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Funerary literature in ancient Egypt was created primarily through scribal copying. However, the appearance of a new Demotic composition in the Roman Period contained features unaccounted for in assessments of the ways in which ancient writings were replicated.

This paper argues that Methodius of Olympus’ 3^rd century CE dialogue, the Symposium; or On Chastity, revolutionizes the traditional setting and characterization of the literary Symposium by placing it in an allegorical space and time, and peopling it with historical figures who, against their allegorical backdrop, serve a purely symbolic role.

The Encomium of Demosthenes included in the manuscripts of Lucian’s works is an unusually layered dialogue. At different layers within the dialogue appear different characters and both the layering of reported speech and the multiplicity of speakers are directly supportive of the content.

Through the comparison between selected Hermetic texts and Plutarch's De E apud Delphos, I intend to analyze the use of “revelation dialogue” that – as a literary and dramatic device – discloses the specific relation between man and divine.

Plutarch presents many different versions of himself not only across the corpus of his dialogues, but even within individual texts. This paper examines Plutarch’s self-presentations in two such texts, De E apud Delphos and Amatorius. I argue that by provocatively juxtaposing older and younger versions of himself in these dialogues, Plutarch invites his reader to locate points of difference and continuity between them.

Understanding the nature of the personae in his dialogues is essential to interpreting Plutarch’s thought. He appears as a character in The E at Delphi, Sympotic Questions, The Dialogue on Love, and Reply to Colotes). He did have specific objectives for his appearances and offers hints for interpreting them. The dialogue form opened up possibilities for “interpretative pluralism” (cf. König 2007 42, 50, 2008; Kechagia 2011, “aporetic,” 99).

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 BCE - 65 CE) retains some elements of the dialogic form for didactic purposes in his De ira but dispenses with the inefficiency of multiple interlocutors and their sustained points of view. Rather, Seneca presents opposition with imaginary interlocutors as it arises in the argument.

Three of the most memorable episodes in the Hellenica involve leaders whom Xenophon is careful to portray as tyrants (as observed by, e.g., Higgins, Gray, Tuplin, Dillery, and Pownall 2004): Critias and the Thirty in Athens (2.3.11–2.4.43), Jason of Pherae (6.1.2–18 and 6.4.20–32), and Euphron of Sicyon (7.1.44–6 and 7.3.1–12).

In his autobiography, The Life of Henry Brulard, Stendhal (whose real name was Marie-Henri Beyle) informs us: “My moral life has been instinctively spent paying close attention to five or six main ideas, and attempting to see the truth about them.” The same might be said of Xenophon, and one of Xenophon’s “main ideas” was to isolate and articulate the qualities of the ideal leader. Xenophon’s “theory” of leadership has, of course, been the subject of considerable scrutiny, most recently and most thoroughly by Vivienne Gray.

The ability to foresee and understand future developments was regarded by Greek historians as a particularly valuable quality in a politician or general, associated especially with the famous wartime leaders Themistocles and Pericles. Xenophon’s profound awareness of change over time and of the disjunctions that may be exposed between past and present, as between ideals and reality, pervade his literary oeuvre, including Anabasis, with its evocation of his later exile from Athens and idyllic times at Scillus (5.3.7).