This paper will explore the reception of Odysseus’ wanderings in twelfth-century Byzantium. Taking into account the Homeric writings of both Eustathius of Thessaloniki and John Tzetzes, I aim to demonstrate that the association between journey and knowledge was extremely productive in the context of the intellectual debates of the time. More specifically, I will show that the development of this traditional theme allowed the major Byzantine scholars to express their own standpoint on crucial matters such as the definition of philosophy, as well as to elaborate on their conception of Homer and their own activity as Homeric exegetes.

The allegorical exegetic tradition was arguably the most popular form of literary criticism in antiquity. Amongst the ancient allegorists we encounter a variety of names and philosophic backgrounds spanning from Pherecydes of Syros to Proclus the Successor. Many of these writers believed that Homer’s epics revealed philosophical doctrines through the means of hyponoia or ‘undermeanings’. Within this tradition was a focus on cosmological, cosmogonical and theological matters which attracted a variety of commentators despite their philosophical backgrounds. It is the intention of this paper to draw attention to two writers: Heraclitus, and Porphyry of Tyre. This paper also intends to demonstrate that the tradition of cosmic allegorical exegesis is still practiced in modern scholarship.

The theme of the journey has a primary relevance in the first book of Sidonius Apollinaris’ Letters. It represents not only an opportunity of personal growth, but also a way to rediscover the paths that lead to the very bases of Romanitas. In this sense, the peregrinatio shapes the life of travellers: on the way to Rome Sidonius Apollinaris, born in Lyon, really becomes Roman (Sidon.Epist. 1.5); Eutropius, who decides to remain in Gaul, refuses his cultural identity, turning into a peregrinus in his own land (Sidon.Epist. 1.6).

Messene was unusual among ancient poleis. It was one of the few major settlements on the Greek mainland to be founded in the Hellenistic period. Moreover, on account of this, its claim to a culturally authoritative past rooted in the mythic period could not rest on suppositions about the continuity of knowledge handed down through the continuation of civic, cultic, and communal institutions. This chapter examines how Pausanias’ account of Messenia (book four of his Periegesis) approaches this dilemma by making knowledge both an artefact preserved unchanged in texts, and a conceptual possession encountered and attained through travel. It goes on to argue that the interplay between these two forms of knowledge is specifically relevant to this text, since the Periegesis also serves as a fixed, written object, which nonetheless offers opportunities for autonomous exploration and experience to the hodological reader-traveler.

The second part of the Gospel according to Mark (8:22-10:52) is a narration about Jesus and his disciples travelling from the north of the Lake of Galilee to Jerusalem in the south. On the narrated journey, the disciples follow Jesus and he teaches them, but they do not understand his teaching. For the implied audience the story about the incomprehension of the disciples becomes a negative example of how not to react on Jesus’s teaching and the journey itself a macro-metaphor explaining how one should follow Jesus.

To trace paths to knowledge or to follow the journey searching for knowledge is to some extent equivalent to reading a philosophical book. Plato, who perceives this relation between journey and philosophy, writes his dialogues as if each of his works were a journey to knowledge. This paper inquires into the ascent and descent motif that is the symbolic motion of a philosophical journey and appears in Plato’s Politeia repeatedly. By means of this motif, Plato depicts the journey of the soul in several different ways. This examination will show a possible way to read Plato’s dialogue as a philosophical journey. This journey is undertaken by Plato or the figure Socrates, but at the same time it involves its readers in philosophical inquiries.

In my paper I propose a new interpretation of a notoriously difficult passage from the Pseudo-Hippocratic treatise De victu, which deals with the activities of the soul during sleep. The passage in question has been interpreted by many scholars as a kind of Orphico- Pythagorean journey of the soul, and thus as key evidence for body-soul dualism in De victu. However, as I attempt to demonstrate, the soul does indeed take a journey, but not a Pythagorean one: in my reading of the text, it travels from the periphery deeper inside the body, to a place the author calls the “oikos of the soul”. I argue that this oikos best corresponds to a kind of ‘cognitive center’, located in the chest and/or heart-region. This type of soul-journey points not to a dualist but to a materialist interpretation of De victu’s psychology. Further, I argue that overall the treatise is closer to the materialist psychophysiology of such fifth century Presocratics as Diogenes of Apollonia.

Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Verwendung von Reise-Metaphern von drei frühgriechischen Denkern: Heraklit, Parmenides und Empedokles. Meine Untersuchung hebt die ausdruckstarke, leichtplastische und polyvalente Natur dieses Metaphern-Bereiches sowohl in Bezug auf diversen Autoren, als auch in ein und demselben Text hervor. Im Fokus steht der Zusammenhangzwischen Metapher, Imagi­nation und philosophischer Argumentation, besonders wenn ein neuer metaphorischer Stratus in einen schon etablierten Metapher-Bereich eingeführt wird. Schließlich wird auch untersucht, in wie fern ein neuer metaphorischer Stratus, indem dieser neue Kenntnisse und Einsichten strukturiert und organisiert, zum kreativen Denken und zur theoretischen Argumentation beiträgt.

Der Beitrag analysiert den Gebrauch der Reise (einschließlich der verschiedenen Modi von Bewe­gung: Gehen, Segeln, Springen, Fliegen) als Metapher oder Bild für Poesie in Pindars Epinikien. Er schlägt vor, dass bestimmte Probleme der Komposition und Einheit Pindarischer Lieder leichter lösbar erscheinen, wenn man Pindars Metaphern des Liedes als Weg und des Dichters als Reisenden ernst nimmt. Eine Interpretation von Nem. 9 soll dies veranschaulichen; hier wird die Reise vom Ort des Sieges zur Heimat des Siegers zum Instrument, dem Gedicht Einheit zu verleihen. Das Bild vom Gedicht als Weg prägt zudem das Konzept, in dem sich die ‚Materialität‘ Pindarischer Poesie versteht, im Gegensatz zum Konzept des Buches, das die spätere griechische Literatur prägt.

Νόστος ist ein zentrales Element von Homers Odyssee. Das Epos enthält viele νόστοι und die wichtigste ist die νόστος des Odysseus. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert die νόστοι von Helena und Menelaos und wie sie getrennt von ihrer Reise berichten. Ziel ist die bei dieser Reise gewonnenen Erkenntnisse herauszuarbeiten. Im Gesamt­zusammenhang der Odyssee ist μῆτις ein wichtiger Aspekt von νόστος, und deshalb passen Helena, Menelaos und ihre Reise auch in dieses Schema. Ein weiteres Ziel ist, κλέος zu erörtern, das jedem der beiden durch das Berichten des eigenen νόστος zukommt. Ihr jeweiliges Erzählen zeigt, dass sie an denselben Orten waren, ähnliche Begegnungen hatten, beide Erkenntnisse gewonnen haben, sich beide verändert haben und nach Sparta zurückgekehrt sind. Dieser Beitrag weist nach, dass sich Helena und Menelaos auf dieselbe νόστος begeben haben: ein gemeinsamer Weg aber mit je andersartiger μῆτις.

This volume is mainly concerned with two conceptual spheres of experience, the journey and knowledge, and how they interconnect in ancient Greco-Roman representations and texts. It is a collection of papers presented at the International Conference ‘Paths of Knowledge in Antiquity’ that was hosted in Berlin in December 2016. The papers provide case-studies from the Greco-Roman world that exemplify the interconnection between the two conceptual domains from two perspectives. First, focusing on actual journeys and concrete paths aimed at knowledge acquisition, such as literary quest stories, nostoi, training paths, historical voyages, and the like. Second, using metaphorical mapping, in which elements included in the This volume is mainly concerned with two conceptual spheres of experience, the journey and knowledge, and how they interconnect in ancient Greco-Roman representations and texts. It is a collection of papers presented at the International Conference ‘Paths of Knowledge in Antiquity’ that was hosted in Berlin in December 2016. The papers provide case-studies from the Greco-Roman world that exemplify the interconnection between the two conceptual domains from two perspectives. First, focusing on actual journeys and concrete paths aimed at knowledge acquisition, such as literary quest stories, nostoi, training paths, historical voyages, and the like. Second, using metaphorical mapping, in which elements included in the conceptual domain of knowledge are depicted as connected figuratively to the domain of the journey. However, it turns out that these two approaches, despite being useful starting points for textual analysis, are often so deeply intertwined with one another that it is difficult to separate them. Actual journeys often become metaphors for the path towards knowledge acquisition. In turn, journey metaphors are essential for depicting unfamiliar and abstract physical processes and are, therefore, used in theoretical constructions, as it were, literally. Finally, the two directions also divide to reveal a third perspective: the metaphorical path to knowledge becomes the pathway through the text, namely the path on which a reader and author set out upon together. The contributions of this volume clearly show to what extent the macro-theme of the journey is essential for the narrative of knowledge acquisition.

This paper considers Philo of Alexandria’s interpretation of Abraham’s journey from Chaldaea to Palestine, foregrounding Philo’s use of the journey as a metaphor to criticize the Stoic theory of oikeiôsis . The journey is a metaphor that helps Philo to advance his views about self-knowledge as an alternative to this Stoic theory of moral progress. In this implicit polemic, Philo suggests that the Stoic theory guides us in the wrong direction, remains too immanentist, and posits an end state to a process that has no end.