Philosophical History : text with translation and notes

This new edition features the Greek text reconstructed from Photius' Epitome and Suidas' Lexicon with critical apparatus, English translation, commentary, and a full historical introduction; there are three appendices, a bibliography, indices, and tables of concordance between the present edition and Zintzen's (Vitae Isidori Reliquiae.) Written in the early sixth century by the head of the Platonic Academy in Athens, this work tells the story of the pagan community from the late fourth century AD. The critical landmarks of this 'anti-ecclesiastical' history are the destruction of the Serapeion in 391 and the persecution of the pagan intelligentsia of Alexandria in 488/9. (The Philisophical History) also establishes a sacred geography of paganism, comprising not merely intellectual centres like Athens, Alexandria and Aphrodisias but sacred sites in the countryside of the Greater Eastern Mediterranean as well. Offering a panorama of the spiritual life of late antiquity from a pagan perspective, the book puts on stage orthodox and heretical exegetes of Hellinism - rhetors, philosophers, iatrosophists, poets, politicians and holy men and women. The linguistic, historical and philisophical commentary on the reconstructed text allows the solution of several prospographical enigmas, while providing at the same time fresh comparative evidence for the study of the period's historiographical methodology. Greek text, critical apparatus, English translation, commentary, historical introduction, appendices, bibliography, indices, and tables of concordance between the present edition and Zinten's… (more)