Overview of all already published volumes of SAPERE
The Book of Jesus Sirach represents a vast synthesis of the wisdom, cultic, prophetic, legal and historiographical traditions of ancient Israel and early Judaism.
The present volume offers an edition, updated English translation of, introduction to, and seven multi-authored contributions on Galen’s small tract That the Best Doctor is also a Philosopher.
Lucian's essay "On Mourning" takes up ethical and religious questions that have been important to people at all times: How should a person deal with the pain when a close person is taken away from them through death?
The philosopher Salustios, inspired by Neoplatonism, outlines doctrines "about the gods, the world and human affairs".
Julian (331/32-363) was the only Roman emperor to turn from Christianity back to the old religion and tried to reverse the Constantinian turn. To do this, he also relied more on the imperial Roman tradition of sun worship.
Emperor Julian's invective "Against the Cynic Herakleios" offers a good insight not only into Julian's active participation in the philosophical-religious debates of his time, but also into the self-image and sense of mission of its author.
As a scholarly dialogue translated from the Greek, the Latin Asclepius is an important textual witness to Hermetism.
The text Miqṣat Ma῾aśe Ha-Torah, Some of the Works of the Torah (4QMMT), is one of the most interesting writings among the famous Dead Sea texts.
Philon's biography of Abraham is a promotional writing for Judaism - written in a political context in which Jews had to fight for their rights.
This volume offers a complete new translation and commentary of Plutarch of Chaironeia's Political Counsels ( Praecepta gerendae rei publicae).
The writing On Happiness: The Life of Proclus, written by the Neoplatonic philosopher Marinos, is a remarkable text of the late 5th century AD.
In the Lucianic Conversations with the Gods, the traditional Greek world of the gods is subjected to a decidedly ironic-satirical illumination.
The enigmatic Homeric description of a grotto of nymphs leads Porphyrios to a fascinating interpretation in which the ways of the soul in the cosmos are fathomed, questions about its immortality answered.
The 5th lecture of Maximos of Tyros asks philosophically about the sense and nonsense of praying. Can praying be justified? And what does the respective understanding of prayer say about the concept of God?
Philons Schrift De Migratione Abrahami ist ein allegorischer Kommentar zu Gen 12. Der Auszug Abrahams aus seiner chaldäischen Heimat wird von Philon allegorisch auf den Auszug der Seele aus der Sinnenwelt und ihre Rückkehr zu Gott gedeutet.
In the middle decades of the second century AD, the acclaimed orator Aelius Aristides wrote a number (eight in all) of prose hymns to traditional Greek gods.
Tatian's "Speech to the Greeks", written after the middle of the 2nd century AD, is the eloquent and vehement attack of an educated Christian.
The Sapientia Salomonis (Wisdom of Solomon) has been handed down in the Christian Bible since antiquity as part of the Old Testament.
In antiquity and the Middle Ages, collections of sayings (gnomes/entences) were a popular form of everyday literature. As texts, they did not have a high literary claim.
Pyrrhonian skepticism has gradually gained a stellar reputation. Rather than being dismissed as extremist and evidently implausible, as it often was in the past, it is now recognized as a philosophically sophisticated outlook.
Synesius' essay De insomniis ('On Dreams') inquires into the meaning and importance of dreams for human beings and treats themes.
The treatise De mundo offers a cosmology in the Peripatetic tradition which subordinates what happens in the cosmos to the might of an omnipotent god.
The Diatribe IV 1 peri eleutherias is one of the densest (and at the same time one of the longer) conversations of Epictetus (around 100 AD) that the historian Arrian has handed down to us.
Synesius of Cyrene (ca. 370 -413 AD) may be regarded as a representative of the late antique Greek upper class in the Imperium Romanum.
The dialogue Axiochos, which has been handed down under Plato's name, deals with the timeless question of whether one should be afraid of death. Socrates tries to free his terminally ill interlocutor Axiochos from his fear of death through various philosophical arguments.
The volume edited by Gustav Adolf Lehmann contains a complete translation and commentary of the Euboean speech of Dion of Prusa.
This volume presents the first German translation of a text in which the important late antique orator Libanios of Antiocheia addresses the Roman Emperor Theodosius.
Synesius of Cyrene (c. 370-413 CE) is a personality with many facets: landowner and family father, philosopher and hymn writer.
Plutarch’s dialogue On the daimonion of Socrates is a unique combination of exciting historical romance and serious philosophical and religious discussion.
The story of Joseph and Aseneth is a love story and a conversion story in one. It tells of the proud Egyptian priest's daughter Aseneth, her love for Joseph, the son of Jacob, her conversion and preservation.
Lucius Annaeus Cornutus came from Leptis Magna in Libya and lived as a Stoic philosopher in Rome at the time of Emperor Nero.
The volume presents some lecture texts (or. 54, 55, 70, 71 and 72) of the orator and philosopher Dion of Prusa (c. 40 - after 111 AD) - also called Chrysostomos ("Goldmund") - which have never been annotated in detail before.
Rufus of Ephesus’ treatise On Melancholy represents perhaps the most influential medical monograph from the late first century AD, since his notion of melancholy links two diverse aspects.
Mit einem Expertenteam unter Führung eines Fachmanns für diesen Text werden die 14 kurzen Briefe dieses Briefwechsel mit Übersetzung vorgelegt und interpretiert.
The subject of this entertaining writing is a conversation about the nature of love (Eros) that is said to have once taken place between the newlywed Plutarch and some friends.
In 167 AD, in Olympia, the wandering philosopher Peregrinos, who called himself Proteus, committed suicide by publicly burning himself at the end of the Olympic Games.
An enigmatic image on a dedicatory tablet in the sanctuary of Kronos leads the participants in this dialogue to central questions in the search for personal happiness.
The writing of the rhetor and Platonic philosopher Apuleius of Madaura (North Africa, 2nd century AD) is a doctrinal lecture given in public.
Based on an autobiographical description of the city of Olbia, the speech develops Platonic and Stoic ideas of good human community.
On Magic is the only surviving court speech of the imperial period. Apuleius defends himself against the charge of love magic and shows himself to be an all-round educated philosopher and connoisseur of magical practices.
With his Vita Pythagorica, the philosopher Jamblich drafts a Neoplatonic doctrine of salvation, which was also intended as a rival to Christianity, which had already become very strong in his time.
Following Lucian's collection of stories of miracles and hauntings, the essays discuss Lucian's place in the history of ancient philosophy and his relationship to magic.
This is a reflection on the shaping of human concepts of God in the face of Zeus of Olympia with far-reaching literary and art-theoretical implications.
The text offers an examination of the Platonist Plutarch with the Epicurean ideal of life.
Volumes in progress
Justin's dialogue with the Jew Tryphon is the first literary dialogue between a Christian and a Jew that has come down to us and is therefore an extremely important source for religious and intellectual history.
Alexander, a Platonist of the 4th century AD from the Upper Egyptian city of Lyconpolis, intended to refute the message of the "Apostle of Light" successfully spread by Manichaean Christians among the pagan educated of his environment.