Biography is one of the most widespread literary genres worldwide. Biographies and autobiographies of actors, politicians, Nobel Prize winners, and other famous figures have never been more prominent in book shops and publishers' catalogues. This Handbook offers a wide-ranging, multi-authored survey on biography in Antiquity from its earliest representatives to Late Antiquity. It aims to be a broad introduction and a reference tool on the one hand, and to move significantly beyond the state-of-the-art on the other. To this end, it addresses conceptual questions about this sprawling genre, offers both in-depth readings of key texts and diachronic studies, and deals with the reception of ancient biography across multiple eras up to the present day. In addition, it takes a wide approach to the concept of ancient biography by examining biographical depictions in different textual and visual media (epigraphy, sculpture, architecture) and by providing outlines of biographical developments in ancient and late antique cultures other than Graeco-Roman.
Highly accessible, this book aims at a broad audience ranging from specialists to newcomers in the field. Chapters provide English translations of ancient (and modern) terminology and citations. In addition, all individual chapters are concluded by a section containing suggestions for further reading on their specific topic.
Part I. Introduction 1: Koen De Temmerman: Writing (About) Ancient Lives: Scholarship, Definitions and Concepts 2: Sean A. Adams: What are Bioi/Vitae? Generic Self-Consciousness in Ancient Biography 3: Jeffrey Beneker: Individual and Collected Lives in Antiquity 4: Ioannis M. Konstantakos: Popular Biography 5: Joseph Geiger: Jewish Biography 6: Scott Fitzgerald Johnson: Christian Biography Part II. Reading Biographies 7: Christopher Pelling: Fifth-Century Preliminaries 8: Takis Poulakos: Isocrates' Evagoras: The Educational Ends of the 'First' Biography in Classical Greece 9: Noreen Humble: Xenophon of Athens 10: Tiziano Dorandi: Ex uno fonte multi rivuli? Unity and Multiplicity in Hellenistic Biography 11: Rex Stem: Nepos' Life of Atticus, Nicolaus' Life of Caesar and the Genre of Political Biography in the Age of Augustus 12: Christopher Whitton: Biography and Praise in Trajanic Rome: Tacitus' Agricola and Pliny's Panegyricus 13: Aristoula Georgiadou and Michele A. Lucchesi: Plutarch's Parallel Lives 14: Luc Van der Stockt: Plutarch: Lives of the Caesars (Galba, Otho) and Lives of Aratus and Artaxerxes 15: Dennis Pausch: Types of Life-Writing in Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars and Illustrious Men 16: Corinne Jouanno: The Alexander Romance 17: Graham Anderson: Lucian: Satirical and Idealising Lives (Peregrinus, Alexander, Demonax) 18: Adam Kemezis: The Biographer as Literary Artist: Form and Content in Philostratus' Apollonius 19: Stephen White: Diogenes Laertius and Philosophical Lives 20: James Corke-Webster: A Bishop's Biography: Eusebius of Caesarea and The Life of Constantine 21: Michael Stuart Williams: Augustine's Confessions as Autobiography 22: Jason König: Solitude and Biography in Jerome's Life of Hilarion Part III. Tracing Biographees 23: Suzanne Saïd: : Lives of Homer 24: Jacqueline Klooster: Ancient Biographies of Statesmen 25: Kendra Eshleman: Sophists 26: Graeme Miles: Philosophers and their Neoplatonic Lives: Problemsand Paradigms 27: Danny Praet: Holy Men: Lives of Miracle Workers, Apostles, and Saints 28: Koen De Temmerman and Danny Praet: Martyrs and Life-Writing in Late Antiquity 29: Mark Edwards: Monastic Lives Part IV. Cultures 30: Muriel Debié: Syriac Biography 31: Arietta Papaconstantinou: Coptic Life Stories 32: S. Peter Cowe: Armenian Biography in Late Antiquity 33: Faustina Doufikar-Aerts: Arabic Biography Part V. Media 34: Elizabeth Frood: Biographical Monuments: Displaying Selves and Lives in Ancient Egypt 35: Christof Schuler and Florian R. Forster: Engraved Lives: Biographical Material in Epigraphical Sources 36: Zahra Newby: Depicted Lives: The Role of The Visual Arts in Sophistic Self-Representation 37: Eric Varner: Triumphant Lives: Portraits, Statues and Triumphal Arches in Imperial Rome Part VI. Reception 38: Martin Hinterberger: Byzantine Biography 39: Lars Boje Mortensen: Roman Biography in the Medieval West: Did Classical Texts Facilitate Complex Literary Portraits in the Middle Ages? 40: Thomas Hendrickson: Ancient Biography and the Italian Renaissance: Old Models and New Developments 41: Enrica Zanin: Ancient Biography in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 42: Nora Goldschmidt: After-Lives: Biographical Receptions of Greek and Roman Poets in the Twentieth Century
Koen De Temmerman is a Professor of Classics and European Literature at Ghent University, Belgium. He is the author of Crafting Characters: Heroes and Heroines in the Ancient Greek Novel (OUP 2014) and the co-editor of Writing Biography in Greece and Rome: Narrative Technique and Fictionalization (Cambridge 2016, with K. Demoen) and Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden 2018, with E. van Emde Boas).
Reviews for The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography
This is a fine work and will be the standard point of reference on ancient 'biography' for decades. * John M. Rist, Augustiniana *
