Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature

Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature
Author: Lawrence Kim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-09-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139490249

Did Homer tell the 'truth' about the Trojan War? If so, how much, and if not, why not? The issue was hardly academic to the Greeks living under the Roman Empire, given the centrality of both Homer, the father of Greek culture, and the Trojan War, the event that inaugurated Greek history, to conceptions of Imperial Hellenism. This book examines four Greek texts of the Imperial period that address the topic - Strabo's Geography, Dio of Prusa's Trojan Oration, Lucian's novella True Stories, and Philostratus' fictional dialogue Heroicus - and shows how their imaginative explorations of Homer and his relationship to history raise important questions about the nature of poetry and fiction, the identity and intentions of Homer himself, and the significance of the heroic past and Homeric authority in Imperial Greek culture.

Homer Between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature

Homer Between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature
Author: Lawrence Young Kim
Publisher:
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2010
Genre: Greek literature
ISBN: 9780511908712

"Did Homer tell the 'truth' about the Trojan War? If so, how much, and if not, why not? The issue was hardly academic to the Greeks living under the Roman Empire, given the centrality of both Homer, the father of Greek culture, and the Trojan War, the event that inaugurated Greek history, to conceptions of Imperial Hellenism. This book examines four Greek texts of the Imperial period that address the topic - Strabo's Geography, Dio of Prusa's Trojan Oration, Lucian's novella True Stories, and Philostratus' fictional dialogue Heroicus - and shows how their imaginative explorations of Homer and his relationship to history raise important questions about the nature of poetry and fiction, the identity and intentions of Homer himself, and the significance of the heroic past and Homeric authority in Imperial Greek culture"--

The Cambridge Guide to Homer

The Cambridge Guide to Homer
Author: Corinne Ondine Pache
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 974
Release: 2020-03-05
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1108663621

From its ancient incarnation as a song to recent translations in modern languages, Homeric epic remains an abiding source of inspiration for both scholars and artists that transcends temporal and linguistic boundaries. The Cambridge Guide to Homer examines the influence and meaning of Homeric poetry from its earliest form as ancient Greek song to its current status in world literature, presenting the information in a synthetic manner that allows the reader to gain an understanding of the different strands of Homeric studies. The volume is structured around three main themes: Homeric Song and Text; the Homeric World, and Homer in the World. Each section starts with a series of 'macropedia' essays arranged thematically that are accompanied by shorter complementary 'micropedia' articles. The Cambridge Guide to Homer thus traces the many routes taken by Homeric epic in the ancient world and its continuing relevance in different periods and cultures.

Reading History in the Roman Empire

Reading History in the Roman Empire
Author: Mario Baumann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2022-01-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110764121

Although the relationship of Greco-Roman historians with their readerships has attracted much scholarly attention, classicists principally focus on individual historians, while there has been no collective work on the matter. The editors of this volume aspire to fill this gap and gather papers which offer an overall view of the Greco-Roman readership and of its interaction with ancient historians. The authors of this book endeavor to define the physiognomy of the audience of history in the Roman Era both by exploring the narrative arrangement of ancient historical prose and by using sources in which Greco-Roman intellectuals address the issue of the readership of history. Ancient historians shaped their accounts taking into consideration their readers’ tastes, and this is evident on many different levels, such as the way a historian fashions his authorial image, addresses his readers, or uses certain compositional strategies to elicit the readers’ affective and cognitive responses to his messages. The papers of this volume analyze these narrative aspects and contextualize them within their socio-political environment in order to reveal the ways ancient readerships interacted with and affected Greco-Roman historical prose.

The Struggle for Identity

The Struggle for Identity
Author: Thomas A. Schmitz
Publisher: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden gmbh
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783515096713

In the first century BCE, Greek intellectuals had to come to terms with the stability of Roman power. Many of them were active in Rome, which became the cultural centre of the Greek world; others were connected with Roman patrons. Their work became important for the emergence of Greek identity in the Roman Empire. Bringing together an international group of leading Classical scholars, this volume represents the first attempt at a comprehensive study of Greek cultural identity in the first century: how did the Romans influence the Greeks' view(s) of themselves and of their classical heritage? How did the Greeks interpret the Romans and their role in the world? Covering such different genres as historiography, literary criticism, the novel, and epigram, as well as archaeological material, the contributions explore the intellectual diversity of one of the most significant periods in history and situate the authors active under Augustus within their broader intellectual-historical context.

Beyond the Second Sophistic

Beyond the Second Sophistic
Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520344588

The “Second Sophistic” traditionally refers to a period at the height of the Roman Empire’s power that witnessed a flourishing of Greek rhetoric and oratory, and since the 19th century it has often been viewed as a defense of Hellenic civilization against the domination of Rome. This book proposes a very different model. Covering popular fiction, poetry and Greco-Jewish material, it argues for a rich, dynamic, and diverse culture, which cannot be reduced to a simple model of continuity. Shining new light on a series of playful, imaginative texts that are left out of the traditional accounts of Greek literature, Whitmarsh models a more adventurous, exploratory approach to later Greek culture. Beyond the Second Sophistic offers not only a new way of looking at Greek literature from 300 BCE onwards, but also a challenge to the Eurocentric, aristocratic constructions placed on the Greek heritage. Accessible and lively, it will appeal to students and scholars of Greek literature and culture, Hellenistic Judaism, world literature, and cultural theory.

Homer and the Good Ruler in Antiquity and Beyond

Homer and the Good Ruler in Antiquity and Beyond
Author: Jacqueline Klooster
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004365850

Homer and the Good Ruler in Antiquity and Beyond focuses on the important question of how and why later authors employ Homeric poetry to reflect on various types and aspects of leadership. In a range of essays discussing generically diverse receptions of the epics of Homer in historically diverse contexts, this question is answered in various ways. Rather than considering Homer’s works as literary products, then, this volume discusses the pedagogic dimension of the Iliad and the Odyssey as perceived by later thinkers and writers interested in the parameters of good rule, such as Plato, Philodemus, Polybius, Vergil, and Eustathios.

Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature

Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature
Author: Koen De,Temmerman
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 721
Release: 2017-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004356312

This is the fourth volume in the series Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative. The book deals with the narratological concepts of character and characterization and explores the textual devices used for purposes of characterization by ancient Greek authors from Homer to Heliodorus.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity
Author: Christina-Panagiota Manolea
Publisher: Brill's Companions to Classica
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2021
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9789004243439

"Brill's Companion to the Reception of Homer from the Hellenistic Age to Late Antiquity presents a comprehensive account of the afterlife of the Homeric corpus. Twenty chapters written by a range of experts in the field show how Homeric poems were transmitted, disseminated, adopted, analysed, admired or even criticized across diverse intellectual environments, from the 3rd century BCE to the 6th century CE. The volume explores the impact of Homer on Hellenistic prose and poetry, the Second Sophistic, the Stoics, some Christian writers and the major Neoplatonists, showing how the Greek paideia continued to flourish in new contexts. Contributors are: Gianfranco Agosti, John Dillon, Mark Edwards, Christos Fakas, Jeffrey Fish, Luis Arturo Guichard, Malcolm Heath, Ronald E. Heine, Lawrence Kim, Robert Lamberton, Jane L. Lightfoot, Enrico Magnelli, Antony Makrinos, Diotima Papadi, Robert J. Penella, Aglae Pizzone, Ilaria Ramelli, Anne Sheppard, Georgios Tsomis, Cornelia van der Poll, Sarah Klitenic Wear"--