"The Second Sophistic was a time of intense competition for honour and status. Like today, this often caused mental as well as physical stress for the elite of the Roman Empire. Lieve Van Hoof present
A professor of Greek rhetoric, frequent letter writer and influential social figure, Libanius (AD 314–393) is a key author for anybody interested in late antiquity, ancient rhetoric, ancient epistolography and ancient biography. Nevertheless, he remains understudied because it is such a daunting task to access his large and only partially translated oeuvre. This volume, which is the first comprehensive study of Libanius, offers a critical introduction to the man, his texts, their context and reception. Clear presentations of the orations, progymnasmata, declamations and letters unlock the corpus, and a survey of all available translations is provided. At the same time, the volume explores new interpretative approaches of the texts from a variety of angles. Written by a team of established as well as upcoming experts in the field, it substantially reassesses works such as the Autobiography, the Julianic speeches and letters, and Oration 30 For the Temples.
The first systematic collection of fragmentary Latin historians from the period AD 300–620, this volume provides an edition and translation of, and commentary on, the fragments. It proposes new interpretations of the fragments and of the works from which they derive, whilst also spelling out what the fragments add to our knowledge of Late Antiquity. Integrating the fragmentary material with the texts preserved in full, the volume suggests new ways to understand the development of history writing in the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
Challenging ideas about the declining social role and impact of literature in Late Antiquity, Literature and Society in the Fourth Century AD demonstrates how Greek and Latin literature of the fourth
This book studies the complex attitude of late ancient Christians towards classical education. In recent years, the different theoretical positions that can be found among the Church Fathers have rece
