Writing Biography in Greece and Rome: Narrative Technique and Fictionalization

Ancient biography is now a well-established and popular field of study among classicists as well as many scholars of literature and history more generally. In particular biographies offer important insights into the dynamics underlying ancient performance of the self and social behaviour, issues currently of crucial importance in classical studies. They also raise complex issues of narrativity and fictionalization. This volume examines a range of ancient texts which are or purport to be biographical and explores how formal narrative categories such as time, space and character are constructed and how they address (highlight, question, thematize, underscore or problematize) the borderline between historicity and fictionality. In doing so, it makes a major contribution not only to the study of ancient biographical writing but also to broader narratological approaches to ancient texts.

Table of Contents:
Preface; Part I. Ancient Biography Revisited: 1. Ancient biography and formalities of fiction Koen De Temmerman; 2. Civic and subversive biography in antiquity David Konstan and Robyn Walsh; Part II. Individual Biographies: 3. Life of Aesop: fictional biography as popular literature? Grammatiki Karla; 4. Parallel narratives and possible worlds in Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes Eran Almagor; 5. Lucian's Life of Demonax: the Socratic paradigm, individuality and personality Mark Beck; 6. The Apologia as a mise en abyme in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana Patrick Robiano; 7. The emended monk: the Greek translation of Jerome's Vita Malchi Christa Gray; 8. The divided cloak as redemptio militiae: Biblical stylization and hagiographical intertextuality in Sulpicius Severus' Vita Martini Danny Praet; Part III. Collective Biographies: 9. Mirroring virtues in Plutarch's Lives of Agis, Cleomenes and Gracchi Maarten De Pourcq and Geert Roskam; 10. Dying philosophers in ancient biography: Zeno the Stoic and Epicurus Eleni Kechagia; 11. Never say die! Assassinating emperors in Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars Rhiannon Ash; 12. Poetry and fiction in Suetonius' Illustrious Men Tristan Power; 13. Qui vitas aliorum scribere orditur: narratological implications of fictional authors in the Historia Augusta Diederik Burgersdijk; Part IV. Biographical Modes of Discourse: 14. Chion of Heraclea: letters and the life of a tyrannicide John Paul Christy; 15. Brief encounter: timing and biographical representation in the Ps.-Hippocratic letters Ranja Knöbl; 16. A shaggy thigh story: Kalasiris on the life of Homer (Heliodorus 3.14) Luke V. Pitcher.

About the Author :
Koen De Temmerman is Research Professor of Ancient Literatures and European Literary History in the Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University. He is the recipient of prestigious awards, such as the Triennial Prize for Humanities of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (2008) and an ERC Starting Grant (2013). He has published extensively on ancient narrative literature, and is the author of Crafting Characters: Heroes and Heroines in the Ancient Greek Novel (2014) and the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography (forthcoming). Kristoffel Demoen is Professor of Ancient and Byzantine Greek in the Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University. He is the author of three books and over seventy scholarly articles, and (co-)editor of seven books. His main research interests are related to the transmission, transformation and adaptation of the ancient literary and cultural tradition, especially from the post-classical to the Byzantine period. He is co-editor of L'Antiquité Classique and Byzantion, and president of the Belgian Society for Byzantine Studies.