Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla

Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla

Author:

Publisher: Historiography of Rome and Its

Published: 2021-12-16

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9789004499409

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From footnote-fodder to intellectual: Valerius Maximus, a generally under-appreciated minor author of the early first century AD emerges as a holder of distinct views on Rome's dynasty, their world, on how to behave within that world, and as an influencer of later thought both pagan and Christian.


Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen

Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen

Author: Clive Skidmore

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

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The popularity of the work of Valerius Maximus during the Middle Ages and Renaissance was due to its value as a source of moral exhortation and guidance: the work was as relevant to the readers of those times as it had been to Valerius' contemporaries in the first century AD. Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen demonstrates that the purpose of Valerius' work was to promote a system of morality based upon historical precedent that was both traditional and authoritative to the educated classes for whom he wrote. Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen offers a re-definition of the purpose of Valerius' work and totally new conclusions about its predecessors, form and audience. The book is not confined to an examination of Valerius' work in isolation, but also examines earlier forms of exemplary literature, questions of how Roman literature was communicated to its audience, and presents an entirely new theory on the identity of Valerius Maximus the author.


Exemplary Reading

Exemplary Reading

Author: Marijke Crab

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 3643907265

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This monograph sheds new light on the Renaissance reception of Valerius Maximus, whose collection of Memorable Deeds and Sayings - nowadays little studied - was once considered "the most important book next to the Bible." Offering a close study of all the Latin commentaries on Valerius Maximus printed between 1470 and 1600, the present volume explores how his exempla were read in different times and places and in different intellectual milieus, while also enhancing our general understanding of humanist commentary - which is now, more than ever, a thriving subject of research. (Series: Scientia universalis. Division I: Studies on the History of Pre-Modern Science, Vol. 2 / Abteilung I: Studien zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Vormoderne) [Subject: History, Literary Criticism, Renaissance Studies]Ã?Â?


Models from the Past in Roman Culture

Models from the Past in Roman Culture

Author: Matthew B. Roller

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1107162599

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Presents a coherent model for understanding historical examples in Ancient Rome and their rhetorical, moral and historiographical functions.


Pain Narratives in Greco-Roman Writings

Pain Narratives in Greco-Roman Writings

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-07-03

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9004677461

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Why is it so difficult to talk about pain? As we do today, the Greeks and Romans struggled to communicate their pain: this required a rich and subtle vocabulary which had to be developed over time. Pain Narratives traces the development of this language in literary, philosophical, and medical texts from across antiquity: poets, physicians, and philosophers contributed to an ever-growing lexicon to articulate their own and others’ feelings. The essays within this volume uncover the expanding Greco-Roman vocabulary of pain, analyse the medical discussions on pain symptoms, and explore the religious reinterpretations of pain concepts in late antiquity.


Plutarch and his Contemporaries

Plutarch and his Contemporaries

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-02-26

Total Pages: 511

ISBN-13: 9004687300

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The volume puts into the spotlight overlaps and points of intersection between Plutarch and other writers of the imperial period. It contains twenty-eight contributions which adopt a comparative approach and put into sharper relief ongoing debates and shared concerns, revealing a complex topography of rearrangements and transfigurations of inherited topics, motifs, and ideas. Reading Plutarch alongside his contemporaries brings out distinctive features of his thought and uncovers peculiarities in his use of literary and rhetorical strategies, imagery, and philosophical concepts, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the empire’s culture in general, and Plutarch in particular.


The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War

The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-07-29

Total Pages: 541

ISBN-13: 9004409521

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The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War is part of a burgeoning new trend that focuses on the great impact of stasis and civil war on Roman society. This volume specifically concentrates on the Late Republic, a transformative period marked by social and political violence, stasis, factional strife, and civil war. Its constitutive chapters closely study developments and discussions concerning the concept of civil war in the late republican and early imperial historiography of the late Republic, from L. Cornelius Sulla Felix to the Severan dynasty.


Memorable Deeds and Sayings

Memorable Deeds and Sayings

Author: Valerius Maximus

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 2004-03-01

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1603840710

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Popular in its day both as a sourcebook for writers and orators and as a guidebook for living a moral life, this remarkably rich document serves as an engaging introduction to the cultural and moral history of ancient Rome. Valerius' "thousand tales" are arranged thematically in ninety-one chapters that cover nearly every aspect of life in the ancient world, including such wide-ranging topics as military discipline, child rearing, and women lawyers. As a whole, the work gives the reader fascinating insights into what it felt like to be an ancient Roman, what the ancient Romans really believed, what their private world was like, how they related to one another, and what they did when nobody was watching.


Wisdom from Rome

Wisdom from Rome

Author: Serena Connolly

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-10-03

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 3110789493

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For about one thousand years, the Distichs of Cato were the first Latin text of every student across Europe and latterly the New World. Chaucer, Cervantes, and Shakespeare assumed their audiences knew them well—and they almost certainly did. Yet most Classicists today have either never heard of them or mistakenly attribute them to Cato the Elder. The Distichs are a collection of approximately 150 two-line maxims in hexameters that offer instructions about or reflections on topics such as friendship, money, reputation, justice, and self-control. Wisdom from Rome argues that Classicists (and others) should read the Distichs: they provide important insights into the ancient Roman literate masses’ conceptions of society and their views of relationships between the individual, family, community, and state. Newly dated to the first century CE, they are an important addition and often corrective to more familiar contemporary texts that treat the same topics. Moreover, as the field of Classics increasingly acknowledges the intellectual importance of exploring the reception of Classical texts, an introduction to one of the most widely read ancient texts for many centuries is timely and important.


Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome

Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome

Author: Rebecca Langlands

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-09-13

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 1107040604

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"The well-known mythographer Marina Warner has described the process of reading fairy tales and folktales as 'tasting the dragon's blood' - a magical and transformative process by which one's ears are opened to the voices of the past and of other worlds. Roman exempla, which constitute a national story-telling tradition, are very different in many ways from the dream-like fantasies of fairy-tales and other narrative folk traditions that have been the subject of Warner's studies. In (supposedly) true stories from history, battle-hardened warriors, noble maidens and honourable sons of the soil face impossible dangers, take terrible decisions and sacrifice their lives, their limbs and even their own children for the sake of justice, discipline and the Roman community. Yet for the ancient Romans too, hearing the blood-soaked stories of their ancestral heroes was an intimate and potent experience, and this 'taste of the hero's blood' had an intoxicating effect similar to the blood of Warner's dragon: evoking other worlds, shaping understanding of their own world"--