Most of the contributions to this Festschrift reflect in one way or another the working method of its honorand, Pierre Chuvin, well known for his love for detail and his ability to reconstruct what ancient texts ‘felt’ like to their authors and audience — ‘l'impossible proximité’ (15). The initial interview (13–26) and the list of Chuvin's publications (27–40) give a good picture of an extremely honest scholar, a major referent in the field of late antique literature.
This volume contains twenty-seven contributions (mostly in French), of which I will give a brief summary, dwelling longer only on a few of them. A good number of the papers focus on Nonnus of Panopolis and on several of the authors usually called Nonnian. The former include a contribution by Gianfranco Agosti (83–94), who relates narratives of violence in the Dionysiaca, especially in the episode of Icarius, to contemporary descriptions of popular violence, focusing on hagiographic narratives. Hélène Frangoulis (179–89) analyses the narrative variants of the metamorphoses of Cadmus and Harmonia into snakes, and the depiction of snakes in Harmonia's necklace and on Dionysus' shield. According to Konstantinos Spanoudakis (191–208) the resurrection of Tylus, engraved on Dionysus' shield (Nonn., D. 25.451–552), has intertextual links with the resurrection of Lazarus in Nonn., P. 11.157–71: both passages are vested with the spirituality with which Christian doctrine endowed the human body and each of its individual constituents. Noting that the Tylus passage seems to expand the Lazarus one in ‘corporeal’ fashion, Spanoudakis tentatively suggests the priority of the Paraphrase over the Dionysiaca. Gennaro D'Ippolito (283–95) contributes a study on formulae to describe a person.
As for other late antique texts, Nicola Zito (161–73) proposes a symbolic reading of two passages in the second proem of the Orphic Lythica, and Marie-Christine Fayant (271–81) offers a systematic analysis on neologisms in the Orphic Hymns that sheds light on their semantic contribution to the late antique literary koine. One of the best papers of the volume is that by Delphine Lauritzen (309–23): although it is generally accepted that there is a link between the ekphrasis of John of Gaza and those by Paul the Silentiary, she is the first to define how Paul approached John. Not only does the Silentiary advertise his reading of the Gazaean with recognizable citations in key places, but the Description of Saint Sophia adapts the structure of the Description of the Cosmic Table, then amplified in the Description of the Ambo. This is especially noticeable in the multiplication of the proems, but Lauritzen explores as well how Paul takes John as a model for the compositional techniques of the ekphrasis (for example, the movements of the narrator).
To these add three papers with textual corrections by Enrico Livrea (on P.Oxy. 69.4708) (155–9), Claudio De Stefani (Nonn., Dion. 26.282 (175–7)) and Enrico Magnelli offering notes and textual corrections on selected passages of Christodorus of Coptos' Description of the Statues of the Baths of Zeuxippus (297–308). Regarding late antique Latin authors, Étienne Wolff (95–106) offers a detailed analysis of the epigrammatic doublets by the sixth-century North African poet Luxorius, especially nos 353 and 354.
These literary studies are complemented by contributions on historical, philosophical and artistic issues. Danièle Berranger-Auserve (57–64) discusses how the burial of Constantine among the cenotaphs of the twelve apostles was received by the Church Fathers beyond the compliant narrative of Eusebius' Vita Constantini. Jean Bouffartigue (349–62) scans the literary presence of Dionysus in the writings of the emperor Julian and realizes that the god appears in three main shapes: a classical Dionysus related to the komos, a benefactor of humanity and a major theological entity. Alan Cameron (65–82) applies his usual critical methods to reconstruct Hypatia's political presence in Alexandria, her possible edition of the Handy Tables and Diophantus' Arithmetica and her teachings (more esoteric than previously thought). Jean-Luc Fournet (107–22) examines the personal names in sixth-century texts from the Egyptian village of Aphrodito and concludes that all pagan theonyms that had not been rendered acceptable by a well-known Christian bearer had disappeared as the social discourse had become completely Christianized.
As for late antique philosophy, Annick Charles-Saget (337–48) writes on Plotinus' not so Platonic interpretation of the Platonic Demiurge, and Polymnia Athanassiadi (363–82) delves deep in the Syrian connection of Iamblicus and his reception, mainly by Damascius. There are also two contributions on late antique mosaics, one by Anne-Marie Guimier-Sorbets (141–54) on a third-century Nilotic mosaic from Tmuis in the Nile Delta, depicting a family of dwarves banqueting in the middle of a marsh; and one by Janine Balty (209–16) on a poorly preserved late antique mosaic from Soran, Syria, depicting Meleager and Atalanta, perhaps referring to Euripides' Meleager.
The final two papers, by Domenico Accorinti (383–401) and Michel Tardieu (403–15) follow up two narratives that emerged from Late Antiquity to be received diversely in later times: the moralizing interpretation of the story of Hero and Leander which survived through the Middle Ages to reach the twentieth century, and a narrative on Jesus finding the skull of a pagan man, widely reported in Middle Eastern cultures.
Six further contributions lie outside the main time-frame. Françoise Frazier (217–29) provides a careful reading of Hes., Theog. 26–8. Pierre Cabanes (43–55) publishes the editio princeps of two fragments of a lead tablet found in 2011 in Apollonia (Illyria), dated to the end of the fifth or beginning of the fourth century b.c. The text of the first fragment (an ex voto offered at a sanctuary of Asclepius?) coincides with the third couplet of the hymn to Asclepius known from other sources, with slight orthographic differences. The second tablet seems to contain a set of religious regulations established at Dodona and specifies the offerings due to several gods and heroes, including Asclepius. Charles Guittard (325–35) comments on the anthropomorphization of divinized abstractions in Roman religion. Maurice Sartre (123–38) narrates the historical vicissitudes of the Syrian village of Soada, suggesting that it was promoted to the rank of city under the name Dionysias in a.d. 149 at the latest, and not under Commodus as previously thought. Finally, Sophie Minon (231–54) and Michel Casevitz (255–67) offer lexicographic meditations, the former on stergein, the latter on the terms for neck.
This volume is particularly stimulating for those working on late antique Greek literature, in particular specialists in Nonnus of Panopolis and related authors. The variety of issues and disciplines tackled should be understood as a call against the frequent compartmentalization of studies on the end of antiquity: if we are to get even an inkling of what life was like and how literature was designed and composed at that time we cannot restrict our remarks to a single piece or type of evidence.
