Johan C. Thom Libros

This book is the student edition of the first complete monograph to be devoted to the Hymn to Zeus by the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, which contains a new critical text edition and English translation of the Hymn . In addition to the usual questions of authorship and date, Johan Thom analyses the composition, genre and function of the poem in depth, arguing that the Hymn should be considered a genuine prayer and that it was intended for a non-specialist audience. In the line-by-line philological commentary, attention is paid to the literary, philosophical, and religious aspects of the hymn. It should therefore be of interest to classical philologists, philosophers, as well as scholars of Hellenistic and Greco-Roman religions.

The treatise De mundo (On the Cosmos), dated around the 1st century BCE, offers a cosmology in the Peripatetic tradition which draws also on Platonic and Stoic thought and subordinates what happens in the cosmos to the might of an omnipotent god. Thus the work is paradigmatic for the philosophical and religious concepts of the early imperial age, which offer points of contact with nascent Christianity. In line with the aims of the SAPERE series, this volume on De mundo is explicitly interdisciplinary by nature, bringing together contributions from scholars from a broad spectrum of disciplines and specialisations which focus on specific topics, each from its own disciplinary perspective. The volume contains a Greek text and translation of De mundo as well as interpretive essays on the language and style, geography, cosmotheology and the reception in or possible influence of De mundo in various intellectual traditions.