Quintilian: The Biographical Tradition

In addition to the biographical testimonies in Martial (Epigrams 2.90.2), Ausonius (Professors of Bordeaux 1.7), and Jerome (Chronicon, notes at year 68 and 88), there are some autobiographical remarks in Quintilian’s Institutio, most of which are difficult to mark with a date. Using this scant evidence, scholars from the second half of the fifteenth century onwards have attempted to construct the life of Quintilian. The most extensive and probably most influential biography is Henry Dodwell’s 109-page-long Annales Quintilianei (1698), which offers a chronologically very detailed but fundamentally speculative account of Quintilian’s life. This chapter discusses, after a general outline of the biographical tradition from Poliziano (1481) to Clarke (1967) and Kennedy (1969, revised edition 2013), the suggestions which have been made throughout the centuries to fill out the gaps in our knowledge of Quintilian’s life, focusing on his birth (it is possible that he was born in Rome, not Calagurris), his early life and education, his career as teacher and orator, his retirement and death, and the chronology of the writing of the Institutio. It also explains the origin of the erroneous claim, still often repeated today, that Quintilian was the first teacher of rhetoric who had a public chair of rhetoric in Rome, and gives a summary of the long debate on whether Tacitus’ Dialogus de oratoribus is Quintilian’s lost treatise De causis corruptae eloquentiae, and on the authorship of the two collections of Declamationes.

TRANSLATING THE POET: ALEXANDER POPE'S ENGAGEMENT WITH THE HOMERIC BIOGRAPHICAL TRADITION IN HIS TRANSLATIONS OF THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY

This article explores Alexander Pope's experience as a translator of the Iliad and the Odyssey, particularly his engagement with Homer as a poet and his biographical tradition. The study focuses on how Homer features in Pope's correspondence as he worked on the translations, how the Greek poet is described in the prefatory essay by Thomas Parnell and Pope's own notes to the text, and finally how his physical presence materializes in the illustrations within Pope's translations. The article suggests that, by engaging with the biography of Homer, Pope explores issues such as poetic authority and divine inspiration, promotes his own translations against European competitors, and ultimately establishes himself as a translator and as a poet. Throughout the process, Homer appears as a presence that forces Pope constantly to challenge himself, until he feels he can stand a comparison with the greatest poet ever.

The Reception of Sappho in the Italian Renaissance: Biographical Tradition and Early Editions of the Sapphic Works

In this article the survival of the sapphic fragments of the ancient times in Renaissance period is examined. More specifically the reappearance of the sapphic verses is presented concerning the first publications (editio princeps) and the most widespread texts of ancient authors during West Renaissance. These texts were the primary sources, on which the later publications of the sapphic work were based, while they also had a great influence on the reception of the ancient poet by the Renaissance writers.

Types of Life-Writing in Suetonius’ Lives Of The Caesars and Illustrious Men

This chapter highlights Suetonius’ biographical work, considering some of the literary techniques he employed in both his Lives of the Caesars and Lives of Illustrious Men, and comparing his approach with the biographical tradition in Rome. The usual approach of studying the surviving parts of Suetonius’ œuvre separately from one another and instead comparing them to the works of their predecessors within the respective generic tradition has often led to severe criticism. Many of the typical features of his biographies—such as their stylistic simplicity or thematic idiosyncrasy—can be explained, however, and thus perhaps even seen in a more favourable light, if his writings are studied in close connection with each other. Viewed in this light, it is not at all surprising that he continues his antiquarian approach with regard to both style and content. At the same time, he was fully aware of the tradition of biographical writing and thus adopted the qualities that seemed suitable to him in the Caesars as well as in Illustrious Men.

Arabic Biography

This chapter examines the Arabic biographical tradition. The genre of biographical writing is a celebrated, multifaceted, and widely practised field of Arabic literature. Basic forms of biographical compilation can be shown from the first century of Islam (seventh century), initially orally transmitted and later in writing. The Arabic biographical tradition was mainly developed from within Islam, to which it owes its noticeable character. It probably originated from the earnest aspiration of generations following the initial period to preserve knowledge about the central figures of that era. For that reason, biographical transmission, initially, was a highly religion-orientated discipline. Nevertheless, or perhaps even due to this stimulus, there developed a huge field of different biographical genres and specialized life-writing.

Christian Biography

This chapter addresses Christian biography. The Christian biographical tradition is simultaneously fundamental to the early Church and also fundamentally different from Graeco-Roman biographical traditions. This difference emerges from the distinctive discourse of the canonical gospels. These foundational texts were not sui generis across the board in terms of form and genre, but their distinctive discourse and their devotion to narrative as a standard of orthodoxy, combined with their role as historical and theological authorities in the Church, gave them a paradigmatic status never held by Graeco-Roman—or even most Jewish—biographies in their own reception histories. The chapter traces this influence by means of comparison with various genres that arose subsequent to the canonical gospels and with direct reference to them: apocryphal literature, saints’ Lives, and miracle collections, among others.

Biography and Praise in Trajanic Rome

This chapter addresses Tacitus’ Agricola and Pliny the Younger’s Panegyricus. At first glance, they have little in common. Both written early in Trajan’s principate, one is a short biography of Tacitus’ father-in-law, the other a long speech of thanks addressed to the emperor. However, they are also a complementary, contemporary, and directly connected pair of literary artworks. Tacitus marshals the resources of a long biographical tradition in his brilliant apology for the career of a quietist. Pliny for his part produces a striking account, at once humanizing and mythologizing, of an emperor whose scripted life finds significant origins in the pages of Tacitus. Between privatus and princeps, across biography and encomium, Agricola and Panegyricus together offer striking illumination of the possibilities for textualizing lives in Trajanic Rome.