Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla /
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Long regarded as a sycophantic producer of overblown moral platitudes, Valerius Maximus emerges from a series of studies as an independent thinker capable of challenging his readers through the material he has collected: he makes them think about real moral dilemmas and grants to non-Roman societies a remarkable equivalence to Rome. Through his silences as much as his sermons he decodes the value- and political-system of his day. Valerius is talented as a reader of others and himself was read appreciatively in the Later Empire and even more so by Christians in Medieval Europe.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004499423
9789004499409
Ammianus Marcellinus From Soldier to Author /
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Ammianus Marcellinus was a soldier and an author. This book explores how his experience of 4th-century military life affected his writing of history and conversely how his knowledge of literature influenced his writing about the Roman army.
Ammianus Marcellinus composed a history of the Roman empire from 96 AD to 378 AD, focusing on the mid-fourth century during which he served in the army. His experience as a soldier during this period provides crucial realia of warfare, while his knowledge of literature, especially the genre of historiography, enabled him to imbue his narrative with literary flair. This book explores the tension between Ammianus' roles as soldier and author, examining how his military experience affected his history, and conversely how his knowledge of literature affected his descriptions of the Roman army.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004525351
9789004525290
Visualizing the Poetry of a Statius : An Intertextual Approach /
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Scholars have long noted the strikingly visual aspects of Statius' poetry. This book advances our understanding of how these visual aspects work through intertextual analysis. In the Thebaid , for instance, Statius repeatedly presents "visual narratives" in the form of linked descriptive (or ekphrastic) passages. These narratives are subject to multiple forms visual interpretation inflected by the intertextual background. Similarly, the Achilleid activates particularly Roman conceptions of masculinity through repeated evocations of Achilles' blush. The Silvae offer a diversity of modes of viewing that evoke Roman conceptions of gender and class.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004498860
9789004498853
Sallust and the Fall of the Republic : Historiography and Intellectual Life at Rome /
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This book offers a new interpretation of the Roman historian Sallust, which places him at the centre of the rich intellectual world of late Republican Rome. Drawing on the evidence of Sallust's digressions in particular, and in contrast to previous views of his work as purely moralistic or unsophisticated, it argues that Sallust uses his historiography to advance a coherent set of ideas about the political chaos he saw around him, and to participate in the broader debates which characterised his period. It also offers a new perspective on the argumentative qualities of classical historiography more widely.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004501737
9789004501713
Ambiguities of War: A Narratological Commentary on Silius Italicus' Battle of Ticinus (Sil. 4.1-479) /
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The book lays bare the narrative form of Silius' text. It focuses on the phenomenon of ambiguity due to the epic's constant oscillation between fact and fiction, highlighting Roman triumph in defeat and defeat through triumph.
This Narratological Commentary on Silius' Battle of Ticinus lays bare the narrative form of the text by addressing numerous narratological aspects, including plot-development, focalization, space, and intertextuality. The book also focuses on the phenomenon of ambiguity with its dynamic processes of (un-)strategic production, perception, and resolution. Ambiguity is a central feature of the Punica because of the epic's constant oscillation between fact and fiction: it treats the changing fortunes of war and the tension between Rome and Carthage, which Silius translates into a moment of poetical equilibrium by his paradoxical problematization of triumph in defeat and defeat through triumph.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004522671
9789004522664