Latin biography

  • First published in 1967, Latin Biography contains chapters on Nepos, Plutarch and Suetonius, the three best-known Classical biographers.
  • In his erudite and entertaining "biography," Nicholas Ostler shows how and why Latin survived and thrived even as its creators and other languages failed.
  • An in-depth biography of the Latin language from its very beginnings to the present day from the widely acclaimed author of 'Empires of the Word'.

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    Latin biographies of Muhammad

    A number of biographies of Muhammad were written in Latin during the 9th to 13th centuries.

    Overview

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    The earliest Latin biographies originated in Spain before the mid-9th century. They had a limited circulation and influence.[1] All other Latin biographies are ultimately based on the tradition of the Chronographia of Theophanes the Confessor (d. 818), translated into Latin in the 9th century by Anastasius Bibliothecarius, which contained a chapter on the life of Muhammad.[2]

    While Latin biographies of Muhammad in the 11th to 12th century are still in the genre of anti-hagiography, depicting Muhammad as an heresiarch, the tradition develops into the genre of picaresque novel, with Muhammad in the role of the trickster figure, in the 13th century.

    The Vita Mahumeti by Embrico of Mainz is an early example of the genre. The text, in rhyming leonine hexameters, was modelled on the verse hagiography of contemporaries

  • latin biography

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    Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin

    An in-depth biography of the Latin language from its very beginnings to the present day from the widely acclaimed author of ‘Empires of the Word’.

    The Latin language has been a constant in the cultural history of the West for over two millennia. It has shaped the way we think of ourselves and of our (central) place in the world. It has formed and united us as Europeans, has been the foundation of our education for centuries and defined the way in which we express our thoughts, our faith and our knowledge of the workings of the world. And yet, Latin began life as the cumbersome dialect of a small southern Italian city-state.

    Its active use lasted three times as long as Rome's Empire and its use echoes on in the law codes of half the world, in terminologies of biology and medicine, and until forty years ago in the litany of the Catholic Church, the most populous form of Christianity.

    In ‘Ad Infinitum’, Nicholas Ostler examines the reasons why Lat

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    Greek and Latin Biography
    by
    Alexei V. Zadorojnyi
    • LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2020
    • LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2020
    • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0241

  • Averintsev, Sergei S. 2002. From biography to hagiography: Some stable patterns in the Greek and Latin tradition of Lives, including Lives of the saints. In Mapping lives: The uses of biography. Edited by Peter France and William St. Clair, 19–36. British Academy Centenary Monographs. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    Thought-provoking essay on the “deep” normative expectations behind biographical writing in the Greco-Roman and Christian traditions.

  • Burridge, Richard A. 2004. What are the Gospels? A comparison with Graeco-Roman biography. 2d ed. Biblical Resource. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

    Mapping out the “generic features” in the structure and contents of select Greek and långnovell biographies, argues that the Gospels are related to the contemporaneous narrative matr