Histos (Journal)
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Ch. 5. Writing Culture: Historiography, Hybridity, and the Shaping of Collective Memory
No full textThis chapter explores the relationship between early historiographical enquiry and identity, using theoretical frameworks developed by Homi K. Bhabha and Stuart Hall. In doing so it argues that historiographical enquiry formed part of an ongoing process that was constitutive of identity. ‘Culture work’ of this nature needs to be fully integrated into scholarly consideration of both the manner and the means by which a sense of Hellenic self-consciousness and, by extension, collective memory came into being. The enquiries of the fragmentary Greek Historians are shown to be intimately bound up in wider discourses of identity and difference: coins, elegiac poetry, painted pottery, epigraphy, sculpture and historiographical prose were equally tied up in the ‘making’ of Greek identity.
Published in C. Constantakopoulou and M. Fragoulaki, ed., Shaping Memory in Ancient Greece (HISTOS Supplement 11), p. 189-234
‘The Only Event Mightier Than Everyone’s Hope’: Classical Historiography and Eusebius’ Plague Narrative
Get PDFClassicists have downplayed ecclesiastical historians’ participation in classical historiography. This study provides a test case for Christian engagement with classical historiography through a close reading of Eusebius’ account of the Plague of Cyprian in the Ecclesiastical History (7.21–2). Deploying carefully-selected quotations from Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria in the 250s AD, Eusebius referenced Thucydides’ plague and invited comparison to further plague narratives in Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Josephus. Whereas pagans in plague narratives undergo violence and communal breakdown, Eusebius’ Christians celebrate Easter harmoniously and care courageously for plague victims. Eusebius’ plague also highlights divine vengeance on pagan Alexandrians, displays Christian virtue and knowledge, represents Christians as honourable sufferers, and underscores a Christian rejection of cosmic contingency
Josephus Between Jerusalem and Rome: Cultural Brokerage and the Rhetoric of Emotion in the Bellum Judaicum (1.9–12)
Get PDFThis contribution aims to address the simple but far-reaching issue of the relationship between the Judaean and Graeco-Roman currents in Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum. It offers a new perspective on Josephus’ use of personal emotions in this work, in particular by looking at his outburst in BJ 1.9–12. It proposes to examine Josephus’ motivations for fashioning this passage in the way he did by (1) placing his compositional choices in their literary context, i.e., the broader historiographical outlook of the BJ, and (2) comparing his practice to the Graeco-Roman literature supposedly familiar to his intended audience in Rome. What I aim to show in this article is that Josephus uses emotions in a rhetorically calculated way with the intention of investing Roman readers in his account of the Judaean revolt against Rome
Thinking About Rome (on N. Steffensen, Nachdenken über Rom: Literarische Konstruktionen der römischen Geschichte in der Formierungsphase des Principats)
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Plutarchan Versatility (on J. Opsomer, G. Roskam, and F. B. Titchener, edd., A Versatile Gentleman: Consistency in Plutarch’s Writing. Studies offered to Luc Van der Stockt on the Occasion of his Retirement)
No full textThe Final Instalment of the Valla Herodotus (on P. Vannicelli, A. Corcella, and G. Nenci, edd. and trans., Erodoto, Le Storie, Volume VII: Libro VII, Serse e Leonida)
No full textLa Historia Augusta e i suoi ‘Charmes Délétères’ (on B. Bleckmann and H. Brandt, edd., Historiae Augustae Colloquium Dusseldorpiense)
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Empedocles Arbiter Symposii: Luxury, Political Equality, and Bizarre Dinner Parties in Fifth-Century Acragas
Get PDFThis paper analyses Empedocles’ contribution to Sicilian politics as described by the ancient sources cited by Diogenes Laertius. It offers a close analysis of a bizarre anecdote by Timaeus (FGrHist 566 F 134), where Empedocles got rid of a potential tyrant to preserve political equality, also in the light of other ancient accounts in which Empedocles is described as a man of his people