Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Dialoguing in Late Antiquity

 

 Hellenic Studies Series

Christians talked, debated, and wrote dialogues in late antiquity and on throughout Byzantium. Some were philosophical, others more literary, theological, or Platonic; Aristotle also came into the picture as time went on. Sometimes the written works claim to be records of actual public debates, and we know that many such debates did take place and continued to do so. Dialoguing in Late Antiquity takes up a challenge laid down by recent scholars who argue that a wall of silence came down in the fifth century AD, after which Christians did not “dialogue.”

Averil Cameron now returns to questions raised in her book Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (1991), drawing on the large repertoire of surviving Christian dialogue texts from late antiquity to make a forceful case for their centrality in Greek literature from the second century and the Second Sophistic onward. At the same time, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity points forward to the long and neglected history of dialogue in Byzantium. Throughout this study, Cameron engages with current literary approaches and is a powerful advocate for the greater integration of Christian texts by literary scholars and historians alike.

Available for purchase in print via Harvard University Press.


Cameron, Averil. 2014. Dialoguing in Late Antiquity. Hellenic Studies Series 65. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_CameronA.Dialoguing_in_Late_Antiquity.2014.


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Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Roles, and Social Functions

 
 Curated Books

New and revised edition, translated by Derek Collins and Janice Orion

In this groundbreaking work, Claude Calame argues that the songs sung by choruses of young girls in ancient Greek poetry are more than literary texts; rather, they functioned as initiatory rituals in Greek cult practices. Using semiotic and anthropologic theory, Calame reconstructs the religious and social institutions surrounding the songs, demonstrating their function in an aesthetic education that permitted the young girls to achieve the stature of womanhood and to be integrated into the adult civic community. This first English edition includes an updated bibliography. 

Originally published in 2001 by Rowman & Littlefield as a part of the series Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Copyright, Roman & Littlefield. Available for purchase in print via Roman & Littlefield.

Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Calame.Choruses_of_Young_Women_in_Ancient_Greece.2001.

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Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism

Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism
Edited by, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
  
 Curated Books

Late Antiquity has attracted a significant amount of attention in recent years. As a historical period it has thus far been defined by the transformation of Roman institutions, the emergence of distinct religious cultures (Jewish, Christian, Islamic), and the transmission of ancient knowledge to medieval and early modern Europe. Despite all this, the study of late antique literary culture is still in its infancy, especially for the Greek and other eastern texts examined in this volume. The contributions here presented make new inroads into a rich literature notable above all for its flexibility and unparalleled creativity in combining multiple languages and literary traditions. The authors and texts discussed include Philostratus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Nonnos of Panopolis, the important St Polyeuktos epigram, and numerous others. The volume makes use of a variety of interdisciplinary approaches in an attempt to provoke discussion on change (Dynamism), literary education (Didacticism), and reception studies (Classicism). The result is a study which highlights the erudition and literary sophistication characteristic of the period and brings questions of contextualization, linguistic association, and artistic imagination to bear on little-known or undervalued texts, without neglecting important evidence from material culture and social practices. With contributions by both established scholars and young innovators in the field of late antique studies, there is no work of comparable authority or scope currently available. This volume will stimulate further interest in a range of untapped texts from Late Antiquity.

Originally published in 2006 by Ashgate Press. Available for purchase via Routledge. 

Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Johnson_ed.Greek_Literature_in_Late_Antiquity.2006.

Copyright, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson. This online edition appears by permission of the editor.

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Open Access Journal: The Journal of Iran National Museum

[First posted in AWOL 29 July 2022, updated 25 February 2026] 
 
ISSN:  2783-222 
Journal of Iran National Museum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal of Iran National Museum publishes research and reports on all issues associated with museums and archaeology. It publishes two peer-reviewed issues per year in English and Persian.

The journal brings together curators, museum administrators, and archaeologists to present their research results about the museums and archaeology. Submissions must comply with the requirements set out in the instructions to contributors. The journal is open access and free to all individuals and institutions.

Volume & Issue: Volume 4, Issue 1 - Serial Number 6, February 2026 
Number of Articles: 18

 

See AWOL's full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Homeric Imagery and the Natural Environment

Homeric Imagery and the Natural Environment 
William Brockliss
 

Hellenic Studies Series

Responding to George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s analysis of metaphor, William Brockliss explores the Homeric poets’ use of concrete concepts drawn from the Greek natural environment to aid their audiences’ understanding of abstract concepts. In particular, he considers Homeric images that associate flowers with the concepts of deception, disorder, and death, and examines the ways in which the poets engage with natural phenomena such as the brief, diverse blooms of the Greek spring. Taken together, such Homeric images present a more pessimistic depiction of the human condition than we find in the vegetal imagery of other archaic Greek genres. While lyric poets drew on floral imagery to emphasize the beauty of the beloved, the Homeric poets used images of flowers to explore the potentially deceptive qualities of bodies adorned for seduction. Where the Hesiodic poets employed vegetal images to depict the stable structure of the cosmos, the Homeric poets set arboreal imagery of good order against floral images suggestive of challenges or changes to orderliness. And while the elegiac poets celebrated the brief “flower of youth,” the Homeric poets created floral images reminiscent of Hesiodic monsters, and thereby helped audiences to imagine the monstrous otherness of death. 

2019. Hellenic Studies Series 82. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_BrocklissW.Homeric_Imagery_and_the_Natural_Environment.2019.


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Homer’s Versicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Word-Making

Homer’s Versicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Word-Making
Anna Bonifazi
 

Hellenic Studies Series 

Anna Bonifazi suggests that the Homeric text we have now would have enabled ancient audiences to enjoy the evocative power of even minimal linguistic elements. The multiple functions served by these elements are associated not only with the variety of narrative contexts in which they occur but also with overarching poetic strategies.

The findings relate to two strategies in particular: unfolding the narrative by signaling the upcoming content with αύ- adverbs and particles, and letting the complexity of Odysseus’s identity resonate through the ambiguous use of third-person pronouns. The words’ evocative power springs from the deliberate merging of distinct meanings, which prompts multifaceted interpretations. The text allows the incorporation of different viewpoints, just as an iridescent fabric allows the simultaneous perception of different colors.

 

2012. Hellenic Studies Series 50. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Bonifazi.Homers_Versicolored_Fabric.2012.

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The Art of Reading: From Homer to Paul Celan

 

Hellenic Studies Series 

Trans. C. Porter and S. Tarrow with B. King. Edited by C. Koenig, L. Muellner, G. Nagy, and S. Pollock. Hellenic Studies Series 73. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_BollackJ.The_Art_of_Reading.2016.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License.

he Art of Reading is the first—long overdue—collection of essays by the French classical philologist and humanist Jean Bollack to be published in English. As the scope of the collection demonstrates, Bollack felt at home thinking in depth about two things that seem starkly different to most other thinkers. We see on the one hand the classics of Greek poetry and philosophy, including the relatively obscure but in his hands illuminating re-readings of Greek philosophy by the doxographers. Then, on the other hand, there is modern, including contemporary, poetry. The author of monumental commentaries on the Oedipus Tyrannos of Sophocles and on the fragments of Empedocles, Bollack cultivated in himself and in a generation of students (academics and others) a way to read both sets of texts closely that is as uncompromising and demanding of the interpreter as it is of the reader of the interpretation. The results, which this wide-ranging but compact collection brings to mind, are designed to get beyond flat and clichéd approaches to familiar works and to awaken the reader anew to the aesthetics, the complexity, and the intelligence that careful reconstruction of the text can bring to light. 

 
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