Luciano Canfora
Biographic Data
| ID | 287321 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Luciano Canfora |
| GIVEN NAMES | Luciano |
| FAMILY NAME | Canfora |
| SIGNATURE | CANFORA L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bari Aldo Moro |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3406-9391 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 24 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Jardin de l'Empire: Quelques réflexions
Research objectives Brand activism has emerged as a powerful yet complex strategy, sparking increasing academic and managerial interest. However, ambiguity persists regarding its definition, dimensions, and impact, which must be clarified to understand the emerging concept of brand activism. • Methodology This paper systematically reviews 124 academic studies integrating insights from marketing, consumer psychology, and management research to ref…
La metamorfosi
Ideologies of Hellenism
Turning to the examples of Demosthenes and Alexander, this article looks at the ideological uses of Hellenism, not only in the general sense of the word, but also in Droysen's sense of Hellenismus (referring to the historical epoch that runs from Alexander the Great to Augustus, now loosely termed the ‘Hellenistic era’ in English). The reviews of Werner Jaeger's study of Demosthenes were symptomatic of wider currents in the history of European th…
Bonaparte libertador
Este ensaio procura analisar as ambigüidades presentes na guerra de libertação conduzida pelos revolucionários franceses nos vários países europeus, seguindo os limites nem sempre claros entre as tentativas de "exportação da revolução" e a realização de uma "guerra de conquista". Considera-se a diferente posição assumida a esse propósito pelos jacobinos e pelos girondinos, e a reação à presença francesa no interior das populações "libertadas" ou …
Some Unexpected Refusals
Having related the reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius, Plutarch informs us that both began to get in touch with their friends. But he really only relates the steps taken by Brutus. According to Plutarch, Brutus received only two notes: both from persons who had had very close ties to Cato and would later die at Philippi in the republican ranks — Statilius and Favonius. Favonius, the fanatical Catonian, said that ‘civil war is worse than illegal…
Prisoner of the Pirates (75–74 bc)
Caesar's ship was seized by the ferocious pirates of Cilicia off the island of Pharmacussa — one of the Sporades to the south of Miletos. The most colourful account of this episode is by Plutarch. It is difficult to imagine that anybody but Caesar himself could be the source of the story. The sardonic self-confidence with which the whole episode is related must come from him. ‘The pirates demanded twenty talents for his ransom’, says Plutarch, ‘a…
The ‘Affairs’ of Mr Julius Caesar and Others
The Lupercalia Drama
The most striking and theatrical incident was provoked by Antony, at the very moment when rumours of an imminent, openly monarchical shift in Caesar's aspirations were being nourished from several sides. Once again suspicion turned to the possible role of Cleopatra as the moving force behind the scenes, especially since she had borne Caesar a son. This led to a persistent rumour that the dictator was about to move his seat permanently to Alexandr…
The Serious Mistake of Dismissing the Escort
Suetonius, who is well informed about reports of warnings reaching Caesar before the conspiracy, wonders whether Caesar actually wanted to die, given that exhaustion had led to physical decline — a question which, he says, has already been explored by others. Suetonius also records the view that Caesar felt safer after the senators had sworn to protect him, and therefore made the mistake — which made possible his murder — of dismissing his bodygu…
The Rise of a Party Leader
Caesar became a senator in 68 bc, finally asserting himself as a leader. From this point he formulated his own policies and commanded attention in ‘high’ politics. Throughout this ‘march’ — in which he and Crassus were often side by side — he never lost sight of Pompey, the real master of Roman politics in those years. In 67 bc he supported the Lex Gabinia, by which Pompey was granted command in the struggle against the pirates. In 66 bc, with Ci…
The Conquest of Gaul (58–51 bc)
When he departed for Gaul in the spring of 58 bc, Caesar had a clear idea of the movements of the peoples and their tensions; in particular, the German pressure on Gaul. He conceived a long-term strategic plan using up-to-date ethnographic knowledge to which he himself contributed with his Commentaries. This is but one example of the way he combined scientific study with imperialism. The Gallic campaign was conducted on two levels: Caesar's own f…
‘Anticato’
With Cato dead at Utica, laudationes of the republican martyr and model Stoic followed one upon another. It was Cicero, with his innate imprudence, who inaugurated the series of posthumous commemorations whose political significance as ‘opposition’ is plain. At the request of Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar's favourite, but Cato's nephew and admirer, Cicero began writing a Laus Catonis as early as April 46 bc, as soon as the news reached Rome of Cat…
Towards the Crisis
The most dangerous moment for Caesar in the political crisis that erupted in Rome, while he was occupied with the revolt of Vercingetorix, was the designation of Pompey as ‘consul without colleague’ (consul sine college) at the end of February 52 bc. The destructive and uncontrollable street fighting that led to the assassination of Clodius at Bovillae (18 January 52) was diametrically opposed to Caesar's interests. It was not in his interest to …
The First Consulship (59 bc)
Caesar's first act as consul was to enact a law requiring publication of a written record of the Senate's proceedings, as well as the minutes of proceedings in the popular assemblies (the comitia ). The aim was clearly to step up the external pressure on the Senate. Years later, Augustus repealed Caesar's law on the publication of Senate proceedings. Here Caesar was clearly influenced by the Greek democratic tradition, which was firmly wedded to …
‘Where's Antony?’
The Dynamics of the ‘Tyrannicide’
The evening before the assassination, Caesar was among the guests at supper at the house of Marcus Lepidus, his magister equitum, and the discussion turned to the question: what kind of death would be best? While the rather strange conversation lingered on this question, Caesar, when his turn came to speak, said that he would by far prefer a sudden and unexpected death. The conversation on the eve of the assassination is somewhat enigmatic. There…
Striving after Tyranny?
Suetonius rejected all other explanations, including the one ‘frequently repeated’ by Pompey, that Caesar took the path to revolution because he could not complete what he had undertaken; that is, finish the monuments and public works he had begun and satisfy the expectations he had aroused in the people. If Pompey really did say this it is clear that he understood nothing about his adversary's character. In reality, Pompey's remark was far less …
From Syria to Zela
The Alexandrian war enabled Caesar to add an important element to his clientele: Egypt, which for a long time had been feudally subject to Pompey and his associates. Now, however, all his efforts were directed towards the rearrangement of the eastern clientele, disrupted by the death of Pompey. From Syria to Pontus this was Caesar's priority, despite urgent calls for him to return to Rome, and although he knew that Cato was reassembling the remai…
The Wind
A fragment of Livy, most probably from book 116 (a ‘definitive’ portrait of Caesar following the account of his death), raised a question mark over Caesar's entire career. By citing it Seneca introduced a new angle, which has its own profound poetry — an analogy with the wind: ‘As things are, however, it could be said of winds what was commonly said of Julius Caesar, as reported by Titus Livy; it is uncertain whether it was better for the state t…
An Inconvenient Ally: Clodius
Publius Clodius Pulcher who was born into the patriciate but had become a plebeian — with the authority of Caesar as pontifex maximus — with the sole aim of being elected tribune, was the prototypically unprincipled agitator. His case is a striking illustration of the degeneration of the social struggle in the capital of the empire. He had incited mutiny among Lucullus' troops in the East. Then he had appeared as the accuser of Catiline, but late…
Caesar's Senate Speech Rewritten by Sallust
Catiline, undeterred by this defeat in the consular elections of 63 bc, persevered with his preparations for a coup. The Senate responded by granting the consuls Cicero and Antony full power to defend the city and the peninsula. Catiline fled the city on 8 November 63 bc), leaving Lentulus to win over more supporters. Lentulus, Cethegus, and their accomplices were indicted before the Senate and arrested. In the Senate debate that followed, the fi…
In Flight from Sulla: First Experiences of an Aristocratic Youth
The early life of Caesar may be seen as the story of a young man being hunted, but possessed of an indomitable spirit and a fierce determination to defend the honour of the defeated party of the populares. He incurred the enmity of the dictator Sulla, who sought to eliminate the nephew of Gaius Marius. But Caesar was also the scion of one of the most venerable patrician families, the gens Julia, which boasted a mythical descent from Julus, the so…
The Consequences of the Triumvirate: The View of Asinius Pollio
The causal connection between the triumvirate and the civil war is stated in the opening lines of an ode to Asinius Pollio, in which the sometime republican Horace salutes the birth and development of Asinius' work on the civil war. To Horace, many years after the event, the battle of Philippi remained the moment at which ‘Valour's self was beaten down’ (cum fracta virtus). This view, not unlike that of Cremutius, but clearly set in a poem that v…
Alexandria
When Caesar reached Alexandria on 2 October 48 bc, he certainly did not expect to be greeted by the embalmed head of Pompey, but even less did he expect to be bogged down for all of nine months in a local conflict that almost cost him his life, until 28 June 47 bc, when he finally sailed from Alexandria for Syria. Suetonius writes that in that lengthy period Caesar found himself fighting a war in truth of great difficulty, convenient neither in t…
The Hetairia of Cassius and the Recruitment of Brutus
There is a tradition that pays particular attention to the role of Cassius in the events leading to Caesar's murder. It emerges here and there in the sources and may well provide a valuable element of information. The clearest text is also the most interesting: Plutarch's account of the coup at the beginning of his Life of Brutus, which uses sources very close to the events and the protagonist. Describing the beginning of the conspiracy, Plutarch…
Julius Caesar: The People's Dictator
This book is a splendid profile of an extraordinary man, and a radically new interpretation of one of the most controversial figures in history. Caesar played a leading role in the politics and culture of a world empire, dwarfing his contemporaries in ambition, achievement and appetite. For that, he has occupied a central place in the political imagination of Europe ever since. Yet he remains something of an enigma, struck down by his own lieuten…
The vanished library
The fate of the Great Library of Alexandria weaves in and out of legend and remains the subject of scholarly wrangles to this day
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World
The Library of Alexandria was one of the wonders of the Ancient World, and it has haunted Western culture for over 2000 years. The Ptolemaic kings of Egypt - successors of Alexander the Great - had a staggering ambition: to house all of the books ever written under one roof. The author attempts to explain the vague and contradictory information about the library and especially the fate of its contents. Luciano Canfora is a specialist in ancient l…
Bonaparte libertador
Este ensaio procura analisar as ambigüidades presentes na guerra de libertação conduzida pelos revolucionários franceses nos vários países europeus, seguindo os limites nem sempre claros entre as tentativas de "exportação da revolução" e a realização de uma "guerra de conquista". Considera-se a diferente posição assumida a esse propósito pelos jacobinos e pelos girondinos, e a reação à presença francesa no interior das populações "libertadas" ou …
Lire à Athènes et à Rome
Dans le monde grec l'alphabétisation généralisée est un programme d'utopistes. Dans les îles du Soleil, mystérieuses et très agréables, que Iamboulos, d'après Diodore, aurait visitées à une époque non précisée, la connaissance des signes alphabétiques, de même que la connaissance de l'astrologie, étaient l'objet de la plus grande attention. On avait adopté une écriture artificielle basée sur sept lettres, dont chacune avait quatre emplois différe…
Como entrou e como finalmente saiu de cena a democracia grega
os restos do Parlamento") -isto é, o que sobrou do Longo Parlamento após a "mutilação" (prisão dos noventa deputados da ala intransigente presbiteriana) infligida pela "Purga de Pride" (6 de dezembro de 1648) -sancionou esse princípio, que pode ser considerado o ponto de chegada e, ao mesmo tempo, a formulação mais avançada que a primeira Revolução inglesa produziu
Altri manoscritti Gulianei
Internazionalismo antico
La Préface de Thucydide et la critique de la raison historique
A la question: comment est-ce que je concois un fait historique, T. a repondu: en le comparant, en termes de grandeur, a d'autres faits
Klio Band 60, Heft 2
L'historien Thucydide n'a jamais été exilé
Antiquisants et marxisme: Istituto Gramsci, Analisi marxista e società antiche, a cura di L. Capogrossi, A. Giardina, A. Schiavone
Analogie et Histoire
Thucydide, successeur ecrit Voltaire, borne 'a nous detailler l'histoire de la guerre du Peloponnese. . . . Herodote eut le meme merite qu'Homere; il fut le premier historien Homere le premier poete piquee.' Mais a l'epoque d'Herodote et de Thucydide le mot histoire et ses derives (historia, historien) signifient simplement rechercher. Thucydide evite meme d'utiliser ces mots et generalement se distingue radicalement d'Herodote, dans la mesure ou…
Past and Process in Herodotus and Thucydides
Dans la France des Lumières: Liberté des Anciens, liberté des Modernes (Note critique)
On connaît la valeur activement subversive des auteurs politiques classiques, grecs et romains, à des époques et dans des milieux caractérisés par l'absolutisme. Comme le rappelle Guerci au début de son livre, Hobbes mettait en garde contre ' la lecture des livres politiques et des histoires des auteurs grecs et romains ' qui exercent ' une impression forte et durable ' sur tous ceux qui ' sont privés de l'antidote d'une solide raison '. Par la l…
La véritable histoire de la bibliothèque d'Alexandrie
Aureolee de legende, la bibliotheque d'Alexandrie a reussi a incarner le mythe surreel qui voulait rassembler en un lieu clos les livres du monde entier.Ce fragile monument de la pensee humaine pretendait en symboliser l'immortalite, pourtant ses livres furent consumes par les flammes. Avec brio, Luciano Canfora retrace l'histoire de cette celebre bibliotheque : l'incroyable cachette des textes d'Aristote, la traduction en grec des textes hebreux…
Lire à Athènes et à Rome
Dans le monde grec l'alphabétisation généralisée est un programme d'utopistes. Dans les îles du Soleil, mystérieuses et très agréables, que Iamboulos, d'après Diodore, aurait visitées à une époque non précisée, la connaissance des signes alphabétiques, de même que la connaissance de l'astrologie, étaient l'objet de la plus grande attention. On avait adopté une écriture artificielle basée sur sept lettres, dont chacune avait quatre emplois différe…
I Trattati nel mondo antico: Forma, ideologia, funzione
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World
The Library of Alexandria was one of the wonders of the Ancient World, and it has haunted Western culture for over 2000 years. The Ptolemaic kings of Egypt - successors of Alexander the Great - had a staggering ambition: to house all of the books ever written under one roof. The author attempts to explain the vague and contradictory information about the library and especially the fate of its contents. Luciano Canfora is a specialist in ancient l…
I trattati nel mondo antico: Forma, ideologia, funzione
Le leurre de la nouvelle Italie
The Theme of the Universal Library in the Arabic Tradition
The Letter of Aristeas, a text written in Greek by a Jewish author of the Alexandrian diaspora, probably in the second century b.c., traces the circumstances under which a Greek translation of the sacred book of the Jews, the Pentateuch, was commissioned by King Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The letter situates this undertaking in the broader context of the foundation of the Library of Alexandria on the advice of Demetrius of Phalerum, who instigated …
The vanished library
The fate of the Great Library of Alexandria weaves in and out of legend and remains the subject of scholarly wrangles to this day
From the Quest for the Archetype to the History of Texts. A Short Note on the French Critical Style
It is not possible to settle on a method of classifying manuscripts in the abstract; the lost works whose content is being reconstructed can be dated more or less precisely and the classification only acquires significance if it is accompanied by the history of the text. Then many apparent anomalies of tradition automatically disappear [...]. In several of his articles Paul Maas has helped to clarify the notion of Byzantine conjecture; it would h…
Confins. Les Colonnes d’Hercule de la Sicile à Gibraltar » , par Luciano Canfora, philologue, historien, helléniste à l’Université de Bari
Limits: The Pillars of Hercules from Sicily to Gibraltar
Democracy in Europe: A History of an Ideology
Biographical Obscurities and Problems of Composition
The opening words of Thucydides' work offer a clue as to the year of his birth. At the beginning of the introduction, refers to himself simply as Thucydides the Athenian. A well-known passage mentions his father's name as being Oloros, while his mother's name, Hegesipyle, comes down to us from ancient biographical tradition. As for Pausanias, Pittakys supposed that the periēgētes had actually seen two different statues: one of Oinobius and the ot…
Thucydides in Rome and Late Antiquity
The earliest reference we have to a Roman knowing Thucydides' work is in connection with Cato the Elder (234-149 BC), who, according to Plutarch, developed an interest in Greek culture. Plutarch (Cat. Ma. 2.5) speaks of two Greek authors whom Cato drew upon during this late acquaintance with Greek literature, Thucydides and Demosthenes. The collection of Greek historical works found in the King's library at Pella would certainly have included Thu…
Democracy in Europe: A history of an ideology
Prologue. 1. A constitution imbued with Hellenism: Greece, Europe, and the West. 2. The beginning: democracy in ancient Greece. 3. How Greek democracy came back into play, and finally left the stage. 4. Liberalism's first victory. 5. Universal suffrage: act one. 6. Universal suffrage: act two. 7. Trouble for the old mole. 8. Europe on the march. 9. From the slaughter of the Communards to the sacred unions. 10. The Third Republic. 11. The second f…
Como entrou e como finalmente saiu de cena a democracia grega
os restos do Parlamento") -isto é, o que sobrou do Longo Parlamento após a "mutilação" (prisão dos noventa deputados da ala intransigente presbiteriana) infligida pela "Purga de Pride" (6 de dezembro de 1648) -sancionou esse princípio, que pode ser considerado o ponto de chegada e, ao mesmo tempo, a formulação mais avançada que a primeira Revolução inglesa produziu
Classical Antiquity Studies (41 works) · History (30 works) · Art (27 works) · Political science (22 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Ancient history (12 works) · Classics (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Humanities (9 works)