Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire

Presenting the sophists' role as civic celebrities side-by-side with their roles as transmitters of Hellenic culture, Anderson produces a valuable and lucid account of the Second Sophistic.

This volume -- the first project of its kind in the field -- collates c. 1200 biographical entries on Greek sophists and rhetors who flourished in the Roman Empire from the first to the seventh century AD. Ancient Greek sophists, the masters of speech and teachers of rhetoric, constituted one of the most important and interesting intellectual circles of the ancient world. The prosopography provides comprehensive information on sophists and their activities, using abundant and varied source material such as literary texts (including those of the rhetors themselves) and papyrological, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence. Each entry provides data (where available) on sources in which the person is attested, biographical details, career, and rhetorical activity. Prosopography of Greek Rhetors and Sophists of the Roman Empire constitutes a basis and a tool for subsequent in-depth studies on the Greek Sophistic movement, as well as a useful reference book for students and all those interested in the culture of the ancient world.

This book examines the role of social networks in the formation of identity among sophists, philosophers and Christians in the early Roman Empire. Membership in each category was established and evaluated socially as well as discursively. From clashes over admission to classrooms and communion to construction of the group's history, integration into the social fabric of the community served as both an index of identity and a medium through which contests over status and authority were conducted. The juxtaposition of patterns of belonging in Second Sophistic and early Christian circles reveals a shared repertoire of technologies of self-definition, authorization and institutionalization and shows how each group manipulated and adapted those strategies to its own needs. This approach provides a more rounded view of the Second Sophistic and places the early Christian formation of 'orthodoxy' in a fresh context.

Explores the various ways in which modern scholarship has approached the oratorical culture of the Early Imperial period.

This book explores the cultural conflicts of the second-century CE Roman Empire, through the perspective of Greek writings. The specially commissioned essays investigate the intellectual and social tensions in the era which gave rise to Christianity.

In the World of the Second Sophistic, education, paideia, was a crucial factor in the discourse of power. Knowledge in the fields of medicine, history, philosophy, and poetry joined with rhetorical brilliance and a presentable manner became the outward appearance of the elite of the Eastern Roman Empire. This outward appearance guaranteed a high social status as well as political and economical power for the individual and major advantages for their hometowns in interpolis competition. Since paideia was related particularly to Classical Greek antiquity, it was, at the same time, fundamental to the new self-confidence of the Greek East. This book presents, for the first time, studies from a broad range of disciplines on various fields of life and on different media, in which this ideology became manifest. These contributions show that the Sophists and their texts were only the most prominent exponents of a system of thoughts and values structuring the life of the elite in general.