History of Ancient Greek Scholarship : From the Beginnings to the End of the Byzantine Age

"This book aims to offer a unified historical treatment of all that is usually understood as "ancient scholarship" or "ancient philology" and is the first modern work to cover a period from the beginnings to the fall of Byzantium after John Edwin Sandys' work published between 1903-1908. The field "ancient scholarship" includes the exegesis of Greek authors, the editing of their texts, orderly collections of materials useful for exegetical purposes - such as lexeis, onomatologies, collections of antiquarian materials et similia -, the study of grammar, reflection on language, and everything that can be linked to this sphere, that is to say literature and the instruments for interpreting it. If it is hard today to imagine such a work being undertaken by a single scholar, it is worth underlining the benefits offered by a volume with multiple expert voices in a field so complex and multiform. The book is based on the four historiographical chapters of Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship (2015), which have been enlarged, updated and rethought"-- Provided by publisher Contents 5 Introduction 9 Chapter 1 The Origins and Growth of Scholarship in Pre-Hellenistic Greece 17 1 Social Premises and Conditions Leading to the Establishment of Scholarship 17 1.1 Reading and Writing in Archaic Greece 17 1.2 Writing, Literacy and the Development of New Media 21 1.3 Literacy as an Instrument in Learning 28 1.4 The Growth of Scholarly Environment 30 2 Social Institutions that Assisted in the Development of Scholarship 32 2.1 Education 32 2.2 Libraries and Archives 42 3 Philological Approaches in Pre-Alexandrian Greece 45 3.1 The Early Critical and Interpretative Approaches 45 3.2 The Beginnings of Homeric Textual Criticism and Editing 49 3.3 Early Text Exegesis and Literary Criticism 71 3.4 Fundamental Notions of Language Categories 101 3.5 Towards a Scholarly Methodology: the Development of Scholarly Self-Awareness 118 3.6 400 BC to Alexandria: an Overview 121 Chapter 2 Hellenistic Scholarship 140 1 Preliminaries 140 1.1 Court Poetry and Scholarship in Hellenistic Societies 140 1.2 Historiographic Pattern 146 1.3 Scholarship and Knowledge 148 2 Alexandrian Scholarship to 144 BC 150 2.1 Traces of Scholarship Outside Alexandria in the Early Hellenistic Age 150 2.2 Culture and Royal Patronage in Early Ptolemaic Egypt: the Museum 156 2.3 Making the ‘Universal’ Library 162 2.4 Philology for Books, Books for Philology 170 2.5 Librarians’ diadokhē and Learned Community 181 3 The Spread of Scholarship in the 2nd and 1st Centuries 225 3.1 Rise and Zenith of Pergamene Scholarship (2nd Century) 225 3.2 Pluralism and Exchange in Late Hellenistic Scholarship (144–31) 235 3.3 Alexandrian Scholars in an Augustan World 252 Chapter 3 Greek Scholarship in the Imperial Era and Late Antiquity 268 1 State of Research, Presuppositions and Focal Points of a Historical Survey 268 2 Philology and Grammar in the Imperial Era and Late Antiquity in Context 276 2.1 Criteria for the Periodization of the History of Philology and Grammar 276 2.2 The Institutional Character of Philology and Grammar 280 3 Persons, Works and Achievements 293 3.1 Judgments and Prejudices 293 3.2 Philological Studies 296 3.3 Linguistic Studies 334 3.4 Studies on Metrics 357 3.5 Lexicography 359 Chapter 4 Scholarship in the Byzantine Empire (529–1453) 381 1 From Justinian to Iconoclasm 381 1.1 Beginnings 381 1.2 Schools and Cultural Centers in the Mediterranean 385 1.3 Constantinople: Schools and Scholars 394 1.4 Iconoclasm 405 1.5 Transliteration 408 2 From the Byzantine Revival to the Age of Encyclopedism 409 2.1 General 409 2.2 Photius 414 2.3 Lexicography and Grammar 420 2.4 Manuscripts (9th Century) 422 2.5 Arethas 425 2.6 More Manuscripts (10th Century) 428 2.7 Schools 431 2.8 Collections 433 3 From Basil II to the Fourth Crusade 438 3.1 From Basil II to the 11th Century: the Context 438 3.2 Mauropous, Psellus, Italus 441 3.3 The Comnenian Age: General Features 448 3.4 The Comnenian Age: Schedography and Grammar 452 3.5 The Comnenian Age: Commenting Texts 457 3.6 John Tzetzes 460 3.7 Eustathius 468 3.8 The Comnenian Age: Manuscripts 475 3.9 Italy 477 4 From Nicaea to the Palaeologan Renaissance 480 4.1 Nicaea 480 4.2 Southern Italy between the 13th and the 14th Century 484 4.3 The Palaeologan Renaissance: Context and Early Personalities 485 4.4 Maximus Planudes 491 4.5 Constantinople after Planudes: Moschopulus, Grammar, Lexicography 498 4.6 Constantinople after Planudes: between Christian and Classical Culture 501 4.7 Thessalonica: Thomas Magistros and Demetrius Triclinius 504 4.8 Theodore Metochites and Nicephorus Gregoras 511 5 The Last Century of Byzantium 516 5.1 The Late 14th Century: between Hesychasm and Classicism 516 5.2 From Chrysoloras to the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1397–1439) 522 5.3 The Last Years before the Fall 531 Bibliography 539 General Index 659 Passages Index 682 This is the first book, after J. E. Sandys, to cover the multiform fied of “ancient scholarship” from the beginnings to the fall of Byzantium. It is worth underlining the benefits of a work with multiple expert voices in a field so complex. The book is based on the four historiographical chapters of Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship (2015), which have been updated and rethought.