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If Aristotle's catharsis gets rid of something by allowing it moderate exercise, by tragedy it will get rid of an excessive disposition to grief, as well as pity and fear; and in comedy of an excessive disposition to contempt. Dispositions to fear, grief, and contempt do tend to be excessive. Until the Neoplatonists Porphyry and Iamblichus, there are only brief references to Aristotle's catharsis in Pythagoras and Pythagoreans, Philodemus, Plutarch, less clearly in the Stoics Diogenes of Babylon and Seneca. But among later Neoplatonists, Proclus denies theatre can be cathartic while Simplicius allows over-indulgence to be cathartic. Both compare a healing emetic. Olympiodorus associates catharsis through moderate exercise of emotion with Pythagoras, whereas Aristotle's catharsis is associated with his advice in Rhetoric to drive out one emotion by its opposite, and there are three other kinds of catharsis.

Before iconoclasm, the natural world was celebrated in the many sermons and commentaries devoted to the Hexaemeron, in which the marvels of the created world conveyed, by analogy, the greatness of the Creator. Frequently, these compositions incorporated self-contained ekphraseis of particularly noteworthy elements of creation. But early Byzantine writers could also criticize the world of nature as fleeting and evanescent. In church art during the early Byzantine period, we can find, as in literature, displays of the elements of creation, such as its rivers and creatures. But these motifs also had their critics, as evidenced by a letter written by Nilus of Sinai to Olympiodorus, which rejected this kind of decoration as distracting to the faithful. As in the early period, the post-iconoclastic view of nature was ambivalent, except that now the denigration of nature carried more weight than it had before. The great series of commentaries on the Hexaemeron dwindled. Both in their literature and in their art, Byzantines of the Middle Ages found ways to put nature securely in a subordinate position.

For the life of Hierocles, there are only two chronological points of reference. Both derive from his treatise On Providence, which has been preserved in short summaries and extracts by Photius, the 9th-century Byzantine scholar and Patriarch of Constantinople, in his monumental compendium of learning, the Bibliotheca. According to Photius, Hierocles dedicated On Providence to the historian Olympiodorus of Thebes (in Egypt), whose work is in turn dedicated to the Emperor Theodosius II and covers the years AD 407 to 425. In 412, Olympiodorus led a successful embassy to the Huns, and he generally enjoyed such renown among the barbarians that in around AD 418 he was invited to visit the Blemmyes (a nomadic Egyptian tribe). These events appear to be incorporated in the praise given him by Hierocles. On Providence should therefore be dated to some time after AD 418. The second date comes from the seventh and last book of On Providence, in which Hierocles covers the school of Ammonius.

This chapter discusses the apparent move to Christianize the teaching of philosophy in Alexandria through published texts aimed to attack the traditional Neoplatonic doctrine of the eternity of the world and the teachers who presented it. In its place, the opponents of the Neoplatonic doctrine looked to establish a set of teachings that affirmed the created nature of the world and Christian teachings about its eventual destruction. These goals were joined to an equally strong desire to keep students reading the more accomplished Christian authors of late antiquity. This chapter also presents a historical account of the events leading to the uncertainties that occurred in Ammonius's school after his death in 517. It discusses the opposition of Christians to Olympiodorus who eventually replaced Ammonius as head of the school.

Chapter 4 examines the ways in which the Capitoline Hill was experienced by those living in late antique Rome, from the ongoing visibility of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus to toponyms that supplied a bridge to events from the distant past. Just as the Capitoline Hill was deeply rooted in the Romans’ sense of themselves as an urban community, the image of the Capitol reverberated into literary productions in the last half of the fourth century, first in Roman intellectual circles and then beyond. The Capitol’s linkage to the eternity of the empire, and the waning importance placed on stopping on the Capitol for legitimating the emperor’s authority, became a way for historians, such as Eunapius, Olympiodorus, and Procopius, to talk about and understand the fragility of the Roman state as it faced the barbarian wars of the fifth and sixth centuries.

Because the narrative of Dionysus being killed by the Titans has been considered by many to be the central myth of Orphism, the sixth chapter focuses entirely on the presentation of Dionysus in the Rhapsodies, and places this narrative in its literary context as an episode in the theogonic narrative. The first section discusses the modern debate on the importance of Dionysus to Orphic myth, and the second section discusses ancient interpretations, including a lengthy explanation of how Dionysus fit into Neoplatonic allegory. The third section offers an interpretation of the narrative that removes it from considerations on its importance to Orphism as a whole to see how it fits in the Rhapsodic theogony, and concludes that the story of Dionysus and the Titans is as much about the theogonic role of Zeus in the Rhapsodies as it is about Dionysus.