Discovers new connections and cross-fertilisations between different cultural, linguistic and religious communities in the Roman Empire.

Explores how Roman emperors were perceived by their subjects in the first two centuries after Augustus.

"Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature is the first monograph devoted to the reception of Herodotus among Imperial Greek writers. Using a broad reception model and focused largely on texts outside of historiography proper, this book analyzes the entanglements of criticism and imitation in select works by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Dio of Prusa, Lucian, and Pausanias. It offers a new angle on Herodotus's intellectual afterlife, channeled through evocations both explicit and implicit in literary criticism, the moral essay, public oration, satire and periegetic literature. Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature shifts focus from reputation only - what ancient authors explicitly had to say about Herodotus - toward the kinetic interrelation between Herodotus's reputation and his active reworking across genre and mode. It demonstrates how Herodotus was strategically construed and often implicitly summoned - as fabulist, classicist, moralizer, and evasive intellectual - and how such Herodotean presences played to the wider purposes of Imperial writers. Herodotus became a touchstone for writers concerned with a nimbus of questions that the Histories first helped to articulate. Imperial Greeks found Herodotus useful in puzzling through questions of authorial persona, mimesis, the relationship between aesthetic and ethical criticism, the self, and the contingent definitions of Hellenism under Rome. Ultimately, Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature widens an incomplete reception history and reads bi-focally, examining how attention to the presence of Herodotus in various texts unveils new layers of meaning in those works, while also showing how ancient receptions offer insight into the Histories"--

This volume approaches the broad topic of wonder in the works of Tacitus, encompassing paradox, the marvellous and the admirable. Recent scholarship on these themes in Roman literature has tended to focus on poetic genres, with comparatively little attention paid to historiography: Tacitus, whose own judgments on what is worthy of note have often differed in interesting ways from the preoccupations of his readers, is a fascinating focal point for this complementary perspective. Scholarship on Tacitus has to date remained largely marked by a divide between the search for veracity – as validated by modern historiographical standards – and literary approaches, and as a result wonders have either been ignored as unfit for an account of history or have been deprived of their force by being interpreted as valid only within the text. While the modern ideal of historiographical objectivity tends to result in striving for consistent heuristic and methodological frameworks, works as varied as Tacitus' Histories, Annals and opera minora can hardly be prefaced with a statement of methodology broad enough to escape misrepresenting their diversity. In our age of specialization a streamlined methodological framework is a virtue, but it should not be assumed that Tacitus had similar priorities, and indeed the Histories and Annals deserve to be approached with openness towards the variety of perspectives that a tradition as rich as Latin historiographical prose can include within its scope. This collection proposes ways to reconcile the divide between history and historiography by exploring contestable moments in the text that challenge readers to judge and interpret for themselves, with individual chapters drawing on a range of interpretive approaches that mirror the wealth of authorial and reader-specific responses in play.

This volume addresses the intellectual and political contexts that produced Cassius Dio's (c. 160–c. 230 CE) massive and indispensable synthesis of Roman history. Contributors examine the literary influences, cultural identity and political ideologies of this much read but enigmatic author.

Edwards explores how Josephus in Antiquities adapts the scriptural stories of Joseph and Esther in unexpected ways as models for accounts of more recent Jewish figures. Terming this practice “subversive adaptation,” Edwards contextualizes it within Greco-Roman literary culture and employs the concept of “discourses of exemplarity” to show how Josephus used narratives about past figures to engage Roman elites in moral reflection and pragmatic decision-making. This book supplies analysis of frequently overlooked accounts as well as Josephus’ broader literary strategies, and shows how ancient Jews appropriated imperial historiographical conventions and forms of discourse while countering Greco-Roman claims of cultural superiority.

This book shows how Ancient Christians both used curses and criticized them in ancient Mediterranean religion and society.

The T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul gathers leading voices on various aspects of Paul's biography into a thorough reconsideration of him as a historical figure. The contributors show how recent trends in Pauline scholarship have invited new questions about a variety of topics, including his social location, his mode of subsistence, his cultural formation, his place within Judaism, his religious experience and practice, and his affinities with other religious actors of the Roman world. Through careful attention to biographical detail, social context, and historical method, it seeks to describe him as a contextually plausible social actor. The volume is structured in three parts. Part One introduces sources, methods, and historiographical approaches, surveying the foundational texts for Paul and the early Pauline tradition. Part Two examines key biographical questions pertaining to Paul's bodily comportment, the material aspects of his career, and his religious activities. Part Three reconstructs the biographical portraits of Paul that emerge from the letters associated with him, presenting a series of “micro-biographies” pieced together by leading Pauline scholars.

This book is for scholars and students of the ideas, literatures, and cultures of early Christianity and late antiquity, ancient philosophers, and historians of theology. It offers new perspectives on early Christian modes of knowing and ordering knowledge in relation to changing discourses, institutions, and material culture of late antiquity.

An essential resource for scholars and students Since the publication of the first edition of Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters in 1986, the field of early Judaism has exploded with new data, the publication of additional texts, and the adoption of new methods. This new edition of the classic resource honors the spirit of the earlier volume and focuses on the scholarly advances in the past four decades that have led to the study of early Judaism becoming an academic discipline in its own right. Essays written by leading scholars in the study of early Judaism fall into four sections: historical and social settings; methods, manuscripts, and materials; early Jewish literatures; and the afterlife of early Judaism.