized the association of sacred space transformation with the victory of Christianity over Judaism and paganism.

A Historiographical Interlude

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Teubner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The ‘Historiographical Interlude’ presents a brief overview of the cultural, social, and political changes that occur between Augustine’s death in 430 CE and Boethius’ earliest theological writings (c.501 CE). When Augustine, Boethius, and Benedict are treated together in one unified analysis, several historiographical challenges emerge. This Interlude addresses several of these challenges and argues that trends within late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship established some unfounded interpretive biases. In particular, this section will discuss the contributions of Adolf von Harnack and Henri Irénée Marrou, focusing on how they contributed, in diverse ways, to the neglect of sixth-century Italy as a significant geographical site in the development of the Augustinian tradition.

The East-Syriac Reception of Evagrius’s Gnostic Chapters

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Scully
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Comparison ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The Future

The first chapter demonstrates that even though Isaac quotes Evagrius throughout much of his writing, Isaac does not adopt Evagrius’s eschatological framework. In order to reach this conclusion, this chapter conducts a detailed comparison of two Syriac translations of the Gnostic Chapters, which is the Evagrian text that Isaac quotes most often. While the sixth-century Syriac version of the Gnostic Chapters includes a detailed eschatological consideration of the human soul in the future world, the fifth-century Syriac version is void of any distinctive eschatological framework. Since Isaac only used the fifth-century Syriac version of the Gnostic Chapters, he cannot have derived his eschatological framework from Evagrius. Rather, following Babai the Great, who established a framework for interpreting the fifth-century Syriac version of the Gnostic Chapters, Isaac interprets Evagrius’s Gnostic Chapters as a work describing the journey of asceticism.

Ancient Approaches to Letter-Writing and the Configuration of Communities through Epistles

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thorsten Fögen
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Interpersonal Relationship ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Pliny The Younger ◽  
The Social ◽  
Letter Writer

The chapter explores reflections on the practice of letter-writing, with equal attention to instructional handbooks (esp. Demetrius’ Περὶ ἑρμηνείας‎, Iulius Victor’s Rhetorica, Pseudo-Demetrius’ Τύποι ἐπιστολικοί‎, Pseudo-Libanius’ Ἐπιστολιμαῖοι χαρακτῆρες‎, and Erasmus of Rotterdam’s De conscribendis epistolis) and the meta-generic statements that letter-writers routinely embed in their correspondence (with a special focus on Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, and Pliny the Younger). In both types of sources, what one might call the social dimension of style registers as a primary concern: in order for the letter to fulfil its purpose, namely to generate a special bond between sender and recipient, the chosen idiolect has to be ‘appropriate’ (πρέπον‎/aptum) to the interpersonal relationship and its specific circumstances and exigencies. Shared stylistic values and the willingness of the letter-writer to adjust his character to that of the recipient generate a sense of community between the correspondents.

Secular Monograms, Social Status, and Authority in the Late Roman World and Early Byzantium

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Noble Identity ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines the use of monograms as graphic signs of imperial authority in the late Roman and early Byzantine empire, from its appropriation on imperial coinage in the mid-fifth century to its employment in other material media in the following centuries. It also overviews the use of monograms by imperial officials and aristocrats as visible signs of social power and noble identity on mass-produced objects, dress accessories, and luxury items. The concluding section discusses a new social function for late antique monograms as visible tokens of a new Christian paideia and of elevated social status, related to ennobling calligraphic skills. This transformation of monograms into an attribute of visual Christian culture became especially apparent in sixth-century Byzantium, with the cruciform monograms appearing in the second quarter of the sixth century and becoming a default monogrammatic form from the seventh century onwards.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document