Greek Migrant Literature in the Early Roman Empire

This article argues that the concept of migrant literature, developed in postcolonial studies, is a useful tool for analysing Greek literature of the Early Roman Empire (27 BC-AD 68). The city of Rome attracted huge numbers of migrants from across the Mediterranean. Among them were many writers from Hellenized provinces like Egypt, Syria and Asia, who wrote in Greek. Leaving their native regions and travelling to Rome, they moved between cultures, responding in Greek to the new world order. Early imperial Greek writers include Strabo of Amasia, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Timagenes of Alexandria, Crinagoras of Mytilene, Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus. What connects these authors of very different origins, styles, beliefs, and literary genres is migrancy. They are migrant writers whose works are characterized by in-betweenness, ambivalence and polyphony.

Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition

This book explores the history of rhetorical thought and examines the gradual association of different aspects of rhetorical theory with two outstanding fourth-century BCE writers: Lysias and Isocrates. It highlights the parallel development of the rhetorical tradition that became understood, on the one hand, as a domain of style and persuasive speech, associated with the figure of Lysias, and, on the other, as a kind of philosophical enterprise which makes significant demands on moral and political education in antiquity, epitomized in the work of Isocrates. There are two pivotal moments in which the two rhetoricians were pitted against each other as representatives of different modes of cultural discourse: Athens in the fourth century BCE, as memorably portrayed in Plato's Phaedrus, and Rome in the first century BCE when Dionysius of Halicarnassus proposes to create from the united Lysianic and Isocratean rhetoric the foundation for the ancient rhetorical tradition.

Shakespeare’s suppliants: the ‘rotten custom’ of ancient asylum seeking in Coriolanus

Looking back to the early modern period from the current immigration crisis, this article reads Shakespeare’s tragedy Coriolanus as a tragedy of displacement and asylum seeking. It argues that just like theatrical productions today, Shakespeare might have harked back to ancient Greek tragedy as a cultural resource for coming to terms with the challenges of immigration. It traces the possible migrations between the ritual of asylum seeking that was reflected in a number of Greek tragedies including Aeschylus’s Hiketides, the earliest surviving play about refugees from the fifth century BC, and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. In this respect, this article is part of the current critical re-evaluation of the relations between Shakespeare’s work and ancient Greek tragedy. It places Coriolanus into the intertextual and intermedial hiketeia rhizome, in which one transmission line from Greek tragedy via Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Amyot, and North to Shakespeare can be corroborated by evidence, while other lines are more uncertain. Asking whether hiketeia, the ancient verbal and gestural repertoire of a stranger pleading for protection and integration into the polis, is only present as ‘rotten custom’ in Shakespeare’s tragedy, as a trace of cultural history without any considerable force in the new context, the article explores the paradoxical negotiation of displacement in Coriolanus, where both the exiled and the exiler become suppliants. It proposes that Shakespeare’s transformative reactivation of hiketeia as a theatrically, affectively, and politically potent form created an opportunity to negotiate the immigration crisis in Jacobean England.

Refiguring Odysseus’ Apologue in Plato’s Protagoras

The common 4th century B.C. view according to which Homer was regarded as a poet and a wise man, the leading and most honorable, to the point of being considered “the educator of Greece” (Pl. Resp. 606e-607a), is strongly supported by the Pla-tonic dialogues. The works of Plato are the main available source to get to know not only the great pedagogical esteem for Homer, but also the several educational traditions that used or relied on Homeric poetry in Classical Athens. We are certainly used to thinking of Socrates as standing out for contesting or blaming such customs and methods provided by rhapsodes, sophists and common people (Pl. Resp.; Ion; Hp. mi.). But conversely, he is also often depicted quoting, alluding to or remaking on Homeric passages when presenting his own views. Socrates even claims to feel a certain friendship or reverence for the poet and declares to be charmed by contemplating things through him, whom he con-siders to be amongst the few deserving to be called “philosophers” (Pl. Resp. 595b; 607c-d; Phdr. 278b-279b). The puzzling twofold nature of the Socratic attitude towards Homer, coupled with the fact that Plato would become a figure as honored as the poet was, led ancient literary criticism to focus on the Platonic use and sharing of material and techniques proper to Homeric poetry. Works like those of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Maximus of Tyre, Longinus and above all Proclus, not only pointed out the philosopher’s debt to the poet, but even consid-ered him to be an admirer of the Homeric genius unlike anyone else, and whose emulation basically attempted to reach and out-perform the pedagogical power that the legendary poet had (Dion. Hal. Pomp. I, 13; Max. Tyr. Or. 26; [Longinus]; Subl. XIII, 2-3; Procl., In R. VI, 163.13-164.7; 202.7-205.23). With an analogous spirit, studies of contemporary Platonists suggest that the dialogues were shaped using the Homeric text, especially the Odyssey, as a template, and making Socrates ap-pear as going through equivalent experiences to those of Odys-seus’ “νόστος”. With respect to Protagoras, previous attempts focused on explicit references to books X and XI, placing the dispute with the sophist and the events at Callias’ house in the symbolic context of Odysseus’ encounter with Circe and the fol-lowing journey into the underworld. I attempt to bring that read-ing one step further, paying special attention to the narrated character and the dramatic context for the singing of those epi-sodes and the parallel ones in Protagoras. In first place, I consider the whole dialogue refiguring the epi-sode in the Odyssey that works as a dramatic frame for the sing-ing of Odysseus’ past adventures, the arrival at Phaeacia and the reception at Alcinous’ court. I regard Odysseus’ need to sing the Apologue as a call for hospitality to secure a safe passage home, working as a pattern for Socrates’ need of a tale at his own ap-pearance in Athens to fulfill and secure a philosophical education in the city. In second place, I take into consideration the metanar-rative dimension of such remaking. Since Socrates’ narration comes in response to a certain “Ὁμήρου ἐπαινέτης”, a “praiser of Homer” (Pl. Prt. 309b1), as Odysseus’ Apologue is to Demo-docus the “ἀοιδὸς”, I examine how the dialogue could evince a dispute for pedagogical primacy amongst the different narratives and uses of poetry in Athens, a dispute that the Platonic narrative would attempt to surpass precisely by imitating Homer.