Ancient biography

Ancient biography, bios or bioi (plural), as distinct from modern biography, was a genre of Greek and Roman literature interested in describing the goals, achievements, failures, and character of ancient historical persons and whether or not they should be imitated.[1]

History

The earliest pioneers of ancient biography are found in the 4th century BC, amongst Greek works such as Xenophon's Agesilaus and Memoirs of Socrates,[2] Isocrates' Evagoras, and Aristoxenus' publications.[3] During the 1st century BC to 2nd Century AD, Cornelius Nepos' De Viris Illustribus, Plutarch's Parallel Lives, Suetonius' De Vita Caesarum, Lucian's Demonax and Peregrinus, and Tacitus' Agricola were examples of this development. Also in late antiquity, the Gospel narratives, Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists and Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Porphyry's Life of Pythagoras and Life of Plotinus, and Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.[4]

Subgenres and characteristics

Authors of ancient bios, such as the works of Nepos and Plutarch imitated many of the same sources and techniques of the contemporary historiographies of ancient Greece, notably including the works of Herodotus and Thucydides. There were various forms of ancient biographies, including:[1]

  1. philosophical biographies that brought out the moral character of their subject (such as Diogenes Laertius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers);
  2. literary biographies which discussed the lives of orators and poets (such as Philostratus's Lives of the Sophists);
  3. school and reference biographies that offered a short sketch of someone including their ancestry, major events and accomplishments, and death;
  4. autobiographies, commentaries and memoirs where the subject presents his own life;
  5. historical/political biography focusing on the lives of those active in the military, among other categories.

Most scholars agree ancient biographies were subject to varying degrees of fictionalization.[5][6] Mike Licona describes writing bios as comparable to editing a photograph, as ancient biographers did not hold to modern standards, and Coen de Temmerman compares them to paintings and sculptures; devices include flattery, idealization, inaccuracy, and distortion. While Plutarch did not completely fabricate material in his biographies, he did utilize imaginative literary techniques to reconstruct the truth as he saw fit.[7] Christopher Jones finds this the case with Appollonius of Tyana and the Alexander Romance,[8][9][10] though Ewen Bowie classifies it as only as a novel.[11] Thucydides writes:

With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.[12]

Another characteristic is that this genre of biography was often written to praise and laud an individual, with stories being selected and edited to present a particular view of a person. Authors in this genre did not always internally name themselves. These authors also tended to reference being personally present when discussing subjects in their own lifetime, and their direct relation to the events with first person statements, such as Cornelius Nepos in discussing a speech:[13]

I myself heard him proudly assert, and with truth, at the funeral of his mother, whom he buried at the age of ninety, that "he had never had occasion to be reconciled to his mother," and that "he had never been at all at variance with his sister," who was nearly of the same age with himself; a proof that either no cause of complaint had happened between them, or that he was a person of such kind feelings towards his relatives, as to think it an impiety to be offended with those whom he ought to love.[14]

Most preserved bios named their literary sources such as letters, previous authors, and books,[15] but other biographies like Tacitus's Agricola, the Gospel of John, and Lucian's Life of Peregrinus did not cite written sources, as the authors themselves were the source of information given.[16]

Gospels as bios

The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of this ancient genre.[17] Andrew Byers disputes the majority view, arguing that the author of Mark viewed himself as an author of scripture rather than a biographer or historian.[18] Mitchell Reddish believes that caution should be given to identifying the gospels with biographies, describing them rather as "theologically interpreted history" given that modern biographies are different to ancient biographies.[19][20][21] The four Gospel writers each interpreted the biography of Jesus differently.[22] While the gospels share this genre, they are written for a wider audience and more closely resemble Jewish narratives about prophetic figures. The choice to assign the gospels as biography often involves a judgment about their historicity, with scholars who reject biography as the appropriate genre tending to overemphasize legendary elements in the gospels.[23] Mitchell G. Reddish believes that caution should be given to identifying the gospels with biographies, as modern biographies are different to ancient biographies.[19][20] For Reddish, they are best described as "theologically interpreted history",[21] with the four Gospel writers each interpreting the biography of Jesus differently.[22] Craig S. Keener wrote that ancient biographies that were typically written shortly after the subject's life, normally included substantial historical material.[24]

Contemporary scholars are also in agreement that the Gospel of John was written in the genre of Greco-Roman biography.[25][26] John contains many characteristics of those writings belonging to the genre of Greco-Roman biography, a) internally; including establishing the origins and ancestry of the figure (John 1:1), a focus on the main subjects great words and deeds, a focus on the death of the subject and the subsequent consequences, b) externally; promotion of a particular hero (where non-biographical writings focus on the events surrounding the characters rather than the character himself), the domination of the use of verbs by the subject (in John, 55% of verbs are taken up by Jesus' deeds), the prominence of the final portion of the subject's life (one third of John's Gospel is taken up by the last week of Jesus' life, comparable to 26% of Tacitus's Agricola and 37% of Xenophon's Agesilaus), the reference to the main subject in the beginning of the text, etc.[27]

References

  1. 1 2 Marincola 2010, pp. 528–531.
  2. ↑ Gray, Patrick, ed. (2021). The Cambridge Companion to the New Testament. Cambridge University Press. pp. 98–99. ISBN 9781108437707.
  3. ↑ Momigliano, Arnaldo (1993). The Development of Greek Biography. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-20041-8.
  4. ↑ Hägg, Tomas (2012-04-05). The Art of Biography in Antiquity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-37927-5. Greek and Roman biography embraces much more than Plutarch, Suetonius and their lost Hellenistic antecedents. In this book Professor Hagg explores the whole range and diversity of ancient biography, from its Socratic beginnings to the Christian acquisition of the form in Late Antiquity. He shows how creative writers developed the lives of popular heroes like Homer, Aesop and Alexander, and how the Christian gospels grew from bare sayings to full lives. In Imperial Rome biography flourished in the works of Greek writers: Lucian's satire, Philostratus' full sophistic orchestration, Porphyry's intellectual portrait of Plotinus.
  5. ↑ De Temmerman, Koen (2016), "Ancient biography and formalities of fiction", in De Temmerman, Koen; Demoen, Kristoffel (eds.), Writing Biography in Greece and Rome: Narrative Technique and Fictionalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–25, ISBN 978-1-107-12912-2, retrieved 2026-06-19
  6. ↑ Keener, Craig (2019). Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0802876751. Most scholars find at least some fictionalization in ancient biography.
  7. ↑ Pelling, Christopher (1990). Antonine Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0198140573.
  8. ↑ Reardon, B. P. (2008-07-08). Collected Ancient Greek Novels. University of California Press. p. 651. ISBN 978-0-520-25655-2. It comes as a shock to realize how quickly historians fictionalized Alexander: Onesikritos, who had actually accompanied Alexander, told how Alexander had met the queen of the (mythical) Amazons.
  9. ↑ Arrian (2012-01-17). The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp. 388–389. ISBN 978-1-4000-7967-4. Soon after his death, Alexander's life story was written up by an anonymous author [...] This work, known as the Alexander Romance, emphasized the fabulous elements of Alexander's story and added many new fables [...] This work seems, however, not to have been known to the Romans until it was translated by Julius Valerius in the fourth century C.E.; this has led to the mistaken view, still shared by many, that the Greek original was not written until shortly before that date. Probably it arose much earlier, perhaps in the early third century B.C.E. The Alexander Romance is a fictional biography that is of interest as indicating the way that the memory of Alexander was shaped a generation or two after his death.
  10. ↑ "Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana I, II: The Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Loeb Classical Library vols. 16, 17) – Bryn Mawr Classical Review". bmcr.brynmawr.edu. Retrieved 2026-06-19.
  11. ↑ Bowie, Ewen (2006). The Limits of Ancient Biography. Swansea: Wales: Classical Press of Wales. p. 142. ISBN 978-1905125128.
  12. ↑ Greenwood, Emily (2023), "Rhetorical History: Speeches in Thucydides", in Low, Polly (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides, Cambridge Companions to Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 63–76, ISBN 978-1-107-10705-2, retrieved 2026-06-19
  13. ↑ J C Rolfe (07 March 2016), Cornelius Nepos, https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548724118
  14. ↑ "Cornelius Nepos: Life of Atticus - translation". www.attalus.org. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  15. ↑ Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition. Princeton University Press. 1993.
  16. ↑ Vytlacilova, Magdalena. "Why Does the Genre of the Gospels Matter? The Gospels' Genre and Historical Jesus Research". The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 87 (4): 664.
  17. ↑ Lincoln 2004, p. 133.
  18. ↑ Byers, Andrew J. (2023-12-01). "The Genre of Mark's Gospel Is 'Gospel': Reconsidering Literary Innovation in the Markan Incipit". Journal for the Study of the New Testament. 46 (2): 168–192. doi:10.1177/0142064X231205137. ISSN 0142-064X.
  19. 1 2 Reddish, Mitchell G. (2011-09-01). An Introduction to The Gospels. Abingdon Press. pp. 21–22. ISBN 978-1-4267-5008-3. One must be cautious, however, in too quickly identifying the Gospels as biographies. Modern biographies are different from ancient biographies. Modern biographers are usually interested in portraying the psychological development of an individual and the factors that influenced and shaped a person's character and development. Such were not concerns of ancient biographers. Furthermore, even though ancient biographers wrote with historical intentions, ancient understandings of history and the methods and sources available to them for determining historical accuracy were different from that of modern writers. A certain amount of fiction and exaggeration was allowed and even expected in ancient biographies. Since ancient biographers and historians had little access to the speeches and sayings of their subjects, an accepted technique was to create speeches that were deemed appropriate to the occasion.
  20. 1 2 BDEhrman (2014-02-17). "The Gospels as Biographies". The Bart Ehrman Blog. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  21. 1 2 Reddish, Mitchell G. (2011-09-01). An Introduction to The Gospels. Abingdon Press. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-1-4267-5008-3. With the Gospels a similar situation occurred. The Gospel writers were not interested in simply writing down all the traditions about Jesus they could find. Rather their task was to present to their readers a specific interpretation of who Jesus was. Their works are not "objective" historical accounts (no account is ever bias-free), but rather are narratives shaped to reveal particular understandings of Jesus. The Gospels are theological works as much as or more than they are historical works. The evangelists selected from the traditions available to them the stories and teachings of Jesus that were compatible with their understandings of him. They often reshaped and retold these traditions in order to highlight or downplay certain aspects of the life and teachings of Jesus. The Gospels then can best be understood as theologically interpreted history. The difference between an objective, historical account of the life of Jesus and what one finds in the Gospels has often been described as the difference between a photograph and a painting.
  22. 1 2 Reddish, Mitchell G. (2011-09-01). An Introduction to The Gospels. Abingdon Press. ISBN 978-1-4267-5008-3. We need to view the Gospels as portraits rather than as photographs. In some cases what they present may not correspond to what actually happened, just as a portrait may not always look like a photograph. The Gospel writers, like portrait artists, were interested in sharing with their readers their understanding of the significance of the life and teachings of Jesus. As we shall see, the "portraits" of Jesus in the four Gospels are each different. No two Gospel writers tell the story of Jesus in the same way; each interpreted Jesus differently.
  23. ↑ Coogan, Michael David; Brettler, Marc Zvi; Newsom, Carol Ann; Perkins, Pheme (2010). "Introduction to the Gospels". The New Oxford Annotated Bible: With the Apocrypha (PDF). Oxford University Press. p. 1379. ISBN 978-0-19-528960-2. Still, scholars disagree over the extent to which the Gospels follow conventions of ancient biography...it is closer to Jewish accounts of Moses or a prophet like Elijah than to typical Greek and Roman biographies of rulers or philosophers...which had a wider scope, including an account of the preliminary education of the subject of the biography. GrecoRoman biographies were addressed to a social and literary elite, which may explain why the Gospels, addressed to a much broader audience, do not match them very closely...Since the genre "biography" emerged from Greek historical writing, the question of whether the Gospels belong to this genre often involves a prior judgment concerning their historical plausibility. Scholars who reject biography as a description of the Gospels often overemphasize the ideological or legendary elements found in the narratives. They prefer to read the Gospels as etiological legends explaining the emergence of a new religion or as ideological representations of the Christology of particular early Christian communities.
  24. ↑ KEENER, CRAIG S. (2011-01-01). "Otho: A Targeted Comparison of Suetonius's Biography and Tacitus's History, with Implications for the Gospels' Historical Reliability". Bulletin for Biblical Research. 21 (3): 331–355. doi:10.2307/26424373. ISSN 1065-223X.
  25. ↑ Lincoln 2007, p. 183.
  26. ↑ Burridge 2004, pp. 213–233.
  27. ↑ Kostenberger 2012, pp. 445–463, esp. 449.

Sources

Further reading

  • Brian McGing; Judith Mossman, eds. (2006), The Limits of Ancient Biography
  • Edward Swain (1997), Portraits: biographical representation in the Greek and Latin literature of the Roman Empire
  • Francis Cairns; Trevor Luke, eds. (2018), Ancient Biography: Identity through Lives
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.