{"title":"Armenian","authors":"S. Cowe","doi":"10.1515/9783111703602-025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111703602-025","url":null,"abstract":"Recognizing Hellenism and Greek as the hemispherically dominant culture and language of late antiquity, this chapter applies a dynamic model to chart the incremental Armenian reception of such trends over the fifth–eighth centuries. Acknowledging the contemporary affinity between elite literacy and Christianity’s regional integration, it analyses the resulting bifurcation in Armenian society and literature whereby Persianate aristocratic epic persists in an oral verse repertoire, while the novel written medium largely in prose propagated by a new literate class not only appropriates all the ecclesiastical genres but reconceptualizes the Armenian worldview within a Christian dispensation from a Greek cultural ethos. Adopting the trivium and quadrivium from Antioch and Alexandria, scholars replicate lay schools in Armenia and contribute to those disciplines by their commentaries. Elaborating an indigenous theological literature in continuity with Syria and Egypt, Armenians defend it in dialogue with Constantinople as the eastern Mediterranean littoral enters into the Umayyad Caliphate.","PeriodicalId":436040,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126495891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Punic","authors":"C. Baurain","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199699445.013.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199699445.013.26","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the Punic literature of the Roman imperial period. Since Punic works have not survived from either the Punic city or the Roman city, investigations on Punic literature can only be based on indirect testimonies—including Neo-Punic epigraphy, a temporary survival of the Neo-Punic language and writing, and fragments in translation attributed to Mago the agronomist—or on a cautious assessment of the cultural mood in the Punic city and the role the neighbouring Numidian population may have played in the conservation of the Punic literary output. From this viewpoint, the fate meted out in 146 bce, just after the fall of Carthage, by the Roman Senate to the Agronomic Treatise written by Mago in Punic and to the libri Punici most probably written in Greek is worth special attention because these works could have been one of the stimuli for the Graeco-Latin literature that flourished in Roman Africa right up to the late imperial period. As for other writings in Punic, kept in the archives of Carthage in Punic times, they probably served primarily to preserve traditional knowledge. The contents and the long and turbulent history of the handwritten archives assembled much later in Timbuktu and elsewhere in Mali provide a glimpse into the diversity of topics treated in the Punic language and writing by Carthaginians who lived before 146 bce. As for the Roman city, there is nothing tangible that would support the idea of a ‘renaissance’ in Punic literary output.","PeriodicalId":436040,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128542627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Thracian","authors":"Sorin Paliga","doi":"10.1163/2214-8647_bnp_e1212050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2214-8647_bnp_e1212050","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the Thracians. The Thracians did not have a written tradition. This detail may be considered either normal, as most ethnic groups of antiquity did not use writing as means of communication; or it may be considered somewhat unexpected, given the proximity of the Thracians to the Greeks and later the Romans of the Empire. Nevertheless, one can work out a quite comprehensive list of Thracian words. The Thracian forms are gleaned from various sources, often with approximate spellings and therefore with a high probability of being misread or misinterpreted. The chapter then looks at Thracian religion, one of the striking features of which is aniconism. Also striking is the peculiar representation of the supreme god, Zalmoxis, also spelled Zamolxis. There is no visual representation of this god or other Thracian gods of ‘classical’ Thracian society. Some Thracian groups adopted Roman ways of life and others resisted into the fourth century. This may have some bearing on the two dialects in modern Albanian—Romanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian being the main heirs of the Thracians—but this is a matter of debate.","PeriodicalId":436040,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124657743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Celtic","authors":"Joseph F. Eska","doi":"10.1093/nq/s9-ix.225.317e","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s9-ix.225.317e","url":null,"abstract":"Greek and Roman ethnographic writers provide information about the bardic poets of Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul, as well as the character of their poetry. Among the fragmentary epigraphic records of the Cisalpine Celtic and Transalpine Celtic languages, furthermore, a number have been claimed to display poetic features such as alliteration, rhyme, and non-standard word order. The poetic features of two inscriptions whose status as poems can hardly be doubted are discussed.","PeriodicalId":436040,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire","volume":"260 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133530053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Greek","authors":"H. Morales","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199699445.013.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199699445.013.35","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers an overview of Greek literature of the Roman Empire. The first section discusses ways in which Greek writing responds to Roman rule. This section ranges widely and takes snapshots from six writers—Artemidorus, Plutarch, Lucian, Basil of Caesarea, Galen, and Josephus—from which to show the complexities involved in thinking about Greek literature and its attendant critical issues, including how we might read ‘resistance’ and how Hellenisms relate to Christianities, and Jewish and other identities. The second section focuses more closely on Greek poetry and pantomime, and the third section on the romance novels and Greek prose fiction, including a brief look at a couple of texts that possibly show Egyptian influences.","PeriodicalId":436040,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133969653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}