1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910809210203321

Autore

Manolaraki Eleni

Titolo

Noscendi Nilum cupido : imagining Egypt from Lucan to Philostratus / / by Eleni Manolaraki

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berlin, : De Gruyter, 2012

ISBN

3-11-029774-4

3-11-029773-6

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (392 p.)

Collana

Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes ; ; 18

Trends in classics. Supplementary volumes, , 1868-4785 ; ; v. 18

Classificazione

FB 5875

Disciplina

870.9/35832

870.935832

Soggetti

Latin literature - History and criticism

Egypt In literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Egypt and the Nile in Julio-Claudian Rome: Lucan -- Pompey's Nile -- Beyond Pompey's Nile -- Acoreus -- Acoreus, author of the Nile -- Physics: the Nile between earth and sky -- Ethics: Lucan and Seneca on the Nile -- Poetics: the bard's song and the river of poetry -- The bard's song -- The river of poetry -- Flavian Rome: Egypt and the Nile in Flavian Rome -- Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica -- The Nile in Cyzicus -- The Nile in the Bosphorus -- The Nile in Aea -- The Nile on the Danube -- Statius' Thebaid -- The Nile on Perseus' hill -- The Nile on the Langia -- The Nile in Athens -- Statius' Siluae -- Producing Egypt, staging Isis -- Remapping the land: from Egypt to Rome and back again -- Relating to religion: Anubis, Phoenix, and Apis -- Revisiting history: Alexander and Cleopatra -- The Antonine and Severan periods: The Nile and Egypt in the Antonine and Severan periods -- The emperor's Nile: the younger Pliny and Fronto -- Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris -- Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana -- Sage and emperor on the Nile -- Reclaiming the Nile -- Imagining the Nile.

Sommario/riassunto

What significations did Egypt have for the Romans a century after Actium and afterwards? How did Greek imperial authors respond to the Roman fascination with the Nile? This book explores Egypt's aftermath



beyond the hostility of Augustan rhetoric, and Greek and Roman topoi of Egyptian "barbarism." Set against history and material culture, Julio-Claudian, Flavian, Antonine, and Severan authors reveal a multivalent Egypt that defines Rome's increasingly diffuse identity while remaining a tertium quid between Roman Selfhood and foreign Otherness. Vespasian's Alexandrian uprising, his recognition of Egypt as his power basis, and his patronage of Isis re-conceptualize Egypt past the ideology of Augustan conquest. The imperialistic exhilaration and moral angst attending Rome's Flavian cosmopolitanism find an expressive means in the geographically and semantically nebulous Nile. The rapprochement with Egypt continues in the second and early third centuries. The "Hellenic" Antonines and the African-Syrian Severans expand perceptions of geography and identity within an increasingly decentralized and diverse empire. In the political and cultural discourses of this period, the capacious symbolics of Egypt validate the empire's religious and ethnic pluralism.