In the World of the Second Sophistic, education, paideia, was a crucial factor in the discourse of power. Knowledge in the fields of medicine, history, philosophy, and poetry joined with rhetorical brilliance and a presentable manner became the outward appearance of the elite of the Eastern Roman Empire. This outward appearance guaranteed a high social status as well as political and economical power for the individual and major advantages for their hometowns in interpolis competition. Since paideia was related particularly to Classical Greek antiquity, it was, at the same time, fundamental to the new self-confidence of the Greek East. This book presents, for the first time, studies from a broad range of disciplines on various fields of life and on different media, in which this ideology became manifest. These contributions show that the Sophists and their texts were only the most prominent exponents of a system of thoughts and values structuring the life of the elite in general.

The study of the Second Sophistic is a relative newcomer to the Anglophone field of classics, and much of what characterizes it temporally and culturally remains a matter of legitimate contestation. This Handbook offers a diversity of scholarly voices that attempt to define the state of this developing field. Included are chapters that offer practical guidance on the wide range of valuable textual materials that survive, many of which are useful or even core to inquiries of particularly current interest (e.g., gender studies, cultural history of the body, sociology of literary culture, history of education and intellectualism, history of religion, political theory, history of medicine, cultural linguistics, intersection of the classical traditions and early Christianity).

Explores the various ways in which modern scholarship has approached the oratorical culture of the Early Imperial period.

Training in rhetoric - the art of persuasion - formed the basis of education in the Roman Empire. The classical intellectual world centered around the debate between philosophers, who boasted knowledge of objective reality, and sophists, who could debate both sides of any issue and who attracted large audiences and paying students. The roles of the Talmudic rabbis as public orators, teachers, and jurists, parallel that of Roman orators. Rabbinic literature adopted and adapted various aspects of the classical rhetorical tradition, as is demonstrated in the Talmudic penchant for arguing both sides of hypothetical cases, the midrashic hermeneutical methods, and the structure of synagogue sermons. At the same time, the rabbis also resisted the extreme epistemological relativism of rhetoric as is evident in their restraint on theoretical argumentation, their depiction of rabbinic and divine court procedure, and their commitment to the biblical prophetic tradition. Richard Hidary demonstrates how rabbis succeeded in navigating a novel path between platonic truth and rhetorical relativism.

"It's a rare author who can combine literary erudition and an easy fluency of style together with expert knowledge of psychology and evolutionary biology. David Barash adds to all this a far-seeing wisdom and a humane decency that shines through on every page. The concluding section on the senseless and dangerous futility of nuclear deterrence theory is an irrefutable tour de force which should be read by every politician and senior military officer. If only!" -- Richard Dawkins From hurricanes and avalanches to diseases and car crashes, threats are everywhere. Beyond objective threats like these, there are also subjective ones: situations in which individuals threaten each other or feel threatened by society. Animals, too, make substantial use of threats. Evolution manipulates threats like these in surprising ways, leading us to question the ethics of honest versus dishonest communication. Rarely acknowledged--and yet crucially important--is the fact that humans, animals, and even plants don't only employ threats, they often respond with counter-threats that ultimately make things worse. By exploring the dynamic of threat and counter-threat, this book expands on many fraught human situations, including the fear of death, of strangers, and of "the other." Each of these leads to unique challenges, such as the specter of eternal damnation, the murderous culture of guns and capital punishment, and the emergence of right-wing nationalist populism. Most worrisome is the illusory security of deterrence, the idea that we can use the threat of nuclear war to prevent nuclear war! Threats are so widespread that we often don't realize how deeply they are ingrained in our minds or how profoundly and counter-productively they operate. Animals, humans, societies, and even countries internalize threats, behind which lie a myriad of intriguing questions: How do we know when to take a threat seriously? When do threats make things worse? Can they make things better? What can we do to use them wisely rather than destructively? In a comprehensive exploration into questions like these, noted scientist David P. Barash explains some of the most important characteristics of life as we know it.

This book examines the role of social networks in the formation of identity among sophists, philosophers and Christians in the early Roman Empire. Membership in each category was established and evaluated socially as well as discursively. From clashes over admission to classrooms and communion to construction of the group's history, integration into the social fabric of the community served as both an index of identity and a medium through which contests over status and authority were conducted. The juxtaposition of patterns of belonging in Second Sophistic and early Christian circles reveals a shared repertoire of technologies of self-definition, authorization and institutionalization and shows how each group manipulated and adapted those strategies to its own needs. This approach provides a more rounded view of the Second Sophistic and places the early Christian formation of 'orthodoxy' in a fresh context.

This innovative collection explores the vital role played by fictional narratives in Christian and Jewish self-fashioning in the early Roman imperial period. Employing a diversity of approaches, including cultural studies, feminist, philological, and narratological, expert scholars from six countries offer twelve essays on Christian fictions or fictionalized texts and one essay on Aseneth. All the papers were originally presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient Novel in Lisbon Portugal in 2008. The papers emphasize historical contextualization and comparative methodologies and will appeal to all those interested in early Christianity, the Ancient novel, Roman imperial history, feminist studies, and canonization processes.

"This volume presents a collection of thirteen papers from the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN 2008), which was held in Lisbon at the Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian from July 21 to 26, 2008. The Ancient Novel and the Frontiers of Genre reflects entirely the spirit and the general theme of the Conference, and is intended to convey the idea that both the novel as a literary form and scholarship on the ancient novel tend to mature and advance by crossing boundaries that older forms regarded as uncrossable. The papers assembled in this volume include extended prose narratives of all kinds and thereby widen and enrich the scope of the novel's canon. The essays explore a wide variety of text, crossed genres, and hybrid forms, which transgress the frontiers of the so-called ancient novel, providing an excellent insight into different kinds of narrative prose in antiquity". (from the preface)

Biography is one of the most widespread literary genres worldwide. Biographies and autobiographies of actors, politicians, Nobel Prize winners, and other famous figures have never been more prominent in book shops and publishers' catalogues. This Handbook offers a wide-ranging, multi-authored survey on biography in Antiquity from its earliest representatives to Late Antiquity. It aims to be a broad introduction and a reference tool on the one hand, and to move significantly beyond the state-of-the-art on the other. To this end, it addresses conceptual questions about this sprawling genre, offers both in-depth readings of key texts and diachronic studies, and deals with the reception of ancient biography across multiple eras up to the present day. In addition, it takes a wide approach to the concept of ancient biography by examining biographical depictions in different textual and visual media (epigraphy, sculpture, architecture) and by providing outlines of biographical developments in ancient and late antique cultures other than Graeco-Roman. Highly accessible, this book aims at a broad audience ranging from specialists to newcomers in the field. Chapters provide English translations of ancient (and modern) terminology and citations. In addition, all individual chapters are concluded by a section containing suggestions for further reading on their specific topic.