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A commentary on Cicero, De divinatione I
\"A Commentary on Cicero, De Divinatione I, is the first English-language commentary on the Latin text of Marcus Tullius Cicero's dialogue in almost one hundred years. The defense of divination (the science of predicting the future) offered in Book 1 is illustrated with many entertaining anecdotes that make the argument more accessible to a wider range of readers than many of Cicero's other philosophical works. De Divinatione also preserves many fragments of otherwise lost masterpieces of Roman Republican literature. It is a text important for the study of Roman religion, as well as Roman political and intellectual history. This commentary aims to assist the reader in seeing De Divinatione as a cohesive whole, and to make it accessible--not only to classicists, but also to scholars of religion and to philosophers who may not be familiar with the historical and Roman intellectual background that are the focus here. The cases made for and against divination in De Divinatione closely follow arguments made by Greek philosophers, but many of the examples illustrating them reflect Cicero's preferences in literature, his own poetic efforts and political experience, and his expertise as an augur. The result is a very personal work closely tied to Cicero's own experience. Celia Schultz's volume contains the full Latin text of De Divinatione, Book 1, and accompanies it with commentary on points of grammar, history, prosopography, and ancient religious practice, among other topics. She includes a helpful bibliography for those interested in further study of points raised in the text or commentary.\" -- Publisher's website
Book
Hagiography, Historiography, and Identity in Sixth-Century Gaul
Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory's hagiographical collections, especially the Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory's hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an \"ecclesiastical history\" (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.
eBook
Magic in the cloister : pious motives, illicit interests, and occult approaches to the medieval universe
During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine's in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, works, and how they combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.
eBook
Annals. Book XV
\"Tacitus' account of Nero's principate is an extraordinary piece of historical writing. His graphic narrative (including Annals XV) is one of the highlights of the greatest surviving historian of the Roman Empire. It describes how the imperial system survived Nero's flamboyant and hedonistic tenure as emperor, and includes many famous passages, from the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 to the city-wide party organised by Nero's praetorian prefect, Tigellinus, in Rome. This edition unlocks the difficulties and complexities of this challenging yet popular text for students and instructors alike. It elucidates the historical context of the work and the literary artistry of the author, as well as explaining grammatical difficulties of the Latin for students. It also includes a comprehensive introduction discussing historical, literary and stylistic issues.\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
Philological and Historical Commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXVII
Continuing the series of philological and historical commentaries on Ammianus' Res Gestae this volume deals with Book 27, in which the author deals with military operations and internal affairs. In the central part of the book the emperor Valentinian is portrayed.
eBook
Rewriting Magic
In Rewriting Magic , Claire Fanger explores a
fourteenth-century text called The Flowers of Heavenly
Teaching . Written by a Benedictine monk named John of Morigny,
the work all but disappeared from the historical record, and it is
only now coming to light again in multiple versions and copies.
While John's book largely comprises an extended set of prayers for
gaining knowledge, The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching is
unusual among prayer books of its time because it includes a
visionary autobiography with intimate information about the book's
inspiration and composition. Through the window of this record, we
witness how John reconstructs and reconsecrates a condemned liturgy
for knowledge acquisition: the ars notoria of Solomon.
John's work was the subject of intense criticism and public
scandal, and his book was burned as heretical in 1323. The trauma
of these experiences left its imprint on the book, but in
unexpected and sometimes baffling ways. Fanger decodes this imprint
even as she relays the narrative of how she learned to understand
it. In engaging prose, she explores the twin processes of knowledge
acquisition in John's visionary autobiography and her own work of
discovery as she reconstructed the background to his extraordinary
book. Fanger's approach to her subject exemplifies innovative
historical inquiry, research, and methodology. Part theology, part
historical anthropology, part biblio-memoir, Rewriting
Magic relates a story that will have deep implications for the
study of medieval life, monasticism, prayer, magic, and
religion.
eBook
Epic succession and dissension : Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.623-14.582, and the reinvention of the Aeneid
This is the first direct literary adaptation of Vergil'sAeneid. The present study demonstrates how, in less than one thousand lines, Ovid revisits the epic world of Aeneas and subjects it to a reading that is a paradigm of critical analysis, a statement of originality, and a powerful claim to the epic heritage and Vergilian succession.
eBook