In the Ancient World death came - on average - at a far earlier age than in today's West, and without the authoritative warnings given by modern medicine. Consolation for the trauma of loss had, accordingly, a more prominent role to play. This volume presents eight original studies on consolatory writings from ancient Greek, Roman, early Christian and Arabic societies. The authors include internationally recognised authorities in the field. They offer insight into the ancient experience of loss and the methods used to palliate it. They explore how far there was a consolatory ‘genre', involving letters, funerary oratory, epicedia, and philosophical prose. Focusing on responses to grief in numerous ancient authors, this volume finds elements of continuity and of individual variety in modes of consolation, and reveals instructive tensions between the commonplace and the personal. HAN BALTUSSEN is the author of Peripatetic Dialectic in the De Sensibus (of Theophrastus)(2000), and of Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius. The Methodology of a Commentator(2008). He is also co-editor of two volumes on Greek, Latin and Arabic philosophical commentaries (with P. Adamson and M.W.F. Stone, 2004). Han Baltussen is Hughes Professor of Classics at the University of Adelaide.
Author(s): Han Baltussen
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
Year: 2013
Language: English
Pages: 232
City: Swansea
CONTENTS
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION Han Baltussen
1 TOWARDS A GENRE OF CONSOLATION J. H. D. Scourfield
2 MOURNING AND CONSOLATION IN GREEK TRAGEDY: THE REJECTION OF COMFORT James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard
3 CICERO’S CONSOLATIO AD SE: CHARACTER, PURPOSE AND IMPACT OF A CURIOUS TREATISE* Han Baltussen
4 SENECA THE CONSOLER? A NEW READING OF HIS CONSOLATORY WRITINGS Marcus Wilson
5 THE CONSOLATIO AD APOLLONIUM: THERAPY FOR THE DEAD George Boys-Stones
6 THE GRIEVING SELF: REFLECTIONS ON LUCIAN’S ON MOURNING AND THE CONSOLATORY TRADITION David Konstan
7 CONTINUITY AND TRANSFORMATION OF ANCIENT CONSOLATION IN AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO Josef Lössl
8 ARABIC ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHICAL CONSOLATION Peter Adamson
INDEX
INDEX LOCORUM
