A critical edition, translation and analysis of four texts illustrating the relation of kings and courtiers in the fourth-century Roman world.

The two texts translated in this volume of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series both compare the happiness of the practical life, which is subject to the hazards of fortune, with the happiness of the life of philosophical contemplation, which is subject to fewer needs. The first is Michael of Ephesus' 12th-century commentary on Book 10 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, written (alongside his commentaries on Books 5 and 9) to fill gaps in the Neoplatonists' commentaries from the 6th century. He recognizes that lives of practicality and philosophy may be combined, and gives his own account of the superiority of the contemplative. The second is Themistius' text On Virtue, written in the 4th century AD. He was an important teacher and commentator on Aristotle, an orator and leading civil servant in Constantinople. His philosophical oration is here argued to be written in support of the Emperor Julian's insistence against the misuse of free speech by a Cynic Heraclius, who had satirised him. Julian had previously criticised Themistius but here he combines his political and philosophical roles in seeking to mend relations with his former pupil.

Late Antiquity was an era of remarkable change as beliefs were shaped and reshaped by the competing philosophies of traditional Greco-Roman religion, Middle and Neoplatonist philosophy, and the theology of the early Church. Current narratives of both peaceful competition and violent struggle between Christianity and paganism are reductive. The research presented in this Variorum volume, originally published between 2013 and 2018 in the fields of history, divinity, and philosophy, demonstrates the complexity of the age and provides a more complete picture of major actors including the emperor Julian, Porphyry of Tyre, and Celsus. From the second to the fourth centuries, these were some of the major players in attempting to define the terrain in the conflict between their philosophies and the Christian religion. While the timeframe remains consistently within the late second to the mid-fourth centuries A.D., the sources range between inscriptions, literature, and historical accounts. The particular focus is the emperor Julian (Flavius Claudius Julianus, d. 363), a figure of perennial interest, as not only the last pagan emperor, but the last anti-Christian polemicist of real significance in antiquity. This volume offers a new perspective on Julian, bringing together research from ancient history, Neoplatonist philosophy, and patristic theology, and will be useful to students and scholars alike.

Imagining Emperors in the Later Roman Empire offers new analysis of the textual depictions of a series of emperors in the fourth century within overlapping historical, religious, and literary contexts. Drawing on the recent Representational Turn in the study of imperial power, these essays examine how literary authors working in various genres, both Latin and Greek, and of differing religious affiliations construct and manipulate the depiction of a series of emperors from the late third to the late fourth centuries CE. In a move away from traditional source criticism, this volume opens up new methodological approaches to chart intellectual and literary history during a critical century for the ancient Mediterranean world.

Much like our world today, Late Antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries CE) is often seen as a period rife with religious violence, not least because the literary sources are full of stories of Christians attacking temples, statues and 'pagans'. However, using insights from Religious Studies, recent studies have demonstrated that the Late Antique sources disguise a much more intricate reality. The present volume builds on this recent cutting-edge scholarship on religious violence in Late Antiquity in order to come to more nuanced judgments about the nature of the violence. At the same time, the focus on Late Antiquity has taken away from the fact that the phenomenon was no less prevalent in the earlier Graeco-Roman world. This book is therefore the first to bring together scholars with expertise ranging from classical Athens to Late Antiquity to examine the phenomenon in all its complexity and diversity throughout Antiquity.