Intellectual and Empire in Greco-Roman Antiquity

by Philip R Bosman (Editor)

This volume deals with the interaction between public intellectuals of the late Hellenistic and Roman era, and the powerful individuals with whom they came into contact. How did they negotiate power and its abuses? How did they manage to retain a critical distance from the people they depended upon for their liveli-hood, and even their very existence? These figures include a broad range of prose and poetry authors, dramatists, historians and biographers, philosophers, rhetoricians, religious and other figures of public status. The contributors to the volume consider how such individuals positioned themselves within existing power matrices, and what the approaches and mechanisms were by means of which they negotiated such matrices, whether in the form of opposition, compromise or advocacy. Apart from cutting-edge scholarship on the figures from antiquity investigated, the volume aims to address issues of pertinence in the current political climate, with its manipulation of popular media, and with the increasing interference in the affairs of institutions of higher learning funded from public coffers.

242 pages, Hardcover

Published July 20, 2018

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Books like these are always a gamble, a collection of papers and articles united by a rather broad theme, written by several authors, every chapter is a new question mark on whether you will like it and gain something memorable from it. Unfortunately most of these chapters failed to achieve either.

As the title says this book collects several intellectuals and their relations with the power structures of their time most however zoom in to the micro individual level, analyzing a few or even one philosopher and his relationship with the authorities, higher echelons of society or even an emperor himself. That in itself is not problematic but one is expected to have more then basic knowledge of the intellectuals discussed and even tough I would consider myself to be over average knowledgeable of the Roman and late Hellenistic period it still was a struggle to contextualize these authors let alone get a good grasps on these new takes on what they wrote when I never read it or other theories myself. But then again I was never really that much of a fan of literary analysis as the core of a article or study.

So why did I pick this copy to read? As I said every chapter is something different and the first one I found interesting and accessible while still informative, the point it was making was heard and more importantly I could evaluate its worth. The first chapter by Francesca Schironi asked the question whether the Library of Alexandria was a mere collection or if it was a research institute and how did other Hellenistic kingdoms value this kind of intellectual policy, to what extent was this a form of "enlightenment" or a mere prestige political competition. This was exactly what I was looking for, the intellectual and his role in a given political entity, discussing his wider societal position before one can zoom in to particular individuals. To be fair it is not that other chapters failed to do so completely but with everything it is about the emphasis placed and being limited to 15 or so pages does not help.

So yes I have to limit my score to two but this should be seen as a scoring by a person who did not find what he was looking for in stead of a true harsh criticism of what I have read.