Author Description

If the word culture comes from the Latin word cultura, the concept itself, which means general knowledge acquired through schools, books and cultural institutions, is related, in the Roman world of the first centuries A.D., to Greek paideia. As for paideia, which was then restricted to social elites, it covered literary education formulated and conveyed by sophists and grammarians in the time of the Roman Empire, as well as other forms of Greek culture like music, philosophy and sports. This book focuses on cultural mediators, first of all professors who instill knowledge and who are here examined from various points of view, like social and cultural status, teaching practices or ambivalent representations. Nevertheless, transmission of knowledge exceeds the environment of school: it is performed through literary and intellectual productions, especially in the case of specialized disciplines or when a Roman writer gives an interpretation of a Greek knowledge in order to create and propose his own world views. The present collection of essays investigates a geographical and chronological territory extending from Italy to the Eastern Roman Empire from the 1st to the 4th century A.D. It examines the circulation of Greek culture between Greece and Rome through Egypt, Asia Minor and Pontus Euxinus, a culture whose epicentre is paideia.