The critical role of leadership in national development is widely acknowledged, yet leaders themselves emerge from and are shaped by their societal context. This dynamic evokes the philosophical assertion that virtuous governance is contingent upon a virtuous populace, problematising the question of whether a society’s fate is primarily carved by its leaders or its people. While Greco-Roman antiquity offers a well-documented lineage of political philosophy, this study turns to the wisdom literature of ancient Israel as a similarly rich yet underexplored repository of reflection on governance. Focusing on the book of Proverbs, this paper argues that its collected sayings offer timeless insights into the symbiotic relationship between leadership ethics and civic character. It analyses selected proverbs to construct a framework for evaluating the modern challenges of governance, demonstrating the text’s enduring relevance for contemporary national development. Contribution: This study exegetically analyses selected Proverbs (25–29) to construct an ethical leadership framework. Placing these principles in dialogue with Ghana’s governance challenges, it demonstrates how ancient wisdom literature can inform contemporary understandings of leadership’s critical role in fostering accountability and effective governance in the Ghanaian context.

ResumoO artigo propõe uma análise de imagens de capas e propagandas de medicamentos daBayer e da Vikelp no intuito de problematizar a sobrevivência da Antiguidadegreco-romana na revista ilustrada Eu Sei Tudo, que circulou noBrasil entre 1917 e 1958. A análise privilegiou referênciasteórico-metodológicas e conceitos produzidos por Aby Warburg em suas análisessobre as ninfas e o trabalho de Georges Didi-Huberman, que também pensa a imagemsobrevivente. Problematizamos a presença das divindades na revista, com foco nadiscussão sobre os ideais de beleza, perfeição e força propagados pela indústriafarmacêutica, bem como a saúde e o corpo saudável, que se apresentam namodernidade atravessados pelas referências greco-romanas.

Anchoring Science and Technology in Greco-Roman Antiquity ed. by Miko Flohr, Stephan T. A. M. Mols, and Teun Tieleman (review)

The article sets out to establish the extent of influence exercised by the philosophical and literary-poetic legacy of Greco-Roman antiquity on the Arab civilization during the Islamic Golden Age. To do so, the author characterizes the ideological foundation and methods of classical philosophy and poetry and analyzes their reinterpretation by the Arab Caliphate. The study explores the caliphate’s protoscientific, political and social developments, law, literature, and poetry. The author notes that Plato’s and Aristotle’s cosmogonic models with their premises of the dualism of faith and rational knowledge appealed to the theocratic state, prompting their reinterpretation in religious writing. K. Alabdallakh concludes that the influence of the Greco-Roman classical legacy proved inconsistent and mainly concerned the areas of knowledge, manufacturing, and politics, while barely traceable in law and poetry. At the same time, the Arab Caliphate created a hierarchical model of classical achievements that, in its various forms, lives to this day.

The study of pharmacology in premodern Eurasia reveals a rich and intricate tapestry of interwoven knowledge systems, practices, and materials. Far from being static or isolated, pharmacological knowledge—from Greco-Roman Antiquity to Ancient China and India, and from the medieval Islamicate world

This essay brings the nascent field of dehumanization studies into conversation with an uncomfortable moment of dehumanization in the early Christian movement: namely, Jesus Christ’s animalization of a Canaanite woman and her gentile kin as “dogs” (Matt 15:26–27). Recent scholarship on human animalization has shown that dehumanizing animal metaphors have an uncanny ability to hijack humans’ moral inhibitions against killing one another. Too often, animal metaphors have been wielded to legitimate structural and direct violence against the oppressed, including serving as a precursor for enslavement and genocide. In the context of the United States, animal metaphors thrive in Donald Trump’s fascist politics and far-right MAGA movement to scapegoat and essentialize immigrants as subhuman creatures. Disturbingly, this anti-immigrant foment is especially pervasive among adherents of White Christian nationalism. To confront this moment of democratic backsliding and Christian power worship, this essay brings recent scholarship from dehumanization studies into conversation with animal metaphors in Greco-Roman antiquity and Trump’s fascist politics. This background is then brought to bear on Jesus’ confrontation with the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21-28. The essay concludes with reflections on how Jesus’ changed mind and benefaction toward the woman’s daughter undermines White Christian nationalists’ nativist and dominionist interpretation of Matthew’s Great Commission.

Ancient Sources on the Use of Lead-Based Products and Recognition of Lead Intoxication in Greco-Roman Antiquity

The article provides a brief overview of the earliest accounts by authors from Greco-Roman antiquity regarding the symbolism and role of salt in daily life and its appearance in the Bible. The author also examines how the meaning of salt has been transferred into Romanian faith and traditions in general, and in Bukovina in particular. Without aiming to be exhaustive in his approach, but drawing on numerous bibliographic sources, the author brings to the readers’ attention a topic that is both intriguing and open to various interpretations and specialized research.

This article investigates how teaching functioned as a mode of philosophical self-transcendence for women in Greco-Roman antiquity, focusing on Hypatia of Alexandria and Theano of Croton. Drawing on social construct theory (Hacking, 1999; Butler, 1990), feminist epistemology (Code, 1991; Fricker, 2007) and the idea of philosophy as a way of life (Hadot, 2002), the article explores how these thinkers constructed intellectual authority despite systemic exclusion. Using Agora (2009) and Hidden Figures (2016), the article demonstrates how film can serve as a philosophical medium that visualises epistemic injustice and the performative construction of knowledge. A detail lesson series is presented to support the philosophical use of film in secondary and university-level classrooms. Teaching, it is argued, remains a transformative practice for reclaiming epistemic agency and challenging the exclusionary boundaries of philosophy.

The article presents traces of the Bible and antiquity present in the poems of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski - a poet crowned with a poetic laurel and called the Christian Horace. The author’s religious fervor and his belief in the perfection of the Creator of the world, whom he worshiped in accordance with the Ignatian motto ad maiorem Dei gloriam, were examined. Inspirations from the Old and New Testaments were indicated, including the Song of Songs and the Passion and saving sacrifice of Christ. Attention was paid to the creation of Mary and her role in the divine plan of redemption. It was noticed that biblical motifs in Sarbiewski’s poetry resonate with the heritage of Greco-Roman antiquity. This type of affiliation was noticed especially in panegyric texts praising outstanding families and/or figures. It was established that when creating his contemporary heroes, the poet used established cultural codes—he used an ancient cloak to evoke Christian values, and he presented places close to his heart (home, Masovia and Poland) in the Arcadian convention, inspired by the poetry of Virgil and Horace.

In the Greco-Roman world, doctors held significant authority in the areas of infant care, childcare and paediatric diseases. In the second book of his Gynaecia, the Greek physician Soranus discusses everything from the recommended method of feeding an infant to their emotional well-being. The physicians Galen, Rufus of Ephesus (cited by the Byzantine author Oribasius) and Cornelius Celsus provide further expertise about childrearing through case studies and descriptions of paediatric diseases. This paper will discuss how the mothering expertise of male doctors was privileged by both parents and other male doctors in Greco Roman antiquity and how doctors were often essential members of elite children’s circles of care. It will examine Galen’s parenting expertise through his case studies involving Cyrillus, the son of the consul Boethus, and the emperor’s son Commodus. Comparisons will then be drawn to the privilege that Soranus places on his own expertise of maternal and infant care, the authority that Rufus gives to himself in the area of childrearing and that Celsus places on his knowledge of pediatric disease.

This article explores Cy Twombly’s role as a mediator of Mediterranean culture, focusing on his transition from an American abstract expressionist idiom to a pictorial language influenced by classical mythology and Greco-Roman antiquity. Having moved to Rome in 1957, Twombly spent much of his life between two languages, two cultures and two continents. Though never fluent in Italian, his work was increasingly influenced by the Mediterranean culture, transforming American abstract expressionism into a visual vocabulary rich in colour, light and references to classical mythology and Greco-Roman antiquity. Twombly’s art thus functions as a translation from one language to another, with the artist serving as both a translator and mediator who conveys these cultural references. However, his unique and highly personal artistic language was difficult for many to interpret. French philosopher Roland Barthes played a key role in mediating Twombly’s work for a broader audience. Barthes, whose own creative language was akin to Twombly’s, helped elucidate the artist’s work in the late 1970s, offering important insights into its Mediterranean and Greco-Roman elements. This article examines how Twombly’s shift from one pictorial language to another reflects his role as a cultural mediator and the importance of Barthes’s interpretation in making Twombly’s work accessible to a wider public.

The characteristics of water (which is changeable, unstable and ambivalent) favour the early development of a rich imaginary around this element. This explains the symbolic value that water acquired in the mythology and culture of Greco-Roman antiquity. This dossier brings together a total of ten contributions in which, from different perspectives, the relevance of water in these cultures and the multiple symbolisms surrounding this element, many of which still survive, are highlighted.

One of the central metaphorical themes of Ephesians is maturity, expressed most memorably in 4:13. In this verse, the goal of the church is portrayed as the attainment of the “mature man” (εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον), the state of completion to which Christ’s corporate body is growing until it reaches “the measure of the stature of the fullness” of its head. Despite the clear origin of Paul’s metaphor in the realm of human development, minimal discussion has centered on how Paul’s contemporaries employed the phrase “mature man” (τέλειος ἀνήρ) in relation to other developmental milestones along the commonly conceived life course in Greco-Roman antiquity, and what implications this might have for understanding where in the maturation process Paul would have plotted his implied readers. This investigation explores these contextual matters and then uses the results to cast light on related developmental imagery in the surrounding passages of Ephesians, including not only the human growth terminology in 4:12–16 but also the pedagogical rhetoric in 4:20–21, the allusion to the Roman toga virilis ceremony in 4:22–24, and the military analogy in 6:10–18. Collectively, this metaphorical imagery helps to identify the church’s current stature as that befitting of a young man who has recently come of age and located within the liminal phase of early male adulthood. Explicating the fullness of the maturity metaphor in Ephesians helps to illuminate the thematic coherency of the letter as well as how Paul sought to make his realized eschatology intelligible to his ancient readers.

This article was prompted by the semantic errors present in two key Bulgarian translations of Cavafy's poetry. More specifically, it focuses on works related to themes, narratives, and motifs from Greco-Roman antiquity. The aim is twofold: firstly, to propose a typology of translation errors involving several types of modulation; and secondly, to demonstrate how this typology can be used as an explanatory model to analyse specific Cavafy poems.

This study traces the astonishing – from today’s point of view – promptness or carelessness with which violent legal institutions, in particular slavery and cruel punishment, were accepted or even approved in Ancient philosophy. The basic concept of Ancient practical philosophy was virtue. Plato conceived virtue in the context of his tripartite psychology as reason-controlled activity. Aristotle and the Stoics took up Plato’s notion of virtue in different ways. The influential Platonic concept was used to justify in a straightforward and unifying manner harsh coercive legal institutions of Ancient Greece and Rome. On the one hand it was precisely this aspect of Platonic virtue ethics that helps to historically explain the success and flourishing of the Stoic school until the Roman Empire. On the other hand, however, the Platonic paradigm was an effective conceptual obstacle to the further development of a humane and critical political philosophy in Greco-Roman Antiquity.

Microgravity survey was conducted in Valley of the Golden mummies (VGM) to map and detecting the archaeological features in the valley using a Scintrex CG-5 gravimeter. The Valley of the Golden mummies is located about 380 km west of Cairo. Baharyia Oasis became one of the most interesting archaeological Greco-Roman antiquities sites all over Egypt and the world. Microgravity survey measurements covered two sites one of them about 300 m including measured points 130 about in addition to another site 70 m including measured points 30.Microgravity data were processed to enhance data and calculate different variables. Microgravity survey successfully revealed features causes local density variations, as indicated by the acquired negative anomaly in the residual Bouguer anomalies. Final results shows the presence of an anomaly represented by three oval shapes at depth 1.5 m to 11.5 m and cover an area about2m×2m to 10m×5m. An anomaly interpreted archaeological features like tombs or corridors.

Abstract Grotius’s discussion on slavery exhibits a dual character, as it is based on natural law on the one hand, and on ius gentium on the other. This article focuses on the sources used by Grotius in his search for the rules of ius gentium on war slavery, and compares Grotius’s insights with the works of some of his contemporaries. After briefly discussing Grotius’s introduction to ius gentium and its sources, his references to three themes concerning war slavery are analyzed. The research shows that, if need be, Grotius works according to his own rules even though it seems difficult for him to leave Greco-Roman antiquity and Europe behind; it also shows that he is content with flimsy evidence. In addition, analyzing his sources informs us about Grotius’s personal input regarding the legitimacy of war and slavery. It turns out that with regard to one of the most far-reaching principles concerning war slavery, Grotius’s insight is consistent with what seems to have been generally accepted among (European) scholars from antiquity to his own time. Another lesson learned: natural rights are not safe with Grotius, since ius gentium as presented by him is a serious threat to such rights.

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Obra ressenyada: Andreas SERAFIM, George KARANTZIDIS y Kyriakos DEMETRIOU (eds.), Sex and the Ancient City. Sex and Sexual Practices in Greco-Roman Antiquity. Berlín: De Gruyter, 2022. ISBN: 9-783110-695779