Late Antique Epistemology explores the techniques used by late antique philosophers to discuss truth. Non-rational ways to discover truth, or to reform the soul, have usually been thought inferior to the philosophically approved techniques of rational argument, suitable for the less philosophically inclined, for children, savages or the uneducated. Religious rituals, oracles, erotic passion, madness may all have served to waken courage or remind us of realities obscured by everyday concerns. What is unusual in the (...) class='Hi'>late antique classical philosophers is that these techniques were reckoned as reliable as reasoned argument, or better still. Late twentieth century commentators have offered psychological explanations of this turn, but only recently had it been accepted that there might also have been philosophical explanations, and that the later antique philosophers were not necessarily deluded. (shrink)

I must begin by confessing that I owe to the deficiencies of voice-mail a valuable occasion to re-think the purpose of this lecture. For I left on the voice-mail of Professor Martin the title of the lecture: “Augustine and a Crisis of Wealth in Late Antiquity.” I received—again by voice-mail—a delighted reply. He fully approved of my title: “Augustine and a Crisis of Wills in Late Antiquity.” I realized, to my shame, that I had awoken false expectations in (...) the heart of a great Augustinian scholar. Of course, “Wills” is what a St Augustine Lecture should be about. It was on the Will that Augustine wrote with greatest passion and tenacity, and with the gravest long-term consequences. And I had offered, for the occasion of a St. Augustine Lecture, not “Will” but merely “Wealth.”. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Philologus Jahrgang: 159 Heft: 2 Seiten: 301-326.

The theme of the sickness of the soul is in the mind of late antique Christian philosopher, Evagrius of Pontus, a frontier topic between the two major thematic areas in which his work can be divided: the psycho-spiritual and metaphysics. Reflect and try to define the origin and status of disease in Evagrio implies, in effect, pay attention to a transversal topic of his work: the ignorance. The consideration of this psycho-spiritual condition, it is necessary to achieve a (...) coherent conceptual definition of the concept of disease in Evagrius. Similarly, understanding how the ignorance is the source of passionate disorder that operates in the states of mental imbalance, implies considering their causal link with immoderate love of self or philautia. In the scheme evagriano the philautia is, in turn, the common origin of evil and destabilizing thoughts that are the characteristic cognitive activity of the disease state and that Evagrius calls logismoi. (shrink)

Celsus penned the earliest known detailed attack upon Christianity. While his identity is disputed and his anti-Christian treatise, entitled the True Word, has been exclusively transmitted through the hands of the great Christian scholar Origen, he remains an intriguing figure. In this interdisciplinary volume, which brings together ancient philosophers, specialists in Greek literature, and historians of early Christianity and of ancient Judaism, Celsus is situated within the cultural, philosophical, religious and political world from which he emerged. While his work is (...) ostensibly an attack upon Christianity, it is also the defence of a world in which Celsus passionately believed. It is the unique contribution of this volume to give voice to the many dimensions of that world in a way that will engage a variety of scholars interested in late antiquity and the histories of Christianity, Judaism and Greek thought. (shrink)

The late antique rabbis of Roman Palestine were seasoned jurists, experts on exegesis and legal interpretation. Yet rabbinic literature does not theorize. A positive account of rabbinic conceptions of language therefore remains a desideratum. I choose an alternative approach. Legal reasoning relies on language to ground the determinacy of the law. Jurists must thus confront language when it threatens to undermine the latter. Conversely, they may hold language to safeguard legal determinacy. Drawing on insights from legal theory, I (...) turn to an unusual rabbinic rule of inference. Its earliest attested version suggests a universal possibility of inference “from the category of yes that of no, from the category of no that of yes.” I show that the ever-evolving uses of this rule allow us to observe a shift in linguistic attitude, increasingly acknowledging linguistic uncertainty. My findings tie in with recent advances in the study of rabbinic exegesis. (shrink)

Incorporating Martha Nussbaum's work on the “intelligence” of human emotions in Greco‐Roman moral philosophy, Robert Kaster's analysis of the “narrative scripts” of rivalrous emotions in antiquity, and René Girard's insights into the role of “mimetic desire” in human envy, this article explores the strategies of two major early Christian bishops, Cyprian and Basil of Caesarea, to “read” and to cure the variant scripts of envy and related invidious passions in concrete ecclesial contexts. The article also examines certain monastic theologians (...) in late antiquity who aspired to preempt invidious passions by encouraging salutary scripts of competition in virtue that realized equality of honor in their respective communities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 17-35 [Access article in PDF] Late Antiquity and the Florentine Renaissance: Historiographical Parallels Christopher S. Celenza Aulus Gellius, at the end of the second century, shows us the type of writer who was destined to prevail, the compiler. In his Noctes Atticae he compiles without method or even without any definite end in view.... After him there is only barrenness. (...) The third century is a literary Sahara.... Thoughtless admiration for mathematics keeps up or reintroduces the mentality of magic.... In the fourth century ad Iamblichus had his brain almost turned by the science of numbers. 1 --Ferdinand Lot The rapid progress of humanism after the year 1400 paralyzed native impulses. Henceforth men looked only to antiquity for the solution of every problem, and consequently allowed literature to sink into mere quotation. 2 --Jacob Burckhardt Various aspects of late antiquity in western Europe and the Florentine Renaissance bear certain similarities which, if properly examined and contextualized, can lead to a deeper understanding of both periods--of their social as well as intellectual significance, of the manner in which politics relates to culture, and [End Page 17] of the relationship between urban life in a specific sort of milieu to the mechanisms of religious and philosophical dynamism. 3 The parallels are not always exact, but various underlying patterns are present. Here the main line of argument will be that a number of aspects of late ancient thought and of Renaissance thought (especially Renaissance Latin literature of all genres) went ignored by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars, thanks to certain underlying assumptions concerning what was appropriate to investigate. These assumptions were themselves related to the combination of two major factors: romantic essentializing ideas about the nature of language, inherited from the Enlightenment, and the development in the nineteenth century of nationalist, evolutionary historiographies. The results of these developments persisted into the twentieth century and can be seen to an extent even today. Nationalist Historiographies and the Problem of Language "Gentlemen, nations are thoughts of God." So Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) used to begin his history courses in Berlin, as Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) later remembered. 4 While Ranke himself was concerned primarily with documentary history and the evolution of the modern state, he was also part of a larger trend in the German speaking world which sought to identify, in the study of the past, the spirit, or Geist, of a given era or people, a project which had been theorized by Hegel. Ranke and others, like Johann Gustav Droysen and August Böckh, taking their point of departure from Barthold Niebuhr and, more immediately, from Wilhelm von Humboldt, saw themselves as self-consciously transcending Hegel, basing their ideas on documentary sources as opposed to a priori theorizing. 5 But certain assumptions were similar, none more so than presuppositions relating to the Volksgeist. It is not that Ranke was relentlessly teleological; [End Page 18] history was made in the process of the unfolding of events. His primary mission was the documenting and understanding of modernity, a task which, despite their later divergences in practice, Burckhardt shared. 6 The goal was, following Niebuhr's approach in classical studies, to present history in an appealing way and in a manner useful to modernity. 7 This was bound up with a larger set of movements, encompassing the search for national identity and a tendency toward locating essential characteristics of a "people." 8 One of these characteristics was language, and a central preoccupation of scholars became the manner in which culture expressed itself through language, even as philology was becoming "the first historical discipline, the model for all other historical sciences" and the general view of scholarly fields as separate, specialized entities was growing. 9In their concern with language as a vehicle for cultural transmission and as a defining characteristic of a people, nineteenth-century scholars were the heirs of the Enlightenment. Ideas of a plurality of cultures had flourished; as it was put in the Encyclopédie, language expressed the "genius of a people." If... (shrink)

An issue which plainly exercised the thoughts of many intellectuals in the late antique world was that of man's relation to the gods, and specifically the problems of the mode of interaction between the human and divine planes of existence. Once one accepted, as anyone with any philosophical training did, that God, or the gods, were not subject to passions, and that, as not only Stoics but also Platonists, at least after the time of Plotinus, believed, the (...) world-order was (either entirely or very largely) determined as a product of God's providence, it became a serious problem as to how precisely one could influence the gods, or the course of events, by one's prayers or sacrifices. And yet efforts to do this, on both the popular and the official level, continued unabated. What was the proper attitude for a Platonist philosopher to take up? This is very much the subject of the well-known controversy between Plotinus' pupil Porphyry and his own pupil Iamblichus which manifests itself in the exchange of public letters known as The Letter to Anebo and The Reply of the Master Abammon to the Letter of Porphyry to Anebo (popularly known, since Marsilio Ficino conferred this title upon it, as De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum). The present article involves a close and sympathetic study of Iamblichus' position in defence of theurgy, reflecting on the validity of the distinction between religion and magic. (shrink)

In classical Latin, luxuria means 'desire for luxury'; it is linked with the ideas of excess and deviation from a standard. It is in most cases labelled as a vice which contrasts with the innate frugal nature of the Romans. Latin authors do not see it as endemic but as an import from the East in the aftermath of military conquests--and as a cause of fatal decline. Following these etymological and semantic origins, Roman Luxuria: A Literary and Cultural History discusses (...) the influence of Greek culture on the Roman concept and the peculiar characteristics of Roman luxuria. It analyses Roman views on luxuria through close readings in historical order from Cato the Elder, who regards luxuria as the opposite of the ideal Roman way of life, to the Christian poet Prudentius, who represents it in an allegorical fight with Sobriety. The book attends both to key authors and to wider literary genres, such as historiography and satire. Particular consideration is given to the rhetorical device of personification, which can be traced from the first appearances of luxuria in Latin literature to those of late antiquity. Berno devotes detailed attention to Seneca the Younger, whose work is often preoccupied with this passion. Seneca both defends himself from the charge of luxuria and violently attacks it in others, describing it as the archenemy of a philosophical life. Along the centuries, the focus on luxuria shifts from the economic sphere (and the waste of money) to the erotic, to the extent that in the Christian world it becomes one of the Seven Capital Sins representing the vice of lust. (shrink)

The appellation “Western” is, in my view, inappropriate when applied to Ancient Hellas and its greatest product, the Hellenic philosophy. For, as a matter of historical fact, neither the spirit of free inquiry and bold speculation, nor the quest of perfection via autonomous virtuous activity and ethical excellence survived, in the purity of their Hellenic forms, the imposition of inflexible religious doctrines and practices on Christian Europe. The coming of Christianity, with the theocratic proclivity of the Church, especially the hierarchically (...) organized Catholic Church, sealed the fate of Hellenic philosophy in Europe for more than a millennium. Since the Italian Renaissance, several attempts primarily by Platonists to revive the free spirit and other virtues of Hellenic philosophy have been invariably frustrated by violent reactions from religious movements, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and the bloody wars which followed their appearance in Europe. Modern science succeeded to a certain extent, after struggle with the Catholic Church, in freeing itself from the snares of medieval theocratic restrictions. Thus, it managed to reconnect with the scientific spirit of late antiquity and its great achievements, especially in the fields of cosmology, physics, mathematics, and medicine, which enabled modern science to ad-vance further. But it seems that the mainstream European philosophy has failed to follow the example of science and to liberate itself, too. As in the Middle Ages, so in modern and post-modern times the “European philosophy” has continued to play the undignified and servile role of handmaiden of something. In addition to the medieval role of “handmaiden of theology” (ancilla theologiae), since the seventeenth century philosophy in Europe assumed the role of “handmaiden of science” (ancilla scientiae) and, with the coming of the Marxist “scientific socialism,” the extra role of ‘handmaiden of ideology” (ancilla ideologiae). In this respect, the so-called “Western philosophy,” as it has been historically practiced in Christian and partially Islamized Europe, is indeed a very different kind of product from the autonomous intellectual and ethical human activity, which the Ancient Hellenes named philosophia and honored as “the queen of arts and sciences.” In this historical light, Hellenic philosophy would appear to be closer to the Asian philosophies of India, China, Japan, and Korea than to Western or “European philosophy.” So as we stand at the post-cold war era, witnessing the collapse of Soviet-style Socialism and the coming of the post-modern era; as we look at the dawn of a new millennium and dream of a new global order of freedom and democracy, the moment seemspropitious for reflection. We may stop and reflect upon our philosophical past as exemplified in the free spirit of Hellenic philosophy and its misfortunes, its great “passion” in Christian Europe in the last two millennia or so. (shrink)

The question of the origins of the cult of the fourth century martyr, Demetrius of Thessalonica has been the focal point of hagiographical research since the first publication of his passions by the Bollandists in 1780. Since then there were the most divergent hypotheses put forward to explain the obscure beginnings of his Thessalonican basilica and his alleged connection to Sirmium and its martyred deacon, Demetrius. Different ideas and assumptions were proposed based on various arthistorical, archaeological and literary observations, (...) or sometimes relying only on national ideologies or even pure fantasy. However, there were no attempts made to put the whole problem into the wider context of the Illyrian hagiographic tradition and to make a detailed comparison between St Demetrius' cult and the afterlife of other Pannonian and Illyrian martyrs. In the present paper, then, after a critical analysis of the problem and its proposed solutions, a number of comparative case-studies will be carried out aiming to map the basic tendences of the afterlife of the martyrs of Late Antique Illyricum which presumably will help us to have a better view of the whole problem of the migration of the Illyrian martyrs and to provide a fresh solution for the origin and development of St Demetrius' cult. (shrink)

Introduction: why the De anima commentaries? This book will concentrate on interpretations of the De anima in late antiquity, and what we can learn from ...

During the imperial and late antique period, various systems of lot divination spread in various regions of the Roman Empire. Notably, this custom appears to be particularly widespread in (Southern) Gaul, as revealed, among other things, by three lot books that are very likely to originate from this area, namely the Sortes Sangallenses, the Sortes Sanctorum and the Sortes Monacenses. The present paper focusses on the Sortes Sanctorum, a short divinatory text that includes 56 lots, all entirely preserved, (...) dating from the 5 th /6 th century. The first three sections, aiming at introducing the lots, dwell on the textual transmission, the form and structure of the oracle, and its relationship with the Greek models. The fourth and longest one investigates their language, focussing on the non-standard features and the relation between the type of language adopted and the social status of the clients. (shrink)

The stereotype of slave-run latifundia being turned into serf-worked estates is no longer credible as a model of the transition from antiquity to the middle ages, but Chris Wickham’s anomalous characterisation of the Roman Empire as ‘feudal’ is scarcely a viable alternative to that. If a fully-articulated feudal economy only emerged in the later middle ages, what do we make of the preceding centuries? By postulating a ‘general dominance of tenant production’ throughout the period covered by his book, Wickham fails (...) to offer any basis for a closer characterisation of the post-Roman rural labour-force and exaggerates the degree of control that peasants enjoyed in the late Empire and post-Roman world. A substantial part of the rural labour-force of the sixth to eighth centuries comprised groups who, like Rosamond Faith’s inland-workers in Anglo-Saxon England, were more proletarian than peasant-like. The paper suggests the likely ways in which that situation reflected Roman traditions of direct management and the subordination of labour, and outlines what a Marxist theory of the so-called colonate might look like. After discussing Wickham’s handling of the colonate and slavery, and looking briefly at the nature of estates and the fate of the Roman aristocracy, I conclude by criticising the way Wickham uses the category of ‘mode of production’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Network of Schools The Religious Climate Philosophy, Revelation, and Faith The Course in Philosophy: A Day in Proclus's Life Neoplatonic Pedagogical Thought The Doctrinal Fecundity of Exegetical Misinterpretations The “Symphonic” Presupposition: Syrianus, and the Harmony of Plato and Aristotle according to Simplicius The Explication of Texts: The Neoplatonic cursus of Study The Beginning of the Cursus: The Introductions Taught in the Framework of the Exegesis of Porphyry's Isagoge and Aristotle's Categories, and The General Principles (...) of Exegesis Questions Preliminary to the Study of Plato How Commentaries Were Composed Bibliography. (shrink)

Late antiquity is increasingly recognised as a period of important cultural transformation. One of its crucial aspects is the emergence of a new awareness of human individuality. In this book, the authors assess the influence of seminal thinkers, including the Gnostics, Plotinus, and Augustine, but also of cultural and religious practices such as astrology and monasticism, as well as, more generally, the role played by intellectual disciplines such as grammar and Christian theology. The volume serves as a comprehensive introduction (...) to late antique understandings of human individuality. (shrink)

Scholarship of the last half century has transformed approaches to paganism and Christianity in the late Roman world. Much as the paradigm of late antiquity has replaced traditional narratives of ‘decline and fall’, expounded systematically in the eighteenth century by Edward Gibbon, so recent scholarship has also challenged older narratives of pagan / Christian conflict, particularly heroic narratives of the resistance mounted by Rome’s ‘last pagans’. This article locates a crucial—although often neglected—prehistory and parallel to these debates in (...) the world of early modern humanist scholarship. It examines how fourth-century Roman pagan authors—especially Quintus Aurelius Symmachus and Ammianus Marcellinus—were read by printers, editors and philologists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In a world before Gibbonian decline and fall, humanist scholars navigated both religious conflicts and literary canon wars to articulate a robust vision of late antiquity avant la lettre, although for reasons very different from those which have motivated twentieth- and twenty-first-century revisionists. Even as some of their colleagues dismissed late pagan texts on the grounds of deficient Latinity or deficient Christianity (or both), the early modern scholars who embraced this expansive vision of the ancient canon ended up highlighting the ambiguities of late antique religion—especially the grey area between the ‘pagan’ and the ‘Christian’. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical study of two major thinkers who span the period of late antiquity: Plotinus, who establishes many of the central themes for later debate and establishes strategies of argument and interpretation, and Proclus, who develops a grand philosophical synthesis and provides original insights into a number of important problems regarding being and thinking, matter and evil.

Name der Zeitschrift: Millennium Jahrgang: 13 Heft: 1 Seiten: 5-28.

How on Earth can Humans be perfect? The striving for perfection has always occupied a central place in ancient Greek culture. This dynamics urged the Greeks on to surpass themselves in different fields, from sculpture and architecture over athletics to philosophy. In this volume, an international group of scholars examines how the ideal of perfection was conceived and pursued in Late Antiquity, both within philosophical circles and Christianity. Their studies yield a fascinating panorama of various attempts to bridge the (...) unbridgeable and assimilate our frail, imperfect human nature as far as possible to divine perfection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity: Interpretations of the “De Anima.” by H.J. BlumenthalLloyd P. GersonH.J. Blumenthal. Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity: Interpretations of the “De Anima.” Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. x + 244. Cloth, $57.50.The label ‘Neoplatonism’, coined in the eighteenth century to indicate a putative and rather ill-defined development within the Platonic tradition, is to this day applied in sundry ways. (...) Presumably, ‘Neoplatonic’ is supposed to be distinguished from ‘Platonic’, but the problem with this is that most of those ancient philosophers called ‘Neoplatonic’ thought of themselves simply as Platonists, that is, as authentic interpreters and continuators of Plato. Nevertheless, there are several important and relatively clear differentiations to be made among those within this tradition. One such refers to those Platonists who attempted to appropriate Aristotle’s philosophy. This was done principally in two ways. For Plotinus, Aristotelian concepts and distinctions were employed to defend Plato against Peripatetic attacks. For Porphyry and the later Platonic commentators on the works of the Aristotelian corpus, Aristotle was co-opted as an authority on the philosophy of the sensible world, leaving the higher, intelligible world to Plato. The commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima are particularly revealing in this regard. For one would assume that in matters regarding the soul it would be extremely difficult to see Aristotle and Plato as anything other than irreconcilable. Aristotle’s hylomorphism and explicit denial of the immortality of the soul hardly seem to be compatible with that which can be called, even on the most charitable interpretation, genuinely Platonic. In fact, the reconciliation of Aristotelian and Platonic soul doctrines is one of the central tasks late Platonists set for themselves. As Blumenthal notes: “Whatever the historical truth about the relation of Aristotle’s thought to Plato’s may have been, the Neoplatonist regarded it as propaedeutic to Plato’s as well as aiming at the same goal” (25).H. J. Blumenthal’s long-anticipated monograph explores in minute detail the extant commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima written by late Platonic or, if one insists, Neoplatonic philosophers. This book builds upon a large body of frequently groundbreaking work by the author on various facets of late Greek philosophy. The main commentaries studied are those of John Philoponus and the unknown authors dubbed ‘Pseudo-Philoponus’ and Pseudo-Simplicius’, though there is also considerable attention paid to Themistius, the last Peripatetic commentator on De Anima and, of course, [End Page 315] Alexander of Aphrodisias, whose commentary on De Anima has not survived but whose own immensely influential Peripatetic treatise on the soul does.This book is divided into two parts: I. Commentaries and Commentators and II. Interpretations of the De Anima. The first part provides the essential background to the second. Anyone approaching the Aristotelian commentators for the first time will find here a most useful guide. Even those who have some familiarity with this material will benefit from the author’s extensive knowledge of detail and judicious examination of some of the difficult issues of dating, authorship, philosophical lineage, and so on.The second section of the book concentrates on the De Anima commentaries. Here the author, following the order of the text of De Anima, systematically surveys the positions of the commentators on some of the central issues taken up in Aristotle’s work. These include the commentators’ efforts to reconcile Aristotle’s definition of the soul with Platonic assumptions about its nature and Plato’s tripartite division of the soul with Aristotle’s not entirely clear divisions. One of the instructive features of this comparative study of the commentaries is to see frequently how the issues that seize the imagination of modern commentators trouble the ancients not at all and vice versa.Most readers will be mainly interested in the chapters on the commentaries on the latter part of Book Two and Book Three of De Anima. From Plotinus onward, some of the most original philosophizing in the Platonic tradition focuses on self-consciousness, memory, imagination, and the integrative operation of the rational and arational powers. The last two chapters are filled with material about these issues as well as the... (shrink)

Written by a group of leading scholars, this unique collection of essays investigates the views of both pagan and Christian philosophers on causation and the creation of the cosmos. Structured in two parts, the volume first looks at divine agency and how late antique thinkers, including the Stoics, Plotinus, Porphyry, Simplicius, Philoponus and Gregory of Nyssa, tackled questions such as: is the cosmos eternal? Did it come from nothing or from something pre-existing? How was it caused to come (...) into existence? Is it material or immaterial? The second part looks at questions concerning human agency and responsibility, including the problem of evil and the nature of will, considering thinkers such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Augustine. Highlighting some of the most important and interesting aspects of these philosophical debates, the volume will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of philosophy, classics, theology and ancient history. (shrink)

By analysing three paradigmatic passages, this paper explores how Prudentius uses classical love motifs and imagery not only to lambast paganism, but also as a powerful rhetorical tool to convey his Christian message. The ‘fire of love’ imagery is conspicuous in Psychomachia 53–57, which wittily blends Christian and erotic language. In an entirely different context, the flamma amoris is also fully exploited to depict lustful young Vestal Virgins, in combination with other classical metaphors of passion, such as the ‘wound of (...) love’ and the signa amoris. Additionally, the contrast between heat and cold is a central element in the description of the Vestals’ tardy nuptials, redolent of classical satirical portraits of vetulae libidinosae. Finally, in Hamartigenia 628–636 the relationship between the soul and God draws from a Christian tradition of bridal representation, but the lapse into sin is portrayed as the love triangle, typical of the Latin love elegy. These examples illustrate how Prudentius creatively and consciously frames love and sex imagery in new contexts, exploring their potential and infusing clichés with new meanings and forms. (shrink)

This collection of essays brings together the work of leading North American and European classics and patristic scholars. By emphasizing the common Platonic heritage of pagan philosophy and Christian theology, it reveals the range and continuity of the Platonic tradition in late antiquity. Some of the papers treat specific authors, and others the evolution of particular doctrines.

Taking off from the observation that scholars have for too long maintained that late ancient philosophy has no ethical theory, the purpose of this paper is toshow that there is. indeed an ethics in late antiquity, and even that it is rich and consistent. I make a distinction between an ethical theory (about e.g. happiness and virtue) and its practical foundation in the philosophical curriculum of Neoplatonic schools. I focus on the curriculum, showing that the pedagogical focus of (...) late ancient ethics is twofold: it aims to make people turn away from worldly ties, but nevertheless always retains social concern as a main preoccupation. To this end two different kinds of ethical tasks can be distinguished: (a) the purification of the soul who is starting her philosophical journey and (b) the generous testimony of the soul who has already experienced purification. The Platonic call for divinization of the soul [Theaetetus 176b) turns out to bear interesting parallels with late ancient ethics and, what is more, to provide its general framework. (shrink)

Is power the essence of divinity, or are divine powers distinct from divine essence? Are they divine hypostases or are they divine attributes? Are powers such as omnipotence, omniscience, etc. modes of divine activity? How do they manifest? In which way can we apprehend them? Is there a multiplicity of gods whose powers fill the cosmos or is there only one God from whom all power(s) derive(s) and whose power(s) permeate(s) everything? These are questions that become central to philosophical and (...) theological debates in Late Antiquity (roughly corresponding to the period 2nd to the 6th centuries). On the one hand, the Pagan Neoplatonic thinkers of this era postulate a complex hierarchy of gods, whose powers express the unlimited power of the ineffable One. On the other hand, Christians proclaim the existence of only one God, one divine power or one 'Lord of all powers'. -/- Divided into two main sections, the first part of Divine Powers in Late Antiquity examines aspects of the notion of divine power as developed by the four major figures of Neoplatonism: Plotinus (c. 204-270), Porphyry (c. 234-305), Iamblichus (c.245-325), and Proclus (412-485). It focuses on an aspect of the notion of divine power that has been so far relatively neglected in the literature. Part two investigates the notion of divine power in early Christian authors, from the New Testament to the Alexandrian school (Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius the Great) and, further, to the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa), as well as in some of these authors' sources (the Septuagint, Philo of Alexandria). The traditional view tends to overlook the fact that the Bible, particularly the New Testament, was at least as important as Platonic philosophical texts in the shaping of the early Christian thinking about the Church's doctrines. Whilst challenging the received interpretation by redressing the balance between the Bible and Greek philosophical texts, the essays in the second section of this book nevertheless argue for the philosophical value of early Christian reflections on the notion of divine power. The two groups of thinkers that each of the sections deal with (the Platonic-Pagan and the Christian one) share largely the same intellectual and cultural heritage; they are concerned with the same fundamental questions; and they often engage in more or less public philosophical and theological dialogue, directly influencing one another. (shrink)

Readers of Eastern Christianity and Late Antique Philosophy will find a collection of authoritative papers from across the Neoplatonic and Eastern Christian traditions. It is only recently that scholars have started to take notice of the Eastern Christian engagement with late antique philosophical texts. This volume builds upon this new interest in order to show the dynamic nature of Neoplatonism and Eastern Christianity at a time when both faced a variety of challenges. The legacy of Greek (...) philosophy in the Christian East fills the gap between the schools of Alexandria and Baghdad and brings into focus the intellectual history of the period. The aim of the volume is to stimulate interest in late antique philosophy and its reception in the Christian East. (shrink)

The Quranic terms sarab, a hapax legomenon, and majmaʿ al-baḥrayn have generated a number of different interpretations among both Muslim exegetes and Western scholars. In this article I demonstrate how they can be better understood when read in the light of the cultural context of late antiquity and, in particular, of the cosmological imagery of this historical period.

This article explores the geographical outlook of the late antique author Ausonius of Bordeaux (c.310–395c.e.). It offers close readings of his poems on roads, oysters and cities, and situates him within the vibrant geographical debates of his day. Section I, on roads, argues that an overlooked passage inEpistula24 reflects attested routes through Gaul, and that other passages in Ausonius’ letters are similarly influenced by ‘hodological’ ways of thinking. Section II, on oysters, identifies a new geographic mode, ‘teleports’, inEpistula3, (...) a poem in a long tradition of works that use oysters to chart imperial space and map cultural landscapes. Section III, on cities, brings the recent paradigm of ‘landmarks’ to bear on theOrdo nobilium urbium, arguing that Ausonius uses the catalogue form both to articulate imperial unity and to express pride in his homeland of Gaul. This article thus advances our understanding of three related aspects of late antique geography: it demonstrates the importance of literary texts for discussions of cultural geography; shows how conceptions of space were influenced by provincial identity; and provides further evidence of the great diversity of Roman understandings of space. (shrink)

The Pythagorean idea that numbers are the key to understanding reality inspired philosophers in late Antiquity (4th and 5th centuries A.D.) to develop theories in physics and metaphysics based on mathematical models. This book draws on some newly discovered evidence, including fragments of Iamblichus's On Pythagoreanism, to examine these early theories and trace their influence on later Neoplatonists (particularly Proclus and Syrianus) and on medieval and early modern philosophy.

Asia Minor witnessed a resurgence of construction and renovation activities in the Theodosian age, and in particular in the last twenty years of the 4th and the first twenty years of the 5th century AD. In fact, the typical Late Antique city, with its imposing fortification walls, heterogeneous street colonnades and agora porticoes, and monumental churches replacing earlier temples, came into being in these decades. A confrontation of the material remains with contemporaneous historical, political, social and religious events (...) and changes, would suggest that these urbanistic interventions were the result of unrelated factors arising in just a few decades’ time. Despite the absence of a deliberate Theodosian policy of urban renewal, the care for and energy invested in the cityscape does testify to continuance of aesthetic principles and representational concerns, not only at Constantinople, but also in the provincial capitals and even in the smaller cities of the region. (shrink)

Distinguished experts from a range of disciplines with a common interest in late antiquity probe the apparent paradox of pagan monotheism and reach a better understanding of the historical roots of Christianity.