Peter van Nuffelen is Professor of History at Universiteit Gent, Belgium. His interests cover Hellenistic history, ancient historiography, ancient religion and philosophy and late antique history and literature, including in oriental languages. He has published widely in these fields, including the monograph Un héritage de paix et de piété. Étude sur les Histoires ecclésiastiques de Socrate et de Sozomène (2004) and the edited volumes Faces of Hellenism (2009), Monotheism in Late Antiquity Between Christians and Pagans (2010, with S. Mitchell) and One God. Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (First-Fourth Centuries AD) (2010, with S. Mitchell). He is currently working on projects on late antique historiography and on ritual communication in Late Antiquity.
Introduction
Part I. Ancient Wisdom: 1. Tracing the origins: ancients, philosophers, and mystery cults
2. Plutarch of Chaeronea: 'History as a basis for a philosophy that has theology as its end'
3. Numenius: philosophy as a hidden mystery
4. Dio Chrysostom, Apuleius and the rhetoric of ancient wisdom
Part II. Cosmic Hierarchy: 5. Towards the pantheon as the paradigm of order
6. The Great King of Persia and his satraps: ideal and ideology
7. Dio Chrysostom: virtue and structure in the Kingship Orations
8. Plutarch: a benevolent hierarchy of gods and men
Part III. Polemic and Prejudice: Challenging the Discourse: 9. Lucian, Epicureanism and strategies of satire
10. Philo of Alexandria: challenging Greco-Roman culture
11. Celsus and Christian superstition
Epilogue.
