Vittorio Berti: Holy monks and Dead Bodies in East Syriac literature of Northern Iraq

In Late Antique Syriac Christianity two major teachings competed for explain the fundamental structure of the human nature. The more common doctrine, meanly spread among scholastic circles, consisted in a dichotomist model stating the entelechial relation of soul and body, according to a mixture between the Aristotelian leanings of the Antiochian tradition and the theoretical speculations on the syriac belief about the sleep of the soul after death. An alternative perspective, notably prevalent in the monastic milieu, sustained a tripartite model: the man as a composed of body, soul and intellect, as taught by the ascetic spirituality of Evagrius of Pontus, and its platonizing penchant. The two systems were often dialoguing in the tradition, shaping original synthesis on the representation of the death, speculation on the location of the souls, their relation with God, their memory of the past and their knowledge of the present. According to this perspective, it is revealing the way East Syrian writers treated some hagiographic episodes concerning the interaction between monastic holiness and the death’s sphere. This paper would present and analyse in particular a story concerning the necromantic power of Rabban Hormizd, preserved in his Life, and an episode of the disappearance of the corpse of a holy monk-bishop preserved in the Book of Governors by Thomas of Marga. Whereas in the first episode, theology and hagiography seem to find a shared discourse, the second shows the prevalence of a miraculous solution defending monastic autonomy face the official worship of mortal remains.

Karin Schlapbach: Remembering the Christian Saints, or: The silencing of the holy men

This paper addresses a change in the cultural practice of remembering saints. In the pre-Christian Graeco-Roman world, it was generally the philosopher who could lay claim to the title of holy man, or theios anér. Endowed with special power, often including rhetorical power, the philosopher was a teacher, and while some philosophers did not leave behind any writings, they certainly talked to their fellow human beings to impart their wisdom. The sayings of the philosophers were held in high esteem and transmitted with great care (several portraits of philosophers by Diogenes Laertius and Lucian of Samosata may illustrate this claim). It was believed that the philosopher’s sayings revealed his character, and if his life was in accordance with his teaching, he was a true philosopher.The portrayal of Jesus in theGospelsoverlaps with this tradition of holy men who were commemorated as teachers, and the Sayings of the Desert Fathersare influenced by it. By contrast, the Livesof Christian saints greatly diminish the role of the saint’s sayings. While the Ur-Life, Athanasius’ Life of Antony, still dedicates over twenty-five chapters to his direct discourse, this aspect becomes more marginal as the new genre develops. Judging from the majority of late antique Latin Lives, Christian saints are not talkative; for them, eloquence is not a virtue. This paper addresses the change in commemorating holy men via a case study, by examining the sparse direct discourse in the Life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus.

Christa Gray: Saints and lovers: the protagonist's close relationships in Jerome's Vitae Sanctorum

One major difference between Athanasius' Life of Antony and Jerome's three Vitae Sanctorum is that Antony is generally depicted as a solitary hero, whereas Jerome's protagonists all have close emotional relationships with other characters (Paul and Antony in the Life of Paul; Malchus and the unnamed woman in the Captive Monk; Hilarion and Antony, followed by Hilarion and Hesychius, in the Life of Hilarion). These relationships have been pointed out and analysed by Virginia Burrus in an article which now forms the first chapter of her Sex Lives of Saints (first published 2004). Building on Burrus' stimulating observations, I propose to investigate this pattern further in terms of the Lives' literary relationships with existing texts. Comparison with biblical and 'secular' models suggests that Jerome styles these relationships on a variety of models (see e.g. the recent article by Susan L. Haskins and Jacobus B Kritzinger, "Naming the nameless woman of Jerome's Vita Malchi", HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 74: 3 (2018)), and that these models give a further indication of the author's indebtedness to a variety of cultural contexts, besides his stylistic and linguistic dependencies.

Robert Volk: The Greek Lives of St John Damascene - common information, differences, historical value.

The Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (BHG) altogether lists 18 bio-hagiographical texts on St John Damascene in three different locations within the this reference book. Four of these 18 texts are still not edited or printed at all, namely BHG 885h, 885k, 885m, and 1076q. Seven of them need a new critical edition (BHG 394, 395, 884, 884a, 885, 885b, 885c). This edition work now is well underway. Based on this work, one finds that the numbers of the BHG are not allocated on the basis of internal details; they don’t inform us to which group a text belongs. Two groups of longer texts are extant: In the first (represented by BHG 394, 884a), only one person called Cosmas appears. In the second group (represented by BHG 885b, 884, 394a, 395, 885), two persons called Cosmas appear. The two persons called Cosmas are found for the first time in the Arabic Life of John, written in 1085, which became the source of BHG 884. The focus of many shorter texts is the miracle of John’s cut off hand cured by the Holy Virgin; in this connection, BHG 885c belongs to the genre of ‘converting the caliph’ texts.

Mihail Mitrea: “Hail, glory of the fathers!” Patristic sources and references in the hagiographical works of Philotheos Kokkinos

A seminal figure of the hesychast movement, Philotheos Kokkinos played a leading role in orchestrating its societal breakthrough, both through his ecclesiastical authority and writings. If a comprehensive analysis of Kokkinos’ theological works is yet to be undertaken, his hagiographical compositions have recently made the subject of thorough and systematic study. The vitae Kokkinos composed for contemporary figures, including his spiritual fathers (Sabas the Younger, Germanos Maroules) and friends and fellow combatants in the hesychast debates (Isidore Boucheir, Gregory Palamas), reflect the ecclesiastical climate and polemics ongoing at the moment of their composition, and are permeated with numerous hesychastic elements. These include extensive visions of the divine and Tabor light, invectives against the anti-hesychasts and (dream) visions which foretell or legitimize their condemnation, as well as excursuses on hesychast theology, with references and allusions to Church Fathers such as Gregory Nazianzen, Maximos the Confessor, and John of Damascus. Moreover, in his saints’ lives, Kokkinos translates hesychast theology into living examples of the hesychastic way of life. He often compares his heroes with patristic figures and even includes Church Fathers as characters in the narrative in order to legitimize the (contested) figures of his heroes and promote hesychast theology. Furthermore, Kokkinos fashions Palamas’ theological works as a synthesis and explanation of patristic theology. This paper will offer a detailed exploration of Kokkinos’ use of the Church Fathers in his vitae in support and for the promotion of hesychast theology, thus contributing to the research on patristic sources in the hesychast debates.

Zeljko Pasa: The Prototype of Holiness and the Ascetic Physiognomyin the Book of Chastity (ktāba d-dakpūtā)

The Book of Chastity (ktāba d-dakpūtā) attributed to Īšōʿdĕnaḥ of Basra, composed in the mid-ninth century (or possibly at the end of the eighth), is a long hagiographical collection. It includes one hundred forty brief lives of famous monastic figures, from the mythical monastic founder Mār Awgēn (Eugenius) to individuals from the eighth century, concluding with Mār Yaʿqūb, prophet and seer.
The Paper examines the presentation of the life of the saints in the Book, which follows typical descriptions of the prototype of holiness and the ascetic physiognomy of Syriac monasticism regarding the nature of asceticism (virginity, poverty, fasting, sleep, dressing, movement, hygiene, and other means of mortification) and the ascetic application of the religious acts (meditation, prayer, and reading).
By reporting some representative lives of saints in their historical context (as testified by other sources) the research aims to restore the didactical intention of the hagiographical description.

Elisabeth Schiffer: Intercessory Prayer and Early Byzantine Hagiography

It is a standard element in the motif-repertoire of martyrdom accounts as well as of saints’ lives, that someone in need for spiritual support approaches a holy man or woman to ask for his or her intercession. In many instances, such a plea evokes a more or less spontaneous prayer said by the saint. We come across these prayers e.g. in the context of healing miracles but also on other occasions. Especially if the respective saint is a member of the clergy, the words that are put into the saint’s mouth by the hagiographer show similarities with prayer texts that are also known from Byzantine prayer book manuscripts from the late eighth century onward.
This paper will trace back such intercessory third-person prayers in early Byzantine hagiographical texts, i.e. in texts that date from the centuries preceding the earliest Euchologia manuscripts that have come down to us. By studying this narrative form of Byzantine literary production, additional evidence for the circulation of prayer texts—beyond their primary way of transmission—will be provided. Moreover, the close reading of hagiographical texts will also contribute to a better understanding of how these prayer texts were embedded in everyday life in the early Byzantine period.

Ernest Marcos Hierro: The Contest of beauty and sainthood: The empress bride as the mirror of perfection

A handful of mostly hagiographical texts from the 9th and 10th centuries (The Lives of St. Philaretos the Merciful, of Empress Theodora, of Empress Theophano and of St. Irene Abbess of Chrysobalanton) provide apparently evidence of the practice of a bride-show at the Byzantine court to choose a new empress. While W. T. Treadgold (1979) affirmed its historicity based on these reports, L. Rydén (1985) denied it and dismissed them as literary fiction. M. Vinson (1999 and 2004) analysed them with good results as rhetorical pieces with narrative content in the context of the traditional logos basilikós in praise of an empress. The aim of my contribution is to resume my previous research on the subject (2001) and to focus on the way in which these texts draw the portrait of the ideal empress bride as the mirror of all human perfections. In accordance with a general literary development in Byzantine medieval age, her virtues are not merely rhetorically praised using traditional topoi such as in the case of Gregory of Nyssa but shown off through narratives in which they provide success to their owner. I intend to prove that, as in the previous cases of the Book of Esther and the story of Emperor Theodosius II and Aelia Eudocia in the Chronicle of John Malalas, the narrative of the bride-show provides an explanation for a marriage between unequal partners because of their different religious beliefs thus portraying the orthodox empress as superior to her heretical and/or unsuitable husband.

Nicola Bergamo: Was Irene truly a Roman Emperor?

Describing the life of a saint is never easy. On the one hand, one may rely too heavily on the hagiography that embellishes his or her actions. On the other, a saint's unique character may be lost in the very efforts undertaken to demystify it. In addition to the challenges so common to contemporary historiography, one might also fail to contextualize past events, thereby providing a modern vision of a society that disappeared centuries ago. The figure of Irene (752-803) is not exempt from this conundrum. My intervention will shed light on some stubbornly obscure points, while trying to avoid, in the process of contextualization, unlikely comparisons with modern society. My paper will focus on the rise to power of Irene who quickly became a perfect court woman when she took over the great imperial bureaucratic machinery shortly after the death of her husband. Additionally, I will address the nearly symbiotic relationship between Irene and her son Constantine especially when he forced her to relinquish the imperial throne despite her continued hold on imperial power, a decision which cost him his life. Once every possible opponent had been eliminated, Irene’s symbolic triumph of power becomes apparent, especially through her dominance and control over the four most powerful men of the Empire at the time of Byzantium's most important festivities. Although coins are the only remaining proof that Irene had proclaimed herself "Basileus", there are many arguments in support of viewing her as, in fact, the first Female Roman Emperor.

Todd French: The Compilatory Impetus: Prefaces and Strategies in Late Antique Hagiographies

The impulse to compile saints’ lives in Late Antiquity is well-attested by the collections of John Moschos, John of Ephesus, Cyril of Scythopolis, Theodoret of Cyrrhos, and Palladios. This paper examines the authorial intent communicated by these authors in their prefaces and literary asides. Drawing on the methodologies of Somerville and Brasington’s 1998 work with the prefaces to canon law books and Patricia Cox Miller’s 1983 text on biography and authorship, this research brings the communicated compilatory strategies of these authors into conversation with each other and their chosen styles, theological influences, and political landscapes. Since most of these compilations dabble in the tropical formulations of their antecedents, this paper will track longitudinally how these authors navigated the prefaces and asides of their works and how their positionality within the framework of authorial intent is imagined. Understanding how these writers conceived of their role as author and compiler, and the influence they had on their successors—some direct, others presumed—enriches the conversation around reception history of late antique compilations. The contours of the authors’ relationships with their compilations offer rich possibilities for interpreting how and why saints’ lives became the vehicle par excellence for communicating and prescribing a range of religious meaning through to the Middle Ages.

Maria Munkholt Christensen: Holy Women as Teachers: Approaching Female Voices in Hagiographical Literature

Several hagiographical texts from Late Antiquity feature female saints that teach, e.g. Macrina, Melania and Syncletica. With a comparative analysis, this paper explores how the women and their voices are presented, and how these women are given authority in different ways, for instance by speaking with words of the Scripture or by speaking against certain biblical interpretations. One example is the teaching of Olympias. In the Life of Olympias from the fifth century, we see that Scripture is the essence of her teaching. Her hagiographer lets Olympias’ voice completely blend with Paul’s as he begins to recount Olympias’ teaching. However, once in the text it is made very explicit that the Scriptures are not always read at face value, but according to a principle that further
ascetic and monastic ways of life. In the third chapter of the Life, Olympias is said to have spoken against reading her own life in the light of a certain Bible-verse, i.e. 1 Timothy 5:14: “I wish young widows to marry [and] run a household”.In the hagiographical discourse, holy women are used
literarily as agents to promote ascetic teachings that rethink exegesis and rhetoric.

Luis Salés: Systems Intelligence, Historiography, and Early Christian Women’s Virtues: A New Method for Examining Identity-Constituting Microbehaviors in Gendered Macrostructures

A range of critical-theoretical analytical tools (e.g., psychoanalytical, feminist, postcolonial) have been fruitfully deployed to illumine the nature of gendered relations in premodern Christian sources. These methods have succeeded in exposing multiple layers of social structures of power that are instituted through normative discourse. Separately, sociologists (e.g., Pierce, Sue, Nadal) have successfully identified nearly imperceptible actions performed contextually by individuals that constitute their identity and determine their future horizon of behavioral possibilities; however, they have remained exclusively interested in “microaggressions,” though I suggest these are part of a more general category of behaviors: microbehaviors. The recent interdisciplinary work of two Finnish scholars (Saarinen, Hämäläinen) on “Systems Intelligence” (SI) furnishes us with a useful concept and methodological apparatus to examine such microbehaviors and their interconnection with communal macrostructures, which are often the object of critical-theoretical analysis. This communication proposes that underexplored dynamics of early Christian gendered relations can be exposed by bridging the first two modes of inquiry through the conceptual and methodological resources of SI. The result is a new historiographical approach to early Christian social relations. This communication argues that a more complex description of early Christian gendered relations can be obtained by applying this new approach to sources that promote microbehavioral normativity for women’s contextual behavior. Thus, we will examine a handful of such instances preserved in Greek, Syriac, and Latin martyrologies and hagiographies in order to texture our knowledge of identity-constituting social forces imposed on women and, conversely, how their microbehavioral resistance could have systemic consequences.

Young Kim: Mediterranean Connectivity in the Vitae of Two Saints of Cyprus

 The fourth-century world imagined in the vitaof Saint Epiphanius is one in which the free movement of people, goods, and ideas—both within and beyond imperial ‘borders’—still very much reflected an interconnected Mediterranean, with the relatively stable structures of empire intact and perhaps even flourishing. Cyprus, which had always been a coveted and ever occupied by various regional powers, was a node of exchange, functioning as a commercial hub, to and from, in every direction. The extent to which the hagiographer(s), writing in the fifth or sixth centuries, could unfold the narrative of Epiphanius’s life in this setting offers hints of Greco-Roman continuity. In the vitaof Saint John the Almsgiver, a Cypriot who became the patriarch of Alexandria in 610, we see yet another imagined world, but one which saw the increasing disruption of the interconnected Mediterranean. And yet the hagiographer, Leontius of Neapolis, could still envisage a world of long-distance exchange, with ships laden with goods and grain moving from Alexandria even as far as Britain. Nevertheless, the pressures of imperial conflict and regional disorder witnessed a flood of refugees, first from Syria and Palestine to Egypt, and then from there to Cyprus, where John ultimately returned, having fled his bishopric. Now, in the seventh century, the island which had once been a center of exchange, has become a refuge, a borderland.

Irene Jacobs: Movement and stability: metaphor as thought in middle Byzantine hagiography

In Byzantine monastic saints’ lives we come across both the ideal of spiritual stability and the reality of physical movement. While on the one hand physical stability, besides spiritual stability, seemed to have been important in Byzantine society in general (eg. emperors are praised for their ‘firmly fixed’ disposition) and normative sources even forbade monks to leave their monastery, the ‘wandering monastic saints’ do not seem to uphold this ideal. They in fact travelled frequently, moving from a monastery to a cave, to a city, to another monastery. This paper deals with conceptualisations of travel in ninth- and tenth-century Byzantine Lives of travelling monks and examines if and how the ideal of stability plays a role in these texts.Taking a cognitive approach, this paper will investigate the potential of studying metaphors to uncover underlying thought patterns regarding movement and stability, both physical and spiritual. By highlighting certain aspects of reality, while hiding others, metaphors have been said to contribute to particular understandings of the world. Figurative language permeates Byzantine hagiography. In the Life of Euthymios the Younger, for example, the saint’s spiritual stability is emphasized by likening him to an ‘unshakable rock’ or a ‘man of steel,’ while sea travel metaphors – eg. temptations as ‘buffeting waves’ and minds experiencing ‘a total shipwreck’ – are equally paramount. The paper aims to show how conceptual metaphor theory as a novel approach to Byzantine hagiography can deepen our understanding not only of the saints’ lives but also of characteristic features of Byzantine society.

Adrian Brandli: A question of belonging: Perpetua and the family of Christ (WS 0175)

The Passion of Perpetua is arguably one of the most imaginative Christian texts that have come down to us from antiquity. It tells the story of a group of Christians who were martyred at Carthage on the occasion of emperor Getha’s birthday in 203. Particularly prominent is the report about 22-year-old Vibia Perpetua, including some kind of a prison diary that seems to feature her own words. In this report, her path from a mere catechumen to a baptized Christian, who was about to undergo the torments of martyrdom, is depicted as the renunciation of her worldly kinship relations in favour of a new kind of family that features Christ as the worthy replacement for the actual father. Interestingly, this change of paradigm does not simply build on a revision of notions of filial obligation (such as pietas) to explain the dissociation with one and the affiliation with another father figure but intertwines Roman moral thought with biblical motifs, thereby producing a unique conflation of two distinct lines of tradition. Starting from these observations, it is the aim of the paper to elucidate Perpetua’s shift from one household model to the other against the backdrop of these traditions. Thus, the analysis of the text will focus on both the moral expectations that were associated with the Roman household and the biblical imagery, which allocated a place in the Christian family to Perpetua.

Matteo Caruso: Hagiographic style of Vita Spyridonis between rhetoric and literary tradition: analogies between Joan Chrysostom's homilies and Theodore's, bishop of Paphos, work

The goal of my speech consists in analyzing rhetorical relationships and influences between the Vita Spyridonis, written by Theodore, bishop of Paphos, and the homilies of Joan Chrysostom.
The idea of studying this issue came to me observing that the final of Theodore's work is similar to the final used by Joan Chrysostom in many homilies. The same final appears in some homilies of Epiphanius of Salamis of Cyprus also. Then I noticed the Chrysostom's homilies thematic influence on Theodore's work especially appears in narrations of social miracles, that regard debts and credits. Theodore's view of poor people and debtors seems to be influenced by Chrysostom's homilies concerning poor and rich people. The contempt of vanity, gold, rich clothes seems to be in both authors. These mutual characteristics lead me to conclude that Theodore in the middle of 7^th century knew Chrysostom's homilies and used them as a stylistic and thematic model to write his work on St Spyridon.
Starting from this relationship, I propose to analyze some homilies of Chrysostom comparing them with the Theodore's work and find others rhetorical characteristics which link the two authors. Finally the purpose of my speech is to underline the grammatical and thematic influence of Chrysostom's works on Vita Spyridonis and consequently on monastic writings and life of Cyprus.

Samuel Noble: A Byzantine Genre in Arab Garb: Encomia to Saints in 10th-11th Century Antioch

The period of Byzantine rule over Northern Syria during the 10th and 11th centuries was a unique moment in the history of Arabic Christian literature.  Closer contact with Constantinople and a stream of refugees arriving in Antioch from the Fatimid conquest of Egypt and Palestine stimulated a uniquely cosmopolitan ecclesial and literary environment where both contemporary and patristic Greek texts were adapted to the cultural and intellectual needs of the local Arabic-speaking population, particularly its lay elites. Two figures that perhaps best exemplify this milieu are the protospatharios Ibrahim ibn Yuhanna (d. ca. 1025) and the deacon Abdallah ibn al-Fadl (d. ca. 1050). Ibrahim ibn Yuhanna, also the author of original hagiographic texts, prefaced his translations of Greek Ephrem and Gregory the Theologian with original encomia on these saints. The prolific translator and philosopher Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, who had studied grammar with the famous Muslim poet Abu ʿAla al-Maʿrri, is known to have translated Greek encomia to Saints Nicholas and Demetrius, to which he appended his own comments and prefaces. This contribution will examine these texts in order to understand how these two writers adapted Byzantine literary forms to their Arabic cultural and linguistic environment in order to express both their Orthodox Christian devotion and Arabic cultural identity.

Todd French: Just Deserts: Origen’s lingering influence on divine justice in the hagiographies of John of Ephesus

The Lives of the Eastern Saints by John of Ephesus has been received as a twilight reminiscence of the Miaphysite community in Syria. This paper challenges that notion through the examination of John’s role as Justinian’s “Converter of Pagans,” and the influence of Origen’s theologies on hagiographical renderings of retributive justice. The paper works at the intersection of contemporary theological influence, imperially-inspired identity making, and Christian sectarian response to developing legal sanctions.

Re-reading John’s narrative mosaic, with attention to the fact that his saints are carefully selected and highly stylized, raises interesting questions: Citing John’s close ties to Justinian, why did John depict his Miaphysite saints as literary heroes? Given the charged nature of Origen’s theology—and prior condemnation—do John’s vignettes play a role in crafting a tradition that defeats restorative theology (apokatastasis)? How do these themes relate to Justinian’s concept of divine justice and why is this exemplified in the lives of John’s Syrian saints?

This paper argues for a nuanced tradition of hagiography that is increasingly political and theological. John infuses his saints with providential power and divine justice, crafting an idealized world of holiness that conflates divine and imperial justice, condemns unfashionable theologies, emphasizes an estranged community’s saints, and is deferential to imperial interests. Whether John’s intentions are realized is up for debate. We can, however, read his work with amplified meaning, supplementing our perspectives on the Syrian holy man and his role in the shaping of later Christian traditions.

Bryan Ward-Perkins: Marginal saints, and disputed saints, in the late antique East and West

To explore the cult of those late antique holy persons whose sanctity was uncertain or denied. Hagiographies usually claimed that their protagonists' saintly status was firmly accepted. But some evidence shows that the process of creating a saint was often not straightforward. There are historiographies which pondered rather than advertised the sanctity of their heroes, calendars unable to establish their identity, and even hagiographies whose apologetic tone implies at least doubts, if not denial. The workshop will explore what types of late antique saints were considered most problematic, how Christians tried to establish criteria of sanctity and determine the saints to be venerated, and what forms of cult were considered appropriate. The answers to these questions are interesting in themselves, and will also help to understand the emergence of specific cults and the development of the very phenomenon of the cult of saints.
Participants in the workshop will be: Bryan Ward-Perkins, exploring moments of uncertainty in the works of Gregory of Tours, particularly his Histories: Marta Tycner, showing how the redactions of the Martyrologium Hieronymianum sought to eliminate doubtful saints, but also managed to produce new ones; Stavroula Konstantinou, examining the uncertainty and debate over the sanctity of the holy women who had dressed and lived as monks; and Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar, analysing the promotion of the exceptional style of sanctity practiced by Symeon the Elder Stylite, and the conflict over control of his leagacy.

Christa Gray: Whose story? Approaching sources and narrators in Jerome's Lives of desert saints

There is currently an emerging interest among scholars in applying sophisticated literary methods to hagiographical writings in order to gain a deeper understanding of the texts and their cultural role. Among these approaches is the use of narratology. I propose to investigate the narrator of Jerome's three Lives, the Vitae Pauli, Malchi, and Hilarionis, through an analysis of the narrator's attitudes and emotions, both those expressed in the narrator's own voice and those implicit in the narrative structures of the texts. I shall also consider the sources from which the narrator claims to have the information recounted in the text, and outlines the ways in which those sources may have been adapted.
In the course of such an analysis it becomes clear that the narrating voices are far from stable and reliable, and that they vary dramatically across the three Lives. Whereas large parts of the Vitae Pauli and Malchi are focalised through the linear experience of a prominent protagonist, Antony and Malchus respectively, the Vita Hilarionis comes closest to a biography in the Plutarchan tradition. The narrator wants to give a full and objective picture of the subject's life. The structure varies between chronological progression and episodic anecdotes which are probably sourced in the main from Hilarion's disciples. This complexity makes it harder to draw a-priori conclusions about the narrator; but here a comparison with the other two Lives allows readers to contextualise individual phrases and statements with regard to their ideological and affective connotations.