Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity

Late Antiquity has increasingly been viewed as a period of transformation and dynamic change in its literature as in society and politics. In this volume, thirteen scholars focus on the intellectual and literary culture of the time, investigating complex relationships between late-Antique authors and the texts which they had inherited through the classical ('pagan') and Christian traditions. Particular emphasis is placed on works that carried special authority: Homer, Virgil, Plato, and the Bible. The volume thus contributes to the history of the reception of classical texts, and through its inclusiveness (classical and classicizing, philosophical, and patristic writing are all represented) seeks to offer a view of the textual world of late Antiquity as a unified whole. It affords a scholarly introduction to a sweep of late-Antique literature in Greek and Latin. Authors and genres discussed include Juvencus and Claudian, Plotinus and Proclus, Jerome and John Cassian, geographical and grammatical writing, and Christian cento.

Late Antiquity has increasingly been viewed as a period of transformation and dynamic change in its literature as in society and politics. In this volume, thirteen scholars focus on the intellectual and literary culture of the time, investigating complex relationships between late-Antique authors and the texts which they had inherited through the classical ('pagan') and Christian traditions. Particular emphasis is placed on works that carried special authority: Homer, Virgil, Plato, and the Bible. The volume thus contributes to the history of the reception of classical texts, and through its inclusiveness (classical and classicizing, philosophical, and patristic writing are all represented) seeks to offer a view of the textual world of late Antiquity as a unified whole. It affords a scholarly introduction to a sweep of late-Antique literature in Greek and Latin. Authors and genres discussed include Juvencus and Claudian, Plotinus and Proclus, Jerome and John Cassian, geographical and grammatical writing, and Christian cento.

Preface Abbreviations Notes on contributors 1. Textual inheritances and textual relations in late Antiquity - J.H.D. Scourfield 2. A new created world: classical geographical texts and Christian contexts in late Antiquity - Mark Humphries 3. Antiquity and authority in Nonius Marcellus - Anna Chahoud 4. More Roman than the Romans of Rome: Virgilian (self-)fashioning in Claudian's Panegyric for the Consuls Olybrius and Probinus - Stephen Wheeler 5. Birth and transfiguration: some Gospel episodes in Juvencus and Sedulius -Roger P.H. Green 6. Virgil, Christianity, and the Cento Probae - Scott McGill 7. The Bible Hellenized: Nonnus' Paraphrase of St John's Gospel and 'Eudocia's' Homeric centos - Mary Whitby 8. Plotinus and the myth of Love - Andrew Smith 9. John of Stobi on the soul - John Dillon 10. What's in a divine name? Proclus on Plato's Cratylus - R.M. van den Berg 11. Pagans and Christians on providence - Andrew Louth 12. Jerome, Virgil, and the captive maiden: the attitude of Jerome to classical literature - Ann Mohr 13. John Cassian, the instituta Aegyptiorum, andthe apostolic church - Richard J. Goodrich Index