Statius' Silvae 5.3 is a poem written in honor of the poet's dead father. In the course of the poem, Statius recounts his father's life and achievements. Prominent among these accomplishments are the years the elder Statius spent as a teacher of Greek poetry—a grammarian—in Naples. Statius tells us which Greek poets his father taught and to whom. The content and audience of Statius' father's instruction form the basis of this paper. A number of the Greek poets taught by Statius' (...) father are not obvious candidates for inclusion in a course of instruction in Greek poetry. Lycophron, Corinna or Epicharmus, for instance, are not commonly found in other accounts of Greek education in Roman Italy during the early empire. The elder Statius' pedagogical activity has thus been viewed as a Neapolitan peculiarity. Yet, I argue, the same authors taught by Statius' father were the focus of grammarians who were working in Rome itself. The curriculum of Statius' father is thus representative of Greek intellectual activity in early imperial Rome. The pedagogical activity of Statius senior is relevant to Roman intellectual history in a second way. His students consisted of aristocrats from around the Bay of Naples and southern Italy. Some of these students were likely Roman. So too the students of the Greek grammarians working in Rome likely encountered young Romans. How did the study of some mainstream and some recondite Greek poets fit into the élite discourse of the early empire? I argue that knowledge of the poets taught by the elder Statius was geared towards marking off the élite from the non-élite. Students of grammarians such as Statius' father were given the tools to engage in aristocratic discourse, which constituted a claim for prestige and honor in early imperial Rome. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 1 - 39 Through a novel set of texts drawn from Plato, Porphyry, Plotinus, Ps. Julian, Proclus, Hermeias, Synesius and Damascius, I explore how anagogic _erōs_ in master-disciple relationships in Neoplatonism contributed to the attainment of self-knowledge and to the transmission of knowledge, authority and inspired insights within and outside the _diadochia_. I view anagogic _erōs_ as one of the most important channels of non-discursive pedagogy and argue for the mediating power of anagogic (...) _erōs_ in the attainment of the main goal of the Platonist: reorienting desire from sensible to intelligible beauty and changing one’s ontological status to become like god and attain union with the divine. After considering the problematic nature of Socratic _erōs_, its skeptics and detractors, I discuss the dynamics of philosopher-disciple relationships and the experience of anagogic _erōs_ in the following: the attack on Porphyry and defense by Plotinus following Porphyry’s recital of an ecstatic poem on _Hieros Gamos_, the concealment of anagogic _erōs_ behind the authoritative façade of an oracle, the intensely devotional private letters of Ps. Julian to the aged Iamblichus and of Synesius to his female master Hypatia; the identification of anagogic _erōs_ with theurgic ascent in Syrianus’s school according to Proclus and Hermeias and the experiences of anagogic _erōs_ outside the _diadochia_ in Damascius’ _Philosophical History_. I conclude that the true and correct practice of philosophy had much, if not everything to do with the anagogic _erōs_ between the true philosopher, the bacchant and the philosopher in training, aspiring to become transformed from thyrsus-bearer into bacchant. The privileged and exalted status given to the divine lover ensured the transmission of the philosophical tradition in all its richness, preserving both its discursive and non-discursive aspects as a system of thought, as a way of life and as a way of being and loving. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss how the increasing social control of violence and aggression, which characterized the period from the Archaic to the Classical Age in ancient Greece, can be explained as an Eliasian civilizing process. Particularly crucial for this development is the question of how the city-state’s distinctive urban-political structures were the locus of this civilizing process. Accordingly, it is argued that not only are Elias’s key concepts analytically relevant to the ancient Greek civilizing process, but (...) also that they are to be reassessed in the light of the ancient Greek city-state culture. Thus, by the advancing of the argument that the civilizing process is not a uniquely western phenomenon, which occurred in western Europe from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19thcentury, the analytical relevance of Elias is re-evaluated and augmented. (shrink)

The return of Hephaistos to Olympos, as a myth, concerns the establishment of a balance of power among the Olympian gods. Many visual representations of the myth in Archaic and Classical Greek art give visible form to the same theme, but they do so in a manner entirely distinct from the manner in which it is expressed in literary narratives of the tale. In this paper, I argue that vase-painters incorporated elements of Dionysiac processional ritual into representations of the return (...) of Hephaistos in order to articulate visually the principal theme of the myth. The vase-painters structured the myth along the lines of epiphanic processions in which Dionysos was escorted into the city of Athens. Like Dionysiac epiphanic processions, the procession of Hephaistos, Dionysos and the wine-god's followers is distinguished visually by drunkenness, ostentatious display of the phallus and obscene or insulting behaviour. To judge from the aetiological myths associated with them, the epiphanic processions symbolized the triumph of Dionysos over, and his belated acceptance by, those who denied his status as a god. By structuring the visual representations of the return of Hephaistos along the lines of such Dionysiac processions, artists conveyed visually the idea that the myth al so concerned the triumph of a god over those who rejected him, and his acceptance among the Olympians. It is not necessary to assume that the vase-painters relied on a detailed poetic account of the myth to create their representations of it, because they employed elements of religious spectacle, an inherently visual phenomenon, to convey the essence of the story. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the first part of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics A-33, 88b30-89a10. I claim that Aristotle is not concerned with an epistemological distinction between knowledge and belief in general. He is rather making a contrast between scientific knowledge (which is equivalent to explanation by the primarily appropriate cause) and some explanatory beliefs that falls short of capturing the primarily appropriate cause.