Mario Telò
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226309699
- eISBN:
- 9780226309729
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226309729.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Aristophanes, whose eleven surviving plays are all that remain of Old Comedy, has been stereotyped since ancient times as the poet who brought order and stability to this rowdy theatrical genre. But ...
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Aristophanes, whose eleven surviving plays are all that remain of Old Comedy, has been stereotyped since ancient times as the poet who brought order and stability to this rowdy theatrical genre. But how did this image arise, and why were the rivals Cratinus and Eupolis relegated to secondary status and merely fragmentary survival? This book traces Aristophanes’ supremacy, paradoxically, back to the defeat of his Clouds at the Great Dionysia in 423 BCE. Both Wasps (422) and the revised Clouds (419–417), the two plays at the center of this study, depict the earlier Clouds as a failed attempt by Aristophanes, the good son, to heal the comic audience—reflected in the plays in a pair of dysfunctional fathers. Through this narrative of failure, Aristophanes advances a “proto-canonical” discourse that anticipates the contours of the Hellenistic comic canon by elevating his aesthetic mode while delegitimizing his rivals. Aristophanic comedy is cast as a prestigious object, an expression of the supposedly timeless values of dignity and self-control. This discourse, which depends on both internal and external textual connections, is grounded in the distinctive feelings that different comic modes purportedly transmitted to an audience. In Wasps and Clouds the Aristophanic style is figured as a soft, protective cloak meant to shield an audience from debilitating competitors and restore it to paternal responsibility and authority. Aristophanes’ narrative of afflicted fathers and healing sons, of audience and poet, is thus shown to be at the center of the proto-canonical discourse that shaped his eventual dominance.Less
Aristophanes, whose eleven surviving plays are all that remain of Old Comedy, has been stereotyped since ancient times as the poet who brought order and stability to this rowdy theatrical genre. But how did this image arise, and why were the rivals Cratinus and Eupolis relegated to secondary status and merely fragmentary survival? This book traces Aristophanes’ supremacy, paradoxically, back to the defeat of his Clouds at the Great Dionysia in 423 BCE. Both Wasps (422) and the revised Clouds (419–417), the two plays at the center of this study, depict the earlier Clouds as a failed attempt by Aristophanes, the good son, to heal the comic audience—reflected in the plays in a pair of dysfunctional fathers. Through this narrative of failure, Aristophanes advances a “proto-canonical” discourse that anticipates the contours of the Hellenistic comic canon by elevating his aesthetic mode while delegitimizing his rivals. Aristophanic comedy is cast as a prestigious object, an expression of the supposedly timeless values of dignity and self-control. This discourse, which depends on both internal and external textual connections, is grounded in the distinctive feelings that different comic modes purportedly transmitted to an audience. In Wasps and Clouds the Aristophanic style is figured as a soft, protective cloak meant to shield an audience from debilitating competitors and restore it to paternal responsibility and authority. Aristophanes’ narrative of afflicted fathers and healing sons, of audience and poet, is thus shown to be at the center of the proto-canonical discourse that shaped his eventual dominance.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226305776
- eISBN:
- 9780226305196
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226305196.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
The third and fourth books of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations deal with the nature and management of human emotion: first grief, then the emotions in general. In lively and accessible style, Cicero ...
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The third and fourth books of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations deal with the nature and management of human emotion: first grief, then the emotions in general. In lively and accessible style, Cicero presents the insights of Greek philosophers on the subject, reporting the views of Epicureans and Peripatetics and giving a detailed account of the Stoic position, which he himself favors for its close reasoning and moral earnestness. This book gives the Stoics' analysis of the causes of grief, their classification of emotions by genus and species, their lists of oddly named character flaws, and by the philosophical debate that develops over the utility of anger in politics and war. This translation makes Cicero's work accessible. The accompanying commentary explains the philosophical concepts discussed in the text and supplies many helpful parallels from Greek sources.Less
The third and fourth books of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations deal with the nature and management of human emotion: first grief, then the emotions in general. In lively and accessible style, Cicero presents the insights of Greek philosophers on the subject, reporting the views of Epicureans and Peripatetics and giving a detailed account of the Stoic position, which he himself favors for its close reasoning and moral earnestness. This book gives the Stoics' analysis of the causes of grief, their classification of emotions by genus and species, their lists of oddly named character flaws, and by the philosophical debate that develops over the utility of anger in politics and war. This translation makes Cicero's work accessible. The accompanying commentary explains the philosophical concepts discussed in the text and supplies many helpful parallels from Greek sources.
Neil Coffee
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226111872
- eISBN:
- 9780226111902
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226111902.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Latin epics such as Virgil's Aeneid, Lucan's Civil War, and Statius' Thebaid addressed Roman aristocrats whose dealings in gifts, favors, and payments defined their conceptions of social order. This ...
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Latin epics such as Virgil's Aeneid, Lucan's Civil War, and Statius' Thebaid addressed Roman aristocrats whose dealings in gifts, favors, and payments defined their conceptions of social order. This book argues that these exchanges play a central yet overlooked role in epic depictions of Roman society. Tracing the collapse of an aristocratic worldview across all three poems, it highlights the distinction they draw between reciprocal gift giving among elites and the more problematic behaviors of buying and selling. In the Aeneid, customary gift and favor exchanges are undermined by characters who view human interaction as short-term and commodity-driven. The Civil War takes the next logical step, illuminating how Romans cope once commercial greed has supplanted traditional values. Concluding with the Thebaid, which focuses on the problems of excessive consumption rather than exchange, the book closes its case that these poems constitute far-reaching critiques of Roman society during its transition from republic to empire.Less
Latin epics such as Virgil's Aeneid, Lucan's Civil War, and Statius' Thebaid addressed Roman aristocrats whose dealings in gifts, favors, and payments defined their conceptions of social order. This book argues that these exchanges play a central yet overlooked role in epic depictions of Roman society. Tracing the collapse of an aristocratic worldview across all three poems, it highlights the distinction they draw between reciprocal gift giving among elites and the more problematic behaviors of buying and selling. In the Aeneid, customary gift and favor exchanges are undermined by characters who view human interaction as short-term and commodity-driven. The Civil War takes the next logical step, illuminating how Romans cope once commercial greed has supplanted traditional values. Concluding with the Thebaid, which focuses on the problems of excessive consumption rather than exchange, the book closes its case that these poems constitute far-reaching critiques of Roman society during its transition from republic to empire.
Marian H. Feldman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226105611
- eISBN:
- 9780226164427
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226164427.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern History: BCE to 500CE
This book explores how communities formed around artworks in the Iron Age Levant (c. 1200-600 BCE). It argues that portable luxury arts forged collective memories and community identities through the ...
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This book explores how communities formed around artworks in the Iron Age Levant (c. 1200-600 BCE). It argues that portable luxury arts forged collective memories and community identities through the production and consumption of style, understood as stylistic practices, and offers a rethinking of the way art historians approach style as an analytical feature of art. Stylistic analysis of Iron Age Levantine ivories and metalworks reveals a spectrum of heterogeneous styles that point to flexible networked communities of practice, rather than to one-to-one geographical associations between style and city-state, challenging the autochthonous nature of style and strictly culture-history classifications of art. An alternative approach for interpreting stylistic traits, derived from practice theory, proposes that stylistic practices be understood as part of embodied social relations. These are considered from the vantage point first of the Levant and then of its increasingly powerful neighbor Assyria. Contextualizing the stylistic practices of specific Levantine artworks, such as decorated metal (“Phoenician”) bowls, articulates the ways in which collective memories could coalesce around them through social activities such as drinking and libating. The artworks’ efficacy in creating social relations extends to contexts of displacement, recycling, and reuse, and the book concludes by tracing the narratives of several Levantine ivories and metalworks that moved in multiple contexts across cultures and social strata in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean.Less
This book explores how communities formed around artworks in the Iron Age Levant (c. 1200-600 BCE). It argues that portable luxury arts forged collective memories and community identities through the production and consumption of style, understood as stylistic practices, and offers a rethinking of the way art historians approach style as an analytical feature of art. Stylistic analysis of Iron Age Levantine ivories and metalworks reveals a spectrum of heterogeneous styles that point to flexible networked communities of practice, rather than to one-to-one geographical associations between style and city-state, challenging the autochthonous nature of style and strictly culture-history classifications of art. An alternative approach for interpreting stylistic traits, derived from practice theory, proposes that stylistic practices be understood as part of embodied social relations. These are considered from the vantage point first of the Levant and then of its increasingly powerful neighbor Assyria. Contextualizing the stylistic practices of specific Levantine artworks, such as decorated metal (“Phoenician”) bowls, articulates the ways in which collective memories could coalesce around them through social activities such as drinking and libating. The artworks’ efficacy in creating social relations extends to contexts of displacement, recycling, and reuse, and the book concludes by tracing the narratives of several Levantine ivories and metalworks that moved in multiple contexts across cultures and social strata in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean.
Daniel A. Dombrowski
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226155463
- eISBN:
- 9780226155494
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226155494.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
Despite their influence in our culture, sports inspire dramatically less philosophical consideration than such ostensibly weightier topics as religion, politics, or science. Arguing that athletic ...
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Despite their influence in our culture, sports inspire dramatically less philosophical consideration than such ostensibly weightier topics as religion, politics, or science. Arguing that athletic playfulness coexists with serious underpinnings, and that both demand more substantive attention, this book harnesses the insights of ancient Greek thinkers to illuminate contemporary athletics. The author contends that the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus shed important light on issues—such as the pursuit of excellence, the concept of play, and the power of accepting physical limitations while also improving one's body—that remain just as relevant in our sports-obsessed age as they were in ancient Greece. Bringing these concepts to bear on contemporary concerns, he considers such questions as whether athletic competition can be a moral substitute for war, whether it necessarily constitutes war by other means, and whether it encourages fascist tendencies or ethical virtue. The book philosophically explores twenty-first-century sport in the context of its ancient predecessor, revealing that their relationship has great potential to inform our understanding of human nature.Less
Despite their influence in our culture, sports inspire dramatically less philosophical consideration than such ostensibly weightier topics as religion, politics, or science. Arguing that athletic playfulness coexists with serious underpinnings, and that both demand more substantive attention, this book harnesses the insights of ancient Greek thinkers to illuminate contemporary athletics. The author contends that the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus shed important light on issues—such as the pursuit of excellence, the concept of play, and the power of accepting physical limitations while also improving one's body—that remain just as relevant in our sports-obsessed age as they were in ancient Greece. Bringing these concepts to bear on contemporary concerns, he considers such questions as whether athletic competition can be a moral substitute for war, whether it necessarily constitutes war by other means, and whether it encourages fascist tendencies or ethical virtue. The book philosophically explores twenty-first-century sport in the context of its ancient predecessor, revealing that their relationship has great potential to inform our understanding of human nature.
Steven Johnstone
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226405094
- eISBN:
- 9780226405117
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226405117.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
An enormous amount of literature exists on Greek law, economics, and political philosophy. Yet no one has written a history of trust, one of the most fundamental aspects of social and economic ...
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An enormous amount of literature exists on Greek law, economics, and political philosophy. Yet no one has written a history of trust, one of the most fundamental aspects of social and economic interaction in the ancient world. This volume explores the way democracy and markets flourished in ancient Greece, not so much through personal relationships as through trust in abstract systems—including money, standardized measurement, rhetoric, and haggling. Focusing on markets and democratic politics, the book draws on speeches given in Athenian courts, histories of Athenian democracy, comic writings, and laws inscribed on stone to examine how these systems worked. It analyzes their potentials and limitations and how the Greeks understood and critiqued them. The book links Greek political, economic, social, and intellectual history and examines contemporary analyses of trust and civil society.Less
An enormous amount of literature exists on Greek law, economics, and political philosophy. Yet no one has written a history of trust, one of the most fundamental aspects of social and economic interaction in the ancient world. This volume explores the way democracy and markets flourished in ancient Greece, not so much through personal relationships as through trust in abstract systems—including money, standardized measurement, rhetoric, and haggling. Focusing on markets and democratic politics, the book draws on speeches given in Athenian courts, histories of Athenian democracy, comic writings, and laws inscribed on stone to examine how these systems worked. It analyzes their potentials and limitations and how the Greeks understood and critiqued them. The book links Greek political, economic, social, and intellectual history and examines contemporary analyses of trust and civil society.
Luc Brisson
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226075358
- eISBN:
- 9780226075389
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226075389.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical ...
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This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. The book shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. This book also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, the book explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance; after the triumph of Christianity, the book argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well.Less
This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. The book shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. This book also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, the book explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance; after the triumph of Christianity, the book argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well.
Luca Giuliani
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226297651
- eISBN:
- 9780226025902
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226025902.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, History of Art: pre-history, BCE to 500CE, ancient and classical, Byzantine
On museum visits, we pass by beautiful, well-preserved vases from ancient Greece—but how often do we understand what the images on them depict? This book tells the stories behind the pictures, ...
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On museum visits, we pass by beautiful, well-preserved vases from ancient Greece—but how often do we understand what the images on them depict? This book tells the stories behind the pictures, exploring how artists of antiquity had to determine which motifs or historical and mythic events to use to tell an underlying story while also keeping in mind the tastes and expectations of paying clients. Covering the range of Greek style and its growth between the early Archaic and Hellenistic periods, the book describes the intellectual, social, and artistic contexts in which the images were created. It reveals that developments in Greek vase painting were driven as much by the times as they were by tradition—the better-known the story, the less leeway the artists had in interpreting it. As literary culture transformed from an oral tradition, in which stories were always in flux, to the stability of written texts, the images produced by artists eventually became nothing more than illustrations of canonical works. At once a work of cultural and art history, this book builds a new way of understanding the visual culture of ancient Greece.Less
On museum visits, we pass by beautiful, well-preserved vases from ancient Greece—but how often do we understand what the images on them depict? This book tells the stories behind the pictures, exploring how artists of antiquity had to determine which motifs or historical and mythic events to use to tell an underlying story while also keeping in mind the tastes and expectations of paying clients. Covering the range of Greek style and its growth between the early Archaic and Hellenistic periods, the book describes the intellectual, social, and artistic contexts in which the images were created. It reveals that developments in Greek vase painting were driven as much by the times as they were by tradition—the better-known the story, the less leeway the artists had in interpreting it. As literary culture transformed from an oral tradition, in which stories were always in flux, to the stability of written texts, the images produced by artists eventually became nothing more than illustrations of canonical works. At once a work of cultural and art history, this book builds a new way of understanding the visual culture of ancient Greece.
Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Cornelius Fronto
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226713007
- eISBN:
- 9780226713021
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226713021.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
In 1815 a manuscript containing one of the long-lost treasures of antiquity was discovered—the letters of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, reputed to have been one of the greatest Roman orators. But this ...
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In 1815 a manuscript containing one of the long-lost treasures of antiquity was discovered—the letters of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, reputed to have been one of the greatest Roman orators. But this find disappointed many nineteenth-century readers, who had hoped for the letters to convey all of the political drama of Cicero's. That the collection included passionate love letters between Fronto and the future emperor Marcus Aurelius was politely ignored—or concealed. And for almost 200 years these letters have lain hidden in plain sight. This book rescues these letters from obscurity and returns them to the public eye. The story of Marcus and Fronto began in 139 ce, when Fronto was selected to instruct Marcus in rhetoric. Marcus was eighteen then, and by all appearances the pupil and teacher fell in love. Spanning the years in which the relationship flowered and died, these are the only love letters to survive from antiquity—homoerotic or otherwise. The translation reproduces the effusive, slangy style of the young prince and the rhetorical flourishes of his master.Less
In 1815 a manuscript containing one of the long-lost treasures of antiquity was discovered—the letters of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, reputed to have been one of the greatest Roman orators. But this find disappointed many nineteenth-century readers, who had hoped for the letters to convey all of the political drama of Cicero's. That the collection included passionate love letters between Fronto and the future emperor Marcus Aurelius was politely ignored—or concealed. And for almost 200 years these letters have lain hidden in plain sight. This book rescues these letters from obscurity and returns them to the public eye. The story of Marcus and Fronto began in 139 ce, when Fronto was selected to instruct Marcus in rhetoric. Marcus was eighteen then, and by all appearances the pupil and teacher fell in love. Spanning the years in which the relationship flowered and died, these are the only love letters to survive from antiquity—homoerotic or otherwise. The translation reproduces the effusive, slangy style of the young prince and the rhetorical flourishes of his master.
William Fitzgerald
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226252537
- eISBN:
- 9780226252568
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226252568.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
In this age of the sound bite, what sort of author could be more relevant than a master of the epigram? Martial, the most influential epigrammatist of classical antiquity, was just such a virtuoso of ...
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In this age of the sound bite, what sort of author could be more relevant than a master of the epigram? Martial, the most influential epigrammatist of classical antiquity, was just such a virtuoso of the form, but despite his pertinence to today's culture, his work has been largely neglected in contemporary scholarship. Arguing that Martial is a major author who deserves more sustained attention, this book provides a tour of his works, shedding light on the Roman poet's world—and how it might speak to our own. Writing in the late first century CE—when the epigram was firmly embedded in the social life of the elites of Rome's elite—Martial published his poems in a series of books that were widely read and enjoyed. Exploring what it means to read such a collection of epigrams, this book examines the paradoxical relationship between the self-enclosed epigram and the book of poems that is more than the sum of its parts. It goes on to show how Martial, by imagining these books being displayed in shops and shipped across the empire to admiring readers, prophetically behaved like a modern author.Less
In this age of the sound bite, what sort of author could be more relevant than a master of the epigram? Martial, the most influential epigrammatist of classical antiquity, was just such a virtuoso of the form, but despite his pertinence to today's culture, his work has been largely neglected in contemporary scholarship. Arguing that Martial is a major author who deserves more sustained attention, this book provides a tour of his works, shedding light on the Roman poet's world—and how it might speak to our own. Writing in the late first century CE—when the epigram was firmly embedded in the social life of the elites of Rome's elite—Martial published his poems in a series of books that were widely read and enjoyed. Exploring what it means to read such a collection of epigrams, this book examines the paradoxical relationship between the self-enclosed epigram and the book of poems that is more than the sum of its parts. It goes on to show how Martial, by imagining these books being displayed in shops and shipped across the empire to admiring readers, prophetically behaved like a modern author.
Achilles in Love
The Advent of Pluralism
Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris
Aegean Interactions
Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry
Aeschylus' Supplices
African Athena
Afro-Greeks
After Alexander: Central Asia before Islam
