Syriac Sayings of Greek Philosophers: A Study in Syriac Gnomologia with Edition and Translation [Paperback]

Syriac "Sayings of Greek Philosophers" (SGP) is a corpus of sentencespreserved in a number of Syriac manuscripts in the form of differentcollections and under different titles (until now these sentences weremainly referred to as "On the Soul"). SGP consists of two main blocks ofsentences represented by two gnomic anthologies, the "DublinFlorilegium", consisting of short maxims, and the "Tur ?AbdinFlorilegium", including longer expositions in moral philosophy, or"counsels". The first introductory part of the book not only describesthe textual witnesses of SGP, but also surveys all other extant gnomicmaterials attributed to Greek philosophers and poets (the Seven Sages,Homer, Plato, Menander, Pythagoras, Theano, etc.), including gnomologia,florilegia, exempla, and doxography. Two chapters of the introductionfocus on the pedagogical use of the gnomic materials mainly connectedwith the new Christian forms of rhetorical education based on the studyof the Bible and on the texts of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory ofNazianzus. The second part of the book contains a critical edition ofSGP on the basis of 15 manuscripts.