As a literary genre and practice, philosophical and political epistolography seems to have been alive and well in the fourth-century Roman empire. We have fragments of twenty letters of the late third- and early fourth-centuryc.e. Platonist philosopher Iamblichus of Chalcis to former students and other contemporaries, some of whom appear to have been imperial officeholders ; theEpistle to Himeriusof Sopater the Younger to his brother Himerius on the latter's assumption of an unknown governorship in the East, probably sometime in the (...) 340s or 350s ; the Emperor Julian'sEpistle to Themistius, which was likely written and publishedc.December 361/early 362; and theEpistle to Julianof the Aristotelian philosopher Themistius on proper rule, which seems to have been a response, in part, to Julian'sEpistle to Themistiusand perhaps was written to the emperor when both men likely resided in Constantinople at the same time. These philosophical and political letters are but a few examples from this period. All four authors mentioned above, who are representative of intellectual life in the East during the fourth century, produced epistles which reflect Greek political theory in a Roman imperial context. (shrink)

The Platonic dialogues contain passages that seem to point in quite opposite directions on the question of the moral equality of women with men. Rep. V defends the view that sexual difference need not be relevant to a person’s capacity for philosophy and thus for virtue. Tim. 42a-c, however, makes incarnation in a female body a punishment for failure to master the challenges of embodiment. This paper examines the different ways in which two subsequent Platonists, Proclus (d. 485 CE) and (...) Theodore of Asine (d. c. 360 CE), dealt with this tension. (shrink)

Introduzione Nel codice della sua Bibliotheca consacrato a recensire la produzione letteraria di Temistio, il patriarca Fozio testimonia di aver letto – oltre ad alcune opere filosofiche – un corpus di trentasei discorsi politici (λόγοι πολιτιϰοιλς), tra cui alcuni indirizzati a Costanzo, a Valente e Valentiniano II, a Teodosio, non tutti pervenuti. Ora, l'opera oratoria di Temistio, quale noi moderni leggiamo, comprende trentatrè orazioni, pubbliche e private, di cui due (o forse tre) incomplete. È molto probabile che gli altri tre (...) discorsi che Fozio ugualmente leggeva siano da identificare con orazioni perdute, di cui sopravvivono talune notizie: il discorso recitato nel 357 dinanzi al senato di Costantinopoli in occasione di un'ambasceria a Roma, il panegirico indirizzato nel 363 all'imperatore Giuliano per il suo quarto consolato e l'orazione sulla tolleranza religiosa indirizzata a Valente tra gli anni 375–376. Verrebbe, in questo modo, confermata la notizia della Bibliotheca circa l'esistenza di un corpus di complessivi trentasei discorsi ed in particolare rafforzata l'ipotesi, ventilata da taluni studiosi, secondo cui la silloge temistiana in nostro possesso corrisponderebbe in buona sostanza al ‘libro’ recensito da Fozio. (shrink)

Paideia– i.e. Greek culture, comprising, amongst other things, language, literature, philosophy and medicine – was a constituent component of the social identity of the elite of the Roman empire: as a number of influential studies on the Second Sophistic have recently shown, leading members of society presented themselves as such by their possession and deployment of cultural capital, for example by performing oratory, writing philosophy or showcasing medical interventions. As the ‘common language’ of the men ruling the various parts of (...) the empire, Greek culture became a characteristic of, and thus ade factocondition for, leading socio-political positions. Whilst most elite men would have taken for granted a good cultural education no less than a leading position, an outstanding command of the classical Greek language, literature and tradition as displayed in epideictic performances allowed some orators, philosophers and doctors to move distinctively up the social ladder, sometimes reaching the ears of, and thereby wielding influence over, the emperor himself. (shrink)

In late antiquity, in the context of the jagged tradition of Neo-Platonism,Aristotle’s Metaphysics and the specific science that is traced out in itare indicated with the current denominations of meta ta physika andtheologikē pragmateia, which are seen as consistent with one anotherand closely interconnected. In this connection, the Metaphysics, in thewake of previous philosophical readings, is considered as a treatise on“theological science” — the most elevated among the sciences — and thedenomination meta ta physika is seen in a specifically theological (...) sense.According to a widespread Neo-Platonic reading, the science thematizedin the Metaphysics is “metaphysics” in that it is theological science,an epistemic discourse on divine realities, which, within the ordo rerum,transcend the physical ones, and, therefore, according to the ordo cognoscendi,must be studied after the latter. (shrink)

In his tale entitled The Nameless City, Howard Phillips Lovecraft includes unspecified «paragraphs from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius» among the «fragments» of the «cherished treasury of daemoniac lore» of the protagonist In the present essay, I suggest that there is a connection between this unusual reference and a note in the writer’s Commonplace Book, which refers to the notice by Photius on a lost work by Damascius that nowdays is generally referred to as Paradoxa and assumed to consist of (...) a variegated collection of extraordinary stories and facts. I, therefore, delineate a general presentation of the testimony by the Byzantine Patriarch, upon which I attempt to bring into focus the motivations that led the Providence to make the writer insert the name of Damascius in the fantastic plot of his story. (shrink)

One of the aims of the Neoplatonists is to demonstrate that ancient Presocratic thought is, in fact, a Preplatonic thought. According to the Neoplatonists, Presocratics, who were not far from the truth, employed an inaccurate and ambiguous language, whereas Plato spoke about the truth in a more appropriate and clear way. That is why the Presocratics are not necessarily erroneous and their theoretical originality and their terminology can be incorporated into the Neoplatonic philosophy. I would like to show how some (...) Presocratic theories are embedded in the Neoplatonic metaphysical system of the three Hypostases. Regarding the One and the Intellect, Plotinus, Proclus and the Anonymous Author of the Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy read and employ some Presocratic texts in order to harmonize the Platonic and the Presocratic accounts. Although the Neoplatonists see themselves as continuing the Greek philosophical tradition started by the Presocratics, their interpretation of Presocratic thought illustrates the birth of exegetic philosophy which is able to apply ancient concepts and predicates to its own metaphysical theory. (shrink)

Introduzione Nel codice della sua Bibliotheca consacrato a recensire la produzione letteraria di Temistio, il patriarca Fozio testimonia di aver letto – oltre ad alcune opere filosofiche – un corpus di trentasei discorsi politici (λόγοι πολιτιϰοιλς), tra cui alcuni indirizzati a Costanzo, a Valente e Valentiniano II, a Teodosio, non tutti pervenuti. Ora, l'opera oratoria di Temistio, quale noi moderni leggiamo, comprende trentatrè orazioni, pubbliche e private, di cui due (o forse tre) incomplete. È molto probabile che gli altri tre (...) discorsi che Fozio ugualmente leggeva siano da identificare con orazioni perdute, di cui sopravvivono talune notizie: il discorso recitato nel 357 dinanzi al senato di Costantinopoli in occasione di un'ambasceria a Roma, il panegirico indirizzato nel 363 all'imperatore Giuliano per il suo quarto consolato e l'orazione sulla tolleranza religiosa indirizzata a Valente tra gli anni 375–376. Verrebbe, in questo modo, confermata la notizia della Bibliotheca circa l'esistenza di un corpus di complessivi trentasei discorsi ed in particolare rafforzata l'ipotesi, ventilata da taluni studiosi, secondo cui la silloge temistiana in nostro possesso corrisponderebbe in buona sostanza al ‘libro’ recensito da Fozio. (shrink)