Nigeria and the classics最新文献

{"title":"Plato’s Philebus","authors":"Sylvain Delcomminette, Dee L. Clayman","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0326","url":null,"abstract":"The Philebus is almost unanimously considered as one of Plato’s last dialogues, probably written around the same time as the Timaeus. Unlike other late dialogues, however, it takes the more conventional form of a conversation between Socrates and two interlocutors: Philebus and Protarchus. Philebus in fact refuses to discuss and remains silent for most of the dialogue, leaving to Protarchus the task of defending hedonism against the attacks of intellectualism championed by Socrates. The Philebus is a particularly rich and difficult work, which has often been viewed as messy. Although it has received the subtitle “On pleasure” since Antiquity, it contains, besides a lengthy examination of pleasure that notably argues for the possibility of false pleasures, a reflection on the relations between unity and plurality, an exposition of dialectic presented as a “god-given” and “heavenly” method, a fourfold classification of “all there is,” a cosmological argument purported to show that the world is governed by intelligence, and a hierarchical classification of the different kinds of knowledge. All these elements are integrated in a quest for “the good,” which at the beginning of the dialogue is identified to the best human life, but at the end seems to gain greater generality and concern not only human beings but also the whole or the universe. Are all these themes supposed to connect somehow, and if they are, in what manner? This question was already debated by the Neoplatonist commentators and was taken over by modern scholarship since the 19th century. Another question that has provoked scholars is the relation between the “metaphysics” exposed in the dialogue and Plato’s “unwritten doctrines” referred to by Aristotle. However, the greatest part of scholarship on the Philebus is currently devoted to scrutinize a theme or a portion of the text itself. After a relative neglect, this dialogue has indeed become the focus of much scholarly work during the last decades. The present bibliography had consequently to be highly selective and favors the most useful starting-points for further explorations of the wealthy literature devoted to this fascinating text.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90827265","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":"Eratosthenes of Cyrene","authors":"P. Finglass","doi":"10.1007/springerreference_58424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/springerreference_58424","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90691938","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":"Optimates/Populares","authors":"C. Rosillo-López","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0323","url":null,"abstract":"Populares and optimates are two political denominations, especially used in ancient Roman politics during the 1st century bce during the Late Roman Republic (although the sources apply them sometimes to the 2nd century bce). The basis of such differentiation is Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 bce), Pro Sestio 96, which defined populares and optimates as two distinct political categories. Popularis (adjective, singular of the plural populares in Latin) is an ambiguous term: it could connote “pleasing to the people” or “in the interest of the people”; the term to define the opposite of the senatorial majority, a combination of a certain political strategy and a certain type of political eloquence (eloquentia popularis) or, finally, a certain political tradition. Many politicians termed populares were tribunes of the plebs and some of them died or were murdered in violent confrontations with the Senate. The term optimates, or boni (a similar term, not exactly a synonym), rarely occur in the sources. People ascribed to this group in modern scholarship are those who believed in senatorial authority and/or those supporting the interests of the wealthy. However, identification can be also problematic. Some of the main sources are Cicero, Pro Sestio 96 (takes a negative view; main locus of the confrontation optimates-populares); Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 20; Bellum Iugurthinum 31 (Memmius’s speech) and 85 (Marius’s speech); Historiae 1.55 (Lepidus’s speech) and 3.48 (Macer’s speech). Sallust’s Epistulae ad Caesarem have been considered to be both fake and authentic (latest edition Antonio Duplá, Guillermo Fatás, and Francisco Pina Polo, Rem publicam restituere: una propuesta popularis para la crisis republicana: las Epistulae ad Caesarem de Salustio [Zaragoza, Spain: Departamento de ciencias de la antigüedad Universidad de Zaragoza, 1994] considers them authentic). Best introductions in English: Zvi Yavetz, Plebs and princeps (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1988); Nicola Mackie, Popularis ideology and popular politics at Rome in the first century B. C. Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 135 (1992): 49–73; Margaret Robb, Beyond « populares » and « optimates »: political language in the late Republic (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010); Antonio Duplá, “Consules populares,” in Consuls and res publica: holding high office in the Roman Republic, edited by Hans Beck, Antonio Duplá, Martin Jehne and Francisco Pina Polo (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 279–298; Claudia Tiersch, “Political Communication in the Late Roman Republic: Semantic Battles between Optimates and Populares?” in Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome. Speech, Audience and Decision, edited by H. van der Blom, C. Gray and C. Steel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 35–68.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78163168","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":"Pythagoreanism","authors":"L. Zhmud","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0319","url":null,"abstract":"Pythagoreanism is a modern term referring to a multifaceted phenomenon that covered different aspects of the ancient world such as political life, religion, philosophy, and science and existed in only partly overlapping forms. Its originator, Pythagoras of Samos, moved c. 530 bce to Italian Croton, where his followers, the Pythagoreans, organized a political society, whose participants were at the same time encouraged to undertake various intellectual pursuits. Pythagoras’s best attested doctrine is transmigration of the soul, whereas philosophical theories and scientific discoveries ascribed to him are highly disputed. Often he is regarded as a purely religious thinker, though not a single religious figure is known of among his followers. All known ancient Pythagoreans belong to five overlapping categories: politicians, athletes, doctors, natural philosophers, and mathematical scientists. After Pythagoras’s death the Pythagorean societies politically dominated in Croton, Metapontum, Tarentum, and other cities of Southern Italy until the anti-Pythagorean uprising (c. 450), when many Pythagoreans were killed or forced to flee to mainland Greece. The last center of Pythagoreanism in Italy remained in Tarentum, led in 367–361 by Archytas, a successful general and brilliant mathematician. The Pythagorean school created theoretical arithmetic and mathematical harmonics and greatly contributed to natural philosophy, geometry, and astronomy. Its disappearance after 350 bce marked the end of ancient Pythagoreanism. A new form of Pythagoreanism without the Pythagoreans were the pseudo-Pythagorean writings ascribed to Pythagoras and his fictitious family members. The first wave of Pseudo-Pythagorica (late 4th to late 2nd centuries bce) was neither numerous nor popular but since the early 1st century bce it was superseded by the second, more successful wave that was part of the emerging Neopythagoreanism. These treatises written under the names of historical and fictional Pythagoreans and containing Stoic, Platonic, and Aristotelian doctrines aimed to present Pythagoras and his followers as the precursors of Plato and Aristotle. The first Neopythagoreans writing under their own names appeared in the mid-1st century ce and doctrinally belonged to Middle Platonism. The most important representatives of late antique Pythagoreanism were the Neoplatonists Porphyry and especially Iamblichus, who secured its existence until the end of Antiquity.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81205228","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":"Classical Architecture in Europe and North America since 1700","authors":"E. Macaulay-Lewis","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0318","url":null,"abstract":"Since the Western Roman Empire collapsed, classical, or Greco-Roman, architecture has served as a model to articulate the cultural, artistic, political, and ideological goals of later civilizations, empires, nations, and individuals. The Renaissance marked the first major, widespread re-engagement with classical antiquity in art, literature, and architecture. Debates over classical antiquity and its relation to the modern world continued ever since. One such important debate was that of the quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns, which resulted when Charles Perrault published his Parallèles des anciens et des modernes in 1688. This dispute focused on whether the modern age could surpass antiquity, especially in literature. The Greco-Roman controversy (1750s and 1760s) was another example of Europeans engaging with the classical past; this debate focused on whether Greek or Roman art was of greater historical value; an argument has continued unabated to this day. Figures like Johann Joachim Winckelmann argued (in publications such as Winckelmann 1764, cited under Early Archaeological Publications on Greece and Classical Ruins in the Roman East, on Greek art) for the supremacy of Greek forms, while others like Giovanni Battista Piranesi (whose 1748–1778 views of Rome are reproduced in Ficacci 2011, cited under Early Archaeological Publications on Italy) advocated for Rome’s preeminence. Such debates demonstrate how classical antiquity was an essential part of the intellectual and artistic milieu of 18th-century Europe. This bibliography focuses on the appropriation of classical architecture in the creation of built forms from 1700 to the present in Europe and North America, which is typically called neoclassical or neo-classical, both of which are acceptable. Scholars often define the neoclassical period as lasting from c. 1750 to 1830, when European art and architecture predominantly appropriated classical forms and ideas. The influence of classical architecture continued in popularity throughout the 19th century and early 20th century in the United States. The early 19th century saw the flourishing of the Greek Revival, where Greek forms dominated artistic and architectural production, both in Europe and the United States. The ascendance of Queen Victoria in 1837 marked a shift toward a preference for the Gothic and Medieval forms. Neoclassical forms saw a resurgence in the second half of the 19th century, as Roman architectural forms became increasingly popular as an expression of empire. The term “Neo-classical” was coined as early as January 1872 by Robert Kerr, who used the term positively. It later took on certain negative overtones, when it was used as a derogatory epithet by an unknown writer in the Times of London in 1892. Neoclassical architecture has fared no better with the rise of modernism in the early 20th century onward and since then it has been seen as old-fashioned and derivative. Neoclassical architecture was not a mindless i","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91063624","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":"Plato’s Crito","authors":"B. Plato, G. P. Rose","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0368","url":null,"abstract":"The Crito belongs to Plato’s early dialogues. It presents a discussion between Socrates and a long-term associate of Socrates, Crito, that takes place while Socrates is in prison awaiting his execution. Crito tries to convince Socrates to escape from prison. Socrates refuses, arguing that doing so would be unjust. The dialogue may be divided into two parts. The first part (43a1-50a5) contains Crito’s arguments in favor of Socrates’ escape and Socrates’ initial rebuttal of those arguments, based on principles that were agreed in previous discussions between Socrates and Crito. The second part (50a6-54e2) contains a new set of arguments against escape that are presented in the form of an imaginary speech of the personified laws of Athens (usually referred to as “the speech of the Laws”). The bulk of scholarly literature on the Crito focuses broadly on three topics. The first concerns the dialectic of the Crito. The second concerns the consistency between the Crito and the Apology. The main issue is that the speech of the Laws appears to make strong authoritarian claims which are not straightforwardly compatible with either Socrates’ arguments in the first part of the dialogue or the Apology. The third concerns the proper interpretation of central elements of the speech of the Laws and their relevance to contemporary debates about political obligation, the authority of law, and civil disobedience. Those elements include the option that the Laws offer to the citizens to either persuade or obey them and the arguments in favor of the citizens’ subordination to the Laws based on gratitude and the citizens’ agreement. Other topics that have received significant scholarly attention include Socrates’ rejection of retaliation in the first part of the Crito and the place of the Crito in Socrates’ political philosophy. Recently there is also growing scholarly interest in the relevance of Socrates’ general views on filial obligations to the speech of the Laws in the Crito.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"99 3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83327379","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":"Lactantius","authors":"S. Freund","doi":"10.1163/2589-7993_eeco_sim_00001875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2589-7993_eeco_sim_00001875","url":null,"abstract":"Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250–c. 325 ce) was a Christian Latin author during the Diocletianic persecution and the times of Constantine the Great. Lactantius was born in Africa, studied with the rhetor Arnobius in Sicca Veneria, and became a teacher of rhetoric himself. In about 290, Emperor Diocletian offered him a chair at the court at Nicomedia, one of the new imperial residences of the Tetrarchy. There, in 303 the author faced the beginning of the Diocletianic persecution. The injustice he believed was being done to the Christians is of utmost importance for Lactantius. In order to become the champion of the oppressed, he resolved to defend and explain the Christian faith. His first two writings conceal their Christian character: The elegy on the Phoenix (De ave Phoenice) tries to illustrate the idea of resurrection by retelling the myth of the fabulous bird which dies and comes to life again; with it Lactantius establishes a Christian Latin poetry in the classical manner. His treatise On the Workmanship of God (De opificio dei) gives a detailed account of human physiology, which suggests that it was created through the working of God’s providence. In his magnum opus, the seven books entitled Divine Institutes (Divinae institutiones), consisting of more than six hundred modern pages, Lactantius gives an apologetic overall sketch of Christian teaching for pagan readers. The Divine Institutes were finished before 311, as the whole work suggests that persecution was still in progress while it was being written. Soon after the end of persecution, i.e., in 313/314, Lactantius composed his brief work On the Deaths of the Persecutors (De mortibus persecutorum), the first Latin treatise on ecclesiastical history. When Constantine appointed Lactantius to be tutor to his son Crispus, Lactantius came to the imperial court at Trier. In the following years, Lactantius wrote On the Anger of God (De ira dei), which argues that God does indeed show wrath, and also a short version of his Divine Institutes (Epitome divinarum institutionum). An unfinished second edition of the whole Divine Institutes, which contains dedications to the emperor Constantine and passages explaining the author’s dualistic worldview, presupposes the political conditions of 324 and thus dates the author’s death to 324/325. Lactantius was read in Late Antiquity, but was often supposed to be theologically outdated or problematic. In the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, however, the “Christian Cicero,” as he was called then, was greatly admired for the way he used classical style, rhetoric, poetry, education, and mythology to explain Christianity. The Divine Institutes are contained in the first book which was printed in Italy.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1924-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86988611","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 Domestic Architecture c. 800 bce to c. 100 bce","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0364","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses research on the housing of culturally-Greek settlements dating between c. 800 bce and c. 100 bce but with an emphasis on the central part of this period, and offers an overview of the various approaches. (Information on individual sites can be found by consulting the volumes listed under Period-Specific Overviews). While surviving textual sources shaped early research, relevant surviving texts are very limited in their number and scope. The most detailed source of information about Greek domestic architecture (and also about the organization of domestic activities) is the excavated remains of the houses themselves, which offer access to a wider range of aspects of the construction, in a greater variety of locations. Although the domestic buildings in ancient Greek settlements have historically received less attention from excavators than monumental civic and religious ones, sufficient evidence exists from which to generalize, and the available database continues to grow. This, coupled with the application of ever more sophisticated theoretical frameworks and archaeological field methods, has meant that the majority of current scholarship has come to focus on excavated houses. Over more than 150 years of research, the questions asked about domestic architecture have shifted, from the basic appearance of a house or attempts to ascertain how closely archaeological findings map onto the descriptions of ancient writers, toward analyses of a range of larger issues which include social relationships, the organization of the domestic economy, the cultural identities of households in various parts of the Mediterranean, and the way in which households changed between the earlier first millennium bce and Roman times. Throughout the period covered here, it is impossible to be certain whether the small sample of houses that have been excavated is representative of the range that were originally inhabited: it is likely that the homes of wealthier members of society are over-represented, since they were probably larger and more sturdily-built, hence surviving better in the archaeological record and more easily identified and excavated by archaeologists.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88571358","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":"Cicero’s Philosophical Works","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0361","url":null,"abstract":"Cicero (106–43 bce) was a Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher. As well as speeches, letters, and rhetorical treatises, Cicero wrote numerous philosophical works. These can be divided into two periods—those written before the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great (pre-49 bce), and those written during and after it (46 bce onward). Those written before are in dialogue form and the central topics are political: the ideal orator (De Oratore), the best citizen and the best state (De Re Publica), the best laws (De Legibus). Those following are predominately part of an ambitious project to bring philosophy to Rome in a systematic fashion; they are also mainly in dialogue form. Cicero composed an exhortation to philosophy (Hortensius), followed by books on epistemology (Academica, Lucullus) and works on broadly ethical concerns—the nature of good and evil (De Finibus); honor and glory (De Gloria); old age and friendship (De Senectute, De Amicitia); the soul, death, and suffering (Tusculans); consolation (Consolatio); the nature of the gods, divination, and providence (De Natura Deorum, De Divinatione, De Fato). Cicero’s final philosophical work is the De Officiis, presented as a letter to his son. Philosophy also figures prominently throughout Cicero’s letters, speeches, and rhetorical works. Indeed, it should be noted that Cicero felt his rhetorical works Orator and Brutus should be included in his philosophical corpus (Div. 2.4). There are two schools of thought on the novelty and value of Cicero’s philosophical works: (1) he is essentially just repackaging Greek material in Latin, offering renditions of existing ideas that are invaluable for saving much of the lost tradition of Hellenistic philosophy; (2) he is doing something more than that, developing distinctive philosophical contributions of his own. Most recent studies stress the innovative elements of Cicero’s philosophical thinking. Cicero’s own philosophical convictions are varied. Stoicism figures largely, as does his sympathy with Plato, Aristotle, and the Academic and Peripatetic traditions that follow them. He is strongly anti-Epicurean in both periods of his philosophical activity. Most scholars maintain that he is a pragmatic and flexible Academic skeptic, who weighs both sides of every argument and gives his assent to whatever he finds most compelling given the particular circumstances. Ostensibly a lack of political opportunity motivated Cicero to write philosophy. In the prefaces to his philosophical works he insists that it is not an escape from politics, but an intervention in it by other means.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90267462","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":"Theoderic the Great and Ostrogothic Italy","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0363","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0363","url":null,"abstract":"The Ostrogothic king Theoderic is the only non-Roman ruler of Late Antiquity to have acquired the epithet the Great, albeit only in modern times. Born around 453 in Pannonia (Hungary) as the son of a Gothic king named Thiudimir, he grew up in Constantinople, where he was held as a hostage for ten years. He returned to Pannonia in 471, in 474 succeeding his father, who had meanwhile led the “Pannonian Goths” into Macedonia. For several years Theoderic fought a Gothic king and rival claimant to imperial favor likewise named Theoderic whose power base was in Thrace (hence “Thracian Goths”). Only after the latter’s death in 481 did he succeed in uniting the two groups under his leadership. Although he was subsequently appointed magister militum and held the consulship in 484, relations with the emperor Zeno soon became hostile. In 488, Theoderic and Zeno made an agreement that Theoderic should take his people to Italy and eliminate Odovacer. After a devastating war, he slew Odovacer by his own hand in March 493, in breach of an oath sworn shortly before to share rule in Italy. Having secured sole rule in Italy, Theoderic turned his mobile and militarized followers into a standing army by allotting them ownership rights to landed estates (rather than shares in land tax, as some have argued). He defined his position as ruler over two peoples, Goths and Romans, to which he assigned complementary but separate roles (“integration by separation”). While Goths were warriors by definition, the civilian population was labeled Roman. Theoderic won over the senatorial elites by preserving their privileges, wealth, and social power and by giving them a share in his rule. He left the administrative structures of the Late Roman state largely unaltered and filled all positions of a civilian nature with people from the senatorial milieu. Although he belonged to a Christian denomination considered heretical by Catholics (“Arian”) he treated Catholic bishops with respect; they in turn asked him to act as an arbitrator when in 498 Symmachus and Laurentius were simultaneously elected to be bishop of Rome. From 508 to 511 he extended his rule over Provence and the Iberian peninsula. Relations with the senatorial elites and the Roman church became strained at the end of Theoderic’s life. He died in Ravenna on 30 August 526 without having nominated an heir to the throne. His kingdom fell within a generation after his death, but his memory lived on in Italy and in all Germanic-speaking lands where legend transformed him into Dietrich of Berne.","PeriodicalId":82164,"journal":{"name":"Nigeria and the classics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81346361","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}