PHIL/HUMA-552 – From Plutarch to the Cappadocians: Pagans, Christians, and the Moral Imagination

The Christian encounter with Greco-Roman culture was often hostile. But many Christians nurtured a selective enthusiasm for the pagan world around them. One of its best-loved elements was the rich stock of moral examplars they inherited from literature, myth, and Scripture. Gods, heroes, statesmen, and generals served as memorable ways of teaching and learning the virtues and vices. But a nagging question concerned the morality of even engaging with such sources. Our seminars will consider this nexus of problems through pagan authors such as Plutarch, a first-century Greek pagan priest, philosopher, and literary critic, whose biographies were essential reading for educated Christians through to the twentieth century; and Valerius Maximus, a forgotten Roman superstar of the same tradition. Our Christian guides will be the fourth-century Cappadocian Church Fathers Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea, both of whom led brilliant careers as theologians, teachers, bishops, ascetics, and societal reformers.