Libanios

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Libanios (Greek Λιβάνιος Libánios ; * 314 in Antioch on the Orontes ; † after 393 probably there) is considered the most important Greek orator of late antiquity .

Life

Family history and youth

Libanios was born in Antioch in the year 314 in Antioch on the Orontes in the then Roman province of Syria and probably died there soon after 393. He came from a curial family that had probably been living in Antioch since the second half of the 3rd century and had become somewhat prosperous at the time the birth of Libanios, however, had difficult times behind it. Both his grandfather and his brother were executed in 303 in connection with the usurpation attempt by a certain Eugenius (about whom little is otherwise known). In the course of these events, the Lebanios family seems to have lost a large part of their property.

Education

Initially educated by private tutors in Antioch, he began studying rhetoric with Ulpianus of Antioch, the most important Antiochene rhetorician at the time . From Antioch he went to Athens in 334 to complete his studies . Originally he wanted to join the school of Epiphanius there , a son of Ulpianus of Antioch. But on the way from the port to the city he was intercepted by students of Diophant of Alexandria , a competitor of Epiphanius, and forced to enter his school. Overall, Libanios seems to have stayed away from the disputes that were widespread in Athens at the time between students in the various schools.

Teaching activity in Constantinople, Nikaia and Nicomedia

At the turn of the year 340/341, Libanios opened his first school in Constantinople. The intrigued atmosphere in the capital - older colleagues seem to have envied the young newcomer the large number of visitors that his school was able to record; Libanios himself reports on a dispute with the rhetorician Bemarchios - but seems to have led relatively quickly to the desire to move. Around 342 he then succeeded in obtaining permission to move to Nikaia . After an apparently only short stay there, he started a position in Nicomedia from 342/343 . According to his own statement, this was the beginning of one of the happiest times in his life, marked both by great productivity and by a large number of students; According to his own statement, he even managed to poach students from the capital. During this time, for example, Basil of Caesarea attended the school of Libanios, and the later Emperor Julian was also able to hear him for a short time (even if only indirectly via lecture notes). After five years, however, he was called back to the capital, where he taught again until 353/354.

Final return to Antioch

It was not until 354 that Libanios finally managed to finally settle in his hometown; he was not to leave her until his death. In Antioch he was quickly able to take a leading position among the city's rhetoricians. He also soon had excellent contacts both to the leading personalities of the city and to influential officials at the court of Emperor Constantius II. A first high point were the preparations for Emperor Julian's Persian campaign, which led it to Antioch. A friendly relationship quickly developed between Julian and Libanios, and the latter was accepted into the closest circle of people around the emperor, with Libanios apparently hoping to strengthen paganism. Even after Julian's death in 363, which ended the attempt at a pagan restoration, Libanios initially retained his influential position in the city, even if he was obviously deeply affected by Julian's death. Amphilochius of Iconium and John Chrysostom were among his students at this time , and he was also in contact with other intellectuals of his time. Mostly one assumes that the addressee of a Libanios letter (ep. 1063) named Marcellinus is the historian Ammianus Marcellinus from Antioch , but this is increasingly doubted in recent research.

Forced inaction

After Emperor Valens practically relocated his residence to Antioch in the course of military operations from 371/372, after the discovery of the Theodorus' conspiracy, a downright persecution of the pagans began in the Greek East, to which many pagan intellectuals fell victim in the following years. The pagan spiritual life in the east of the empire never fully recovered from this blow. John Chrysostom , for example, throws a spotlight on the conditions in Antioch , who reports how he found and picked up a magical book while playing on the banks of the Orontes, but threw it back into the river in agony when a soldier accidentally approached.

Libanios was able to survive the persecution unscathed - probably due to influential protection at the imperial court - but it is very likely that he stopped teaching and avoided public appearances.

The "second spring"

The year 378 brought an unexpected new beginning for Libanios with the disaster of Adrianople and the death of Valens. In a short time he managed to regain a leading position among the city's rhetoricians. In addition, he again gained considerable political influence both in Antioch and at the court of Theodosius I. A high point of this development were the so-called statue riots of 387; here it appears as if Libanios made a significant contribution to sparing the leading layers of his hometown further imperial collective punishments. The latest reports about Libanius show that he was concerned about his influence at court and the highest level of protection.

The last decade of life also held severe strokes of fate in store for Libanios. So his partner and his only son Kimon died in 390 quick succession. The last news about Libanios dates back to 393. Soon afterwards he will have died; a remark by Synesius of Cyrene from the year 404 about an aged rhetorician certainly does not refer to Lebanius. His students included Theodor von Mopsuestia and Johannes Chrysostomos .

plant

One page of the text of a speech by Libanios in the manuscript Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana , Vaticanus Urbinas graecus 126, fol. 124r

The surviving work of Libanios can be divided into speeches, writings from the rhetoric school and letters.

  • His speech corpus comprises 64 speeches ( orationes ); Among the most important are his autobiography (or. 1), a funeral oration for Emperor Julian ( Epitaphios logos ), a panegyric speech for Emperor Constantius II ( Basilikos logos ), a speech addressed to Emperor Theodosius I in defense of the pagan religion ( pro templis ) as well as an eulogy for his hometown Antioch ( Antiochikos , or. 11). Not all of these texts were actually read in front of an audience; some were rather used as missives, memoranda or similar. In addition to the 64 orationes, there are 51 “sample speeches” ( Declamationes ), which serve exclusively to present one's own rhetorical skills and are mostly intended to deal with historical or mythical topics or to depict certain character types. The “defense of Socrates ” (decl. 1), an answer to the “accusation of Socrates” by Polykrates , is particularly well known from this . However, some of the surviving model speeches are probably not authentic and do not come from Libanios.
  • Various texts for use in a school of rhetoric ( Progymnásmata ), 57 commentaries ( Hypothéseis ) on speeches by Demosthenes and a (though probably spurious) theoretical epistolographic treatise with the title “Epistolimaíoi charaktḗres” have been preserved under the name of Libanios .
  • The corpus contains around 1,600 letters received; This makes it one of the most extensive surviving corpora of letters from antiquity. In contrast to the epistulae Pliny the Younger , the letters of Libanios are not a collection that has been revised for publication. There are many differences in style and content between the individual texts in the collection.

Survival

Libanios developed an extraordinary history of impact. The Byzantine rhetoric he was considered exemplary and served as one of the most important school authors; so his writings, which can be assigned to rhetoric lessons, found widespread use. The Renaissance still valued Libanios so much as a stylist that around 1474 the Venetian Francesco Zambeccari , in order to recommend himself for official employment, had an edition printed with alleged translations of Lebanios letters, which had in fact been invented by him. In the 17th century, Libanios slowly fell into oblivion, from whom research in the second half of the 19th century, in particular the Breslau philologist Richard Förster , was able to snatch him away.

Text output, translations and comments

  • Scott Bradbury: Selected Letters of Libanius: From the Age of Constantius and Julian (= Translated Texts for Historians . Volume 41). Liverpool University Press, Liverpool 2004 ( online excerpts ).
  • Tilman Krischer , Werner Portmann: Libanios: Kaiserreden (= library of Greek literature . Volume 58.) Anton Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2002 ( specialist review ).
  • Ulrich Lempp: Libanios: sample speeches (= library of Greek literature. Volume 78). Antion Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2015.
  • AF Norman: Antioch as a Center of Hellenic Culture as observed by Libanius . Liverpool 2000.
  • DA Russell : Libanius. Imaginary speeches: a selection of declamations . London 1996.
  • Georgios Fatouros , Tilman Krischer: Libanios: Antiochikos (or. XI): To the pagan renaissance in Christian Antioch . Vienna 1992.
  • AF Norman: Libanius. Autobiography and selected letters . 2 volumes, London 1992.
  • AF Norman: Libanius. Selected Works . 2 volumes (I, The Julianic Orations = Or. 13, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 24; II = Or. 2, 50, 30, 45, 33, 23, 19, 20, 21, 22 , 48, 49, 47), London 1969-1987.
  • Georgios Fatouros, Tilman Krischer: Libanios. Letters . Munich 1980 (small selection from the received corpus).
  • Jean Martin, P. Petit, Pierre-Louis Malosse: Libanios. Discours . 3 volumes, Paris 1979, 1988, 2004.
  • Richard Foerster : Libanii opera ( Bibliotheca Teubneriana ). 12 volumes, Teubner, Leipzig 1903–1927 (basic text edition).

literature

Overview representations

Investigations

  • Raffaella Cribiore: The School of Libanius in Late Antique Antioch. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ et al. 2007, ISBN 0-691-12824-3 (offers an overview of the late antique school system and the work of Libanios).
  • Raffaella Cribiore: Libanius the Sophist. Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century. Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY et al. 2013, ISBN 978-0-8014-5207-9 .
  • Georgios Fatouros , Tilman Krischer (ed.): Libanios (= ways of research . 621). Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1983, ISBN 3-534-08805-0 (important anthology, reprinting various, sometimes remotely published articles).
  • John HWG Liebeschuetz : Antioch. City and imperial administration in the Later Roman Empire. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1972, ISBN 0-19-814295-1 (Also: London, University, Dissertation, 1971).
  • André J. Festugière : Antioche païenne et chrétienne. Libanius, Chrysostome et les moines de Syrie (= Bibliothèque des Ecoles Françaises d'Athènes et de Rome. 194, ISSN  0257-4101 ). Boccard, Paris 1959.
  • Margaret E. Molloy: Libanius and the dancers (= ancient scholarly texts and studies. 31). Olms-Weidmann, Hildesheim et al. 1996, ISBN 3-487-10220-X (also: Melbourne, University, dissertation).
  • Heinz-Günther Nesselrath: Libanios. Witness to a dwindling world (= locations in antiquity and Christianity. 4). Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-7772-1208-1 (current standard work).
  • Paul Petit: Les étudiants des Libanius (= Etudes prosopographiques. 1, ISSN  0423-5819 ). Nouvelles Éditions latines, Paris 1957, (seminal study on the prosopography of the pupils of Libanius).
  • Paul Petit: Libanius et la vie municipale à Antioche au IVe siècle apr. J.-C. Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris 1955, (basic study on Libanios and the city history of Antioch).
  • Paul Petit: Les fonctionnaires dans l'oeuvre de Libanius. Analysis prosopographique (= Annales littéraires de l'Universite de Franche-Comté. 541 = Center de Recherches d'Histoire Ancienne. 134). Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-251-60541-X (continuation of the study from 1957).
  • Jan Stenger : Hellenic Identity in Late Antiquity. Pagan authors and their discomfort with their own time (= investigations into ancient literature and history. 97). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021328-7 (at the same time: Kiel, University, habilitation paper, 2007/2008; important study that places Libanios in the context of pagan literature of the 4th century).
  • Lieve van Hoof (Ed.): Libanius. A critical introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014, ISBN 978-1-107-01377-3 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Wiemer : Libanios and Julian. Studies on the relationship between rhetoric and politics in the fourth century AD (= Vestigia . 46). Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39335-7 (at the same time: Marburg, University, dissertation, 1994; fundamental study on the relationship between Libanios and Julian).
  • Jorit Wintjes: The life of Libanius (= historical studies of the University of Würzburg. 2). Leidorf, Rahden 2005, ISBN 3-89646-834-0 (also: Würzburg, University, dissertation, 2003).

Web links

Wikisource: Libanios  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Libanios
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Λιβάνιος (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek speaker
DATE OF BIRTH 314
PLACE OF BIRTH Antioch on the Orontes , today Turkey
DATE OF DEATH after 393
Place of death Antioch on the Orontes , today Turkey