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This book series is designed to offer texts and editions, with commentary and comment, of important sources for the study of the New Testament and its world. Primary sources are envisioned as a mainstay of the series, in which documents that enlighten and support New Testament study are published in definitive, accessible and informative editions, often with supporting commentary. Collections of essays and monographs, that focus upon these types of important sources and advance the scholarly discussion, are also welcome.

The series has published an average of one volume per year over the last 5 years.
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This strand of Brill Research Perspectives addresses important themes connected with the reworking of material inherited from classical antiquity, primarily the Latin language and Latin writing conventions, but also the creative adaptation of classical traditions in other languages and media. Contributions by leading scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds will provide up-to-date overviews on the context, key texts, controversial questions, existing scholarship and avenues for further research concerning particular themes. These surveys are designed to give advanced students and scholars new to this particular area an idea of the sources, approaches and existing research, sketching scholarly history and facilitating further work.
Brill’s Companions to Classical Studies is a leading series providing graduate-level synthesis of debate and the state of scholarship on key authors and subjects from Antiquity. Each volume contains an up-to-date general bibliography. Volumes published have covered authors such as Ovid, Herodotus, Cicero, Callimachus, Thucydides, Sophocles and Seneca, and themes such as Ancient Macedon, Ancient Greek Scholarship, Hellenistic Epigram, and Hellenistic Astronomy. Forthcoming titles include Euripides, Cassius Dio, and Theocritus.

The most successful Companion volumes focus on authors, genres or themes on whom or on which there has been recent scholarly attention that has provoked new perspectives and new questions on which there is ample scope for debate. Ideally, Companions look backwards at a history of scholarship that might include the very emergence of a field, and forwards to future questions and lines of enquiry. Successful Companions regularly raise explicit questions about the boundaries of genres or themes, but it is hard to put together a coherent volume on a field that is as yet poorly defined.

The aim of a Companion is not to be exhaustive, but to give a lively sense of current debates, and to encourage participation in future debates. Editors should commission and curate articles that offer the target, graduate-level audience insight into the most pertinent questions that are and should be asked about the author, genre or theme on which the volume is focused. Editors should frame the volume with an introduction and sections that make these questions explicit, and they should make every effort to ensure that individual essays are participating in conversations that are shared across the volume. It is therefore important to insert cross-references where articles complement each other or where they disagree with one another.
The Language of Classical Literature is a peer-reviewed series of studies on Greek and Latin language and literature that are informed by modern literary or linguistic theory (e.g. discourse linguistics, narratology, intertextuality, metapoetics). The series is open to monographs, edited volumes, and conference proceedings (provided they have a clear thematic coherence). The Language of Classical Literature is a continuation of the renowned Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology. Volumes 1-31 can be found here.
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Abstract

Pherecydes of Syros’ work is difficult to understand because of its fragmentary nature. A previously unexplored perspective on his work is to analyze how it was understood and used in Ptolemaic Alexandria, particularly by Eratosthenes and Callimachus. Eratosthenes’ distinction between Pherecydes of Syros and Pherecydes of Athens (DL 1.119) has been used as a key piece of evidence that those two authors are, in fact, distinct. However, there has been little discussion of Eratosthenes’ interest in these authors outside of that statement. Callimachus’ interest in Pherecydes has also been ignored by both scholars of Pherecydes and scholars of Alexandrian poetry (except for brief references). Through this examination, I argue that Pherecydes of Syros was an important figure in discussions about the development of prose in Ptolemaic Alexandria.

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In: Mnemosyne

Abstract

The article argues that the Odyssean hapax ἐπιλλίζω (Od. 18.11) does not mean ‘to wink’, as traditionally assumed, but ‘to harass, to provoke’, and is the verbal base of the adverb ἐπι(λ)λίγδην ‘grazing’, said of a projectile. It belongs to the PIE root *sleig̑- ‘to rub’ (rather than ‘to slide’). The Odyssey only features the metaphoric use of the verb, but the proper meaning is preserved in Nicander’s fr. 100 ἐπιλλίζοντας ὀϊστούς. Apollonius of Rhodes uses ἐπιλλίζω in agreement with the Odyssean meaning ‘to provoke’. Later, two reinterpretations occurred. The traditional understanding of ‘to wink’ results from a synchronic etymology relating ἐπιλλίζω to ἰλλός ‘squint-eyed’: this accounts for Nicander’s use of ἐπιλλίζω (Ther. 163) and is therefore older than the 2nd c. BCE. Later on, Nicander’s ἐπιλλίζοντας (fr. 100) was erroneously related to λίγξε ‘(the bow) groaned’ by Greek grammarians, and wrongly translated ‘whizzing’.

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In: Mnemosyne
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Abstract

A little over a century ago, it was discovered that Athanasius’ Life of Antony echoes Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras in two different passages, and scholars have since debated the implications of this clear intertextual linkage. Building on these initial findings, the present article adduces a previously undiscovered third echo of the Porphyrian Life and argues that Athanasius deploys this intertext in order simultaneously to subvert Porphyry’s idealized portraiture of Pythagoras and to elevate his own hagiographic protagonist Antony.

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In: Mnemosyne
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Abstract

This paper discusses the convention of off-stage cries deployed in Greek tragedy and satyr play chiefly to represent violent events. Unlike other studies dedicated to this topic, it is primarily focused on the cries themselves and to a lesser extent on their context, both dramatic and theatrical. Using the familiar distinction between word and action, it begins with a simple question: how exactly does an off-stage cry represent a violent event taking place within? Examined first as textual phenomena the voices from within are found to acquire their meaning through the discourse of the characters, and not as cries per se. The performative approach, however, also brings their auditory dimension into perspective. Although the evidence is mostly circumstantial, its cumulative weight does suggest that the vocal qualities of the off-stage cries could endow them with meanings unaccounted for in the textual perspective.

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In: Mnemosyne
Classical Studies E-Books Onlineis the electronic version of the book publication program of Brill in the field of Classical Studies.

Coverage:
Ancient Philosophy, Ancient History, Ancient Religion, Greek and Roman Literature, Epigraphy & Papyrology, Archeology

This e-book collection is part of Brill's Humanities and Social Sciences E-Book collection.

The list of titles per collection can be found here.