This chapter traces a set of reading strategies developed in imperial Greek and early Christian appropriations of classical Greek literature, focusing on Plutarch’s On Reading the Poets and Basil’s On the Value of Greek Literature. The metaphors, tropes and lines of argument developed in these two texts conform to different philosophical and theological agendas and reveal different parameters and affordances of paideia. Despite the different commitments undergirding these texts, however, both models of appropriation converge in the way that they encourage practices of selection and excerpting typical of the anthologising ethos of the post-classical period. In addition to appropriating paideia in creative and tactical ways, it is argued, Plutarch and Basil also participate in top-down processes of canonisation that foreclose alternative practices of reading and interpretation.

This chapter maps Plato’s epistemological vocabulary, focusing on the relationship between technē and epistēmē. It argues that while the two terms are often used interchangeably, they are best understood as interchangeable via synecdoche. The chapter introduces a structured diagram to clarify associations, contrasts, and overlaps among key terms such as phronēsis, sophia, dēmiourgos, idiōtēs, empeiria, and parergon. This analysis lays the groundwork for understanding how Plato deploys these terms throughout his corpus.

This chapter opens the second half of the book by exploring how Imperial prose fiction responds to Roman education. Starting with Lucian’s True Story as a case in point, the chapter argues that ancient novels stage an irreverent critique of literary paideia and the learned readers it produces. Novels embrace the aesthetics of riddling (ainigma) and deception (apate) to satirize the curriculum of canonical fiction taught in schools. Through scenes of “fiction incompetence” and erotic or exotic alternatives to traditional learning, novelists expose the precarity of elite educational ideologies. The chapter surveys a wide range of Greek and Latin novels, showing how they subvert the moral and hermeneutic expectations of “good” fiction. It concludes by introducing the case studies for the remaining chapters (Life of Aesop, Story of Apollonius, and the Alexander Romance) which parody scholastic models of fictionality while promoting their heroes as masters of riddle-reading and alternative education. These works challenge ancient views of fiction as a vehicle for moral instruction, reimagining narrative pleasure as a rebellion against the institutional authority of paideia.

This chapter evaluates the Life of Aesop as a fictional biography that traces Aesop’s rise from mute slave to celebrated orator, dramatizing a subversive educational trajectory. Through contests with slaveowners and sophists, Aesop acquires the rhetorical authority associated with elite paideia—yet weaponizes elementary techniques like gnome, chreia, and fable to challenge the prestige of rhetorical schooling. Special focus is given to Aesop’s divine acquisition of speech, his parody of the Platonic Phaedrus, and his schooling under the philosopher Xanthus. The chapter argues that the Life inverts the structure of the rhetorical curriculum: whereas fables were taught as preliminary exercises, Aesop reserves them for the height of his intellectual ascent, delivering animal tales before public assemblies as political counsel. In this way, the Life not only reclaims muthos as a legitimate form of public speech but also reimagines "fiction competence" as the true test of education.

This chapter argues that the Alexander Romance mounts a subversive critique of rhetorical education in the Roman world. Though long dismissed as ahistorical fantasy, the novel draws extensively on the declamatory school tradition, only to parody its constraints and elevate Alexander as a master rhetorician beyond the reach of paideia. Through close readings of episodes involving Aristotle, the Attic orators, Darius, and the Theban flautist Ismenias, the chapter shows how the Romance reframes Alexander not as a pupil of canonical figures but as their superior and eventual replacement. By satirizing epistolary fiction, impersonation exercises, and the “travel advisories” suasoriae from chapter 4, the novel rewrites Classical history to suit Alexander’s anti-sophistic persona. His distinctive voice – described as “divinely inspired” – becomes the true marker of kingship and character, in contrast to the pedantry of rhetorical mimesis. Ultimately, the Romance envisions an alternative model of fiction mastery and learning that dethrones classical exempla and reconfigures the boundaries of elite education.

This chapter introduces the book’s two major claims: that learning to read and write fiction was integral to literate education in the Roman world, and that Imperial prose fiction emerged in response to this pedagogy. Drawing on a wide range of literary, philosophical, and educational sources, it argues that the acquisition of “fiction competence” – the trained ability to identify, interpret, and evaluate fictional narratives – was central to the curriculum from early childhood through rhetorical education. It then proposes an “institutional theory of fiction” for classical antiquity, arguing that ancient fictionality be defined not by genre or authorial intent but by culturally embedded conventions taught through schooling. Tracing the roots of these conventions to Greek philosophical and sophistic traditions, the chapter reconstructs four pedagogical principles that structured how students learned to engage with fiction. These principles centered on deception (apate), enigmatic speech (ainigma), and evaluative criticism. The chapter demonstrates that educational texts and practices shaped ancient readers’ expectations of fiction and that literary fiction, in turn, reflected and contested its institutional training. Fiction in antiquity, the chapter contends, must be understood as a socially regulated practice, embedded in and shaped by systems of education.

Chapters 5 and 6 focus on clusters of re-narrated episodes in Cyril’s response to Julian. Chapter 5 is organized by one of Julian’s own categories: the “gifts of the gods” which, he had argued, were given in surpassing quality and quantity to the Hellenic people. This chapter groups Julian’s various iterations of gifts and Cyril’s sprawling responses in three, interrelated categories: exemplary characters, intellectual superiority, and military and political domination. In Cyril’s responses, Minos was no legendary hero but rather imitated the fallen angels’ lust for domination; the Attic language itself (not to mention the convention of writing) derived from proto-Christian sources; and the Jewish people’s turbulent history and the present ascendance of Roman superiority equally reflect the Christian God’s management of the cosmos.

This chapter assesses the imperial presence of lyric in the form of the textual tradition of the nine canonical poets established by Alexandrian scholars. It reviews the evidence for the circulation of archaic and classical lyric texts among students of literature and readers from the late Hellenistic period onwards. Papyri preserving lyric texts and commentaries, treatises discussing literary and rhetorical education, as well as the diffusion of lyric quotations among Greek prose writers are all surveyed to define the place of lyric poetry in imperial paideia. Compared to mainstream classics, the genre thus emerges as a special, more niche and refined form of reading. The chapter then shows that by the imperial period, the reception of lyric subgenres followed a crystallised system of personas, where each poet activated specific thematic, local, ethical and aesthetic associations. This mental map shaped the reception of lyric poetry by imperial writers who, like Aristides, knew and chose to deploy it.

The chapter provides an in-depth analysis of the baptismal spaces at Henchir el Koucha (Tunisia), Myrtilis Iulia (now Mértola), and Milreu/Estói (Portugal), examining how each site incorporates pre-Christian elements into Christian contexts. At Henchir el Koucha, iconography associated with the Roman circus is ingeniously blended into a Christian framework. In the case of Myrtilis Iulia, the chapter explores a building with both palatial and baptismal features and makes suggestions about what might have motivated the representation of the mythological hero Bellerophon in baptistery. Milreu stands out for inserting a baptismal space within a pre-existing Roman monument, allowing the site’s mosaic frieze showing a marine thiasus scene to symbolize the salvific water of baptism. In each case, the incorporation of Roman elements wasn’t merely pragmatic but represented a conscious choice to articulate a multifaceted Christian identity that acknowledged and even celebrated its Roman cultural heritage. The chapter argues that these nuanced choices offer a flexible and inclusive model of Christian identity.

Assessments of Lucian’s attitude towards philosophy have tended to focus on how much he really knew about philosophy, which school he preferred, and if his texts can be read as philosophy. This chapter argues that Lucian’s attitude is best understood as reflecting the central position philosophy occupied in imperial elite culture. As Lucian satirises elite paideia from within that same paideia, criticising imperial philosophy implied assuming a philosophical stance or appropriating philosophical concepts and vocabulary. Lucian explores themes that were current in philosophical discourse of the Roman Empire, such as the expectation of matching doctrine and deed, salaries for philosophical education, and ancient wisdom. Whilst he shows awareness of technical terminology, his writings are mostly concerned with protreptic and the question if one has to dedicate oneself fully to a philosophical life. His ubiquitous satire, even in works deemed ‘more serious’, does not permit firm conclusions about Lucian’s own ideas and solicits multiple interpretations on the part of the reader.

This chapter explores several fundamental features of ancient Greek and Roman ethics and considers some ways in which these features are still influential in contemporary education. Ancient ethics was generally undergirded by a substantive cosmology and related philosophical anthropology; ancient thinkers often affirmed the existence of some sort of objective logos that served as the ordering principle of the cosmos and in accordance with which human beings ought to order their lives. This two-fold commitment resulted in a focus on cultivating virtue. The chapter also discusses three educational arenas in which commitment to features of ancient ethics is manifested today: arguments for “flourishing” as an aim of education, “character education” initiatives, and the contemporary K-12 “classical education” movement.

One of the central issues to which the Cappadocian fathers frequently returned was the possibility of Christian paideia. It has been pointed out that the idea of morphosis, a never-ending process of giving shape to one’s life in imitation of Christ, is at the heart of Gregory of Nyssa’s educational thinking. What has been overlooked is the way Gregory’s awareness of paideia as an engagement of the subject with an object raises the methodological problem of how this relationship can be established. This chapter illuminates Gregory’s concept of self-formation by investigating the ways in which he theorises the acquisition and ordering of knowledge suited to the life of faith. A reading of his Life of Moses demonstrates that, drawing on the rhetoric of an opposition between Christianity and classical culture, Gregory re-evaluates this tension from a pedagogical perspective. His novel idea is that the negotiation of foreignness and kinship can be a catalyst for Christian self-perfection.

This chapter surveys some of the key themes in epistemology and pedagogy in antique philosophical and classical education and early Christianity that illuminate the rise of Christian catechesis. Critical topics include the role of memory and the use of regula or “canons” of truth and the emergence of teachers and “school churches” in second-century Rome.

Plutarch is commonly viewed as a major exponent of a shared Greco-Roman culture among the imperial elite to which he belonged. However, while dealing with the Greek and Roman worlds on fairly equal terms, he essentially expects the protagonists of his Lives, both Greek and Roman, to display virtues grounded in Greek culture and conforming to Greek role models. Thus, Philopoemen–Flamininus analyzes the Roman conquest of Greece with a strong focus on Greek historical experience; Marius shows the adverse consequences of anti-Hellenism and lack of paideia in a Roman statesman; and Lucullus presents a Roman career shaped by philhellenic benefactions on the one hand and barbarian luxury on the other. Beyond the Lives, the Roman Questions frequently invoke Greek concepts and traditions to explain Roman customs and institutions, whereas Advice on Statesmanship is predominantly concerned with the autonomy of the Greek cities and the power of the local aristocracy, thus epitomizing the Hellenocentric perspective that characterizes Plutarch’s oeuvre as a whole.

This chapter explores the depictions of the barbarians, and indeed the very concept barbaros, in Plutarch’s works. It reviews Plutarch’s rhetoric dealing with non-Greeks, which was circumscribed on the one hand by the Roman imperial political reality and on the other by memories of the old Hellenic valor, which was filtered only through texts and oratory. The chapter examines Plutarch’s play with the established stereotypes in a way that shows ethnic labeling to be elusive. It studies Plutarch’s ethnic taxonomic schemes (i.e. a twofold arrangement of barbarians vs. Greeks/Romans and a threefold scheme of Greeks vs. Romans vs. barbarians), and the subtle moral and political implications thereof. It also looks into the literary significance of the use of barbarians in the narrative and of the mismatch between Greek and barbarian practices as presented mostly in the Lives.