Terms like “Classical Arabic,” “Classical Armenian,” “Classical Syriac,” and “Classical Persian,” though not entirely unproblematic, arouse minimal controversy and are widely used. These Near Eastern languages have their classical traditions of learning, all arising in the same region, all interacting with one another. Let us therefore envision a “Classical Near East” to foster modern scholarly exchange between specialists in pre-modern Near Eastern history and philology. This essay explores the prospects of a broader arena of ancient and medieval research for specialists in the premodern Near East that transcends the specializing delimitation of modern identities and religions

This envoi looks at the impossible necessity of literary history. It explores the term ‘literary’, marking how it both opens ancient writing to scrutiny and obscures significant sets of connections or ideas, and it questions how narratives of the history of literature are always unfinished, partial and ideologically laden. It discusses the place of literary history within the field of classics.

The introduction of the book provides the heuristic, analytical, and methodological keys for the interpretation of the concepts of the classic and the canon in historiography. It details the interdisciplinary approach that has made this study possible, blending literary criticism, the critical analysis of historical texts, the theory of history, the history of historiography, hermeneutic philosophy, sociology, and biblical studies. It exposes the difficulties presented by the analysis of historiographical categories such as the classic and the canon, which privilege stability over instability and permanence over change. Finally, it lists the main primary sources used and synthesizes the content of each of the five chapters of the book, each of them dedicated to the main concepts analyzed: durability, classic, canon, genre, and genealogy.

This section consists of four selections from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian that serve as an introduction to the classical understanding of rhetoric. What is rhetoric? Is it an art or a mode of knowledge? What is its value? What are its elements or parts?

Tracy’s theology has often been well received in African contexts for its hermeneutical openness, but difficult distances remain between Tracy’s post-modern framing of theology and post-colonial imperatives. Tinyiko Sam Maluleke criticises universalising gestures in historic Christian theology, repeated in recent ‘public theology’, that efface the kinds of differences in power that follow from colonial domination. Few who abide in entrenched traditions of subjugation, Afro-pessimism, and Western supremacism will be willing, ready, or able to re-evaluate sufficiently their readings of ‘the classics’– despite Tracy’s hopes for such hermeneutical events. And yet, Tracy’s subsequent work: (1) parses classics as ‘frag-events … that shatter, negate, and fragment all totality systems … including Christendom’; and (2) emphasises the dialectical and apophatic seriousness of his commitment to thinking analogically. Perhaps Tracy could be received outside the limiting frame of Western post-modernity, in support of decolonising exchanges between subjugated African theological experience, on the one hand, and historically privileged perceptions stained by colonialism, on the other.

David Tracy’s work invites readers generously into ever-widening conversations while Tracy himself pursues a precise theological ‘pointilism’ calling for lengthy rumination. Tracy’s concept of the ‘classic’– cultural, religious, theological– is endlessly fruitful for theology amid plural and ambiguous history. Tracy’s work may be viewed as an attempt at ‘making the future of theology now’, adumbrating theological possibility in a complicated and complicating present. Tracy’s major early works– Blessed Rage for Order (1975) and The Analogical Imagination (1981)– quite radically reconceived theology for greater present-day self-awareness, yet equally Tracy’s concept of analogical imagination calls to mind the ‘third way’ between cataphasis and apophasis that Dionysius the Areopagite pretended to have written as his Symbolic Theology. Tracy’s recent essay collections, Fragments and Filaments, reprise the theological experience of reading Tracy. As fragments and filaments (‘ever unreeling … ever tirelessly speeding’– Walt Whitman), these mutually resonating essays quicken into theological events for readers who learn to read well, with Tracy, to ‘make the future of theology now’.

Is it possible to hear marvels? Despite its deep roots in Aristotelian thought, the marvellous, or meraviglia in Italian, was a highly contested subject in early modern literary circles. It is most often associated with Giambattista Marino (1569–1625), the poet who infamously declared that the aim of poetry was, above all else, to arouse wonder. The primacy of wonderment as an artistic aim did not, however, begin with Marino. Not only does the idea permeate criticism throughout the second half of the sixteenth century, particularly in the writings of Francesco Patrizi (1529–97), but it was by no means restricted to the art of poetry alone. This chapter focuses on the origins of meraviglia in the work of classical writers, its centrality to literary debates in the sixteenth century, and its reimagining in the poetry, painting, and sculpture of the early seventeenth century.

This chapter focuses on ancient Sparta as a representative case for the general reception of classical antiquity in heavy metal music. The Spartans are the basis of songs and albums by dozens of bands across the globe: their last stand at Thermopylae is the most popular ancient battle in metal music, and their king Leonidas is one of the most popular ancient figures. Their appropriation by metal bands is a product of their rise in popularity in popular culture since the premiere of the 2006 film 300, and as in pop-culture, their appeal resonates with political and nationalistic agendas, especially of Greek bands. Sparta’s wide appeal harmonises with metal’s core ethos of hypermasculinity, the liberation of animal instincts and the disruption of systems of conformity and control. As with other topics from the classical world, heavy metal music takes the Spartans from both ancient sources and modern media and remakes them in the image of its own counterculture, that of the few standing defiant against the many.

Beginning in the late tenth century, a key feature of the new Song government was the use of the examination system to recruit and select officials. Central to this effort was the need for schools to educate men for governance. The content of education was classical, rooted in the texts of Confucian tradition believed to cultivate loyalty to the state and its ruler, and the ability to administer the laws and regulations of the empire. To that end, the Imperial University in the capital served as the primary educational institution, and a hierarchy of official agencies administered the examinations. By the mid-eleventh century, state schools were promoted to support the recruitment and training of government officials. The spread of print technology was both supported by, and contributed to, the expansion of the examinations. Competition among candidates created a commercial market for cheap printed editions and the availability of these increased access. To what degree did the examination system foster social mobility? How crucial was marriage to the right family, and how important was wealth as opposed to pedigree? How did the Jurchen Jin incorporate Han Chinese scholars and officials along with the examination system in their rule of the north?

The first chapter is divided into three sections. First, it presents a brief survey of previous scholarship concerning the history of late antique Arabia, the genesis of the Qurʾān and early Islam. It then discusses the sources available for historical research into pre-Islamic Arabia. Finally, it addresses the problem of identifying Arabia and the ‘Arabs’ from antiquity to the rise of Islam by analysing primary sources dated between the first millennium BCE and the sixth century CE. Were there any Arabs in pre-Islamic Arabia? Past scholarship has recursively translated the Semitic root ‘-r-b as ‘nomads’ and/or has used the term ‘Arabs’ to refer to the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula in pre-Islamic times. Because of recent archaeological discoveries, we now know that these interpretations must be revised. This chapter argues that the connection between the ‘Arabs’ is purely geographical. These people dwelled in Central and North Arabia but belonged to different tribes, each of which more than likely had different and distinguishable cultural heritages. Hence, it is preferable to use the geographic term ‘Arabians’ to the ethnic term ‘Arabs’ when discussing the inhabitants of pre-Islamic Arabia.

The Introduction frames the study as an argument about the use of biblical figures within the narrative of On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano). Bay maintains that a survey of the scriptural characters that appear in this text suggest that these remembered heroes were an important tool for how Pseudo-Hegesippus conceived of and communicated late Second Temple period Jewish history from a late antique Christian perspective. This chapter also recommends the Old Testament exempla of On the Destruction of Jerusalem as a good place to start literarily for approaching and understanding the background, aims, and inner logic of this text. Bay further explains how the biblical exempla of Pseudo-Hegesippus often appear within speeches placed into the mouths of historical characters in the narrative, a typical literary feature of ancient historiography. Finally, the Introduction helps situate this study within the history of scholarship – not only within the little work done on Pseudo-Hegesippus, but also in the context of various scholarly discussions in Classics, biblical studies, early Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations, and late antique literature.