The ‘Second Sophistic’ traditionally refers to a period at the height of the Roman Empire’s power that witnessed a flourishing of Greek rhetoric and oratory, and since the 19th century it has often been viewed as a defense of Hellenic civilization against the domination of Rome. This book proposes a very different model. Covering popular fiction, poetry and Greco-Jewish material, it argues for a rich, dynamic, and diverse culture, which cannot be reduced to a simple model of continuity. Shining new light on a series of playful, imaginative texts that are left out of the traditional accounts of Greek literature, Whitmarsh models a more adventurous, exploratory approach to later Greek culture. Beyond the Second Sophistic offers not only a new way of looking at Greek literature from 300 BCE onwards, but also a challenge to the Eurocentric, aristocratic constructions placed on the Greek heritage. Accessible and lively, it will appeal to students and scholars of Greek literature and culture, Hellenistic Judaism, world literature, and cultural theory.
Table of Content
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Beyond the Second Sophistic and into the Postclassical
PART ONE. FICTION BEYOND THE CANON
1. The ‘Invention of Fiction’
2. The Romance of Genre
3. Belief in Fiction: Euhemerus of Messene and the Sacred Inscription
4. An I for an I: Reading Fictional Autobiography
5. Metamorphoses of the Ass
6. Addressing Power: Fictional Letters between Alexander and Darius
7. Philostratus’s Heroicus: Fictions of Hellenism
8. Mimesis and the Gendered Icon in Greek Theory and Fiction
PART TWO. POETRY AND PROSE
9. Greek Poets and Roman Patrons in the Late Republic and Early Empire
10. The Cretan Lyre Paradox: Mesomedes, Hadrian, and the Poetics of Patronage
11. Lucianic Paratragedy
12. Quickening the Classics: The Politics of Prose in Roman Greece
PART THREE. BEYOND THE GREEK SOPHISTIC
13. Politics and Identity in Ezekiel’s Exagoge
14. Adventures of the Solymoi
References
Index
About the author
Tim Whitmarsh is Professor of Ancient Literatures, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University.
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