Part 1 Antiquity: ancient books the library of the museum and Hellenistic scholarship other Hellenistic work books and scholarship in the Roman Republic developments under the early empire archaism in the second century the compendium and the commentary from roll to codex paganism and Christianity in the 4th century the subscriptions. Part 2 The Greek east: scholarship and literature under the Roman Empire the Christian church and classical studies the early Byzantine period Greek texts in the Orient the Renaissance of the 9th century the later Byzantine period. Part 3 The Latin west: the dark ages Ireland and England the Anglo-Saxon missionaries insular influence on classical texts the Carolingian revival the development of Caroline miniscule Carolingian libraries and the Latin classics Carolingian scholarship the Carolingian twilight the resurgence of Monte Cassino the 12th-century Renaissance the scholastic age Greek in the west in the middle ages. Part 4 The renaissance: humanism the first humanists the consolidation of humanism - Petrarch and his generation Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) the great age of discovery - Poggio (1380-1459) Latin scholarship in the 15th century - Valla and Politian Greek studies - diplomats, refugees and book collectors Greek scholarship in the 15th century - Bessarion and Politian the first printed Greek texts - Aldus Manutius and Marcus Musurus Erasmus (1469-1536). Part 5 Some aspects of scholarship since the Renaissance: the Counter-Reformation - the high Renaissance in Italy the beginnings of humanism and scholarship in France the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries Richard Bentley (1662-1742) - classical and theological studies the origins of paleography discoveries of texts since the Renaissance - palimpsests, papyri, other manuscript discoveries, epigraphic texts epilogue. Part 6 Textual criticism: the development of the theory of textual criticism the stemmatic theory of recension limitations of the stemmatic method age and merit in individual manuscripts indirect tradition some other basic principles corruptions fluid forms of transmission - technical and popular literature conventions in the "apparatus criticus" conclusion.

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The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters

Scribes and scholars: A guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature

For ideas of kingship, the period c. 750 to c. 1150 was no longer one of beginnings but of consolidation. It saw the formation of a single culture in an expanded Latin Christendom. It began with the incorporation of significant Spanish and insular contributions into the mainstream of western political thought, and it ended with new contributions from as far afield as Bohemia and Denmark. The history of the period was dominated first by the Frankish Empire, then by states that succeeded to or were profoundly influenced by it. Its creation strengthened in the short run the traditional elements in barbarian kingship, successful leadership of the people ( gens ) in wars of conquest and plunder bringing Frankish domination of other gentes. Hence the hegemonial idea of empire, of the emperor ruling many peoples and realms, arose directly from the political experience of the eighth-century West. In the longer run power devolved to kingdoms that proved durable, without a gentile identity or an economic base in plunder and tribute. This brought new formulations of the realm as a territorial and sociological entity, the aristocracy sharing power and responsibility with the king. The idea of empire detached from its gentile anchorage acquired Roman-Christian universality. In the eighth century the Frankish kings Pippin and Charlemagne successfully mobilised two elites, the higher clergy of the Frankish Church and the Frankish aristocracy. Power-sharing was built into the fabric of the Carolingian Empire though it was masked at first by a community of interest that evoked a chorus of praise for rulers evidently possessed of divine approval.

Kingship and empire

For half a millennium the printed book has been the primary means of communicating ideas in the Western world. The history of Roman literature effectively begins with Ennius. Plautus in his comedies had reproduced his Greek models in metres in which the influence of native Latin verse is apparent. Roman educational institutions, predictably, follow Greek models. The casual and fluid nature of publication in the ancient world is described just as characteristic of what happened to books after publication. For educational and rhetorical purposes epitomes and abstracts were increasingly in vogue. Roman scholars took over the traditions of Alexandrian literary scholarship along with the rest of Hellenistic culture. From Virgil onwards Latin poetry was profoundly influenced by rhetoric, and a style of literary criticism that fails to take account of this fact will miss much that is essential to the poetry. Literary Latin was an artificial dialect, quite distinct from the spoken idiom.

Books and readers in the Roman world

This interdisciplinary study explores how classical ideals of generosity influenced the writing and practice of gift giving in medieval Europe. In assuming that medieval gift giving was shaped by oral 'folk models', historians have traditionally followed in the footsteps of social anthropologists and sociologists such as Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu. This first in-depth investigation into the influence of the classical ideals of generosity and gift giving in medieval Europe reveals to the contrary how historians have underestimated the impact of classical literature and philosophy on medieval culture and ritual. Focusing on the idea of the gift expounded in the classical texts read most widely in the Middle Ages, including Seneca the Younger's De beneficiis and Cicero's De officiis, Lars Kjaer investigates how these ideas were received, adapted and utilised by medieval writers across a range of genres, and how they influenced the practice of generosity.

The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition: Ideals and the Performance of Generosity in Medieval England, 1100–1300

Beginning with a sustained analysis of Seneca's theory of monarchy in the treatise De clementia, in this text Peter Stacey traces the formative impact of ancient Roman political philosophy upon medieval and Renaissance thinking about princely government on the Italian peninsula from the time of Frederick II to the early modern period. Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince offers a systematic reconstruction of the pre-humanist and humanist history of the genre of political reflection known as the mirror-for-princes tradition - a tradition which, as Stacey shows, is indebted to Seneca's speculum above all other classical accounts of the virtuous prince - and culminates with a comprehensive and controversial reading of the greatest work of renaissance political theory, Machiavelli's The Prince. Peter Stacey brings to light a story which has been lost from view in recent accounts of the Renaissance debt to classical antiquity, providing a radically revisionist account of the history of the Renaissance prince.

The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters

Citations

Scribes and scholars: A guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature

Kingship and empire

Books and readers in the Roman world

The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition: Ideals and the Performance of Generosity in Medieval England, 1100–1300

Roman monarchy and the Renaissance prince

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