City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria
City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria

Author: Edward J. Watts

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2008-09-10

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0520258169

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This lively and wide-ranging study of the men and ideas of late antique education explores the intellectual and doctrinal milieux in the two great cities of Athens and Alexandria from the second to the sixth centuries to shed new light on the interaction between the pagan cultural legacy and Christianity. While previous scholarship has seen Christian reactions to pagan educational culture as the product of an empire-wide process of development, Edward J. Watts crafts two narratives that reveal how differently education was shaped by the local power structures and urban contexts of each city. Touching on the careers of Herodes Atticus, Proclus, Damascius, Ammonius Saccas, Origen, Hypatia, and Olympiodorus; and events including the Herulian sack of Athens, the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonic school under Justinian, the rise of Arian Christianity, and the sack of the Serapeum, he shows that by the sixth century, Athens and Alexandria had two distinct, locally determined, approaches to pagan teaching that had their roots in the unique historical relationships between city and school.

Riot in Alexandria
Riot in Alexandria

Author: Edward J. Watts

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2017-02-23

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0520294866

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This innovative study uses one well-documented moment of violence as a starting point for a wide-ranging examination of the ideas and interactions of pagan philosophers, Christian ascetics, and bishops from the fourth to the early seventh century. Edward J. Watts reconstructs a riot that erupted in Alexandria in 486 when a group of students attacked a Christian adolescent who had publicly insulted the students' teachers. Pagan students, Christians affiliated with a local monastery, and the Alexandrian ecclesiastical leaders all cast the incident in a different light, and each group tried with that interpretation to influence subsequent events. Watts, drawing on Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac sources, shows how historical traditions and notions of a shared past shaped the interactions and behavior of these high-profile communities. Connecting oral and written texts to the personal relationships that gave them meaning and to the actions that gave them form, Riot in Alexandria draws new attention to the understudied social and cultural history of the later fifth-century Roman world and at the same time opens a new window on late antique intellectual life.

Violence in Late Antiquity
Violence in Late Antiquity

Author: H.A. Drake

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 1351875744

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'Violence' is virtually synonymous in the popular imagination with the period of the Later Roman Empire-a time when waves of barbarian invaders combined with urban mobs and religious zealots to bring an end to centuries of peace and serenity. All of these images come together in the Visigothic sack of the city of Rome in A.D. 410, a date commonly used for the fall of the entire empire. But was this period in fact as violent as it has been portrayed? A new generation of scholars in the field of Late Antiquity has called into question the standard narrative, pointing to evidence of cultural continuity and peaceful interaction between "barbarians" and Romans, Christians and pagans. To assess the state of this question, the fifth biennial 'Shifting Frontiers' conference was devoted to the theme of 'Violence in Late Antiquity'. Conferees addressed aspects of this question from standpoints as diverse as archaeology and rhetoric, anthropology and economics. A selection of the papers then delivered have been prepared for the present volume, along with others commissioned for the purpose and a concluding essay by Martin Zimmerman, reflecting on the theme of the book. The four sections on Defining Violence, 'Legitimate' Violence, Violence and Rhetoric, and Religious Violence are each introduced by a theme essay from a leading scholar in the field. While offering no definitive answer to the question of violence in Late Antiquity, the papers in this volume aim to stimulate a fresh look at this age-old problem.

A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity
A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity

Author: Josef Lössl

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2018-05-22

Total Pages: 711

ISBN-13: 1118968107

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A comprehensive review of the development, geographic spread, and cultural influence of religion in Late Antiquity A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity offers an authoritative and comprehensive survey of religion in Late Antiquity. This historical era spanned from the second century to the eighth century of the Common Era. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the Companion explores the evolution and development of religion and the role various religions played in the cultural, political, and social transformations of the late antique period. The authors examine the theories and methods used in the study of religion during this period, consider the most notable historical developments, and reveal how religions spread geographically. The authors also review the major religious traditions that emerged in Late Antiquity and include reflections on the interaction of these religions within their particular societies and cultures. This important Companion: Brings together in one volume the work of a notable team of international scholars Explores the principal geographical divisions of the late antique world Offers a deep examination of the predominant religions of Late Antiquity Examines established views in the scholarly assessment of the religions of Late Antiquity Includes information on the current trends in late-antique scholarship on religion Written for scholars and students of religion, A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity offers a comprehensive survey of religion and the influence religion played in the culture, politics, and social change during the late antique period.

Late Antiquity on the Eve of Islam
Late Antiquity on the Eve of Islam

Author: Averil Cameron

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 1351923145

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This volume reflects the huge upsurge of interest in the Near East and early Islam currently taking place among historians of late antiquity. At the same time, Islamicists and Qur'anic scholars are also increasingly seeking to place the life of Muhammad and the Qur'an in a late antique background. Averil Cameron, herself one of the leading scholars of late antiquity and Byzantium, has chosen eleven key articles that together give a rounded picture of the most important trends in late antique scholarship over the last decades, and provide a coherent context for the emergence of the new religion. A substantial introduction, with a detailed bibliography, surveys the present state of the field, as well as discussing some recent themes in Qur'anic and early Islamic scholarship from the point of view of a late antique historian. The volume also provides an invaluable introduction to recent scholarship, making clear the ferment of religious change that was taking place across the Near East before, during and after the lifetime of Muhammad. It will be essential reading for Islamicists and late antique students and scholars alike.

Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity
Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity

Author: Josef Lössl

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1409410080

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This book brings together sixteen studies by international scholars on the origins and early development of the Latin and Syriac biblical and philosophical commentary traditions. With its breadth and ground-breaking originality, this volume is an indispensable resource not only for specialists, but also for all students and scholars interested in late-antique intellectual history, especially the practice of teaching and studying philosophy, the philosophical exegesis of the Bible, and the role of commentary in the post-Hellenistic world as far as the classical renaissance in Islam.

The Cross in the Visual Culture of Late Antique Egypt
The Cross in the Visual Culture of Late Antique Egypt

Author: Gillian Spalding-Stracey

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 9004430512

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In The Cross in the Visual Culture of Late Antique Egypt Gillian Spalding-Stracey brings the design of crosses in monastic and ecclesiastical settings to the fore. Visual representations of the Holy Cross are often so ubiquitous in Christian art that they are often overlooked as artistic devices themselves. This volume offers an exploration of the variety of designs and associated imagery by which the Cross was expressed across the Egyptian landscape in late antiquity. A survey of locations and images leads to an analysis of artistic influences, possible symbolism, variance across time and place and the contextual use of the motif. Gillian Spalding-Stracey provides the reader with an art-historical perspective of the socio-cultural situation in Egypt at the time.

Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire
Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire

Author: Natalie B. Dohrmann

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2013-10-09

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0812208579

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In histories of ancient Jews and Judaism, the Roman Empire looms large. For all the attention to the Jewish Revolt and other conflicts, however, there has been less concern for situating Jews within Roman imperial contexts; just as Jews are frequently dismissed as atypical by scholars of Roman history, so Rome remains invisible in many studies of rabbinic and other Jewish sources written under Roman rule. Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire brings Jewish perspectives to bear on long-standing debates concerning Romanization, Christianization, and late antiquity. Focusing on the third to sixth centuries, it draws together specialists in Jewish and Christian history, law, literature, poetry, and art. Perspectives from rabbinic and patristic sources are juxtaposed with evidence from piyyutim, documentary papyri, and synagogue and church mosaics. Through these case studies, contributors highlight paradoxes, subtleties, and ironies of Romanness and imperial power. Contributors: William Adler, Beth A. Berkowitz, Ra'anan Boustan, Hannah M. Cotton, Natalie B. Dohrmann, Paula Fredriksen, Oded Irshai, Hayim Lapin, Joshua Levinson, Ophir Münz-Manor, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Hagith Sivan, Michael D. Swartz, Rina Talgam.

Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity
Dressing Judeans and Christians in Antiquity

Author: Kristi Upson-Saia

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1317147979

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The past two decades have witnessed a proliferation of scholarship on dress in the ancient world. These recent studies have established the extent to which Greece and Rome were vestimentary cultures, and they have demonstrated the critical role dress played in communicating individuals’ identities, status, and authority. Despite this emerging interest in ancient dress, little work has been done to understand religious aspects and uses of dress. This volume aims to fill this gap by examining a diverse range of religious sources, including literature, art, performance, coinage, economic markets, and memories. Employing theoretical frames from a range of disciplines, contributors to the volume demonstrate how dress developed as a topos within Judean and Christian rhetoric, symbolism, and performance from the first century BCE to the fifth century CE. Specifically, they demonstrate how religious meanings were entangled with other social logics, revealing the many layers of meaning attached to ancient dress, as well as the extent to which dress was implicated in numerous domains of ancient religious life.

Explaining the Cosmos
Explaining the Cosmos

Author: Michael W. Champion

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0199337489

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Explaining the Cosmos analyses the philosophical and theological writings relating to the creation and eternity of the world of three Gazan thinkers, Aeneas, Zacharias and Procopius. It sheds light on Neoplatonic and Christian debates, and maps distinctive cultural characteristics of Gaza, including its schools and monasteries, in Late Antiquity.