1993, ISBN: 9781555408817

Atlanta, Scholars Press, XVIII, 230 p. Paperback. Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langjährigem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (… Meer...

Atlanta, Scholars Press, XVIII, 230 p. Paperback. Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langjährigem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Ein sehr gutes und sauberes Exemplar ohne Anstreichungen / an excellent and clean copy without markings. - Introduction: When Suetonius' Life of Caligula has not been accepted uncritically as a mine for historical fact, it has been dismissed as gossip. The monstrum especially has not been taken seriously. A commentary by J. A. Maurer stopped after chapter 21, the point at which Suetonius leaves his princeps behind. It is, to be sure, the most outrageous of Suetonius? biographies but not because its author approached his task differently. As Tacitus said, nothing had been written sine ira et studio, and toward the emperor Gaius it was all anger. Unlike the assessments of Germanicus or Nero, for instance, about whom threads of differing opinions can be traced, the tradition about Gaius is amazingly uniform. It had been in the interest of no one, especially Claudius, to rescue the reputation of the unsuccessful princeps who was best treated as an aberration, and so a vulgate developed quickly and soon took written form. For all Suetonius' rearranging, he did not make things up and is our most important witness of what the first century had to say about Gaius. I The Lives of the Caesars were influential throughout antiquity, and the large number of manuscripts that have survived indicate that they were read heavily in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance.1 Suetonius' portraits were apparently accepted as psychologically plausible until modem scholarship judged their author merely a diligent and mechanical collector. All are constructed in the same way; rubrics of related characteristics, good and bad, are gathered within a quasi- chronological outline (birth, accession, death). At the turn of the century Friedrich Leo advanced the idea that Suetonius, influenced perhaps by his own De viris illustribus, had transferred to political figures categories properly belonging to literary men, what he called "Alexandrian biography," ostensibly the creation of Alexandrian scholarship. He saw Suetonius making no effort to individualize his emperors or to create unified portraits, an assessment that persists despite Wolf Steidle's radical correction in Sueton und die antike Biographie (1951). Steidle proposed that Suetonius did create organically consistent and dramatically satisfying portraits, each held together by an overarching theme, cruelty in the case of Gaius. His work has stimulated numerous structural analyses of the Lives, and the result is an appreciation of the ancient biographer's organizational skills and control of his data.2 There can be no question that Suetonius accomplished what he set out to do. His organization is careful and sometimes even clever, his transitions neat, his parallels stylish; rhetorical flourishes abound, especially in the "middle lives" of which the Life of Caligula is one.3 Gaius' disrespect for his associates marches neatly from close relatives to more distant ones, then on to friends and finally to the Roman people as a whole; his favors to citizens descend systematically through the orders as does his cruel treatment of these same groups. A rubric of licentiousness is followed by extravagance (or parsimony) which is followed in turn by extraordinary money-raising measures, not only in the Life of Gaius but also in the Lives of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius and Nero. Whether or not an appreciation of these structures convinces that the whole of Suetonius' effort is more than the sum of its parts depends on the reader's satisfaction with the portraits themselves. The checkerboard emperors still float disembodied without benefit of context (excerpt from the introduction). ISBN 9781555408817Klassische Philologie 1993<

1993, ISBN: 9781555408817

Oxford University Press, U.S.A. Taschenbuch, 256 Seiten, Publiziert: 1993-05-01T00:00:01Z, Produktgruppe: Buch, 0.87 kg, Verkaufsrang: 4184958, Linguistik, Sozialwissenschaft, Kategorien,… Meer...

Oxford University Press, U.S.A. Taschenbuch, 256 Seiten, Publiziert: 1993-05-01T00:00:01Z, Produktgruppe: Buch, 0.87 kg, Verkaufsrang: 4184958, Linguistik, Sozialwissenschaft, Kategorien, Bücher, Antike, Bewegungen & Epochen, Literaturgeschichte & -kritik, Literatur & Fiktion, Geschichte, Gesellschaft & Individuum, Lexika, Hand- & Jahrbücher, Schule & Lernen, Verschiedenes, Ingenieurwissenschaft & Technik, Naturwissenschaften & Technik, Allgemein, Klassische Antike, Politik & Geschichte, Römisches Reich, Mittelalter, Fremdsprachige Bücher, Featured Categories, Englische Bücher, 7c9a6c79-19ea-4dea-90da-d7d47042d341_2301, 7c9a6c79-19ea-4dea-90da-d7d47042d341_0, Arborist Merchandising Root, acc906d0-2585-4921-a56f-3ff277850936_4901, acc906d0-2585-4921-a56f-3ff277850936_0, Special Features Stores, Taschenbücher, acc906d0-2585-4921-a56f-3ff277850936_4201, Oxford University Press, U.S.A., 1993<

1993, ISBN: 9781555408817

Softcover book. 256 pages. Published by Oxford University Press, Incorporated (1993) Media > Book