Yelena Baraz
Biographic Data
| ID | 5633865 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yelena Baraz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yelena |
| FAMILY NAME | Baraz |
| SIGNATURE | BARAZ Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 41 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Precarity of Friendship in Times of Crisis
This chapter considers the intense negotiations around the meaning of friendship, or rather the Latin concept of amicitia , Essential discussions of amicitia in Roman society are Brunt 1988, Konstan 1997, Williams 2012. In connection with Amic ., see also Götter 1996, Habinek 1990 on candor. Verboven 2011 provides an excellent overview, including a concise history of scholarship on the subject. I use the two terms somewhat interchangeably in this…
The Errant Flock
Lucan's Cicero
This paper proposes a new synthetic account of the presence of Cicero as both character and source in Lucan's Bellum Ciuile . Lucan's treatment is derived primarily from Virgil's technique for creating intertextually complex characters, but further builds on Sallust's displacement of Cicero in his narrative of the Catilinarian conspiracy and on the declamatory practice of reducing the orator to a few prominent and recognizable traits. Cicero the …
The Bitter Medicine of History
This chapter investigates how Seneca the Elder negotiates the generic position of declamation in his Controversiae and Suasoriae . It argues that his practice shows a perception of close generic affinity between declamation and poetry, and focuses on his attempt to force his readers into a closer engagement with historiography. In the course of critiquing declamations, Seneca not infrequently offers as extra-declamatory comparanda examples from p…
Reading Roman Pride
Pride is pervasive in Roman texts, as an emotion and a political and social concept implicated in ideas of power. This study examines the Roman discourse of pride from two distinct complementary perspectives. The first is based on scripts, mini-stories told to illustrate what pride is, how it arises and develops, and where it fits within the Roman emotional landscape. The second is semantic, and draws attention to differences between terms within…
Discourse of Kingship in Late Republican Invective
This chapter examines the anti-monarchical discourse that was indigenous to Rome since the expulsion of the kings. Through a study of the lexicographic range of the words rex (king) and regnum (kingship), it parses the accusations of ‘regal aspirations’ abounding in political writings of the late Republic. Although associated with the last Roman king, the ‘tyrannical’ Tarquin, these terms were not indicative of constitutional positions. Rather, i…
Sound and Silence in Calpurnius Siculus
This article examines the rupture of pastoral exchange between human music and natural sound, familiar from Theocritus and Vergil, as well as the later Western pastoral, in the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus. Calpurnius’ focus on nature as obstructive, and on the importance of silence to composition of song, is a distinctive feature of his pastoral poetics that builds on moments of discord between man and nature in Vergil’s Eclogues . The appeara…
True Greatness of Soul in Seneca’s De constantia sapientis
This chapter examines the quality of magnanimitas or magnitudo animi fundamental to Seneca's conceptualization of the sapiens in De constantia sapientis. Seneca constructs the concept of greatness of soul in opposition to traditional Roman ways of conceiving greatness; the evaluative structure of the conventional social hierarchy is displaced through Seneca's assertion of a virtue-based hierarchy in which the sapiens is located at its summit. In …
Philosophy after Caesar
This chapter examines the transformation in Cicero’s philosophical project following the change in his political circumstances after the death of Julius Caesar. It begins with a reading of the preface to book two of De Divinatione , Cicero’s first public reflection on the state of the project at the time of Caesar’s death. It then considers the treatises that followed, arguing for a gradually evolving new direction, along with the trajectory in C…
Reading a Ciceronian Preface
This chapter examines the preface as an interactive process, a journey during which the author strives to win over the reader so as to obtain a favorable reception for his text before the reader actually encounters the body of the work. It considers the importance of Cicero’s insertion of his project into the social institution of amicitia and the way in which texts associated with circles of amicitia establish relations between an author and his…
The Gift of Philosophy
This chapter examines Cicero’s claims about the political content of his philosophical writings and their potential benefit to the future of the state. Drawing on two of his treatises, the preface to book one of Tusculan Disputations and the preface to book one of De Finibus , the chapter considers what Cicero repeatedly identifies as his project’s major contribution: the act of translating philosophy from the Greek and making it accessible in La…
On a More Personal Note
This chapter examines the reasons for Cicero’s project that he sets forth, paratactically, in the prefaces by focusing on the references to philosophy, writing, and intellectual life that are found in his letters. It first considers Cicero’s belief in the ability of philosophy to influence and improve people’s characters and actions—a belief implicit in the politically motivated goals that he cites in the prefaces. It then explores how Cicero con…
Otiose Otium
This chapter examines Cicero’s struggles with Roman anxieties about philosophy and situates them within a broader contemporary discourse that tries to expand the field of acceptable activity to include the intellectual. The discussion draws on the prefaces to Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum and the preface to the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium , along with the criticisms that Cicero claims are leveled against his project. The …
A Written Republic
A Written Republic
In the 40s BCE, during his forced retirement from politics under Julius Caesar’s dictatorship, Cicero turned to philosophy, producing a massive and important body of work. As he was acutely aware, this was an unusual undertaking for a Roman statesman because Romans were often hostile to philosophy, perceiving it as foreign and incompatible with fulfilling one’s duty as a citizen. How, then, are we to understand Cicero’s decision to pursue philoso…
Euripides’ Corinthian Princess in the Aeneid
A Written Republic
In the 40s BCE, during his forced retirement from politics under Julius Caesar’s dictatorship, Cicero turned to philosophy, producing a massive and important body of work. As he was acutely aware, this was an unusual undertaking for a Roman statesman because Romans were often hostile to philosophy, perceiving it as foreign and incompatible with fulfilling one’s duty as a citizen. How, then, are we to understand Cicero’s decision to pursue philoso…
Euripides’ Corinthian Princess in the Aeneid
Discourse of Kingship in Late Republican Invective
This chapter examines the anti-monarchical discourse that was indigenous to Rome since the expulsion of the kings. Through a study of the lexicographic range of the words rex (king) and regnum (kingship), it parses the accusations of ‘regal aspirations’ abounding in political writings of the late Republic. Although associated with the last Roman king, the ‘tyrannical’ Tarquin, these terms were not indicative of constitutional positions. Rather, i…
Euripides’ Corinthian Princess in the Aeneid
Philosophy after Caesar
This chapter examines the transformation in Cicero’s philosophical project following the change in his political circumstances after the death of Julius Caesar. It begins with a reading of the preface to book two of De Divinatione , Cicero’s first public reflection on the state of the project at the time of Caesar’s death. It then considers the treatises that followed, arguing for a gradually evolving new direction, along with the trajectory in C…
Reading a Ciceronian Preface
This chapter examines the preface as an interactive process, a journey during which the author strives to win over the reader so as to obtain a favorable reception for his text before the reader actually encounters the body of the work. It considers the importance of Cicero’s insertion of his project into the social institution of amicitia and the way in which texts associated with circles of amicitia establish relations between an author and his…
The Gift of Philosophy
This chapter examines Cicero’s claims about the political content of his philosophical writings and their potential benefit to the future of the state. Drawing on two of his treatises, the preface to book one of Tusculan Disputations and the preface to book one of De Finibus , the chapter considers what Cicero repeatedly identifies as his project’s major contribution: the act of translating philosophy from the Greek and making it accessible in La…
On a More Personal Note
This chapter examines the reasons for Cicero’s project that he sets forth, paratactically, in the prefaces by focusing on the references to philosophy, writing, and intellectual life that are found in his letters. It first considers Cicero’s belief in the ability of philosophy to influence and improve people’s characters and actions—a belief implicit in the politically motivated goals that he cites in the prefaces. It then explores how Cicero con…
Otiose Otium
This chapter examines Cicero’s struggles with Roman anxieties about philosophy and situates them within a broader contemporary discourse that tries to expand the field of acceptable activity to include the intellectual. The discussion draws on the prefaces to Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum and the preface to the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium , along with the criticisms that Cicero claims are leveled against his project. The …
A Written Republic
A Written Republic
In the 40s BCE, during his forced retirement from politics under Julius Caesar’s dictatorship, Cicero turned to philosophy, producing a massive and important body of work. As he was acutely aware, this was an unusual undertaking for a Roman statesman because Romans were often hostile to philosophy, perceiving it as foreign and incompatible with fulfilling one’s duty as a citizen. How, then, are we to understand Cicero’s decision to pursue philoso…
Sound and Silence in Calpurnius Siculus
This article examines the rupture of pastoral exchange between human music and natural sound, familiar from Theocritus and Vergil, as well as the later Western pastoral, in the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus. Calpurnius’ focus on nature as obstructive, and on the importance of silence to composition of song, is a distinctive feature of his pastoral poetics that builds on moments of discord between man and nature in Vergil’s Eclogues . The appeara…
True Greatness of Soul in Seneca’s De constantia sapientis
This chapter examines the quality of magnanimitas or magnitudo animi fundamental to Seneca's conceptualization of the sapiens in De constantia sapientis. Seneca constructs the concept of greatness of soul in opposition to traditional Roman ways of conceiving greatness; the evaluative structure of the conventional social hierarchy is displaced through Seneca's assertion of a virtue-based hierarchy in which the sapiens is located at its summit. In …
Discourse of Kingship in Late Republican Invective
This chapter examines the anti-monarchical discourse that was indigenous to Rome since the expulsion of the kings. Through a study of the lexicographic range of the words rex (king) and regnum (kingship), it parses the accusations of ‘regal aspirations’ abounding in political writings of the late Republic. Although associated with the last Roman king, the ‘tyrannical’ Tarquin, these terms were not indicative of constitutional positions. Rather, i…
The Bitter Medicine of History
This chapter investigates how Seneca the Elder negotiates the generic position of declamation in his Controversiae and Suasoriae . It argues that his practice shows a perception of close generic affinity between declamation and poetry, and focuses on his attempt to force his readers into a closer engagement with historiography. In the course of critiquing declamations, Seneca not infrequently offers as extra-declamatory comparanda examples from p…
Reading Roman Pride
Pride is pervasive in Roman texts, as an emotion and a political and social concept implicated in ideas of power. This study examines the Roman discourse of pride from two distinct complementary perspectives. The first is based on scripts, mini-stories told to illustrate what pride is, how it arises and develops, and where it fits within the Roman emotional landscape. The second is semantic, and draws attention to differences between terms within…
Lucan's Cicero
This paper proposes a new synthetic account of the presence of Cicero as both character and source in Lucan's Bellum Ciuile . Lucan's treatment is derived primarily from Virgil's technique for creating intertextually complex characters, but further builds on Sallust's displacement of Cicero in his narrative of the Catilinarian conspiracy and on the declamatory practice of reducing the orator to a few prominent and recognizable traits. Cicero the …
The Errant Flock
Precarity of Friendship in Times of Crisis
This chapter considers the intense negotiations around the meaning of friendship, or rather the Latin concept of amicitia , Essential discussions of amicitia in Roman society are Brunt 1988, Konstan 1997, Williams 2012. In connection with Amic ., see also Götter 1996, Habinek 1990 on candor. Verboven 2011 provides an excellent overview, including a concise history of scholarship on the subject. I use the two terms somewhat interchangeably in this…
Classical Antiquity Studies (14 works) · Art (13 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Literature (9 works) · Cicero (8 works) · Classics (8 works) · History (8 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works)