Cicero, Greek Learning, and the Making of a Roman Classic

Inbunden, Engelska, 2019

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Beskrivning

The Roman statesman, orator, and author Marcus Tullius Cicero is the embodiment of a classic: his works have been read continuously from antiquity to the present, his style is considered the model for classical Latin, and his influence on Western ideas about the value of humanistic pursuits is both deep and profound. However, despite the significance of subsequent reception in ensuring his canonical status, Cicero, Greek Learning, and the Making of a Roman Classic demonstrates that no one is more responsible for Cicero's transformation into a classic than Cicero himself, and that in his literary works he laid the groundwork for the ways in which he is still remembered today. The volume presents a new way of understanding Cicero's career as an author by situating his textual production within the context of the growth of Greek classicism: the movement had begun to flourish shortly before his lifetime and he clearly grasped its benefits both for himself and for Roman literature more broadly. By strategically adapting classic texts from the Greek world, and incorporating into his adaptations the interpretations of the Hellenistic philosophers, poets, rhetoricians, and scientists who had helped enshrine those works as classics, he could envision and create texts with classical authority for a parallel Roman canon. Ranging across a variety of genres - including philosophy, rhetoric, oratory, poetry, and letters - this close study of Cicero's literary works moves from his early translation of Aratus' poetry (and its later reappearance through self-quotation) to Platonizing philosophy, Aristotelian rhetoric, Demosthenic oratory, and even a planned Greek-style letter collection. Juxtaposing incisive analysis of how Cicero consciously adopted classical Greek writers as models and predecessors with detailed accounts of the reception of those figures by Greek scholars of the Hellenistic period, the volume not only offers ground-breaking new insights into Cicero's ascension to canonical status, but also a salutary new account of Greek intellectual life and its effect on Roman literature.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2019-01-10
Mått:163 x 241 x 28 mm
Vikt:712 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:372
Förlag:OUP OXFORD
ISBN:9780198829423

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Mer om författaren

Caroline Bishop is Assistant Professor of Classics at Texas Tech University. She specializes in Greek and Roman intellectual history, Cicero and Latin prose, and the mechanics of reception in the ancient world, with a particular focus on classicism, canon formation, and cultural exchange from Greece to Rome. Her current research centres on questions of reading and interpretation in antiquity, and the ways in which ancient intellectual culture intersected with ancient literary production.

Recensioner i media

All readers of Cicero will find value in this book, as will anyone interested in the impact of Greek intellectual culture on Roman literature. There is a wealth of detail, and Bishop offers a host of fresh insights into the care and effort Cicero took to make his works into Roman "classics."

Innehållsförteckning

FrontmatterTexts and Abbreviations0: Introduction0.1: Cicero's intellectual politics: textual production as a new man0.2: Greek intellectual culture and Roman classicism0.3: iGraecus et scholasticus: Roman ambivalence towards Greek culture0.4: Intellectual and scholastic culture in Republican Rome0.5: Conclusion and chapter summary1: Aratus1.1: Cicero and the virtues of translation1.2: Aratus' Phaenomena1.3: The Phaenomena in Hellenistic Greece1.4: Cicero's Aratea1.5: Conclusion2: Plato2.1: The features of Cicero's Plato2.2: Plato in Philo's Academy2.3: Plato in Antiochus' Academy2.4: Scepticism and syncretism in Cicero's Timaeus2.5: Conclusion3: Aristotle3.1: The features of Cicero's Aristotle3.2: Aristotle, Philo, and in utramque partem debate3.3: Aristotle in Cicero's rhetorical works3.4: Conclusion4: Demosthenes4.1: Demosthenes' Hellenistic reputation4.2: Demosthenes in Cicero's early career4.3: Demosthenes, tyranny, and Atticism in Cicero's late career4.3.1: Brutus4.3.2: De Optimo Genere Oratorum and Orator4.3.3: The Philippics5: Letters5.1: Cicero and the world of Greek letters5.1.1: Greek (and Roman) epistolary theory5.1.2: Greek letter collections5.2: Cicero's (planned) letter collection5.3: Conclusion6: Cicero6.1: Modelling reception in the philosophical dialogues6.2: Hellenistic philosophy and Roman poetry in the philosophical dialogues6.3: The Aratea in De Natura Deorum6.4: Cicero's poetry in De Divinatione6.5: Conclusion7: ConclusionEndmatterBibliographyIndex