Description
Book SynopsisWho or what makes innovation spread? Ten case-studies from Greco-Roman Antiquity and the early modern period address human and non-human agency in innovation. Was Erasmus the ‘superspreader’ of the use of New Ancient Greek? How did a special type of clamp contribute to architectural innovation in Delphi? What agents helped diffuse a new festival culture in the eastern parts of the Roman empire? How did a context of status competition between scholars and poets at the Ptolemaic court help deify a lock of hair? Examples from different societal domains illuminate different types of agency in historical innovation.
Table of ContentsPreface Figures and Table List of Contributors General Introduction: Agents of Change Silvia Castelli 1 Mosquitoes, Molecules, and Megafauna: Who and What Has Agency in Human History J.R. McNeill 2 Builders, Architects, and the Power of Context: Agents of Architectural Change in Fourth-Century-bce Epidaurus and Delphi Jean Vanden Broeck-Parant 3 Agents of Change around the Valley of the Muses Robin van Vliet and Onno van Nijf 4 Callimachus vs. Conon: Competing Agents of Change for the Lock of Berenice Brett Evans 5 Anonymizing Agents of Change in Philosophical Pseudepigraphy: The Case of Pseudo-Plato, De virtute Albert Joosse 6 Cicero and Political Agency in Late-Republican Rome Merlijn Breunesse and Lidewij Van Gils 7 Primus Juvencus and Other Agents of Change in the Rise of Christian Latin Poetry Roald Dijkstra 8 John Cassian as an Agent of Change Nienke Vos 9 Greek-Latin Translation at the Court of Pope Nicholas V (r. 1447–1455): The Agents That Changed the Humanist Translation Movement Annet den Haan 10 Erasmus, an Unsuspected Superspreader of New Ancient Greek? Raf Van Rooy Index
