Second Century CE Prose

The Proto-Gospel of James (2^nd century) exerted an enormous influence on late antique and medieval theology and culture (Cothenet 1988, Ehrman and Pleše 2011: 31–8). A crucial passage, however, has not been properly understood.

This paper examines the digression on the discovery of Tyrian purple in Leukippe and Kleitophon as an analogue for interpreting Achilles Tatius’ novel. In this “most self-reflexive of novels” (Ní Mheallaigh 2014), stories, songs, and paintings pose interpretive challenges for the novel’s characters and its readers alike (Bartsch 1989). The apprehension of hidden meaning in such media is a recurrent feature of the novel (e.g. 1.17.1, 2.21.5), and the aetiological account of Tyrian purple stages this interpretive process.

Distinguishing between the doctrines of the later sects of Academics and the Pyrrhonists is treacherous, and, given the fragmentary state of the works of the second-century CE rhetor and philosopher Favorinus of Arles, it is little wonder that his exact doctrinal position among these skeptics has been subject to dispute (Glucker, Ioppolo, Levy).

Fantastical and ego-centric, the Hieroi Logoi of Aelius Aristides (117-181 CE) were long derided by scholars as the prattling of a hypochondriac (Dodds 1951). Although principally an orator, Aelius is best known today not for his speeches, but for these first-person accounts of the ailments which afflicted his body throughout his lifetime and the miraculous cures he received through the dream epiphanies of the god Asklepios.