Friendship and Otherness in Lucian’s ›Toxaris‹

A Literary Commentary
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-11-162559-1
Verlag: De Gruyter

Buch, Englisch, Latin, Band 162, 392 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 696 g

Reihe: Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte

In Lucian’s Toxaris, the characters’ speeches play a performative role as they become their deeds of friendship. Between irony and (self-)othering, past and present, the dialogue negotiates a mixed form of identity by affirming a Hellenocentric position and deconstructing an Athenocentric per-spective on Greek culture. Eventually, both aspects converge, as the characters’ ability to make speeches on friendship displays their mastery of Greekness. This book, itself a hybrid of commentary and monograph, consists of an introduction, which con-textualises the dialogue in its cultural, philosophical, and literary background; the Greek text with textual critical notes, followed by an English translation; and a commentary, which is organised ac-cording to the central themes of the dialogue: the representation of friendship and the decon-struction of stereotypes. The commentary helps us to better understand how friendship is ap-proached in this dialogue and how the latter relates to the value of friendship in the context of the Roman imperial period. Simultaneously, it provides an examination of the way in which different voices – serious or deriding, Greek or Scythian, etc. – are ambiguously entangled in Lucian’s dia-logue.

Zielgruppe

Students and scholars in the fields of classical philology and an

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bottenberg, Laura

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Antike Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft

Über Autor(innen)

Laura Bottenberg, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Gemany.