IMC 2024: Sessions

Session 1504: Getting It Wrong in Late Antiquity, I: Rhetoric vs. Reality

Thursday 4 July 2024, 09:00-10:30

Sponsor:	Postgraduate & Early-Career Late Antiquity Network
Organiser:	Ella Kirsh, Department of Classics, Brown University
Moderator/Chair:	Ella Kirsh, Department of Classics, Brown University
Paper 1504-a	Gregory the Tragedian: Failure and Success in Gregory of Nazianzus' Self-Fashioning (Language: English) Mathijs Clement, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Hagiography and Language and Literature - Greek
Paper 1504-b	Conceptualising the Wrong Education: Paideia and Ascetic Education in Greek Church Historians under Theodosius II, 408-50 (Language: English) Daniil Kotov, Kazan Federal University, Jizzakh Branch, Uzbekistan Index terms: Education, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Greek and Learning (The Classical Inheritance)
Paper 1504-c	Iudas factus est proditor: Epistolary Misconduct and the Origenist Controversy (Language: English) Devin Lawson, Department of Greek, Latin & Classical Studies, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Religious Life and Theology
Paper 1504-d	'They dressed me up like this!': Reckoning with Julian's Claims of Being Mislabelled a Philosopher (Language: English) Jeremy Swist, Department of French, Italian & Classical Studies, Miami University, Ohio Index terms: Language and Literature - Greek, Philosophy, Political Thought and Rhetoric
Abstract	This panel looks at fourth-century narratives of failure and wrongdoing, and gestures to how structural gaps between rhetoric and reality were encoded into late antique society and thought. Panellists approach this theme by considering mishaps and mislabeling in the self-fashioning programmes of bishops (Clement, looking at Gregory of Nazianzus’ self-portrayal as a loser) and emperors (Swist, investigating emperor Julian’s surprising rejection of the label ‘philosopher-emperor’), and by looking at the breakdown of communication across time (Kotov, looking at late antique Christian receptions of the concept of paideia) and across space (Lawson, examining how epistolary misconduct within the Origenist controversy dissolved Jerome and Rufinus’ relationship).