Scholia

Classics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Pagani
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Short Note ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Different Origins ◽  
Different Sources

The word σχόλιον (“scholion,” Lat. scholium), a diminutive of σχολή, means originally “short note” or “brief explanation.” Today “scholia” designates, in a technical meaning, the amalgam of various comments scattered in the margins of medieval manuscripts of ancient literary works. Their contents descend ultimately from ancient commentaries, treatises, lexica, glossaries, and other scholarly products, via a long process of excerpting, insertion, and recombination of materials of different origins. The scholiastic corpora represent thus the outcome of a compilation of heterogeneous sources, designed to be systematically arranged in the margin of the manuscript, alongside the literary work commented upon, in order to both supply a multifaceted reading aid and preserve the ancient learned heritage. A significant debate has arisen about the period when the birth of the scholiography should be dated, whether in late antiquity or in the early Byzantine age. We possess a substantial amount of Greek scholiastic corpora, especially to a certain number of poets of the Archaic and Classical ages and, to a progressively lesser extent, to the most prominent of the Hellenistic poets; to some didascalic poets; and to prose-writers such as historians, rhetoricians, philosophers. The most plentiful and remarkable of the Greek scholiastic corpora is represented by the scholia to the Homeric poems, which probably convey the richest legacy of the philological and exegetical activity of the Hellenistic scholars. In the Latin field, Late Antique MSS bearing exegetical excerpta in their margins do survive, and we can sometime grasp a long-term process of “circular” tradition: from separate commentaries to the scholia, compiled from different sources and accompanying the literary text; from these ones again to the compilation of autonomous and organic commentaries; and from the last products in turn to a new extraction of materials designed for marginal annotation. The whole of this phenomenon is often called “scholiography,” in the wide meaning of “exegetical annotations” (sometimes applied also to the authorial work of a specific grammarian), though some scholars recognize the origin of scholiography (in the strict sense) to the Latin classical authors between the 8th and the 9th centuries ce. The most prominent remains of Latin scholiastic literature are the ancient commentaries to Virgil, Terence, and Horace, but interesting material related to Cicero, Ovid, Germanicus, Lucan, Statius, Persius, and Juvenal also survives.

scholarly journals TO THE QUESTION OF SPACE ORGANIZATION OF BOOK ILLUMINATION OF LATE ANTIQUITY AND EARLY MIDDLE AGES (IV – VII CENTURY)

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Mikhail S. Bankov
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Space Organization ◽  
Miniature Painting

The article focuses on peculiarities of spatial organization of book miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts (IV – VII centuries). The author analyses the problem of conveying illusion of depth in illustration in context of gradual transmission from roll to codex, which took place in antique book culture between the II and the V centuries. By analyzing survived fragments of illuminated rolls author displays characteristic features of their spatial organization and observes influence which had tradition of roll illustration on the development of codex. Nevertheless, precisely the miniatures of the codices that have come down to our time are in focus of the author’s attention. The stages of development of the text page, the peculiarities of interaction of text and images in codices are compared with the principles of space organization in miniatures. The article makes an attempt, relying on the monuments that have survived to our time, to consider the development of spatial constructions in the period of late Antiquity and early Middle Ages as a continuous process of evolution of the language of book painting. The author assumes that the development of spatial constructions in miniature painting does not imply sharp breaks or regression. Each new stage of the evolution arises from the previous one and makes it possible to expand the arsenal of artistic means which are necessary for solving artistic problems of the time. In accordance with this approach, the article concentrates not only on compositions in which a spatial illusion is created, but also miniatures that are in character more plane. As a result, the author reveals the main types of spatial constructions, considering all surviving monuments of miniature painting of that time. For each type of space organization, the author identifies the basic principles and artistic techniques that allow the artist to convey a sense of depth on the plane of page. The author pays special attention to the comparison of illusionistic tendencies in the late antique book miniature and “reverse perspective”, features of which are present in the monuments of the era. The author casts doubt on the need for a sharp contrast between these two approaches to space organization in the monuments of book miniatures of the era. He analyzes the reasons for the appearance of such features of space organization in miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts, which are so important for the formation of artistic language of medieval book illumination.

Persecution and response in late paganism: the evidence of Damascius

1993 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Polymnia Athanassiadi
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The One ◽  
Psychological Dimensions ◽  
Immediate Reactions ◽  
Complex Subject

The theme of this paper is intolerance: its manifestation in late antiquity towards the pagans of the Eastern Mediterranean, and the immediate reactions and long-term attitudes that it provoked in them. The reasons why, in spite of copious evidence, the persecution of the traditional cults and of their adepts in the Roman empire has never been viewed as such are obvious: on the one hand no pagan church emerged out of the turmoil to canonise its dead and expound a theology of martyrdom, and on the other, whatever their conscious religious beliefs, late antique scholars in their overwhelming majority were formed in societies whose ethical foundations and logic are irreversibly Christian. Admittedly a few facets of this complex subject, such as the closing of the Athenian Academy and the demolition of temples or their conversion into churches, have occasionally been touched upon; but pagan persecution in itself, in all its physical, artistic, social, political, intellectual and psychological dimensions, has not as yet formed the object of scholarly research.

scholarly journals The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (33) ◽  
pp. 19780-19791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Fuks ◽  
Guy Bar-Oz ◽  
Yotam Tepper ◽  
Tali Erickson-Gini ◽  
Dafna Langgut ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Proximate Cause ◽  
International Scope ◽  
Common Era

The international scope of the Mediterranean wine trade in Late Antiquity raises important questions concerning sustainability in an ancient international economy and offers a valuable historical precedent to modern globalization. Such questions involve the role of intercontinental commerce in maintaining sustainable production within important supply regions and the vulnerability of peripheral regions believed to have been especially sensitive to environmental and political disturbances. We provide archaeobotanical evidence from trash mounds at three sites in the central Negev Desert, Israel, unraveling the rise and fall of viticulture over the second to eighth centuries of the common era (CE). Using quantitative ceramic data obtained in the same archaeological contexts, we further investigate connections between Negev viticulture and circum-Mediterranean trade. Our findings demonstrate interrelated growth in viticulture and involvement in Mediterranean trade reaching what appears to be a commercial scale in the fourth to mid-sixth centuries. Following a mid-sixth century peak, decline of this system is evident in the mid- to late sixth century, nearly a century before the Islamic conquest. These findings closely correspond with other archaeological evidence for social, economic, and urban growth in the fourth century and decline centered on the mid-sixth century. Contracting markets were a likely proximate cause for the decline; possible triggers include climate change, plague, and wider sociopolitical developments. In long-term historical perspective, the unprecedented commercial florescence of the Late Antique Negev appears to have been unsustainable, reverting to an age-old pattern of smaller-scale settlement and survival–subsistence strategies within a time frame of about two centuries.

Inscriptions, Synagogues and Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-277
Author(s):  
Fergus Millar
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
A Current

AbstractThe numerous works of “rabbinic” literature composed in Palestine in Late Antiquity, all of which are preserved only in medieval manuscripts, offer immense possibilities for the historian, but also present extremely perplexing problems. What are their dates, and when did each come to be expressed in a consistent written form? If we cannot be sure about the attribution of sayings to individual named rabbis, how can we relate the material to any intelligible period or social context? In this situation, it is natural and right to turn to contemporary evidence, archaeological, iconographic and epigraphic. The primary archaeological evidence is provided by the large (and increasing) number of excavated synagogues. But, it has been argued, rabbinic texts are not centrally concerned with synagogues or the congregations which met in them. So perhaps “rabbinic Judaism” and “synagogal Judaism” are two separate systems. Alternatively, the epigraphic evidence attests individuals who are given the title “rabbi,” and these inscriptions, on stone or mosaic, include some which derive from synagogues. But perhaps “rabbi,” in this context, was merely a current honorific term, and these are not the “real” rabbis of the texts? It will be argued that this distinction is gratuitous, and that in any case the largest and most important synagogue-inscription, that from Rehov, both is “rabbinic” in itself and mentions rabbis as religious experts.

Panegyric and the Discourse of Praise in Late Antiquity

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 291-304
Author(s):  
Catherine Ware
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Epideictic Rhetoric ◽  
The Creation

Although a panegyric can be defined very simply as a speech of praise, it is no longer assumed that praise is also its sole function. What that function might be, however, continues to preoccupy scholarship. Generalisations can be made, but even a nuanced judgement such as ‘every encomium is at once a literary work, a moral problem, and a social rite’ (Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric, ix) can be challenged by the particular: ‘there is no system and there never was. There is circumstance, preference and ambiguity’. The question is further complicated by the evolution of a rhetoric of praise, related to but independent of the formal panegyric, which came to characterise the literature of Late Antiquity and beyond. The questions, therefore, of what a panegyric is and what it is for are highly relevant to modern scholarship, not only to commentaries but, as is apparent from the books under review, to studies of rhetoric, late antique historiography and the creation of the imperial image.

Sicily before the Muslims. The Transformation of the Roman Villas between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Fourth to Eighth Centuries CE

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Castrorao Barba
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Productive Activities ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
New Settlements

AbstractThis article treats the issue of transformation in the Sicilian countryside between Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period by analyzing the fate of the Roman villas. A brief synthesis of the European debate over the end of the Roman villas helps to find new interpretative keys for the Sicilian contexts within the changes of the settlement dynamics among the last centuries of the Roman Empire and the Muslim conquest of the island. Descriptions of the primary characteristics of the Late Antique villas in Sicily can be divided into two main phases: between the third and the fifth centuries, the villas were ‘monumentalized’ as a sign of the wealth of the owners and the reorganization of the Late Roman agrarian system; from the fourth/fifth to the eighth century, some villas were reoccupied and reused in different ways (burials, new settlements, productive activities, places of worship). The study also performs some statistical analysis about chronological trends to track long-term transformations of the villas. The article concludes with some reflections and questions for future research on the complexity of rural Sicilian society during Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period.

Treatment of spasticity of different origins with botulinum toxin A: long-term results

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (S 01) ◽  
Author(s):  
K Kollewe ◽  
S Baloush ◽  
K Krampfl ◽  
H Bigalke ◽  
R Dengler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Botulinum Toxin ◽  
Botulinum Toxin A ◽  
Long Term Results ◽  
Toxin A ◽  
Different Origins

Late Antique Letter Collections

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Letter Writer ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Letter Collection ◽  
Latin Letter

This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300-600 C.E.). Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, it illustrates how letter collections advertised an image of the letter writer and introduces the social and textual histories of each collection. Nearly every chapter focuses on the letter collection of a different late ancient author—from the famous (or even infamous) to the obscure—and investigates its particular issues of content, arrangement, and publication context. On the whole, the volume reveals how late antique letter collections operated as a discrete literary genre with its own conventions, transmission processes, and self-presentational agendas while offering new approaches to interpret both larger letter collections and the individual letters contained within them. Each chapter contributes to a broad argument that scholars should read letter collections as they do representatives of other late antique literary genres, as single texts made up of individual components, with larger thematic and literary characteristics that are as important as those of their component parts.

Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophir Münz-Manor
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Biblical Poetry ◽  
Contemporary View ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
The One

The article presents a contemporary view of the study of piyyut, demonstrating that Jewish poetry of late antiquity (in Hebrew and Aramaic) was closely related to Christian liturgical poetry (both Syriac and Greek) and Samaritan liturgy. These relations were expressed primarily by common poetic and prosodic characteristics, derived on the one hand from ancient Semitic poetry (mainly biblical poetry), and on the other from innovations of the period. The significant connections of content between the different genres of poetry reveal the importance of comparative study. Thus the poetry composed in late antiquity provides additional evidence for the lively cultural dialogue that took place at that time.

Unearthing Houses in Porphyreon and Chhim. Structure, Spatial Development, and Decoration of Domestic Spaces in Late Antique Phoenicia

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-195
Author(s):  
Tomasz Waliszewski ◽  
Julia Burdajewicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Wall Painting ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Functional Study ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Residential Architecture

Porphyreon (Jiyeh/Nebi Younis) and Chhim were large rural settlements situated on the coast of modernday Lebanon, north of the Phoenician city of Sidon. As attested by the remains of residential architecture, they were thriving during the Roman Period and late Antiquity (1st–7th centuries AD). This article presents the preliminary observations on the domestic architecture uncovered at both sites, their spatial and social structure, as well as their furnishing and decoration, based on the fieldwork carried out in recent years by the joint PolishLebanese research team. The focus will be put on the wall painting fragments found in considerable numbers in Porphyreon. The iconographical and functional study of the paintings betrays to what extent the inhabitants of rural settlements in the coastal zone of the Levant were inclined to imitate the decoration of the urban houses known to them from the nearby towns, such as Berytus, but also from religious contexts represented by churches.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document