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The
Limits of Ancient Biography
edited by Brian McGing and Judith Mossman
The genre of biography in the ancient world is
interestingly diverse and permeable and deserves intensive study,
bearing as it does on ideas of characterization and the individual.
This volume considers both the form and the content of biography across
the ancient world, and is particularly interested in the frontiers
with other related genres, such as history.
The papers range from the Old Testament to the Arab world, from the
New Testament to the Lives of Saints, from the classic Greek and Roman
biographers to less well known practitioners of the art. The editors BRIAN MCGING is Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity
College, Dublin, and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is co-director
of the Centre for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, a research
project studying the interchange between east and west in the ancient
world, and funded under the Irish Government's Programme for Research
in Third Level Institutes. His main research interests are Hellenistic
Asia Minor and Greco-Roman Egypt. He is currently working on a book
on Polybius.
JUDITH MOSSMAN is Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham.
She was previously Senior Lecturer and Fellow of Trinity College,
Dublin, and an associate of the Centre for Mediterranean and Near
Eastern Studies. She has published a number of articles on Plutarch
and has also edited a volume of essays entitled Plutarch and his Intellectual
World (Classical Press of Wales 1997). She also writes books and articles
on aspects of Greek Tragedy, especially Euripides. She is married
with one son.
Contents
Preface
Introduction - Brian McGing and Judith Mossman
EARLY LIVES
1. Biography in the ancient world: the story of the rise of David
- Andrew D.H. Mayes
2. The biographies of poets: the case of Solon - Elizabeth Irwin
HOLY LIVES?
3. Reading the Gospels as biography - Richard A. Burridge
4 Gospel and genre: some reservations - Mark Edwards
5. Mark's Gospel and ancient biography - Sean Freyne
6. The Acts of the Apostles as biography - Justin Taylor
7. Cynic influence upon first-century Judaism and early Christianity?
- John Moles
8. Philo's adaptation of the Bible in his Life of Moses - Brian
McGing
9. Portrait of the Sophist as a young man - Ewen Bowie
10. Holy and not so holy: on the interpretation of late antique biography
- John Dillon
SELF-PRESENTATION
11. Justice for Justus: a re-examination of Justus of Tiberias' role
in Josephus' Autobiography - Zuleika Rodgers
12. Sacred writing, sacred reading: the function of Aelius Aristides'
self-presentation as author in the Sacred Tales - Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis
13. Dreams of glory: Lucian as autobiographer - Noreen Humble and
Keith Sidwell
14. The Cynic and Christian lives of Lucian's Peregrinus - Jason
König
LIVES ON THE EDGE
15. Breaking the bounds: writing about Julius Caesar - Christopher
Pelling
16. Travel writing, history, and biography - Judith Mossman
17. 'This in-between book': language, politics and genre in the Agricola
- Tim Whitmarsh
WRITING LIVES
18. Biography in letters; biography and letters - Michael Trapp
19. Lords of the Flies: literacy and tyranny in imperial biography
- Alexei V. Zadorojnyi
BEYOND THE LIMITS
20. Beyond the limits of Greek biography: Galen from Alexandria to
the Arabs - Simon Swain
Index