Greek East Research Articles

An Unpublished Ionian Cup from the National Museum in Warsaw

The aim of this paper is to describe one of the few Ionian cups from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw. The vase is of East Greek origin and was used as a drinking cup. This type of ceramics was widespread during the Archaic period.

Interpretacja „Komentarza do Apokalipsy” Andrzeja z Cezarei i jego znaczenie dla krytyki tekstu biblijnego

The article is a brief examination of the most important ancient commentary on the Book of Revelation produced by the Greek East was composed by Andrew, Archbishop of Caesarea, Cappadocia. It not only became the standard patristic commentary in the Eastern Christian tradition and significantly influenced all subsequent Eastern commentaries, but decisively influenced the reception of the Book of Revelation into the canon of the Orthodox Church.

Susanne Carlsson, Hellenistic Democracies. Freedom, Independence and Political Procedure in Some East Greek City States

Susanne Carlsson, Hellenistic Democracies. Freedom, Independence and Political Procedure in Some East Greek City States

One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire , and: Monotheism between Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity (review)

One God. the Roman Empire. Edited by Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2010. Pp. 239- $99-00. ISBN 978-0-521-19416-7.) between Pagans and Christians Late Antiquity. Edited by Stephen Mitchell and Peter Van Nuffelen. [Interdisciplinary Studies Ancient Culture and Religion, 12.] (Leuven: Peeters. 2010. Pp. vi, 225. euro48,00 paperback. ISBN 978-9-042-92242-6.) These two collections of essays are the product of conference entitled Pagan the Roman Empire (1-4 c. AD) that was held at Exeter University July 2006 and represented highlight of triennial research program on the intellectual background to mono theism. The program was conceived as response to the volume Late edited by Michael Frede and the reviewer. The two books differ conception and format. One God an elegantly produced hardcover, containing six basically conceptual essays by recognized authorities the field of religious studies, as well as the contributions of the two editors. on the other hand, paperback volume, apparently less carefully edited, which takes the form more of series of case studies, as the editors themselves note (p. 8). While accepting pagan as heuristic tool, both books give emphasis to the social and political context of religious praxis and the preeminence of cult and over ideology, although the editors point to chronological division between the two. Regarding the Constantinian revolution as watershed, they assign to One God papers dealing with the era before the recognition of Christianity as religio licita and to those relating to the period 350-450. It may also be noted that One God concentrates on the Greek East, whereas draws to an equal extent on Latin sources. The papers One God reflect the fundamental distinctions among (a) soft (inclusive) and hard (exclusive) Judeo-Christian monotheism, (b) numerical and qualitative oneness, and (c) monotheistic thought and polytheistic cult. In well-structured methodological article, Pagan as Religious Phenomenon (pp. 16-33), Peter Van Nuffelen discusses the history and usefulness of such coinages as henotheism, monotheism, and monolatry, together with the neologism megatheism, the context of the study of Greco-Roman religion. All these terms, he argues, point to the changed way of conceiving and worshiping the godhead the Roman Empire as from the first century, change brought about by the interaction between various religious trends under the growing influence of philosophical discourse. Change equally the central issue the analysis of Roman from the first to the fourth century by John North, Pagan Ritual and Monotheism (pp. 34-52), although his emphasis on social and sociological factors (listed on pp. 42 and 51); not only does North minimize the role of philosophy the process of mutation, but he dismisses altogether the idea that the tendency toward monotheism a necessary condition for the religious transformations we are seeking to analyse (p. 51). Frede (The Case for Greek and Graeco-Roman Antiquity, pp. 53-81) and Stephen Mitchell (Further Thoughts on the Cult of Theos Hypsistos, pp. 167-208) remain faithful to the positions adopted their respective essays Monotheism. Emphasizing continuity and intellectuality, Frede brings evidence from Antisthenes, Chrysippus, and Galen to prove that philosophy at the heart of ancient religion, which is not just matter of cult and ritual (p. 81). By adducing new epigraphic evidence, Mitchell restates his thesis that the cult of Theos Hypsistos was in essence and spirit, if not the narrowest definition, form of monotheistic religion (p. 198). With reference to St. Augustine's reception of the Platonic theology, Alfons Furst (Monotheism between Cult and Politics: The Themes of the Ancient Debate between and Christian Monotheism, pp. …

The Natural city: re-envisioning the built environment

Acknowledgments Foreword Introduction: The Natural City: Cultivating the Terrain I. Adjusting Our Vision: Some Philosophical Reflections * In Search of the Natural City - Ingrid Leman Stefanovic* Can Cities Be Both Natural and Successful? Reflections Grounding an Apparently Oxymoronic Aspiration - W.S.K. Cameron* The Gruing of Cities - Frank Cunningham*My Streets Are My Ideas of Imagination: Literature and the Theme of the Natural City - Peter Timmerman II. From the Stars to the Street: Cosmological Perspectives * From Community to Communion: The Natural City in Biotic and Cosmological Perspective - Stephen Bede Scharper* Sailing to Byzantium: Nature and City in the Greek East - Bruce V. Foltz* Dao in the City - Vincent Shen* Biocracy in the City: A Contemporary Buddhist Approach - Kenneth Maly III. Expanding Our Collective Horizons: Societal Implications * Gated Ecologies and Possible Urban Worlds: From the Global City to the Natural City - Hilary Cunningham* Other Voices: Acoustic Ecology and Urban Soundscapes - Richard Oddie* Ecofeminist Cityzenry - Trish Glazebrook* Sustainable Urbanization - John B. Cobb, Jr.*Troubled Nature: Some Reflections on the Changing Nature of the Millennial City (Gurgaon), India - Shubhra Gururani IV: Building on the Vision: Reflecting on Praxis * Urban Place as an Expression of the Ancestors - Bill Woodworth Raweno:kwas* Seeing and Animating the City: A Phenomenological Ecology of Natural and Built Worlds - David Seamon* The City: A Legacy of Organism-environment Interaction at Every Scale - Robert Mugerauer* Natural Cities, Unnatural Energy - Bryan W. Karney and Gaurav Kumar* Children and Nature in the City - Sarah J. King and Ingrid Leman Stefanovic Conclusion

‘More than conquerors’ (Rom 8:37): Paul’s Gospel and the Augustan Triumphal Arches of the Greek East and Latin West

This paper investigates the social and theological import of Romans against the iconography of the Augustan arches, focusing on Paul’s indebtedness to Greeks and barbarians, the reconciliation of enemies, the victory of Christ on behalf of believers, and his rule over the nations. D.C. Lopez and B. Kahl investigated the iconographic evidence of Aphrodisias and Pergamon when discussing the political implications of Paul’s gospel in the Roman province of Asia. Paul visited neither city, so arguments about the apostle’s interaction with the imperial ideology of ‘victory’ depends more on the ubiquity of the Julio-Claudian propaganda than on any contact Paul might have had with those specific monuments. The Augustan arches throughout the Empire stereotypically depict the humiliation of barbarians at the sites of Pisidian Antioch, a city visited by Paul (Acts 13:14-50), as well as at La Turbie, Glanum, Carpentras and the triple arch at the Roman Forum. However, there were other iconographic motifs on the arches that conflicted with the relentless triumphal ideology of Augustus. They articulated an alternate vision of social relations between conqueror and conquered.

Catullus's Phaselus ( C. 4): Mastering a New Wave of Poetic Speech

This article offers a reading of Catullus 4 that positions its protagonist—a talking ship—within the networks of travel, plunder, and intellectual exchange that attended Rome's annexation of Bithynia. This ship's reported account of his travels embeds, I argue, an anxious discourse on Roman authors' dependence upon books and scholars hailing from the Greek east to deepen their understanding of Hellenistic literature. Through its ambiguous presentation of a Bithynian ship as both a subject and an object, a master and a slave, poem 4 stages a defining first-century concern about the Roman poet's ability to control a poetic tradition drawn from a captive Greece and mediated by a newly conquered region of Asia Minor.

The Greek East

The Greek East

Book Review of Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Russia 17. Moscow 8: Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. East Greek Pottery, by Natalia Sidorova

In recent years, the Russian museums have produced a steady flow of CVA volumes. Fascicles devoted to the Attic, South Italian, Corinthian, and now East Greek vases from the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg are finally finding their place on library shelves next to the volumes of other world-class museums with long-standing contributions to the series. These long-awaited gems are pricey, variable in quality, impressive in their quantity.

Latin Poets and Italian Gods by Elaine Fantham (review)

Reviewed by: Latin Poets and Italian Gods by Elaine Fantham Luke Roman Elaine Fantham. Latin Poets and Italian Gods. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2009. Pp. xii + 229. CDN $55. ISBN 9781442640597. The Olympian gods have received their fair share of attention in classical scholarship. Elaine Fantham, in her recent book based on the Robson lectures delivered at the University of Toronto, Latin Poets and Italian Gods, chooses instead to focus on lesser known divinities associated with specific places in Rome and the Italian countryside. The book maintains hints of its original oral format: Professor Fantham offers up witty conversational asides, and approaches her subject with an engaging open-endedness, as if she were not so much presenting iron-clad conclusions as opening and passing around a box full of interesting objects for others to contemplate. The book’s prose style is free of the paratheoretical jargon that continues to weigh down much contemporary scholarly writing. In Chapter 1, “Rustica Numina: The Country Gods of Italy and their Reception in Roman poetry,” Fantham states her aim of reconstructing “the natural and supernatural world of the Italian smallholder” (5). She begins with a survey, in Roman authors from Ennius to Ovid, of rural gods, both native Italian and transplanted: Faunus, Silvanus, Pan, the Camenae, Pales, Priapus, the nymph Juturna. She attempts in this opening chapter to assess the prominence of the various deities and their importance in Roman cult. Chapter 2, “Virgil’s Gods of the Land,” explores the representation of rural divinities and sacred spaces in the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid. Roman rustic divinities are anti-intuitively scarce in the Eclogues, which Fantham explains by suggesting that Virgil’s poetry is more Greek and literary at this stage than truly Roman. The Georgics mark a transition to a more recognizably Italian world of agriculture and work, while Books 7–12 of the Aeneid afford Virgil an opportunity to imagine the sacred landscape of early Italy. In Chapter 3, “Ovid’s Fasti and the Local Gods of the City,” Fantham searches for references to authentic religious rites and attitudes in an author known for being a playful and sometimes devious manipulator of fictions. Whereas Ovid is more often viewed as a poet of the city than of the countryside, the [End Page 256] city of the Fasti, as Fantham shows, is replete with sacred groves and the divinities that inhabit them. In the end, Fantham is tantalized by the elusive hints of a “poet who can oscillate between the authenticity of antiquarian research and the imaginative delight of sheer invention,” lamenting that “it is our loss that we cannot always distinguish between them” (89). The difficulty of extricating authentic religious material from literary invention influenced by Greek literary tradition perhaps explains the subtitle of Part II: “Counter-Examples, and the Triumph of Artistry over Fading Devotion.” The peculiar wording of this title helpfully recognizes the sometimes conspicuous distance of Roman literary divinities from quotidian rural piety, yet also brings up several questions: whose devotion faded? The smallholders of the Italian countryside, or only cynical urban poets like Ovid? If the latter, should we assume that, in earlier poets, devotion was uncompromised by irony, fiction, and artistry? Fantham, however, is bracingly terse when it comes to methodology and interpretive macro-narrative, preferring to follow the sometimes crooked path of individual passages and puzzles. In the book’s final three chapters, Fantham traces the representation of divinities both Greek and Roman through a selection of passages in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Priapean poetry by various authors, and Statius’ Silvae and Thebaid. Chapter 4, “Ovidian variations: From Friendly Flora to Lewd Salmacis and Angry Acheloüs,” takes as its premise the reverence shown to Italian gods on the one hand, and stories of the more “violent and undisciplined” (95) gods of Greece and Asia Minor on the other. Fantham contrasts the wild behavior of some mythical rivers of the Greek East with Ovid’s positive focus on the Italian figure Flora, although, as Fantham herself argues, Ovid may have had his own reasons for favoring a goddess associated with moral license and erotic display (98–100). In Chapter 5, “Gods in a Man-made Landscape...

Sculpted Symposiasts of Ionia

Statues and statuettes of reclining banqueters were dedicated at several Ionian sanctuaries during the sixth century B.C.E., beginning with the Geneleos Group at the Samian Heraion. Though common for small bronze and terracotta sculpture, this figure type is not otherwise attested in monumental dedicatory sculpture and is rare as architectural decoration elsewhere in archaic Greece. This article explores the social implications of this Ionian sculptural tradition, which paired the luxury of the reclining banquet with bodily corpulence, in light of archaic poetry and Samian history. The short-lived trend of reclining banqueter dedications may be understood as a locally specific type of aristocratic self-definition and an Ionian corollary to burials on klinai (banquet couches) in neighboring western Asiatic dynastic cultures. These sculptures also challenge conventional distinctions between private and cultic banqueting and illuminate the place of sympotic culture in archaic Ionian sanctuaries and the social implications of East Greek sculptural style. * .

Sculpted Symposiasts of Ionia

Statues and statuettes of reclining banqueters were dedicated at several Ionian sanctuaries during the sixth century B.C.E., beginning with the Geneleos Group at the Samian Heraion. Though common for small bronze and terracotta sculpture, this figure type is not otherwise attested in monumental dedicatory sculpture and is rare as architectural decoration elsewhere in archaic Greece. This article explores the social implications of this Ionian sculptural tradition, which paired the luxury of the reclining banquet with bodily corpulence, in light of archaic poetry and Samian history. The short-lived trend of reclining banqueter dedications may be understood as a locally specific type of aristocratic self-definition and an Ionian corollary to burials on klinai (banquet couches) in neighboring western Asiatic dynastic cultures. These sculptures also challenge conventional distinctions between private and cultic banqueting and illuminate the place of sympotic culture in archaic Ionian sanctuaries and the social implications of East Greek sculptural style.

Online-Only Content

Next article FreeOPEN ACCESS ON AJA ONLINE (www.ajaonline.org)Online-Only ContentPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreOnline-only content accompanying American Journal of Archaeology Volume 115, Number 1 (January 2011)MUSEUM REVIEWThe Chimaera of Arezzo: Made in Etruria?, by P. Gregory WardenBOOK REVIEWSMetal Detecting and Archaeology, edited by Suzie Thomas and Peter G. Stone. Reviewed by Derek FinchamChogha Mish. Vol. 2, The Development of a Prehistoric Regional Center in Lowland Susiana, Southwestern Iran: Final Report on the Last Six Seasons of Excavations, 1972–1978, by Abbas Alizadeh. Reviewed by John R. AldenDikili Tash, village préhistorique de Macédoine Orientale: Recherches franco-helléniques dirigées par la Société Archéologique d’Athénes et l’école française d’Athénes (1986–2001), by Haïdo Koukouli-Chryssanthaki, René Treuil, Laurent Lespez, and Dimitra Malamidou. Reviewed by Michael FotiadisThe Black Sea: Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of the International, Interdisciplinary Conference, Istanbul, 14–16 October 2004, by Gülden Erkut and Stephen Mitchell. Reviewed by Lise HannestadThe Levant in Transition: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the British Museum on 20–21 April 2004, edited by Peter J. Parr. Reviewed by Graham PhilipΑνασκαφές Μυκηνών ΙΙ: Το “Εργαστήριο” των Μυκηνών, by Despoina Danielidou. Reviewed by Margaretha Kramer-HajosColonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia: Phoenician, Greek, and Indigenous Relations, edited by Michael Dietler and Carolina López-Ruiz. Reviewed by Duane W. RollerSagalassos VI: Geo- and Bio-Archaeology at Sagalassos and in Its Territory, edited by Patrick Degryse and Marc Waelkens. Reviewed by Peter Ian KuniholmCorpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Russia 17. Moscow 8: Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. East Greek Pottery, by Natalia Sidorova. Reviewed by Tyler Jo SmithTradition and Originality: A Study of Exekias, by E. Anne Mackay. Reviewed by Kathryn TopperMore About Caeretan Hydriae: Addenda et Clarificanda, by J.M. Hemelrijk. Reviewed by Elizabeth TrinklGreek Vase-Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour, by Alexandre G. Mitchell. Reviewed by Mark D. Stansbury-O’DonnellThe Derveni Krater: Masterpiece of Classical Greek Metalwork, by Beryl Barr-Sharrar. Reviewed by Jasper GauntThe Furniture and Furnishings of Ancient Greek Houses and Tombs, by Dimitra Andrianou. Reviewed by Lisa NevettPour une archéologie du rite: Nouvelles perspectives de l’archéologie funéraire, edited by John Scheid. Reviewed by Emily Miller BonneyLatrinae et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World, by Barry Hobson. Reviewed by Charalampos DokosDie Casa del Fauno in Pompeji (VI 12). Vol. 1, Bauhistorische Analyse. Die stratigraphischen Befunde und Funde der Ausgrabungen in den Jahren 1961 bis 1963, by Adolf Hoffmann and Andrea Faber. Reviewed by Michele GeorgeThe Roman Amphitheatre: From Its Origins to the Colosseum, by Katherine E. Welch. Reviewed by Sinclair BellLondon’s Roman Amphitheatre: Guildhall Yard, City of London, by Nick Bateman, Carrie Cowan, and Robin Wroe-Brown. Reviewed by Sinclair BellBi’r Minayh: Report on the Survey 1998–2004, edited by Ulrich Luft. Reviewed by Stephen E. SidebothamKourion: Excavations in the Episcopal Precinct, by A.H.S. Megaw; with contributions by Richard Anderson, Susan Boyd, Helen Brown, Christine Kondoleon, Archibald Dunn, Michael F. Hendy, Geoffrey House, John Hayes, Rowena Loverance, D.M. Metcalf, Ino Michaelidou-Nicolau, Kenneth S. Painter, John Rosser, and Susan H. Young. Reviewed by Susan T. StevensList of Books Received Next article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 115, Number 1January 2011 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 35Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3764/aja.115.1.online Copyright © 2011 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Character of Pre-modern Interstate Diplomacy

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 See the list of incidents in Sigrid Albert, Bellum Iustum (Kallmünz, 1980), 13–14. 2 So the influential position of W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome (Oxford, 1979): 165–75. 3 S. P. Mattern Parkes, ‘The Defeat of Crassus and the Just War’, Classical World 96 (2003): 387–96. 4 See A. M. Eckstein, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2006), Chs. 4, 5, and 6. 5 Mattern-Parkes (above, n. 3), 391. 6 The classic example is the intense senatorial anger at the Republic of Rhodes for attempting to mediate the war between Rome and King Perseus of Macedon in 168 B.C. 7 An important exception, not discussed by Ager, is the central role played by the Epirote Confederation in successfully mediating a true compromise peace between Rome and King Philip V of Macedon in 205 B.C. 8 Harris, War and Imperialism, 164–66. 9 On the authenticity of the sentiments of this speech as it appears in Livy, see J. M. Quillin, ‘Information and Empire: Domestic Fear Propaganda in Republcan Rome, 200–149 B.C.’, Journ. of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 160 (2004), 775–76. 10 Jerzy Linderski, ‘Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum: Concepts of Defensive Imperialism’, in Jerzy Linderski, ed., Roman Questions: Selected Papers, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1995): 1–8 (orig. publ. 1984). 11 See Hendrik Mourtisen, Italian Unification: A Study in Ancient and Modern Historiography (London 1998), 23–37, and cf. 59–60 on Mommsen. 12 Allegedly, only ambassadors from Massilia (Marseilles) were exempt from this indignity; they sat with the senators, because of the help Massilia had given Rome at the time of the Gallic sack of Rome ca. 387 B.C. (Justin Epitome of the History of Pompeius Trogus, 43.5.10). 13 The Punic envoys (whom Polybius says had right on their side but still failed, for reasons of power-politics): Polyb. 31.21.5–6. The ambassador from Ephesus: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 17, no. 505. 14 Some of these Punic envoys decided not to return to Carthage in the first place (Diodorus of Sicily 32.6.4). 15 This thesis, too, goes back to Mommsen's reconstruction of the eventual unification of Italy. 16 See A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Policy in the Greek East, 168 B.C.– 1 A.D. (Norman, Oklahoma, 1984): Chapters I and II, and E. S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984): Chapter 2.

Orthodox Readings of Augustine (review)

Reviewed by: Orthodox Readings of Augustine Eric W. Northway Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos, editors Orthodox Readings of AugustineCrestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2008 Pp. 314. $20.00. The thirteen essays contained in this book originally were papers delivered in June 2007 at the Orthodox Readings of Augustine Conference held at Fordham University. In recent years there has been resurgent interest (both positive and negative) in Augustine among various Eastern Orthodox scholars, as well as among non-Orthodox scholars concerned to learn more about the bishop's reception by eastern Christians. Given this interest, the editors of the present work understand the conference and the essays it produced to be groundbreaking: "The articles presented here offer for the first time an ecumenical engagement with the history of the reception of Augustine, both the man and his work, in Eastern Orthodox Christianity" (38). Unfortunately, neither time nor space allow for a comprehensive analysis of every presenter's contribution. What follows, then, are short summaries of a handful of essays, meant to spur on potential readers in the hope that they themselves will carefully mull over each and every one of the fine pieces contained in this volume. The intriguing opening chapter, co-written by Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos, traces the historical/theological currents that demonstrate the ancient majority consensus that Augustine was an Orthodox father, as well as the tentative acceptance by some scholars of certain aspects of Augustine's teachings within eastern Christianity. In both instances this occurred, we are told, primarily because of Photius's defense of Augustine in the ninth century, Bulgakov's engagement with his trinitarian theology in the first third of the twentieth century, and Lossky's quietly clement evaluation of the apophaticism of Augustine in the 1950s. Conversely, the "condemnation" (28, 37) of Augustine's entire theological methodology found its genesis "in early nineteenth-century Russia in its Slavophile form" (37). This downbeat assessment eventually flourished because of the soon to be normative interpretation of Augustine's negative impact on western theology and culture by certain Greek theologians of "the 1960s Generation" (27). The principle articulator of this interpretation was John Romanides, who, in turn, influenced Christos Yannaras and John Zizioulas. Romanides, whose theology was hermeneutically contingent on post-colonial Greek conceptions of "the other" (i.e., "East" over against "West"), appears to have reinforced the pre-existent relationship gap in the church by undermining Augustine's historical station as a father of the Orthodox Church (37). Elizabeth Fisher's essay recounts the circumstances surrounding the translation of Augustine's De Trinitate in 1280 by Planoudes. Fisher briefly, but helpfully, compares passages from Augustine's Latin text to the Greek translation. Based on her assessment of the corresponding texts, Fisher concludes that, "Planoudes chose to incorporate in his translation some features of vocabulary and syntax that echo the Constantinopolitan Creed and place the Greek version of Augustine's De Trinitate in the linguistic framework of this fundamental Christian text" (52). Ultimately, however, Planoudes rejected Augustine's trinitarian doctrine. But, his [End Page 331] translation received both scathing reviews (some aimed criticism at the translation itself, while others at the fact that he translated it in the first place), and cautious acceptance—all the while remaining influential in the Greek East for centuries after its completion (55). In regard to the influential nature of Planoudes' translation, Reinhard Flogaus argues persuasively (if not controversially) in his essay that Augustine's De Trinitate influenced Gregory Palamas, a detail that Flogus believes has been suppressed by eastern scholars in order to maintain "the old stereotypes" of the "Augustinian West and the Orthodox East" (79f.). The last chapter by Andrew Louth is simultaneously an exceptionally learned piece of scholarship and a mediating pastoral reflection. Entitled, "'Heart in Pilgrimage': St. Augustine as Interpreter of the Psalms," Louth focuses the spotlight on Augustine as preacher—examining the bishop's homily on Psalm 100 as found in Enarrationes in Psalmos—and not "the Augustine of the great controversies" (291). Describing his methodology as "an exercise in seeing how Augustine read one of the psalms with his congregation" (295), Louth allows Augustine's exegesis to lead the discussion...

'Just as Befitting a Good Friend and Ally' - Rome, Aphrodisias and the Transaction of Empire

The purpose of this paper is to explore the operation of Roman rule through the case of an exchange between a Roman proconsul, Q. Oppius, and the city of Aphrodisias preserved in two inscriptions from Aphrodisias (Reynolds 1982, nos. 2 & 3). This pair of texts is not just a record, but an artefact of the exchange – its language, arrangement, and performance – and thus allows us to witness the transaction of power between the Romans and their subject (Ma 2000). The interaction itself is carried out in the language of reciprocity and friendship (rather than, say, compulsion or force) and φιλία appears as an active and dynamic relationship with normative rules that helped to normalize and direct Roman power in the Greek East (contra Badian 1984). This pair of texts reveals for us a complex performance of Roman rule in the form of reciprocity and the discourse of friendship, and better helps us to understand the character of the Romans’ empire in the East and their success in establishing it. The earlier text is a civic decree of Aphrodisias, relating Oppius’ request for aid against Mithridates VI of Pontus and the city’s decision to send troops in response; the later document is a letter of Oppius to the city some years later thanking them for these efforts and promising to look out for the city in the future. Here we observe the interaction between ruler and ruled played out in terms of reciprocity, a mode of interaction formulated as a perpetual cycle of mutual exchange. Both parties speak of a series of past, present, and future actions that not only shaped the interaction itself, but provided an opportunity for negotiating their respective positions in relation to one another. Central to this reciprocal mode of interaction was the relationship of φιλία (Dahlheim 1967, Gruen 1984, Mitchell 1997; Low 2007); according to Oppius, through their efforts the Aphrodisians had acted in a manner “befitting a good friend and ally”. Interstate friendship was grounded in the Hellenic tradition, with discursive norms of egalitarianism, goodwill, and mutual exchange (Cooper 1999; Mitchell 2007) that at once located Roman authority within a local framework and within the larger narrative of Greek freedom that circumscribed Greco-Roman relations generally (Gruen 1984, Ferrary 1988), while directing and constraining their actions along these lines. In the decrees, Aphrodisias’ efforts toward Oppius are not compelled by the proconsul, but rather are decisions freely made and executed on the autonomous authority of the city. At the same time, the Aphrodisians openly accept Roman superiority and proclaim their undying support for Roman ἡγeμονία, which sense of loyalty is here the moral obligation due to a friend. Through these texts, we can see the tension in φιλία, and the space that existed within it so that a Greek polis could identify and exercise its autonomy while admitting and obeying Roman hegemony.

Andrew Louth, Greek East and Latin West: The Church, AD 681–1071. (The Church in History, 3.) Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2007. Paper. Pp. xvii, 382 plus 18 black-and-white figures and 8 maps.

Andrew Louth, <i>Greek East and Latin West: The Church, AD 681–1071</i>. (The Church in History, 3.) Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2007. Paper. Pp. xvii, 382 plus 18 black-and-white figures and 8 maps.

La Transfiguration selon l'Orient et l'Occident: Gregoire Palamas - Thomas d'Aquin vers un denouement cumenique. By EDOUARD DIVRY, OP.

The Council of Florence of 1439 left unresolved at least one significant theological disagreement between the Greek East and the Latin West, concerning the nature of transfiguring grace. In the Greek East in the fourteenth century Gregory Palamas had been instrumental in defining the light which shone from Jesus Christ at his transfiguration as the light of the uncreated energies of God. Those energies were consubstantial with the divine essence, distinguishable though inseparable from it. Palamas’s teaching, understood by the Orthodox to have brought to its final term a tradition going back to the early Greek fathers, was endorsed by two fourteenth-century local councils in Constantinople, and became integral to the subsequent Orthodox theological tradition. In the Latin West, a century earlier, Thomas Aquinas had consolidated a rather different Western tradition, which thought of grace as created. The light which shone from Christ at his transfiguration was a light created by a miracle.

Mark's Empty Tomb and Other Translation Fables in Classical Antiquity

Struggling under the weight of contemporary, socioreligious demands, prevailing scholarship regarding Mark's enigmatic ending may prove nothing short of delusional. Several factors, in my view, conspire, prohibiting a clear understanding of how such a text would have likely performed in the ancient Mediterranean world. First, scholars tend to subsume Mark under a Judaic literary domain, thus seeking its primary semiotic indices and cultural conventions within early Jewish literature. There appears, however, to be little basis for this appetence, except a rather non-scholarly insistence on a pristine, non-pagan well from which the academy ought to draw nearly all cultural, literary, and ideological antecedents. Such aversion combines with what one may best describe as a fundamental misapprehension of the processes and principles governing Hellenistic literary production; that is, a given story, when juxtaposed with the array of analogous Mediterranean fabulae, must either match uniformly or the classification be summarily dismissed as nonapplicable. This not only comes as a false choice but betrays a gross misconception regarding the phenomena of syncretic adaptation in the Hellenistic Orient. Third, and perhaps most obstructive, the persistent sacred nature of the narrative, for many in a field overgrown with faith-based scholarship, has typically confused subject and object, yielding a paucity of effective historical, literary- critical treatments.1 With special attention to the second of these formidable obstacles, that is, pertaining to the composition of Levantine Greek literature in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, some measure of reappraisal may be in order. Though variously reconstituted, Hellenic convention invariably governed the Greek literary domain from the Hellenistic period through the Second Sophistic and late antiquity, not merely in early Christian instances. One indeed errs to consider Hellenism in the ancient Greek East a matter of mere influence, as though passively achieved through indirection and diffusion. The writer of Greek literature in the Hellenistic and Roman periods creatively and consciously applied a variegated pastiche of Hellenic conventions and cultural codes, often drawn from the Greek classical canon.2 Read as part of this broader cultural-literary domain, Mark applies indigenous cultural coloring, while artfully adapting his work, weaving it with Near Eastern motifs and nimble mimetic transvaluations; or, at other moments, Mark has with ingenuous superficiality assigned Palestinian nomenclature and cultural flourish (as though foreign decals placed upon a model).3 Such Judeo-Oriental dress thinly draped over the marble of another modulates the directing interpretive signals of the text, that is, a signification by abstraction and association.4 Any item, then, from the array of Romano-Greek literary works (i.e., Greek literature composed during the Roman period), by means of generic reconstitution, conventional variation, and superficial regional attire necessarily varies from its Hellenic predecessors and disparate Hellenistic contemporaries, while wholly relying on and varying on the established Mediterranean cultural codes and semiotic conventional inventory, the then current semiotic grammar of Mediterranean cultural history.5 One ought first to read the Gospel of Mark within this broader systemic literary context and not another. Mutatis mutandis, what likely process of signification would have directed the earliest readings of Mark's concluding episode? Mark 16:1-8 foregrounds not an evincing, postmortem appearance of a risen Jesus but a cenotaph with a body. This ending has seemed so strangely unsatisfying and unresolved that many scholars have supposed a ending for the narrative, lost early in the process of textual transmission.6 Given, however, the implications of the topos of the missing body in classical and late ancient Mediterranean literature, this supposition appears all too hasty. …

En torno al culto al gobernante y a Dea Roma en el Mundo Helenístico: Las póleis y la política de la reciprocidad

This work deals with the cults voluntarily offered to the Hellenistic monarchs and Dea Roma by the poleis of the Greek East. The issue of the isotheoi timai (statue, sacrifices and festivals) offered to the Hellenistic kings is analyzed from a historical point of view; and the creation of an original cult of Rome with similar characteristics is also taken into account. In this sense, we are interested in investigating the role that these cultural practices had in the establishment and development of the diplomatic relations between the Greek poleis and ethne with the Hellenistic kings and Rome. These two kinds of cults show continuities which reveal the strategic and pragmatic condition of these social practices. We believe that the study of this phenomenon will provide elements to set the active role of the poleis in the Hellenistic period within an international context characterized by the supremacy of the Hellenistic monarchies at the beginning, and of Rome at a later period.