Compitum

Suzanne Adema, Tenses in Vergil's Aeneid: narrative style and structure, Leyde-Boston, 2019.

Éditeur : Brill
Collection : Amsterdam studies in classical philology
x, 306 pages
ISBN : 9789004383241
105 €

The narrative style of the Aeneid suggests immediacy and involves the reader, while at the same time both narrator and reader know what the outcomes of the story will be. In ‘Tenses in Vergil's Aeneid: Narrative Style and Structure', Suzanne Adema investigates the role of the Latin tenses in this presentational style. Adema presents a framework to analyze and describe the use of tenses in Latin narrative texts from a linguistic and narratological point of view. The framework concerns the temporal relations between a narrator and the states of affairs in his story on the sentence level, discourse modes on the global text level and narrative progression on the level of narrative and descriptive sequences.

Jean Meyers et Michel Tarayre (éd.), Les Errances de frère Félix, pèlerin en Terre sainte, en Arabie et en Egypte. Tome VII, traité 7, Paris, 2019.

Éditeur : Cassiques Garnier
Collection : Collection des Textes littéraires du Moyen Âge, n° 50
520 pages
ISBN : 978-2-406-07880-7
59 €

Le traité 7, premier de la deuxième partie de l'Evagatorium, raconte le pèlerinage au mont Sinaï. On y suit les pèlerins lors de la difficile traversée du désert d'Arabie jusqu'au monastère Sainte-Catherine. Frère Félix donne un témoignage où il contribue largement à la rencontre entre savoir et expérience.

Source : Classiques Garnier

Olivier Dufault, Early Greek Alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity, Berkeley, 2019.

Éditeur : California Classical Studies
168 pages
ISBN : 9781939926128
29.95USD

Early Greek alchemy, Patronage and Innovation in Late Antiquity provides an example of the innovative power of ancient scholarly patronage by looking at a key moment in the creation of the Greek alchemical tradition.
New evidence on scholarly patronage under the Roman empire can be garnered by analyzing the descriptions of learned magoi in several texts from the second to the fourth century CE. Since a common use of the term magos connoted flatterer-like figures (kolakes), it is likely that the figures of “learned sorcerers” found in texts such as Lucian's Philopseudes and the apocryphal Acts of Peter captured the notion that some client scholars exerted undue influence over patrons.

Sylvain Destephen, Bruno Dumézil et Hervé Inglebert (éd.), Le prince chrétien de Constantin aux royautés barbares (IVe-VIIIe siècle), Paris, 2018.

Éditeur : Association des Amis du Centre d'Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance
Collection : Travaux et mémoires 22/2
608 pages
ISBN : 978-2-916716-66-4
90 €

La conversion du monde antique au christianisme ne modifia pas la position centrale du Prince au sein de son État. Loin de remettre en cause les fondements traditionnels du pouvoir, la nouvelle religion offrit des arguments supplémentaires pour légitimer le souverain dans la mesure où il incarnait et appliquait les valeurs du christianisme dans sa vie personnelle comme dans son action publique.
Les élites chrétiennes mirent rapidement au service du pouvoir la rhétorique de la justification divine tant pour exalter le souverain que l'inviter à conformer ses actes à la parole du Christ. Dans la représentation du pouvoir par les contemporains lettrés et dans son autoreprésentation à travers les textes, les monuments et les images, le souverain assuma le modèle mis à sa disposition, quitte à en jouer pour servir les besoin de l'heure.

Rosario Moreno Soldevila, Alberto Marina Castillo et Juan Fernández Valverde, A Prosopography to Martial's Epigrams, Berlin, 2019.

Éditeur : De Gruyter
706 pages
ISBN : 978-3-11-062135-8
129 €

A Prosopography to Martial's Epigrams is the first dictionary of all the characters and personal names found in the work of Marcus Valerius Martialis, containing nearly 1,000 comprehensive entries. Each of them compiles and analyses all the relevant information regarding the characters themselves, as well as the literary implications of their presence in Martial's poems. Unlike other works of this kind, the book encompasses not only real people, whose positive existence is beyond doubt, but also fictional characters invented by the poet or inherited from the cultural and literary tradition. Its entries provide the passages of the epigrams where the respective characters appear; the general category to which they belong; the full name (in the case of historical characters); onomastic information, especially about frequency, meaning, and etymology; other literary or epigraphical sources; a prosopographical sketch; a discussion of relevant manuscript variants; and a bibliography. Much attention is paid to the literary portrayal of each character and the poetic usages of their names. This reference work is a much needed tool and is intended as a stimulus for further research.

Source : De Gruyter

Louise Cilliers, Roman North Africa. Environment, Society and Medical Contribution, Amsterdam, 2019.

Éditeur : Amsterdam University Press
256 pages
ISBN : 9789462989900
95 €

This book examines the environment and society of North Africa during the late Roman period (fourth and fifth centuries CE) through the writings of Helvius Vindicianus, Theodorus Priscianus, Caelius Aurelianus, and Cassius Felix.
These four medical writers, whose translation into Latin of precious Greek texts has been hailed as "the achievement of the millennium" by one modern scholar, provide a unique opportunity to understand North Africa, the most prosperous region of the Roman World during Late Antiquity. Although focusing on medical knowledge and hygiene, their writings provide fresh insights on the environment, economy, population, language, and health facilities of the region.
This study includes the first full discussion of the exceptional career of the physician Helvius Vindicianus, as well as a valuable reassessment of other writers whose works were read throughout the Middle Ages. It will therefore prove invaluable not only for scholars of Late Antiquity and North Africa, but also for those working on later periods.

Source : Amsterdam University Press