Glen W. Bowersock

This article presents three of Arnaldo Momigliano's letters in the author's possession. All concern Momigliano's responses to criticism, and taken together they show his openness to criticism candidly offered within the context of friendly relations. They also reveal his impatience with indirect, insensitive, or ill informed criticism, as well as certain problems that arose from incomprehension (as in the case of Ronald Syme). The first letter was addressed to the author, the second to Professor Christopher Jones (now at Harvard, formerly at Toronto), and the third to Professor Sir Fergus Millar (Oxford). Jones entrusted the second letter for publication, and a copy of the third was given to the author by Momigliano himself.

Interview of G.W. Bowersock (1936- ), Professor in the School of Historical Studies, 1980-.

The Alexandrian mob that murdered Hypatia, the neo-Platonist mathematician, in 415 came from a charitable group called parabakni, consisting of poor but healthy Christians recruited under the authority of the patriarch for the purpose of caring for the sick. After a review of the emergence of hospital care in late antiquity as well as legislation in the Theodosian code from 416 and 418 restricting the number and activities ofxheparabakni, they are shown, by reference to a passage in Eusebius' Theophany, to be called more correctly parabokni, whose willingness to run risks in charitable work evokes the better known philoponoi. As Christians they could sometimes act violently as agents of the patriarch.

This chapter explores the extraordinary power of philosophy in the 2nd century, when Roman emperors had stopped sneering at philosophy, and intellectuals were high fashion. Philostratus labelled this period the Second Sophistic, because, as in Athens at the time of Socrates, intellectuals who could give a good performance were admired and highly paid. The chapter traces the changing reception in modern scholarship of this ‘performance philosophy’ and its startling reversals. Philosophers who were (on principle) shabby and hairy had makeovers and presented themselves as the media stars they were, so that nobody knew what an intellectual looked like any more. Philosophers seek knowledge, sophists boldly claim to have it: but now a philosopher with sufficient rhetorical brilliance might achieve the status of sophist. Philosophy brought worldly success.