Writing Biography in Greece and Rome

Koen De Temmerman is Research Professor of Ancient Literatures and European Literary History in the Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University. He is the recipient of prestigious awards, such as the Triennial Prize for Humanities of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (2008) and an ERC Starting Grant (2013). He has published extensively on ancient narrative literature, and is the author of Crafting Characters: Heroes and Heroines in the Ancient Greek Novel (2014) and the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography (forthcoming). Kristoffel Demoen is Professor of Ancient and Byzantine Greek in the Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University. He is the author of three books and over seventy scholarly articles, and (co-)editor of seven books. His main research interests are related to the transmission, transformation and adaptation of the ancient literary and cultural tradition, especially from the post-classical to the Byzantine period. He is co-editor of L'Antiquité Classique and Byzantion, and president of the Belgian Society for Byzantine Studies.

• Preface; Part I. Ancient Biography Revisited: 1. Ancient biography and formalities of fiction Koen De Temmerman; 2. Civic and subversive biography in antiquity David Konstan and Robyn Walsh; Part II. Individual Biographies: 3. Life of Aesop: fictional biography as popular literature? Grammatiki Karla; 4. Parallel narratives and possible worlds in Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes Eran Almagor; 5. Lucian's Life of Demonax: the Socratic paradigm, individuality and personality Mark Beck; 6. The Apologia as a mise en abyme in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana Patrick Robiano; 7. The emended monk: the Greek translation of Jerome's Vita Malchi Christa Gray; 8. The divided cloak as redemptio militiae: Biblical stylization and hagiographical intertextuality in Sulpicius Severus' Vita Martini Danny Praet; Part III. Collective Biographies: 9. Mirroring virtues in Plutarch's Lives of Agis, Cleomenes and Gracchi Maarten De Pourcq and Geert Roskam; 10. Dying philosophers in ancient biography: Zeno the Stoic and Epicurus Eleni Kechagia; 11. Never say die! Assassinating emperors in Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars Rhiannon Ash; 12. Poetry and fiction in Suetonius' Illustrious Men Tristan Power; 13. Qui vitas aliorum scribere orditur: narratological implications of fictional authors in the Historia Augusta Diederik Burgersdijk; Part IV. Biographical Modes of Discourse: 14. Chion of Heraclea: letters and the life of a tyrannicide John Paul Christy; 15. Brief encounter: timing and biographical representation in the Ps.-Hippocratic letters Ranja Knöbl; 16. A shaggy thigh story: Kalasiris on the life of Homer (Heliodorus 3.14) Luke V. Pitcher.