Apuleius speech Pro Se De Magia is a unique example of 2nd century Roman oratory and a literary masterpiece of the Second Sophistic. On this fascinating speech, no up-to-date commen-tary in English is available. The present publication aims at filling this gap. In the commentary, special attention is paid to the speakers rhetorical strategies and the rich literary texture of the speech.
Despite the growing interest in Apuleius’ Apologia or Pro se de magia, a speech he delivered in AD 158/159 to defend himself against the charge of being a magus, the only comprehensive study on this speech and magic to date is that by Adam Abt (1908). The aim of this volume is to shed new light on the extent to which Apuleius’ speech reveals his own knowledge of magic, and on the implications of the dangerous allegations brought against Apuleius. By analysing the Apologia sequentially, the author does not only reassess Abt’s analysis but proposes a new reconstruction of the prosecution’s case, arguing that it is heavily distorted by Apuleius. Since ancient magic is the main topic of this speech, an extensive discussion of the topic is provided, offering a new semantic taxonomy of magus and its cognates. Finally, this volume also explores Apuleius’ forensic techniques and the Platonic ideology underpinning his speech. It is proposed that a Platonising reasoning – distinguishing between higher and lower concepts – lies at the core of Apuleius’ rhetorical strategy, and that Apuleius aims to charm the judge, the audience and, ultimately, his readers with the irresistible power of his arguments.
Paidea, the yearning for, and display of knowledge, reached its height as a cultural concept in the works of the Second Sophistic, an elite literary and philosophical movement seeking to ape the style and achievements of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. A crucial element in the display of paidea was an ability to mix the witty and playful with the serious and instructive. The Second Sophistic is known as a Greek phenomenon, but these essays ask how the Latin author Apuleius fitted into this framework, and created a distinctively latin expression of paidea, focusing on the elements of playfulness at its heart.
This volume, comprising 24 essays, aims to contribute to a developing appreciation of the capacity of rhetoric to reinforce affiliation or disaffiliation to groups. To this end, the essays span a variety of ancient literary genres (i.e. oratory, historical and technical prose, drama and poetry) and themes (i.e. audience-speaker, laughter, emotions, language, gender, identity, and religion).
Addressing the close connections between ancient divination and knowledge, this volume offers an interlinked and detailed set of case studies which examine the epistemic value and significance of divination in ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Focusing on diverse types of divination, including oracles, astrology, and the reading of omens and signs in the entrails of sacrificial animals, chance utterances and other earthly and celestial phenomena, this volume reveals that divination was conceived of as a significant path to the attainment of insight and understanding by the ancient Greeks and Romans. It also explores the connections between divination and other branches of knowledge in Greco-Roman antiquity, such as medicine and ethnographic discourse. Drawing on anthropological studies of contemporary divination and exploring a wide range of ancient philosophical, historical, technical and literary evidence, chapters focus on the interconnections and close relationship between divine and human modes of knowledge, in relation to nuanced and subtle formulations of the blending of divine, cosmic and human agency; philosophical approaches towards and uses of divination (particularly within Platonism), including links between divination and time, ethics, and cosmology; and the relationship between divination and cultural discourses focusing on gender. The volume aims to catalyse new questions and approaches relating to these under-investigated areas of ancient Greek and Roman life. which have significant implications for the ways in which we understand and assess ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of epistemic value and variant ways of knowing, ancient philosophy and intellectual culture, lived, daily experience in the ancient world, and religious and ritual traditions. Divination and Knowledge in Greco-Roman Antiquity will be of particular relevance to researchers and students in classics, ancient history, ancient philosophy, religious studies and anthropology who are working on divination, lived religion and intellectual culture, but will also appeal to general readers who are interested in the widespread practice and significance of divination in the ancient world.
This sixth AN Supplementum, Lectiones Scrupulosae ('Scrupulous Rea¡dings'), is a Festschrift in honour of Maaike Zimmerman offered to her by a group of Apuleian scholars on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday. It is a volume focused on the text of Apuleius' Metamorphoses that offers Maaike and all other lectores scrupulosi ('scrupulous readers') of Apuleius' novel a collection of studies that shed new light on certain aspects of text and interpretation. Moreover, since Maaike Zimmerman is currently working on a new critical edition of Apuleius' Metamorphoses for the Oxford Classical Texts series, an additional motivation for this volume was the presentation of a collection of original papers providing material on a number of passages for Maaike to ponder and take into consideration as she reviews the text.Everything proceeds from the text: a textual issue can open the door to a broader approach, including, for example, discussions of literary interpretation, linguistics, or style. Hence, one of the themes of the volume is to show connections between problems of textual criticism and larger interpretative issues (e.g. Bitel, Finkelpearl, McCreight, Keulen). Maaike herself is expert at this kind of 'explication du texte'. Within the broad spectrum between 'text' and 'interpretation', the contributions to this volume present different approaches and choices, varying from a traditional, purely 'textual' approach to one that is largely interpretative and seeks to explain the multi-layered texture of Apuleius' narrative in the light of certain metaphors, images, or expressions. Some articles offer new conjectures and readings of vexed passages (Harrison, Plaza), support unjustly neglected conjectures (McCreight, Schmeling and Montiglio), or propose to banish certain passages or phrases once and for all from the center of the text to a peripheral exile in the apparatus criticus, as a footnote in the history of the text's reception (Bitel, Hunink). Other contributions focus on the 'authorship' of the Metamorphoses (Tatum) or the vicissitudes of the Apuleian text in the hands of Medieval and Renaissance readers (Hunink, May). Through their contributions to Lectiones Scrupulosae, the authors of this AN Supplementum not only honour Maaike as a text-editor or commentator, but also pay tribute to her other scholarly output, such as her work on Cupid and Psyche (Hij¡mans), on Apuleius and Roman Satire or the Greek Ass Tale (e.g. Dowden, Graverini, Plaza, Panayotakis), on the reader's role in the Prologue and on Apuleian ecphrasis (Keulen, van Mal-Maeder), or on space symbolism in the Metamorphoses (James and O'Brien). But all contributors in this volume also send Maaike the same message of friendship and gratitude that can be summarized as follows: Lector, intende: laetaberis.
This volume examines mirrors and mirroring through a series of multidisciplinary essays, especially focusing on the intersection between technological and cultural dynamics of mirrors. The international scholars brought together here explore critical questions around the mirror as artefact and the phenomenon of mirroring. Beside the common visual registration of an action or inaction, in a two dimensional and reversed form, various types of mirrors often possess special abilities which can produce a distorted picture of reality, serving in this way illusion and falsehood. Part I looks at a selection of theory from ancient writers, demonstrating the concern to explore these same questions in antiquity. Part II considers the role reflections can play in forming ideas of gender and identity. Beyond the everyday, we see in Part III how oracular mirrors and magical mirrors reveal the invisible divine – prosthetics that allow us to look where the eye cannot reach. Finally, Part IV considers mirrors' roles in displaying the visible and invisible in antiquity and since.
This volume presents the first half of the proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the International Plutarch Society (2002). The selected papers are divided by theme in sections concentrating on political, philosophical, and literary aspects of Plutarch's presentation of statesmen and their activities, and on the aftermath of this Plutarchan heritage. The volume bears witness to the ongoing, wide-ranging interest in the work of Plutarch.
Despite the efforts of modern scholars to explain the origins of science communication as a social, rhetorical, and aesthetic phenomenon, most researchers approach the popularization of science from the perspective of present issues, thus ignoring its historical roots in classical culture along with its continuities, disruptions, and transformations. This volume fills this research gap with a genealogically reflected introduction into the popularization of science as a recurrent cultural technique. The category »popular science« is elucidated in interdisciplinary and diachronic dialogue, discussing case studies from all historical periods. Classicists, archaeologists, medievalists, art historians, sociologists, and historians of science provide the first diachronic and multi-layered approach to the rhetoric techniques, aesthetics, and societal conditions that have shaped the dissemination and reception of scientific knowledge.
