2013/08/03 by Tim Whitmarsh · 179 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Classical Antiquity Studies #Byzantine Studies and History #Historical and Linguistic Studies #Judaism #Poetry #Literature #EPIC #Period (music) #Ancient Greek #Appeal #Classics #Art #Jewish culture #History #Philosophy #Aesthetics #Law
paper · doi:10.1525/california/9780520276819.001.0001
openalex publication_date 2013/08/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
What happened to Greek literature after the classical period—when Sophocles, Plato, and Demosthenes were just a memory? Postclassical Greek culture has usually been thought of as dominated by aristocratic elites obsessed with preserving links to the past. This book proposes a very different model. Covering popular fiction, poetry, and Greco-Jewish material, it argues for a rich, dynamic, and diverse culture that cannot be reduced to a simple model of continuity. Shining new light on a series of playful, imaginative texts that are left out of the traditional accounts of Greek literature—texts such as Euhemerus’s Sacred Inscription, Lucian’s paratragedy Gout, and Theodotus’s biblically themed epic—it models a more adventurous, exploratory approach to later Greek culture. Beyond the Second Sophistic offers not just a new way of looking at Greek literature from 300 BCE onward but also a challenge to the Eurocentric, aristocratic constructions that have traditionally been placed on the Greek heritage. The book consists of five new and ten revised essays. Accessible and lively, it will appeal to students and scholars of Greek literature and culture, Hellenistic Judaism, world literature, and cultural theory. All foreign languages are translated.