Collective Biographies 
from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Pietro ZACCARIA: Constructing Authority in Hellenistic Collective Biographies

 The genre of collective biography has its roots in the Hellenistic period, when collections of biographies of different figures started to be written. Despite their importance for the later development of the genre, collective biographies penned in the Hellenistic period are not very well known, since they are only fragmentarily preserved.

After offering an overview of the different forms of Hellenistic collective biography attested in the extant fragments, the present paper will focus on a specific aspect of this kind of literature, namely, the various ways in which Hellenistic collective biographers gave authority to their own texts with the aim of defending and divulging specific views in their construction of memory.

Aaron KACHUCK : The Life of the Lives of the Caesars: Unity and Multiplicity in Suetonius’ De Vita Caesarum  

 This paper argues that the individual lives of Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesar, as well as the Lives taken as a whole, owe their topological (per species) approach to their subjects, as well as the way in which those subjects are portrayed (and made to portray themselves), to two (sub-)literary genres in which Romans could think of themselves as particularly, and unusually, innovative: satire and mime (especially funerary mime). Scholarly attention to such influence has historically focused on certain emblematic scenes and explicit references in the Lives, most notably the ending of Augustus’ life and (and towards the end of his Life), which has the dying emperor ask those in attendance whether or not he has ‘well played the mime of life’ (99.1 ecquid iis videretur mimum vitae commode transegisse); as Augustus’ life has been seen to serve as a template for the other Lives—a ‘good emperor’ counterpart to Julius Caesar, it is also the most replete, as well as the only to contain a programmatic mention of Suetonius’ choice of a ‘rubric’ organization that is thematic (per species) rather than chronological (per tempora)—this has special importance that is buoyed by the mention of comedy (and, implicitly, mime) at the end of the life of Vespasian, who founds the next dynasty after the end of the Julio-Claudian line, and whose life, too, has been taken as a new beginning in the organization of Suetonius’ Lives.

This paper builds on recent work on the structures (and especially the conclusions) of Suetonius’ Lives, and on recent work on references to mimes in Suetonius by José Luís Brandão and Tim Power, to show that the influence of both mime and satire can be seen not only on individual scenes, but also on Suetonius’ broader project, as well as on the organizational principle behind them. Thus, their influence can be seen in the Lives’ careful attention to sex, excrement, and bodily appearance, and especially to attire and gait, even (or especially) at the expense of the subject’s reputation—this last feature, in particular, being a key feature of funeral mime at Rome, though also of satire (especially as written by Persius and by Suetonius’ contemporary, Juvenal). Beyond this, though, this paper argues that the generic underlay of mime and satire can, more fundamentally, help us understand how Suetonius handles what is the most enduring feature of his work, and which he passes onto the posterity of collective biographies: the creative tension between chronological (per tempora) and thematic (per species) organization on the one hand, and the combination of the comic and the tragic, of praise and of insinuation, on the other. Long responsible for the maligning of Suetonius as an analyst and stylist, these very traits, this paper will show, are part of Suetonius’ efforts to constitute a new kind of genre that builds on previous biographies (like those of Cornelius Nepos), but that is also heir to the tradition of mime and to the genre of satire, with major implications for how we read individual episodes of Suetonius’ Lives, the constructions of the Lives as a whole, and the traditions of collective biography for which Suetonius’ work served as a model.

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Geert Roskam: "Welcoming Each Hero in Turn as Our Guest (Aem. 1.2) - or How to Read Plutarch's Parallel Lives as one Coherent Work"

The different biographies of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives have often been studied in isolation. During the last decades, however, the insight has gradually grown that they should be read together. The last step in this process of growing scholarly insight is the question, raised by a few scholars (first of all C. Pelling, ‘Plutarch’s ‘Tale of Two Cities’: Do the Parallel Lives Combine as Global Histories?’, in N. Humble, Plutarch’s Lives. Parallelism and Purpose, Swansea 2010, 217-235), whether the whole series in fact should be regarded as a kind of global history. In this paper, the different arguments in support of and against this idea are explored. It is argued that Plutarch in all likelihood had no comprehensive plan when he started writing the Parallel Lives and that the most important compositional unit of the Parallel Lives is to be found on the level of the books, not on that of the work as a whole. Yet several indications (such as the overall comparative approach, the common moralizing agenda, the cross references, etc.) suggest that Plutarch also considered the Parallel Lives as one single and coherent work, though not necessarily as a global history. The unity of the Parallel Lives should rather be sought, so it will be argued, in its zetetic moralism, which allows and even stimulates comparative reading.

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Fabio TANGA: Plutarch’s Mulierum Virtutes and Female Collective Biographies

Plutarch’s Mulierum Virtutes has been recognised as the first and most important work for the study of the history of women in the ancient world. The essay, as a result of the previous and contemporary female catalogic tradition which dates back to Homer’s Iliad, contains a section dedicated to 13 specifically collective anecdotes of virtuous women belonging to the ancient Greco-Roman and Mediterranean world. The introduction of the work, that follows a brief explanation of the topic, effectively summarizes the plutarchean modus operandi of the theoretical and practical biographic comparison in Parallel Lives, and invites the reader to apply that method to Mulierum Virtutes. Plutarch then specifies that his narration concerns only some less famous episodes of virtuous women, consequently suggesting how widely the same topic had been discussed and deepened in history and literature of the past. The opuscule shares the interest for female biographic anecdotes with another plutarchean work: Apophthegmata Laconica, which contains many excerpta of female biographies. Later, Plutarch’s Mulierum Virtutes will become the prototype, or the model, for the subsequent biographies, catalogues and treatises dedicated to the most famous (and virtuous) women of the ancient world, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, such as Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris, and up to the present day.

Peter VAN NUFFELEN: The writing collective. The Historia Augusta’s metareflection on collective biography

The Historia Augusta is a collective biography that revels in the collective: a series of biographies of Roman emperors, it presents itself as composed by a collective of historians, with several emperors as addressees. It consciously extends the group of emperors of which biographies are offered by including usurpers, Caesars and minor Augusti. It locates its own biographical activity within the context of biographers of Roman emperors. Regularly, emperors are compared to their predecessors or lineages are discussed (such as the Antonini), creating groups within the larger group. This paper explores this aspect of the Historia Augusta from several angles: the work engages with contemporary literary expectations about the writing of biography; from a metaliterary perspective, it reflects on the writing of collective biography and its societal relevance; and it explores what an emperor actually was.

Sébastien MORLET: "Les apôtres dans l’Histoire ecclésiastique d’Eusèbe : le refus d’une histoire biographique "

Eusèbe de Césarée n’a jamais composé de « vies » des apôtres. Ceux-ci sont évoqués dans la « Chronique », puis dans l’Histoire ecclésiastique, comme des acteurs de l’histoire. Dans cette œuvre, s’il fournit çà et là des informations biographiques, il ne cherche pas à écrire une succession de « vies ». Le traitement historique de la figure des apôtres est lui-même particulier et permet d’envisager certaines caractéristiques de l’écriture de l’histoire chez l’évêque de Césarée.

Laetitia CICCOLINI: Les biographies collectives de langue latine en leurs manuscrits : l’apport des Codices latini antiquiores.

L’objectif de la présente communication est de prendre en considération l’économie du texte écrit attachée aux biographies collectives. Notre point de départ sera un recensement des biographies collectives dans les Codices Latini Antiquiores. Il s’agit de voir comment s’exprime concrètement, dans les livres où sont copiées plusieurs biographies, la tension entre fragmentation (extraction et lecture sélective) et unité (cohérence du projet d’ensemble). Comment des vies originellement distinctes font-elles corpus ? Inversement, comme les vies incluses dans une même œuvre sont-elles distinguées pour être exploitées de manière sélective ? C’est un pan important de la réception de ces œuvres, qui engage les conditions concrètes de leur maniement et  de leur utilisation.

Latin Collective Biographies in Their Manuscripts: the Contribution of the Codices Latini Antiquiores

 The aim of the present paper is to take into consideration the economy of the written text attached to collective biographies. Our starting point will be a census of collective biographies in the Codices Latini Antiquiores. The aim is to see how the tension between fragmentation (extraction and selective reading) and unity (coherence of the overall project) is concretely expressed in books where several biographies are copied. How do originally distinct lives form a corpus? Conversely, how are the lives included in the same work distinguished in order to be exploited in a selective way? This is an important part of the reception of these works, which involves the concrete conditions of their handling and use.

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Constantinos MACRIS: Fragments from a collective bio-doxography of Early Greek philosophy: Porphyry's Philosophos historia among pagans and Christians
In this paper it is argued that the fragmentarily preserved Philosophos historia of the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry, of which only the Life of Pythagoras has been transmitted in its entirety, makes better sense if read not so much as a history of philosophy but rather as a collective biography – or, better, bio-doxography (the mingling of information about the philosophers’ lives and doctrines being one of the work’s originalities according to its ancient readers).
After an informative introduction focusing on the content, literary models and sources of the Philosophos historia, as well as on the title of the work and its possible meaning(s), the investigation will focus on the two aspects that seem to bring together the early thinkers and poets who populate it, making of them a coherent and meaningful group – namely, (1) their ‘love of wisdom’ and contribution to ‘philosophy’ or ‘philosophical inquiry’ (as Porphyry understood it) and (2) the fact that, chronologically, they all belong to the period going from Homer and Hesiod through the Seven Sages and the ‘Presocratics’ down to Socrates and Plato (and no later). The discussion of these two aspects, and the examination of who Porphyry decided to include in his ‘portrait gallery’ and who he has excluded from it, could give us some important clues about the possible aim and scope of the Philosophos historia.
In a guise of an appendix, a few words will be said on the reception of the Philosophos historia among pagans and Christians (and even apud Arabes!), and an effort will be made to detect the possible – if unavowed – influence of the Porphyrian opus on other biographies of the Late Antiquity, both individual and collective.
 

Han BALTUSSEN: What Motivated Eunapius to Write his Bioi? A Collection of Lives Revisited.

The overall character and purpose of Eunapius’ work Lives of Philosophers and Sophists (or VPS, ca. 395-405 CE) have been the subject of debate for at least the past six decades. Given its fourth century origin, its swipes at the Christians, and its advocacy for the Hellenic traditions, it understandably became viewed as a work that stood in opposition to the growing influence of the Christians. Already David Buck gave a striking portrayal of VPS as “a work of pagan hagiography with commemorative, didactic, and polemical purposes” (1977, 159). More recently it has been labelled a ‘collective biography’ (Patricia Cox 2000, Matthias Becker 2013, 51; Goulet 2014, 98n1). The former emphasises a contextualised interpretation, while the latter emphasise the work’ genre and its internal evidence.
   In this paper I examine both characterisations and argue that, while they have considerable merit, they do not represent the full agenda of Eunapius’ project. Two basic points will direct my discussion: that the label ‘biography’ sits uncomfortably with the highly selective biographical sketches Eunapius presents (Wright 1921, xii; Penella 1990, 123; Goulet 2014/I, 98 “portraits plutôt que des biographies”), and that the term ‘collective’ in the phrase ‘collective biography’ has limited explanatory force. 
   Given these considerations, I will suggest that several neglected aspects can be explained more plausibly, if we accept that the work lacks historical accuracy, and instead manipulates and confabulates information in order to implement a diverse agenda of polemical, didactic, and rhetorical strands. I suggest that Eunapius primarily pursues a moral and religious program in which his panegyrical tendencies interfere with his method as historian. For this reason, Buck’s interpretation strikes me as basically correct (except for the use of ‘hagiography’), but I offer additional (and slightly different) arguments in its favour. By paying close attention to Eunapius’ clues as to what kind of work he was trying to write and placing the work in its historical and religious context, we can get closer to a better understanding of its purpose.

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Arthur URBANO: Saints, Rulers, and Bishops: Political and Ecclesial Theology in Ravenna's Collective Portraits 

In an essay on strategies of representation in late antique collective biographies, Patricia Cox Miller applies the language of visual aesthetics to the literary collections of the lives of monks and philosophers. In her work, the subjects of collective biographies are “icons,” “like finished works of art,” and “literary statues;” the works themselves are literary “space.” In this paper, I reverse the lens, asking how collective biographies can be constructed in images, and not only in words. To do this I explore how we might see the collective portraits found in the churches of late antique Ravenna as visual collective biographies. I consider the choice of subjects of these portraits (found in three forms: medallion portraits, processions, and frontally posed figures) and the principles of organization, in the decoration of the major churches of Ravenna built in the fifth and sixth centuries. I argue that each collection contributes to understanding the shifting political and ecclesial identities of the city and together produce a kind of vita Ravennae.  

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Andrew CAIN: The Greek Historia monachorum in Aegypto and the Birth of Collective Hagiography

In September 394, seven monks set out from their monastery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and traveled to Egypt, where they spent the next several months visiting an array of monks and monastic communities, from the Thebaid in the south to the delta town of Diolcos in the north. Upon their return, one of them anonymously composed in Greek a lively account of their experiences (by modern convention, it typically is referred to as Historia monachorum in Aegypto, the title of Rufinus of Aquileia’s Latin translation of the Greek original). The HMA is significant for many reasons, not least because it is the earliest known specimen of collective hagiography about Christian monks. This paper explores several related topics: the HMA’s possible literary antecedents as well as its genre, structure, and purpose; why its appearance signals a watershed moment in early Christian literary history; and how it fits into the broader scheme of the burgeoning tradition of collective biography (both pagan and Christian) in Late Antiquity. 

Graham BARRETT: Men of Letters and Men of Good Works in Early Medieval Iberia​

The De viris illustribus tradition is not only a set of biographies and bibliographies, but an argument through bio-bibliography for what the Latin Christian literary tradition is or should be. In the hands of Isidore of Seville, the genre came to focus more particularly on the heritage of the Iberian Peninsula, and to take on elements of historiography and hagiography, regional or local in its scope, concerned with promotion of certain episcopal sees. The turning point in its evolution came with his continuator Ildefonsus of Toledo, who drew on Gregorian influences to redirect his catalogue towards an almost exclusive focus on episcopal authority and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, especially the metropolitan status of Toledo. His curious mix of worldly and otherworldly, of biographical and hagiographical, modelled a new means for negotiating orthodoxy, and in the further entries added by two successors, Julian of Toledo on Ildefonsus himself, and Felix of Toledo on Julian in turn, we read equal parts bibliography and hagiography. This paper takes the seventh-century transformation of De viris illustribus from bio-bibliography to hagio-bibliography as the point of departure for thinking about the boundaries of the genre, and the broad range of parallel, increasingly intersecting routes for determining the contours of culture. How artificial is the division which we set between our catalogues of authors and works and collective hagiographies such as the series of Visigothic passiones, evolving and expanding during the same period, or histories such as the Chronicle of 754, arguing for the vitality of Christian literature after the Muslim conquest? When three centuries later the scribe and illuminator Vigila of Albelda added the final entry to the early medieval De viris illustribus tradition in the vita of Salvus, prior abbot of his monastery, he was looking to the Visigoths for cultural identity in the widest sense, forging connections to their holy men as much as their authors, and arguing for a new orthodoxy consisting in the continuance of their life as much as their works.

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Giovanni GOMIERO: A monastic history through the list of miracles of the abbots: the Northern Iraq between 7th and 9th century in the History of the Monastery of Sabrisho of Bet Qoqa.

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The History of the Monastery of Sabrisho‘ of Bet Qoqa is an anonymous writing dated to the first half of the 9th century. The majority of the hagiographical sources of the Church of the East have been neglected by scholars, but, for this monastic history, we could say that has been completely ignored. The text has been edited with a French translation by Alphonse Mingana, as an “appendix” of the Chronicle of Arbela, without a commentary and some introduction or context. From 1908 to. this day, it is impossible to find a single study dedicated to that work. The goal of this paper is to show the internal structure of the source and its relationship in its literary and cultural context. We could in this way perfectly understand the so-called “biographical dimension” of the East Syriac Historiography: in fact, the History of the Monastery of Sabrisho‘ of Bet Qoqa is the perfect example of this literary genre and style, as the biographies of the abbots are the keypoints to reconstruct the network of history’s net of two centuries (from 620 ca. to 820 ca.). in order to better understand the use of this collective biography, it will be useful to compare it with the Book of Superiors of Thomas of Marga from the same period and the same geographical-cultural context. In this way, we shall present a first analysis of this source, showing the potential and the richness of this literary heritage, unfairly neglected.

Anna IZDEBSKA: Mukhtār al-Ḥikam wa Maḥāsin al-Kalim (Book of the Choicest Maxims and Best Sayings) of al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik (11th c. CE) as a Graeco-Arabic collective biography

Abū al-Wafā al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik was 11th-century scholar, philosopher and historian. He was born in Syria but spent most of his life in Egypt, at the Fatimid court. His only preserved work is the Mukhtār al-Ḥikam wa Maḥāsin al-Kalim (Book of the Choicest Maxims and Best Sayings), which is a combination of a collective biography with gnomological material. It is divided into 21 chapters. Apart from the last chapter which presents sayings attributed to various people mixed together, each chapter is devoted to one of twenty ancient sages: Seth, Hermes, Ṭāṭ (Ṣāb), Asclepius, Homer, Solon, Zenon of Elea, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Diogenes, Socrates, Plato, Aristoteles, Alexander, Ptolemy, Luqmān, Mahādargīs, Basil, Gregory, Galen. Greek philosophers and scholars are mixed here with mythical figures from Hermetic as well as Christian and oriental traditions. Al-Mubashshir made use of an impressive collection of sources of Greek and Syriac origin. He certainly had similar works based on Greek material available to him in Syriac or Arabic translation, but no single Greek original can be identified and most probably his original input was substantial. The work contains a very interesting introduction in which the author exposed his main goals as well as his attitude towards the presented Greek material in the context of Islam. What was the most interesting and valuable for him were the wise sayings. Biographies are included for the sake of introducing of the sages and philosophers whose sayings are the actual core of the work, although still al-Mubashshir put a lot of effort to gather the best original biographical material he could. 
The Mukhtār al-Ḥikam became very popular in Arabic and European medieval and early modern period. The first translation was done before 1257 CE into Spanish (Castilian) under the title Bocados d’oro. From the Spanish, it was then translated into Latin, French, Provençal and several times into English. One of these English translations happened to be the first book in English (or presumably in any language) printed in England. In contrast to its premodern popularity, the Mukhtār al-Ḥikam is still waiting for being translated into any modern European language.
In my paper I am going to study the work of al-Mubashshir, which still has not received deserved interest in the modern academic world, as an example of a Graeco-Arabic collective biography. I will look closer at the question of which figures were chosen by the author, and why these and not some others. I will study how they are presented, what was considered important and interesting for the author, what were his main goals and agendas in creating this work. I will then discuss al-Mubashshir’s work as a very good example of reworking and reusing Greek material and lives of Greek sages in different cultural, religious and linguistic context. It will then make it possible to compare this Arabic work with Ancient Greek collective biographies, from which some were also the sources al-Mubashshir used.

Michal BAR-ASHER SIEGAL: Collective biographies in rabbinic literature? rethinking genre and context
Named sages appear regularly in rabbinic literature. They are portrayed as both the protagonists in stories, as well as transmitters of traditions preserved in their names. Scholarship has long debated the historical value of these attributions, as well as the connection between various named traditions in different sources. What can we learn from a collective biography of a named rabbinic sage across corpora? Taking into account recent scholarly caveats concerning both historical and narrative-related conclusions, can we still discuss the meaning and significance of the use of a named sage in these rabbinic sources? This paper will discuss genre and context as factors in evaluating the use of a specific named sage, as part of a corpus, to create a collective biography after all, using the example of minim stories in the Babylonian Talmud.