Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul
Polemon's Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam
George Boys-Stones author Jaś Elsner author Simon Swain author Robert Hoyland author Antonella Ghersetti author Ian Repath author Simon Swain editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:8th Mar '07
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Polemon of Laodicea (near modern Denizli, south-west Turkey) was a wealthy Greek aristocrat and a key member of the intellectual movement known as the Second Sophistic. Among his works was the Physiognomy, a manual on how to tell character from appearance, thus enabling its readers to choose friends and avoid enemies on sight. Its formula of detailed instruction and personal reminiscence proved so successful that the book was re-edited in the fourth century by Adamantius in Greek, translated and adapted by an unknown Latin author of the same era, and translated in the early Middle Ages into Syriac and Arabic. The surviving versions of Adamantius, Anonymus Latinus, and the Leiden Arabic more than make up for the loss of the original. The present volume is the work of a team of leading Classicists and Arabists. The main surviving versions in Greek and Latin are translated into English for the first time. The Leiden Arabic translation is authoritatively re-edited and translated, as is a sample of the alternative Arabic Polemon. The texts and translations are introduced by a series of masterly studies that tell the story of the origins, function, and legacy of Polemon's work, a legacy especially rich in Islam. The story of the Physiognomy is the story of how one man's obsession with identifying enemies came to be taken up in the fascinating transmission of Greek thought into Arabic.
A huge effort...has gone into this beautifully produced, collaborative project on ancient Greek physiognomy and its reception in medieval Islamic society. * M F Burnyeat, Times Literary Supplement *
Their book is many steps forward in the research on physiognomy in Classical Antiquity and the European and Islamic Middle Ages. From a number of different disciplines they have brought together, in one impressive volume, a great number of primary sources about Polemons work on physiognomy. They have excellently edited and translated these sources and they have evaluated them in a number of most enlightening essays. * Jan Just Witkam, Bibliotheca Orientalis *
ISBN: 9780199291533
Dimensions: 242mm x 165mm x 44mm
Weight: 1179g
712 pages