Book contents
- The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium
- The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Ethics across the Late-antique and Byzantine Period
- Chapter 1 Sexual Difference and the Difference It Makes
- Chapter 2 Ethics and the Hierarchy of Virtues from Plotinus to Iamblichus
- Chapter 3 Neoplatonic Contemplative Ethics
- Chapter 4 Ethics, Virtue and Theurgy
- Chapter 5 Imitation and Self-Examination
- Chapter 6 The Reception of Greek Ethics in Christian Monastic Writings
- Chapter 7 Understanding Self-Determination and Moral Selfhood in the Sources of Late-antique and Byzantine Christian Thought
- Chapter 8 ‘Singing with David and Contemplating Agesilaus’
- Part II Prominent Ethical Views of the Time
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index of Names and Subjects
Chapter 8 - ‘Singing with David and Contemplating Agesilaus’
Ethical Training in Byzantium
from Part I - Ethics across the Late-antique and Byzantine Period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 June 2021
- The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium
- The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Ethics across the Late-antique and Byzantine Period
- Chapter 1 Sexual Difference and the Difference It Makes
- Chapter 2 Ethics and the Hierarchy of Virtues from Plotinus to Iamblichus
- Chapter 3 Neoplatonic Contemplative Ethics
- Chapter 4 Ethics, Virtue and Theurgy
- Chapter 5 Imitation and Self-Examination
- Chapter 6 The Reception of Greek Ethics in Christian Monastic Writings
- Chapter 7 Understanding Self-Determination and Moral Selfhood in the Sources of Late-antique and Byzantine Christian Thought
- Chapter 8 ‘Singing with David and Contemplating Agesilaus’
- Part II Prominent Ethical Views of the Time
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index of Names and Subjects
Summary
This chapter focuses on ethical training in Byzantium by examining texts from the tenth to twelfth centuries, including Theophanes Continuatus and works by Peter of Argos, Theodore of Nicaea, John Tzetzes and Constantine Manasses, while briefly discussing connections to works on ethical practice by Plutarch and Athanasius of Alexandria. Studies of hymnography, elite rhetoric and gender have displayed the central role of imitating past models in the cultivation of ethical habits and construction of the self in Byzantium. People in the Byzantine period both refined and displayed their character by patterning their emotions and responses on ancient and biblical models. Numerous historical texts presented classical figures as ethical examples to a medieval audience primed to shun or imitate those behaviours. The elite rhetorical habit of likening subjects to great characters of classical antiquity is explored in this chapter as but one aspect of a larger set of cultural practices that aimed at learning ethical behaviour through the imitation of valorised models.
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- The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium , pp. 140 - 158Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021