Lampas - Volume 58, Issue 3, 2025

This article analyses Hannibal’s march on Rome in Livy’s Ab urbe condita and Silius Italicus’ Punica. Comparisons between these works typically focus on content rather than style, partly because they belong to different genres – historiography and epic. By analysing their narrative structures, we demonstrate that a stylistic comparison is not only possible but also yields valuable insights into these texts. Using the model of prototypical narrative structures, we systematically analyse the tension curves in the Hannibal ad portas episode in Livy and Silius Italicus, mapping the differences. This study of narrative composition and tension building techniques offers new insights into both authors’ narrative techniques and stylistic choices. Even though the underlying facts of the Hannibal ad portas episode are the same, both authors have created their own version in which the narrative’s tension rises differently.

Whereas spoken discourse dominated throughout classical antiquity, the theme of silence gained philosophical significance in the first centuries CE. This article shows that keeping silent is celebrated as a philosophical virtue and the taciturn philosopher becomes a trope in literature of this period. I discuss for what reasons taciturnity became philosophically meaningful by examining several texts in which philosophers advocate silence. In each of these texts, the choice to remain silent is contrasted with speech. Spoken language was distrusted because it could be thoughtless, rampant, and even dangerous. The article starts with Plutarch’s On talkativeness, in which incessant talking is seen as a philosophical problem, whereas silence is seen as a precondition for philosophizing, for it enables listening. Subsequently, I show how the renewed interest in the silence cult of the Pythagoreans emphasized the value of silence as a way to practice self-control. Lastly, I argue that silence became so associated with philosophy that the Neopythagoreans Apollonius of Tyana and Secundus the Silent owe their names as philosophers to their prolonged silences only. For all these philosophers, silence is not a defect, but a deliberate choice to show their philosophical attitude, to keep outsiders out, and to make a statement.

This paper gives a discussion about the place and year of birth of Paul, the great missionary of early Christendom. These reflections were induced by Fik Meijer’s book on the life of Paul (2014, first edition 2012). Meijer follows, after Jerome Murphy O’Connor, a late-4^th-century source that suggests that Paul was not born in Tarsus in Cilicia, as is broadly accepted, but in Gischala in Galilea. According to this view, Paul would not have been a descendant of diaspora Jews; his place of birth lay in ancient Palestine. As to Paul’s year of birth, Meijer claims quite an early date, in the year 6 BC or shortly thereafter, making Paul practically the same age as Jesus. The author of this paper tries to indicate several flaws and faults in Meijer’s reasoning and in his use of sources on both topics. In doing so, and by including other sources and argumentations, the author hopes to give a more plausible approach to determine Paul’s place and date of birth.