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Author: Tomas Hägg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110737927X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
Greek and Roman biography embraces much more than Plutarch, Suetonius and their lost Hellenistic antecedents. In this book Professor Hägg explores the whole range and diversity of ancient biography, from its Socratic beginnings to the Christian acquisition of the form in late antiquity. He shows how creative writers developed the lives of popular heroes like Homer, Aesop and Alexander and how the Christian gospels grew from bare sayings to full lives. In imperial Rome biography flourished in the works of Greek writers: Lucian's satire, Philostratus' full sophistic orchestration, Porphyry's intellectual portrait of Plotinus. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not political biography or the lives of poets that provide the main artery of ancient biography, but various kinds of philosophical, spiritual and ethical lives. Applying a consistent biographical reading to a representative set of surviving texts, this book opens up the manifold but often neglected art of biography in classical antiquity.
Author: Tomas Hägg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110737927X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
Greek and Roman biography embraces much more than Plutarch, Suetonius and their lost Hellenistic antecedents. In this book Professor Hägg explores the whole range and diversity of ancient biography, from its Socratic beginnings to the Christian acquisition of the form in late antiquity. He shows how creative writers developed the lives of popular heroes like Homer, Aesop and Alexander and how the Christian gospels grew from bare sayings to full lives. In imperial Rome biography flourished in the works of Greek writers: Lucian's satire, Philostratus' full sophistic orchestration, Porphyry's intellectual portrait of Plotinus. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not political biography or the lives of poets that provide the main artery of ancient biography, but various kinds of philosophical, spiritual and ethical lives. Applying a consistent biographical reading to a representative set of surviving texts, this book opens up the manifold but often neglected art of biography in classical antiquity.
Author: Pat Wheatley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192573039
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528
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Book Description
Demetrius the Besieger offers the first historical and historiographical biography of Demetrius Poliorcetes (336-282 BC) to be published in English. Also known as 'The Besieger of Cities', Demetrius is an outstanding, yet enigmatic figure who presided over the disintegration of Alexander the Great's Empire after 323 BC, and the most fascinating and high profile of the Diadochoi, or Successors to Alexander the Great. His campaigns, initiatives, and personal life bestride the opening forty years of the so-called 'Hellenistic' age and are pivotal in its formation as he became the first of the Hellenistic Kings. As his name suggests, Demetrius was prodigious in his military adventures, and profligate in his private life, rendering him an icon for artists, writers, politicians, and soldiers for many centuries. He was especially famous for his spectacular siege operations against enemy cities, and gained his unique nickname from his innovation in building gigantic siege engines, which became legendary in the ancient world. However, much of Demetrius' life was enigmatic, oscillating wildly between successful and catastrophic ventures, and his intrinsic qualities remain debatable to this day. What is indisputable is that he presided over a formative period in history marked by great flux and enormous change. His endeavours resulted in the fusion of Asiatic and Greek cultures, producing the hybrid Hellenistic kingdoms which dominated the ancient world for some 200 years until the rise of the Roman Empire. The period is of crucial importance in ancient Greek history, and marks the point from which Hellenistic influence became fundamental in the development of modern Western culture.
Author: Pat Wheatley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192573047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517
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Book Description
Demetrius the Besieger offers the first historical and historiographical biography of Demetrius Poliorcetes (336-282 BC) to be published in English. Also known as 'The Besieger of Cities', Demetrius is an outstanding, yet enigmatic figure who presided over the disintegration of Alexander the Great's Empire after 323 BC, and the most fascinating and high profile of the Diadochoi, or Successors to Alexander the Great. His campaigns, initiatives, and personal life bestride the opening forty years of the so-called 'Hellenistic' age and are pivotal in its formation as he became the first of the Hellenistic Kings. As his name suggests, Demetrius was prodigious in his military adventures, and profligate in his private life, rendering him an icon for artists, writers, politicians, and soldiers for many centuries. He was especially famous for his spectacular siege operations against enemy cities, and gained his unique nickname from his innovation in building gigantic siege engines, which became legendary in the ancient world. However, much of Demetrius' life was enigmatic, oscillating wildly between successful and catastrophic ventures, and his intrinsic qualities remain debatable to this day. What is indisputable is that he presided over a formative period in history marked by great flux and enormous change. His endeavours resulted in the fusion of Asiatic and Greek cultures, producing the hybrid Hellenistic kingdoms which dominated the ancient world for some 200 years until the rise of the Roman Empire. The period is of crucial importance in ancient Greek history, and marks the point from which Hellenistic influence became fundamental in the development of modern Western culture.
Author: Plutarch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199664331
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577
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Book Description
This selection of ten Lives traces the history of Hellenistic Greece from the rise of Macedon and Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire to the arrival of the Romans. Plutarch's biographies of eminent politicians, rulers, and soldiers combine vivid portraits of their subjects with a wealth of historical information; they constitute a uniquely important source for the period
Author: Michael Grant
Publisher: New York : H. W. Wilson Company
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Biographical sketches of 376 Greek and Latin authors covering the years 800 B.C. to 1000 A.D. Includes a list of works of doubtful attribution and a chronological list of authors by century.
Author: Professor Stephen Harrison
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781139380164
Category : Biography as a literary form
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
"Memoir, encomium, romance In diesem Sinne ist der ideale, ja der postexistente Sokrates der reale, und der Sokrates samt seiner Xanthippe, den etwa die photographis-che Kleinkunst zeigen konnte, ist bedeutungslos, jaim hoheren Sinne unwirklich. Adolf von Harnack 1.1 glimpses of a prehistory The single most important force for the emergence of Greek biography in the fourth century BC, it has been convincingly argued, was the personal and historical impact of the figure of Socrates, as reconstructed or invented by the Socratic writers.1 But the one individual writer -- the creative mind -- to whom Greek biography owes most is no doubt Xenophon of Athens (ca. 430--ca. 354 bc), who wrote not only a memoir of Socrates, but also a prose encomium of the Spartan king Agesilaus and a romantic Life of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great.2 Each of his three works displays a distinct biographical strategy: the privileged viewpoint at work in the Memorabilia, the novel literary structure of the Agesilaus, and the imaginative mixture of fact and fiction in the Cyropaedia. Xenophon accordingly provides three different literary models for future life-writers to merge and develop. Now, interest in the character, acts, and lifespan of an important individual was of course not unknown in Greek society before the fourth century. Speculation about the identity of Homer, his birthplace, travels, and death, began early, as the many references show that we find scattered in poetry, drama, and early prose. The corresponding legends of Hesiod's life had a starting-point in first person statements in his own poems, those of Archilochus perhaps also in local tradition on his native island of Paros. Solon and Simonides are further, not so distant, figures who attracted early"--
Author: Duane Reed Stuart
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781258074906
Category : Biography as a literary form
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Author: Cornelius Nepos
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing
ISBN: 9781104917494
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 84
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Book Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Author: Plutarch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781528711982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 596
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Book Description
Plutarch's "Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans", often simply referred to as "Plutarch's Lives", is a series of biographies of notable ancient Greek and Roman figures most likely written at the beginning of the second century AD. Instead of simply writing histories, Plutarch explores the effect that character, good or bad, had on the lives and careers of these famous men, to which end the people treated are ordered in pairs in an attempt to highlight their common moral virtues or shortcomings. This book contains volume IV of the English translation by Aubrey Stewart and George Long, presented here for the enjoyment of modern readers with an interest in the ancient world. Contents include: "Demosthenes", "Cicero", "Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicaro", "Demetrius", "Antony", "Comparison of Demetrius and Antony", "Dion", "Marcus Brutus", "Comparison of Dion and Brutus", etc. Plutarch (c. AD 46 - AD 120) was a Greek biographer and essayist most famous for this series of biographies and his work "Moralia". Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
Author: Plutarch
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781978434509
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
First published in 1517, Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, probably written at the beginning of the second century AD.
