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This book argues that, rather than being conceived merely as a hindrance, the body contributes constructively in the fashioning of a Platonic unified self. The Phaedo shows awareness that the indeterminacy inherent in the body infects the validity of any scientific argument but also provides the subject of inquiry with the ability to actualize, to the extent possible, the ideal self. The Republic locates bodily desires and needs in the tripartite soul. Achievement of maximal unity is dependent upon successful training of the rational part of the soul, but the earlier curriculum of Books 2 and 3, which aims at instilling a pre-reflectively virtuous disposition in the lower parts of the soul, is a prerequisite for the advanced studies of Republic 7. In the Timaeus, the world soul is fashioned out of Being, Sameness, and Difference: an examination of the Sophist and the Parmenides reveals that Difference is to be identified with the Timaeus’ Receptacle, the third ontological principle which emerges as the quasi-material component that provides each individual soul with the alloplastic capacity for psychological growth and alteration.
Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata (Sayings of Kings and Commanders) holds a peculiar position in his oeuvre. This collection of almost 500 anecdotes of barbarian, Greek, and Roman rulers and generals is introduced by a dedicatory letter to Trajan as a summary of the author’s well-known and widely read Parallel Lives. The work is therefore Plutarch’s only text that explicitly addresses a Roman emperor and is likely to shed light on his biographical technique. Yet the collection has been understudied, because its authenticity has been generally rejected since the nineteenth century. Recent scholarship defends Plutarch's authorship of the text, but some remain sceptical. This ...
Neronian representations of magic, a practice prevalent in the everyday life of the period and a central topic in its literary production, are characterized by unprecedented accuracy and detail. The similarities of witchcraft depictions in Seneca’s Medea, Lucan’s book 6, and Petronius’ Satyrica with spells of the PGM, the defixiones, as well as with Pliny’s quasi-magical recipes underscore realism as the distinctive trait of Neronian magic scenes which has often been considered the authors’ means to differentiate themselves from their Augustan predecessors. However, such high-degree realism is not merely an ornamental feature but transforms into a tool that influences the reader’...
Hellenistic poets opted and were very likely expected to deal meaningfully, and perhaps competitively, with the tradition they inherited. They also needed to secure the goodwill of actual or potential patrons. Apollonius, the author of a novel heroic epic, eschews references to literary polemics and patronage. Callimachus often adopts a polemical stance against some colleagues in order to suggest his poetic excellence. Theocritus chooses a third way, which has not been investigated adequately. He avoids antagonism but ironizes the theme of poetic excellence and distances himself from the tradition of competitive success. He does not cast his narrators as superior to predecessors and contempo...
This book presents the first modern critical edition of the work of Gregory of Nyssa, On the Human Image of God (formerly known as On the Making of Man, De hominis opificio) and the first English translation since the nineteenth century. This treatise is one of the most important of Gregory's texts. Paralleling the structure of Plato's Timaeus, Gregory's work begins by offering two analyses of the human being. The first presents the human being as the culmination of the ascent made by nature through the various levels of life, and as made, body and soul, in the image of God. The second considers why this is not immediately apparent, the need for time to be able to grow, individually and coll...
The present volume explores issues of personal identity and selfhood in Plato, especially taking the Phaedo, the Republic and the Timaeus into account. Through a detailed analysis of the texts, the author is able to prove that the body, rather than
In Plato's Timaeus and the Missing Fourth Guest, Donna M. Altimari Adler proposes a new Timaeus scale structure. She finds the harmonic cosmos, mathematically, at 35 A-36 D, regarding the text as a number generator. Plato's primary number sequence, she argues, yields a matrix defining a sophisticated harmony of the spheres. She stresses the Decad as the pattern governing both human perception and the generation of all things, in the Timaeus, including the World Soul and musical scale symbolizing it. She precisely identifies Plato's "fabric" and its locus of severance and solves other thorny problems of textual interpretation.
Plato set his dialogues in the fifth century BCE, when written texts were disseminated primarily by performance and recitation. He wrote them in the fourth century, when literacy was expanding. Jill Frank argues that there are unique insights to be gained from appreciating Plato's dialogues as written texts to be read-and reread. At the center of these insights is the analogy in the dialogues between becoming literate and coming to know or understand something, and two different ways of learning to read. One approach treats literacy as a top-down affair, in which authoritative teachers lead students to true beliefs. Another, recommended by Socrates in the Republic, encourages trial and error...
Examines how Xenophon instructs his elite readers concerning the values and skills needed to lead the Athenian democracy.