Beyond the Second Sophistic. Tim Whitmarsh
(Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2011), 189–204.
Chapter 10, “The Cretan Lyre Paradox: Mesomedes, Hadrian, and the Poetics of Patronage,” revised from the chapter of the same name in Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, edited by B.E. Borg (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 377–402.
Chapter 12, “Quickening the Classics: The Politics of Prose in Roman Greece,” revised from the chapter of the same name in Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greco-Roman Antiquity, edited by J.I. Porter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 353–74.
Chapter 13, “Politics and Identity in Ezekiel’s Exagoge,” revised from “Pharaonic Alexandria: Ezekiel’s Exagoge and Political Allegory in Hellenistic Judaism,” in The Space of the City in Graeco-Roman Egypt: Image and Reality, edited by E. Subias, P. Azara, J. Carruesco, I. Fiz, and R. Cuesta (Tarragona: Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica, 2011): 41–48.
ABBREVIATIONS
| AC | L’antiquité classique. |
| AJPh | American Journal of Philology. |
| ANRW | Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Berlin, 1972–. |
| ASNP | Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. |
| BICS | Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. |
| CA | J. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina: reliquiae minores poetarum Graecorum aetatis Ptolemaicae 323–146 A.C., epicorum, elegiacorum, lyricorum, ethicorum. Oxford, 1925. |
| CCJ | Cambridge Classical Journal. |
| CJ | Classical Journal. |
| ClAnt | Classical Antiquity. |
| CPh | Classical Philology. |
| CW | Classical World. |
| CQ | Classical Quarterly. |
| DK | H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 6th ed. Berlin, 1951–52. |
| EA | Epigraphica Anatolica. |
| EG | G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta. Berlin, 1878. |
| EGF | M. Davis, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Göttingen, 1988. |
| EMC | Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views. |
| FGE | D.L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams: Epigrams before A.D. 50 from the Greek Anthology and Other Sources, not Included in Hellenistic Epigrams or “The Garland of Philip.” Revised and prepared for publication by R.D. Dawe and J. Diggle. Cambridge, 1981. |
| FGrH | F. Jacoby et al., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin and Leiden, 1876–1959; continued Leiden, 1998–. |
| FHJA | C. Halladay, Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors. 4 volumes. Chico, 1983–2003. |
| GDRK | E. Heitsch, Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit. 2 vols. Göttingen, 1961–64. |
| GGM | C.F.W. Müller, Geographi graeci minores. 2 vols. Paris, 1855–82. |
| GRBS | Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies. |
| HSCPh | Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. |
| HThR | Harvard Theological Review. |
| IG | Inscriptiones Graecae. |
| IGRR | R. Cagnat, Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes. Rome, 1964. |
| IJCT | International Journal of the Classical Tradition. |
| JHS | Journal of Hellenic Studies. |
| JRS | Journal of Roman Studies. |
| JSJ | Journal for the Study of Judaism. |
| JTS | Journal of Theological Studies. |
| LCM | Liverpool Classical Monthly. |
| LGPN | P.M. Fraser et al., A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names. Oxford, 1987–. |
| LIMC | H.C. Ackermann, J.-R. Gisler, and L. Kahil, Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae. Zurich, 1981–. |
| LSJ | H.G. Liddell, R. Scott, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. with supplement. Oxford, 1996. |
| MD | Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici. |
| OCD3 | S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd rev. ed. Oxford, 2005. |
| OLD2 | P.G.W. Glare, The Oxford Latin Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, 2012. |
| PCG | R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae comici Graeci. Berlin, 1983–. |
| PCPhS | Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society. |
| P.Hamb. | Griechische Papyri der Hamburger Staats- und Universitäts-Bibliothek mit einigen Stüchen aus der Sammlung Hugo Ibscher. Hamburg, 1954. |
| P.Herc. | Herculaneum Papyri. |
| PLG | T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici Graeci. 4th ed. Leipzig, 1878–82. |
| PMG | D. Page, Poetae melici Graeci. Oxford, 1962. |
| P.Mich. | D.S. Crawford, Papyri Michaelidae: Being a Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri, Tablets and Ostraca in the Library of G.A. Michaïlidis of Cairo. Aberdeen, 1955. |
| P.Oxy. | The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. London, 1898–. |
| PSI | Papiri greci e latini: pubblicazioni della Società Italiana per la ricerca dei papiri greci e latini in Egitto. Florence, 1912–79. |
| QUCC | Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica. |
| RE | Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. 1st ed. Munich, 1903–78. |
| REA | Revue des Études Anciennes. |
| RFIC | Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica. |
| RhM | Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. |
| SEG | Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum. Leiden, 1923–1971; continued Amsterdam, 1979–. |
| SH | H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin, 1983. |
| SIFC | Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica. |
| SO | Symbolae Osloenses. |
| SVF | H. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta. Leipzig, 1923–24. |
| TAPhA | Transactions of the American Philological Association. |
| TEGP | D.W. Graham, The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics. 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K., 2010. |
| TGrF | B. Snell, S.L. Radt, and R. Kannicht, Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta. 5 vols. Göttingen, 1971–2004. |
| UPZ | U. Wilcken, Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit (ältere Funde). 2 vols. Berlin, 1927–57. |
| WJA | Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft. |
| WS | Wiener Studien: Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie und Patristik und lateinische Tradition. |
| YCS | Yale Classical Studies. |
| ZPE | Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. |
Introduction
Beyond the Second Sophistic and into the Postclassical
This book represents a series of experiments in alternative ways of thinking about ancient Greek literature, which I shall identify by the term (to which I lay no exclusive claim) postclassicism.1 With this neologism I mean, principally, to mark an aspiration to rethink classicist categories inherited from the nineteenth century. It is not intended to proclaim any sharp rupture with existing theories and practices within the discipline, for clearly there are many theoretically informed approaches (literary and cultural theory, feminism, reception, Marxism, postcolonialism, queer theory . . .) that share in that labor of reconstructing the humanities legacy, but it seems to me that finding a progressive label that is specific to classical literary studies should be a useful reminder that (despite what is sometimes claimed) battle lines are still drawn up fiercely around the study of ancient texts.
Postclassicism is not, however, merely a matter of updating political and ethical mores. Classics as a discipline was, for sure, more than most humanities subjects forged in the white heat of imperialist, nationalist, elitist, disciplinarian, androcentric imperatives, but collective self-congratulation on “our” liberal progressiveness is lazy and too easy. Rather, what I aim to do in this book is attack some of the conventional ways of categorizing literature, all of which are to some extent rooted in nineteenth-century, postromantic ideas of classical value. Classicists’ organization of literary history has tended to be dominated by an unspoken aesthetic that places certain kinds of texts in the center and hence privileges certain kinds of narratives of “what the Greeks thought.” It is at this kind of assumption, most of all, that this book takes aim. The literary production of the ancient Greeks (and others) is understood here not in terms of an intrinsic worth that is to be adulated—for value only ever indicates what the buyer is willing to pay—but as a plural cultural system. Despite the ever-increasing sophistication of our strategies for reading individual texts, classicists in general still seem to cling to unreconstructed narratives that privilege early Greece as a site of cultural, intellectual, and indeed religious purity. This creates a historical matrix