Unclassical Traditions: Alternatives to the Classical Past in Late Antiquity

Unclassical Traditions: Alternatives to the Classical Past in Late Antiquity offers a collection of essays by leading scholars discussing the nature and extent of the late-antique engagement with its classical heritage. This issue has long been at the heart of modern historical debate and, as this volume demonstrates, it was no less a matter of concern among authors and audiences in the period itself. Eight papers trace the challenges to the ancient and self-assured dominance that the classical tradition once exercised over the educated elites of the Roman world. The persistent importance of classical learning is beyond doubt, but its reception was neither simple nor self-evident. Alternatives were put forward alongside or in place of existing traditions; some gained broad and immediate acceptance, others withered and died. Taken together, the contributions to this volume explore how the classical tradition in its various forms could be negotiated, undermined, ironised or even flatly denied. Whether in the hands of bishops or breviarists, poets or polemicists, historians or hagiographers, many central aspects of late-antique culture here emerge as the product of a combination of authoritatively classical and avowedly unclassical traditions.