Marco Formisano

Therese Fuhrer

Anna-Lena Stock

No scholar today would describe late antiquity as an age of "decline and fall", as Gibbon did; instead, to use Marrou's term, it is seen as an "other antiquity", which deserves to be investigated on its own terms. Yet the idea of a decadent period, accompanied by a fascination for the image of antiquity on the wane, continues to live in scholarly minds, as is suggested, after all, by the recurring insistence on the point that late antiquity was not a period of decline. This collection of papers engages in a productive way with the fascination exerted by the concept of an era in decline and a literary and artistic fin-de-siecle atmosphere, evoked in the very title 'Decadence'. Whether this fascination is seen as a question of the history of reception or as an ongoing phenomenon, it rarely emerges to the surface of scholarly discussions. This volume invites us to reconsider these questions by making decadent late antiquity a paradigm of interpretation in connection with a conscious and sophisticated re-use of the history of reception.

"Decline and Fall" Or "Other Antiquity"?

Décadence

Paolo Felice Sacchi

This volume makes a powerful argument for epitome (combining textual dismemberment and re-composition) as a broad hermeneutic field encompassing multifarious historical, conceptual and aesthetical concerns. The contributors gather from across the globe to present case studies of the 'summing up' of cultural artefacts, literary and artistic, in epitomic writing, and as a collective they demonstrate the importance of this genre that has been largely overlooked by scholars. The volume is divided into five sections: the first showcases the broad range of fields from which epitomic analysis can be made, from classics to postmodernism to cultural memory studies; the second focuses in on epitome as dismemberment in writing from late antiquity to the modern day; the third considers a 'productive negativity' of epitomic writings and how they are useful tools for investigating the very borders and paradoxes of language; the fourth brings this to bear on materiality; the fifth considers re-composition as a counterpart to dismemberment and problematises it. Across the volume, examples are taken from important late antique writers such as Ausonius, Clement of Alexandria, Macrobius, Nepos, Nonius Marcellus and Symphosius, and from modern authors such as Antonin Artaud, Barthes, Nabokov and Pascal Quignard. Epitomic writings about art from decorated tabulae to sarcophagi are also included, as are epitomic images themselves in the form of manuscript illustrations that sum up their text.

Forms of Unabridged Writing

Epitomic Writing in Late Antiquity and Beyond

Philip van der Eijk

This book explores the relationship between theory and practice in ancient Greek and Roman scientific and technical texts.

Knowledge, Text and Practice in Ancient Technical Writing

Hartmut Böhme

Although the paradoxical reality of warfare may elude definition, since antiquity war has been a constitutive element of Western culture; seen from a historical perspective, it gives access to a broad array of tensions between various models of knowledge and different kinds of tradition. The essays in this volume approach the phenomenon of war from antiquity to Clausewitz from the perspective of a variety of disciplines. Particular attention is given to texts, images, and their interaction.

Transformations of War from Antiquity to Clausewitz

War in Words

Christina Shuttleworth Kraus

In recent years, the discipline of Classics has been experiencing a profound transformation affecting not only its methodologies and hermeneutic practices - how classicists read and interpret ancient literature - but also, and more importantly, the objects of classical study themselves. One of the most important factors has been the establishment of reception studies, examining the ways in which classical literature and culture have been appropriated or responded to in later ages and/or non-western cultures. This temporal and cultural expansion beyond the 'traditional' remit of the field has had many salutary effects, but reception studies are not without limitations: of particular consequence is a tendency to focus almost exclusively on the most canonical Greek and Latin texts which is partly due to the sheer scale on which they have been received, adapted, discussed, and alluded to since antiquity. By definition, reception studies are uninterested in texts which have had no 'success', but the result of an implicit adoption of canonicity as an unspoken criterion is the marginalization of other texts which, despite their inherent value, have not experienced so significant a Nachleben. This volume seeks to move beyond the questions of what is central, what is marginal, and why, to explore instead the range and significance of the classical canon and the processes by which it is shaped and changed by its reception in different academic and cultural environments. By examining the academic study of Classics from the interrelated titular perspectives of marginality, canonicity, and passion, it aims to unveil their many subtle implications and reopen a discussion not only about what makes the discipline unique, but also about what direction it might take in the future.

Marginality, Canonicity, Passion

Jan N. Bremmer

A collection of studies about the Passion of Perpetua, the diary written by the young Christian martyr Perpetua. This intriguing text is edited and translated before a team of distinguished scholars examine it from a wide range of perspectives: literary, narratological, historical, religious, psychological, and philosophical.

Perpetua's Passions

Flavius Vegetius Renatus

L'arte della guerra romana

Although the paradoxical reality of warfare may elude definition, since antiquity war has been a constitutive element of Western culture; seen from a historical perspective, it gives access to a broad array of tensions between various modelsof knowledge and differentkinds of tradition. The essays in this volume approach the phenomenon of war from antiquity to Clausewitz from the perspective of a variety of disciplines. Particular attention is given to texts, images, and their interaction.

Marco Formisano

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