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Hellenistic Romance
Five ancient Greek novels survive complete from antiquity: Chariton's ''Callirhoe'' (mid 1st century), Achilles Tatius' ''Leucippe and Clitophon'' (early 2nd century), Longus' ''Daphnis and Chloe'' (2nd century), Xenophon of Ephesus' ''Ephesian Tale'' (late 2nd century), and Heliodorus of Emesa's ''Aethiopica'' (3rd century). There are also numerous fragments preserved on papyrus or in quotations, and summaries in '' Bibliotheca'' by Photius, a 9th-century Ecumenical Patriarch. The titles of over twenty such ancient Greek romance novels are known, but most of them have only survived in an incomplete, fragmentary form. The unattributed ''Metiochus and Parthenope'' may be preserved by what appears to be a faithful Persian translation by the poet Unsuri. The Greek novel as a genre began in the first century CE, and flourished in the first four centuries; it is thus a product of the Roman Empire. The exact relationship between the Greek novel and the Latin novels of Petronius and Apul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which both Greek and Roman societies flourished and wielded huge influence throughout much of Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th-century BC), and continues through the emergence of Christianity (1st century AD) and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th-century AD). It ends with the decline of classical culture during late antiquity (250–750), a period overlapping with the Early Middle Ages (600–1000). Such a wide span of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. ''Classical antiquity'' may also refer to an idealized v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of the Western ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iamblichus
Iamblichus (; grc-gre, Ἰάμβλιχος ; Aramaic: 𐡉𐡌𐡋𐡊𐡅 ''Yamlīḵū''; ) was a Syrian neoplatonic philosopher of Arabic origin. He determined a direction later taken by neoplatonism. Iamblichus was also the biographer of the Greek mystic, philosopher, and mathematician Pythagoras. In addition to his philosophical contributions, his ''Protrepticus'' is important for the study of the sophists because it preserved about ten pages of an otherwise-unknown sophist known as the Anonymus Iamblichi. Life According to the ''Suda'' and Iamblichus' biographer, Eunapius, he was born in Chalcis in Coele Syria. The son of a wealthy, well-known family, Iamblichus was descended from the Emesene dynasty. He initially studied under Anatolius of Laodicea and later studied under Porphyry, a pupil of Plotinus (the founder of neoplatonism). Iamblichus disagreed with Porphyry about theurgy, reportedly responding to Porphyry's criticism of the practice in ''De Mysteriis Aegypt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonius Diogenes
Antonius Diogenes ( grc, Ἀντώνιος Διογένης) was the author of an ancient Greek romance entitled ''The Wonders Beyond Thule'' (Τὰ ὑπὲρ Θoύλην ἄπιστα ''Apista huper Thoulen''). Scholars have placed him in the 2nd century CE, but his age was unknown even to Photios, who wrote a synopsis of the romance. The romance was a novel of twenty-four books and was written in the form of a dialogue about travels. It is highly praised by Photios for its vivid narration, its clearness, and the gracefulness of its descriptions. Scholars have tended to take it as a given that Lucian of Samosata had Diogenes' work principally in mind when he wrote his celebrated parody, the '' Verae Historiae'' (''True Histories''), but J.R. Morgan has more recently questioned this accepted notion upon extensive comparative study of the two works. Summary of the novel in Photios The current knowledge of the novel's content is from Photios, who left a brief summary in his leng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody,Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref>Hallo, William W. (2010) ''The World's Oldest Literature: Studies in Sumerian Belles-Lettres'p.608/ref>Cancogni, Annapaola (1985''The Mirage in the Mirror: Nabokov's Ada and Its French Pre-Texts''pp.203-213 or by interconnections between similar or related works perceived by an audience or reader of the text. These references are sometimes made deliberately and depend on a reader's prior knowledge and understanding of the referent, but the effect of intertextuality is not always intentional and is sometimes inadvertent. Often associated with strategies employed by writers working in imaginative registers (fiction, poetry, and drama and even non-written texts like performance art and digital media), intertextuality is now understood to be i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iamblichus (novelist)
Iamblichus ( grc, Ἰάμβλιχος; 165–180 AD) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek novelist. He was the author of the ''Babyloniaca'' (, , 'Babylonian Stories'), a romance novel in Greek. If not the earliest, it was at least one of the first productions of this kind in Greek literature. Life Iamblichus was born in Homs, Emesene and he had achieved wide prominence in the 2nd century. Iamblichus had the knowledge of three languages: Greek language, Greek, Akkadian language, Babylonian and Syriac language, Assyrian. Iamblichus was educated in Babylon, and hadn't specialized in the Greek language until later in his life. After having lived at Babylon for a number of years, he was taken prisoner and sold as a slave to a Syrians, Syrian, who, however, appears to have set him free again. He is said to have acquired such a perfect knowledge of Greek that he even distinguished himself as a rhetorician. For a time, he lived in Kingdom of Armenia (antiquity), Armenia, when it was rul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lollianus
Lollianus (sometimes rendered in English as ''Lollian'') is a Roman personal name which may refer to many figures of classical antiquity, including: *Lollianus ( Ulpius Cornelius Laelianus, sometimes called Lollianus Spurius), a general proclaimed emperor by his soldiers in Gaul and very soon murdered; he is one of the "Thirty Tyrants" whose lives are briefly sketched in the ''Historia Augusta''. He is the most important of those sharing the name. * Lollianus Avitus, consul in 144 AD, reported by the ''Historia Augusta'' (''Pert.'' i.5) to have given Pertinax his first career break. *Q. Flavius Maesius Egnatius Lollianus, consul in 355 AD, who appears in the letters of St. Athanasius *Q. Hedius Rufus Lollianus Gentianus, son of Lollianus Avitus: according to the ''Historia Augusta'' (Pert. vii.7) he dared criticize Pertinax, and got away with it. *The orator and philosopher Publius Hordeonius Lollianus. *Lollianus Titianus, a man ordered to arm gladiators at Capua in the las ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apollonius Of Tyre
Apollonius of Tyre is the subject of an ancient short novella, popular in the Middle Ages. Existing in numerous forms in many languages, the text is thought to be translated from an ancient Greek manuscript, now lost. Plot summary In most versions, the eponymous hero is hunted and persecuted after he reveals Antiochus of Antioch's incestuous relationship with his daughter. After many travels and adventures, in which Apollonius loses both his wife and his daughter and thinks them both dead, he is eventually reunited with his family through unlikely circumstances or intercession by gods. In some English versions Apollonius is shipwrecked and becomes a tutor to a princess who falls in love with him, and the good king gradually discovers his daughter's wishes. The major themes are the punishment of inappropriate lust—the incestuous king invariably comes to a bad end—and the ultimate rewards of love and fidelity. Origins (Latin and Greek?) The story is first mentioned in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aesop
Aesop ( or ; , ; c. 620–564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as ''Aesop's Fables''. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales associated with him are characterized by anthropomorphic animal characters. Scattered details of Aesop's life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called ''The Aesop Romance'' tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave () who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. Older spellings of his name have included ''Esop(e)'' and ''Isope''. Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2,500 yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A True Story
''A True Story'' ( grc, Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, ''Alēthē diēgēmata''; or ), also translated as True History, is a long novella or short novel written in the second century AD by the Greek author Lucian of Samosata. The novel is a satire of outlandish tales that had been reported in ancient sources, particularly those that presented fantastic or mythical events as if they were true. It is Lucian's best-known work. It is the earliest known work of fiction to include travel to outer space, alien lifeforms, and interplanetary warfare. It has been described as "the first known text that could be called science fiction". However, the work does not fit into typical literary genres: its multilayered plot and its characters have been interpreted as belonging to science fiction, fantasy, satire or parody, and have been the subjects of scholarly debate. Plot The novel begins with an explanation that the story is not at all "true", and that everything in it is a complete an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata, '; la, Lucianus Samosatensis ( 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer Pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets, unbound (and therefore inexpensive) booklets intended for wide circulation. Context Pamphlets were used to broadcast the writer's opinions: to articulate a poli ... who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac language, Syriac, all of his extant works are written entirely in ancient Greek (mostly in the Attic Greek dialect popular during the Second Sophistic period). Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings, which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm. According to his oration ''The Dream'', he was the son of a lower middle clas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
