Wikipedia

Libanius

Libanius(Ancient Greek:Λιβάνιος,romanized:Libanios;c. 314–392 or 393) was a teacher ofrhetoricof theSophistschool in theEastern Roman Empire.[1]His prolific writings make him one of the best documented teachers of higher education in the ancient world and a critical source of history of theGreek Eastduring the 4th century AD.[2]During the rise ofChristianhegemonyin the laterRoman Empire,he remained unconverted and in religious matters was apagan Hellene.

Libanius
Libanius as imagined in an eighteenth-century woodcut
Bornc. 314 AD
Antioch,Coele-Syria
Died392 or 393 AD
Antioch,Coele-Syria
OccupationTeacher ofrhetoric
Notable workOration I,A Reply To Aristides On Behalf Of The Dancers,Lamentation

Life

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Origin

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Libanius was born inAntioch,Coele-Syrialocated near the modern-day city ofAntakya,Turkey.He was born into a deeply cultured and once-influential family that had experienced substantial recent decline. In 303 AD, eleven years before his birth, his family had participated in resisting an insurrection by a local army garrison. In the end, Roman Imperial authorities were equally concerned by local aristocrats arming themselves as they were by the rebellious troops. Libanius' family fell out of favor and his grandfather was executed. Libanius' father died when he was eleven, leaving his upbringing to his mother and maternal uncles, who were in the process of rebuilding his family's reputation.[1][3]

At fourteen years old he began his study ofrhetoric,for which he withdrew from public life and devoted himself to philosophy. Unfamiliar withLatin literature,he deplored its influence.

Career

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He studied inAthensunderDiophantus the Araband began his career inConstantinopleas a private tutor. He was exiled toNicomediain 346 (or earlier) for around five years[1]but returned to Constantinople and taught there until 354.[4]At this time, he held an official appointment as a sophist in the capital and received an imperial salary.[5] Before his exile, Libanius was a friend of the emperorJulian,with whom some correspondence survives, and in whose memory he wrote a series of orations; they were composed between 362 and 365. In winter 353/54 he returned to Antioch in expectation of succeeding his former teacher Zenobius, but the latter refused to yield his place and Libanius could only take the position upon Zenobius' illness and following death in autumn 354.[5]His pupils included both pagans and Christians.[4]There, he continued to received an imperial salary, which was temporarily cut between, which resulted in Libanius in writing many letters trying to obtain it back.[5][a]

Libanius used his arts of rhetoric to advance various private and political causes. He attacked the increasing imperial pressures on the traditional city-oriented culture that had been supported and dominated by the local upper classes. Nevertheless, though Libanius liked to assume the role of an honourable, independent citizen, he concerned himself often with winning for himself and his friends honours and privileges bestowed by the central imperial authority.[5]He is known to have protested against thepersecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire.In 386, he appealed without success to emperor Theodosius to prevent the destruction of a temple inEdessa,and pleaded for toleration and the preservation of the temples against the predation of Christian monks, who he claimed:

[...]hasten to attack the temples with sticks and stones and bars of iron, and in some cases, disdaining these, with hands and feet. Then utter desolation follows, with the stripping of roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues and the overthrow of altars, and the priests must either keep quiet or die. After demolishing one, they scurry to another, and to a third, and trophy is piled on trophy, in contravention of the law. Such outrages occur even in the cities, but they are most common in the countryside. Many are the foes who perpetrate the separate attacks, but after their countless crimes this scattered rabble congregates and they are in disgrace unless they have committed the foulest outrage...Temples, Sire, are the soul of the countryside: they mark the beginning of its settlement, and have been passed down through many generations to the men of today. In them the farming communities rest their hopes for husbands, wives, children, for their oxen and the soil they sow and plant. An estate that has suffered so has lost the inspiration of the peasantry together with their hopes, for they believe that their labour will be in vain once they are robbed of the gods who direct their labours to their due end. And if the land no longer enjoys the same care, neither can the yield match what it was before, and, if this be the case, the peasant is the poorer, and the revenue jeopardized.

— Libanius,Pro Templis[6]

The surviving works of Libanius, which include over 1,600 letters, 64 speeches and 96 progymnasmata (rhetorical exercises), are valuable as a historical source for the changing world of the later 4th century.[4]His oration "A Reply ToAristidesOn Behalf Of The Dancers "is one of the most important records of Romanconcert dance,particularly that immensely popular form known aspantomime.[7]His firstOration Iis an autobiographical narrative, first written in 374 and revised throughout his life, a scholar's account that ends as an old exile's private journal. Progymnasma 8 (see below for explanation of a "progymnasma" ) is an imaginary summation of the prosecution's case against a physician charged with poisoning some of his patients.[8]

Although Libanius was not a Christian his students included such notableChristiansasJohn Chrysostom[1]andTheodore of Mopsuestia.[9]Despite his friendship with the pagan restorationist EmperorJulianhe was made an honorarypraetorian prefectby the Christian EmperorTheodosius I.

Works

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  • 64orationsin the three fields of oratory: judicial, deliberative and epideictic, both orations as if delivered in public and orations meant to be privately read (aloud) in the study. The two volumes of selections in theLoeb Classical Librarydevote one volume to Libanius' orations that bear on the emperor Julian, the other on Theodosius; the most famous is his "Lamentation" about the desecration of the temples (Περὶ τῶν Ἱερῶν);
  • 51declamationes,a traditional public-speaking format of Rhetoric in Antiquity, taking set topics with historical andmythologicalthemes (translations into English by e.g. D.A. Russell, "Libanius: Imaginary Speeches"; M. Johansson, "Libanius' Declamations 9 and 10";
  • 96progymnasmataor compositional exercises for students of rhetoric, used in his courses of instruction and widely admired as models of good style;
  • 57hypothesesor introductions toDemosthenes' orations (writtenc. 352), in which he sets them in historical context for the novice reader, without polemics;
  • 1545 letters have been preserved, more letters than those of Cicero. Some 400 additional letters in Latin were later accepted, purporting to be translations, but a dispassionate examination of the texts themselves shows them to be misattributed or forgeries, by the ItalianhumanistFrancesco Zambeccari in the 15th century. Among his correspondents there wasCensorius Datianus.
  • Libanius (1903).Epistulae.Opera. Translated byRichard Foerster.

English editions

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  • Scott Bradbury,Selected Letters of Libanius.Liverpool, University Press, 2004.ISBN0-85323-509-0
  • Raffaella Cribiore,The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. (Includes translation of c. 200 letters dealing with the school and its students.Reviewed in Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews.)
  • Margaret E. Molloy:Libanius and the Dancers,Olms-Weidmann, Hildesheim 1996ISBN3-487-10220-X
  • A.F. Norman,Libanius: Selected Works,2 volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Loeb Classical Library, 1969–1977.
  • A.F. Norman,Libanius: Autobiography and Selected Letters,2 volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Loeb Classical Library, 1993.Reviewed in Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews.)
  • Lieve Van Hoof,Libanius: a critical introduction(Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Notes

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  1. ^Though some modern accounts insinuate that the salary was cut by the Christian praefectHelpidiusbecause Libanius was a pagan, relations between the two were not uniformly hostile and there is no evidence that the hostility was inspired by religious differences.[5]

References

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  1. ^abcdChisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911)."Libanius".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 534.
  2. ^Bradbury, Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures Scott; Libanius; Bradbury, Scott A. (2004).Selected Letters of Libanius: From the Age of Constantius and Julian.Liverpool University Press. p. 2.ISBN978-0-85323-509-5.
  3. ^Bradbury, Associate Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures Scott; Libanius; Bradbury, Scott A. (2004).Selected Letters of Libanius: From the Age of Constantius and Julian.Liverpool University Press. pp.2–3.ISBN978-0-85323-509-5.
  4. ^abcSpeake, Graham, ed. (1994).Dictionary of Ancient History.London: Penguin Books. p. 370.ISBN0-14-051260-8.
  5. ^abcdeKaster, Robert A. (1983)."The Salaries of Libanius"(PDF).Chiron.13:52, 55,58–59.Retrieved14 October2024.
  6. ^Pro Templis (Oration XXX.8-10)
  7. ^Alessandra Zanobi,Ancient Pantomime and its Reception,Article retrieved April 2016[1]
  8. ^Ratzan, R.M. and Ferngren, G.B. (April 1993). "A Greek progymnasma on the physician-poisoner".Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.48(2): 157–70.
  9. ^Cameron, A.(1998) "Education and literary culture" in Cameron, A. andGarnsey, P.(eds.)The Cambridge ancient history: Vol. XIII The late empire, A.D. 337-425.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,pp. 668-669.
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