Robert Lamberton 
Homer the Theologian 
Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition

Here is the first survey of the surviving evidence for the growth, development, and influence of the Neoplatonist allegorical reading of the
Iliad and
Odyssey. Professor Lamberton argues that this tradition of reading was to create new demands on subsequent epic and thereby alter permanently the nature of European epic. The Neoplatonist reading was to be decisive in the birth of allegorical epic in late antiquity and forms the background for the next major extension of the epic tradition found in Dante.

Table of Content

I. Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity

by Sabine G. Mac Cormack

II. Synesius of Cyrene: Philosopher-Bishop

by Jay Bregman

III. Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity

by Kenneth G. Holum

IV. John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century

by Robert L. Wilken

V. Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man

by Patricia Cox

VI. Pachomius: The Making of a Community In Fourth-Century Egypt

by Philip Rousseau

VII. Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

by A. P. Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein

VIII. Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul

by Raymond Van Dam

IX. Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition

by Robert Lamberton

X. Procopius and the Sixth Century

by Averil Cameron

XI. Guardians of the Language:The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity

by R. A. Kaster

About the author

Robert Lamberton is Assistant Professor of Classics at Princeton University.