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CHRISTIANS IN CONVERSATION
OXFORD STUDIES IN LATE ANTIQUITY
Series Editor
Ralph Mathisen
Late Antiquity has unified what in the past were disparate disciplinary,
chronological, and geographical areas of study. Welcoming a wide array of
methodological approaches, this book series provides a venue for the finest new
scholarship on the period, ranging from the later Roman Empire to the Byzantine,
Sasanid, early Islamic, and early Carolingian worlds.
Disciplining Christians
Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters
Jennifer V. Ebbeler
History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East

Edited by Philip Wood
Explaining the Cosmos

Creation and Cultural Interaction in Late-Antique Gaza
Michael W. Champion
Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity

Porphyry of Tyre and the Pagan-Christian Debate in Late Antiquity
Michael Bland Simmons
The Poetics of Late Antique Literature

Edited by Jas Elsner and Jesus Hernandez-Lobato
Rome’s Holy Mountain

The Capitoline Hill in Late Antiquity
Jason Moralee
The Qur'an and Late Antiquity

A Shared Heritage
Angelika Neuwirth
Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe

Edited by Alexander O’Hara
Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus

Sanctity and Community in the Seventh Century
Alexander O’Hara
Sacred Stimulus
Jerusalem in the Visual Christianization of Rome
Galit Noga-Banai
Christians in Conversation
A Guide to Late Antique Dialogues in Greek and Syriac
Alberto Rigolio
Christians in Conversation
A Guide to Late Antique Dialogues
in Greek and Syriac
Alberto Rigolio
1
1
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Structure of the Work 2
Dialogue and Christianity 8
Dialogues and Late Antiquity 12
The Dialogue Form and Rhetorical Training 16
The Dialogue Form and Erotapokriseis 22
Toward a Comprehensive Approach? 24
A Formal Typology 32
Conclusion 37
Guide to the Dialogues 39

1. ?Aristo of Pella, Disputatio Iasonis et Papisci 39
2. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 43
3. Gaius Romanus, Dialogue against Proclus 48
4. ?Hippolytus, Chapters against Gaius 49
5. Philip Bardaisanite, The Book of the Laws of the Countries and
Bardaisan’s Lost Dialogues 51
6. Anonymous, Erostrophus 57
7. Origen, Dialogue with Heraclides and Lost Dialogues 60
8. Gregory the Wonderworker, To Theopompus, on the Impassibility
and Passibility of God 65
9. Gregory the Wonderworker, Dialogue with Gelian 68
10. Anonymous, Anti-Jewish Dialogue 69
11. Methodius, On Free Will 70
12. Methodius, On Leprosy 74
13. Methodius, Symposium 77
v
vi Contents
14. Methodius, Aglaophon or On the Resurrection 82

15. Methodius, Xeno or On Things Created 86
16. ?Hegemonius, Acta Archelai 88
17. Anonymous, Dialogue with Adamantius 92
18. Diodorus of Tarsus, Two Dialogues 96
19. Gregory of Nyssa, Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection 98
20. Gregory of Nyssa, Against Fate 102
21. Macarius Magnes, Apocriticus 105
22. Apollinarius of Laodicea, Dialogi and Quod Deus in carne
Christus 110
23. Didymus the Blind, Disputation with a Heretic 114
24. Ps.-Athanasius, Disputatio contra Arium 115
25. Anonymous, Two Macedonian Dialogues 118
26. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood 120
27. Anonymous, Dialexis Montanistae et Orthodoxi 125
28. Ps.-Athanasius, Five Dialogues on the Trinity 127
29. Ps.-Athanasius, Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei 131
30. Ps.-Athanasius, Two Dialogues against the Macedonians 134
31. Palladius, Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom 137
32. Cyril of Alexandria, On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and
Truth 141
33. Cyril of Alexandria, Seven Dialogues on the Trinity 144
34. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten 146
35. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ 148
36. Ps.-Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogue with Nestorius 150
37. Theodotus of Ancyra, Contra Nestorium 151
38. Nestorius, Adversus Theopaschitas 153
39. Nestorius, Dialogue in the Bazaar of Heracleides 154
40. Mark the Monk, Disputatio cum Causidico 158
41. John of Apamea, Six Dialogues with Thomas 160
42. John of Apamea, Four Dialogues with Eusebius and Eutropius 162
43. John of Apamea, Dialogue on the Mystery of Baptism 165
44. Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Eranistes 167
45. Anonymous, Actus Silvestri 172
46. Aeneas of Gaza, Theophrastus 177
47. Zacharias of Mytilene, Ammonius 180
48. Zacharias of Mytilene, Life of Severus 186
49. Anonymous or Menas, On Political Science 188
50. Leontius of Byzantium, Dialogus contra Aphthartodocetas 192
51. Leontius of Byzantium, Solutions to the Arguments Proposed by
Severus 195
52. Basil of Cilicia, Against John of Scythopolis 197
Contents vii
53. Paul the Persian, Disputatio cum Manichaeo 199

54. John bar Aphthonia, Conversation with the Syrian Orthodox under
Justinian 203
55. John the Grammarian of Caesarea, Disputatio cum Manichaeo 206
56. Anonymous, Dialogus cum Iudaeis 209
57. Anonymous, Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila 212
58. Paul of Nisibis, Conversation with Caesar 219
59. Anonymous, Religious Conversation at the Sasanian Court 222
60. Anastasius of Antioch, Dialogue between an Orthodox
and a Tritheite 229
General Bibliography 233

Index of Dialogues, Erotapokriseis, and Related Texts 265
General Index 269
Acknowledgments
T he work for the present book originates from my involvement

in the Leverhulme Research Project The Dialogue Form in Early Christianity
and Byzantium during the academic years 2011–13. The project, based at the
University of Oxford and under the leadership of Averil Cameron, gave me the
opportunity to begin a systematic inquiry into Christian dialogues composed
from their origins in the second century until the end of the sixth century CE. My
surprise at the richness of this strand of literature and the important questions
that it raises for the cultural history of late antiquity only intensified as I kept on
reading more and more dialogues, a fact that made me realize the need of a tool
that would help further research of this understudied material by providing a
critical and comprehensive overview of this rich field in all of its complexity. As
I progressed, I kept in mind the interests of different bodies of scholars working
in history, literature, and religion, and, given the preliminary state of research on
several texts, I opted for a comprehensive coverage of the field, at the same time
suggesting what I see as potential avenues for future research.
The work reached the present shape over several years, with very many debts
incurred along the way, especially at Oxford, where the 2014 workshop Dialogues
and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium at Keble College provided the
venue for fruitful conversations, and at Princeton, where the Society of Fellows in
the Liberal Arts offered the necessary respite to draft the manuscript, as well as the
access to a wide range of bibliographical resources and an exceptionally supportive
academic community. The very warm welcome by my new colleagues at Durham
University accompanied me as I followed the last stages in the preparation of the
manuscript. Several scholars and friends kindly answered my questions, shared
their ongoing work and forthcoming publications, and provided helpful feedback
and criticism, while all remaining shortcomings and omissions are my responsi-
bility. They include Patrick Andrist, Marina Bazzani, Adam Becker, Emmanuel
Bourbouhakis, Peter Brown, Pauline Bringel, Tony Burke, Beatrice Daskas, Anna
ix
x Acknowledgments
Dolganov, Mark Edwards, Scott Johnson, Christopher Jones, Anna Jouravel, Chloë
Kitzinger, Charlie Kuper, Dawn LaValle, Yannis Papadogiannakis, Antonio Rigo,
Jeremy Schott, Agostino Soldati, Yumi Suzuki, Sébastien Morlet, Alberto Quiroga
Puertas, Susan Stewart, Peter Van Nuffelen, Matthijs Wibier, and the anonymous
reviewers for Oxford University Press. It was a great pleasure to work with Stefan
Vranka, Emily Zogbi, and the capable staff at the Press; and thanks also go to
James Disley, Rajesh Kathamuthu, and Leslie Safford for their painstaking edi-
torial work, and to Pam Scholefield for the compilation of the general index. My
greatest debt is to Averil Cameron, without whom this project would have never
seen the light; she believed in it from its inception and offered help and inspiration
with a degree of dedication that has been truly extraordinary. The book is dedi-
cated to you, Luigina, Alessandro, Claudio, Filippo, and Alice, for your encourage-
ment, support, and inspiration over the years; your passion and enthusiasm have
taught me more than words can express.
Abbreviations
ACO Schwartz, E., ed. Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum. Berlin

1914–40.
BHG Socii Bollandiani, eds. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca.
3 vols. Brussels 1957.
BHL Socii Bollandiani, eds. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina
Antiquae et Mediae Aetatis. 2 vols. Brussels 1949.
BHO Socii Bollandiani, eds. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis.
Brussels 1910.
CPG Geraard, M. ed. Clavis Patrum Graecorum. 6 vols. Turnhout
1974–98.
CPL Dekkers, E., and Gaar, E., eds. Clavis Patrum Latinorum.
Turnhout 1995.
CSCO Corpus Christianorum Scriptorum Orientalium.
Di Berardino Di Berardino, A. Patrology: The Eastern Fathers from the
Council of Chalcedon (451) to John of Damascus (750). English
translation by A. Walford. Cambridge 2006.
DSp Viller, M., Cavallera, F., and De Guibert, J., eds. Dictionnaire
de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire.
17 vols. Paris 1937–95.
GAL Bardenhewer, O. Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur. 5 vols.
Freiburg 1913–32.
Lampe Lampe, G.W.H. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford 1961.
Moreschini Moreschini, C., and Norelli, E. Early Christian Greek and
Latin Literature: A Literary History. Translated by M.J.
O’Connell. Peabody, MA 2005.
OBD Kazhdan, A.P., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. 3 vols.
Oxford 1991.
xi
xii Abbreviations
PLRE Jones, A.H.M., Martindale, J.R., and Morris, J. et al., eds. The
Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. 3 vols. Cambridge
1971–92.
P.Oxy. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
Quasten Quasten, J., and di Berardino, A. Patrology. 4 vols. Utrecht
1953–86.
RAC Klauser, T., Dassmann, E., and Schöllgen, G., eds. Reallexikon
für Antike und Christentum. Stuttgart 1950–.
SC Sources Chrétiennes.
Schreckenberg Schreckenberg, H. Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte
und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (1.–11. Jh.).
Frankfurt 1999.
Introduction
I
nstances of dialogue are common in early Christian literature. We
have dialogues embedded within different literary genres, such as hagiography,
historiography, or fictional narratives;1 dialogue poems (and dispute poems),
especially common in Syriac literature;2 and texts written in the form of ques-
tions and answers, also known as erotapokriseis.3 Yet we also have a conspicuous
corpus of self-standing texts written in prose that claim to report, or to simulate,
real-life conversations between two or more speakers, primarily about religious,
philosophical, or biographical subjects, and often placed within an elaborate his-
torical or fictitious setting. Christian dialogues address themes such as the nature
of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and the function of fate in relation to free
will, as well as various Christological and exegetical subjects. The role of these
texts in the study of the culture of late antiquity, particularly on issues such as
religious debate, rhetorical culture, and literate education more broadly, is only
gradually being recognized. The most commonly known Christian dialogues in-
clude Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, Methodius’ Symposium, and Gregory
of Nyssa’s Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection, while many more remain
still unfamiliar to the most.
1. Remarkable examples of dialogues embedded in other literary works are found in Ps.-Clementine literature,
in the Acts of Philip, and in the Syriac History of Mar Qardagh, for which see Walker 2006. Instances of dialogue
are common in martyr acts, in which the most dramatic parts often take the form of dialogue; some of the simpler
martyr acts may even be mostly made up by exchanges among speakers, such as the Latin Martyrdom of Justin.
Dialogues can also be used as introduction to other works, as in Theophylact Simocatta’s History: see Ieraci Bio
2006:32–35 and Whitby and Whitby 1986:3–5.
2. For Syriac dispute poems, which some distinguish from dialogue poems, see the fundamental work of Brock
1991 (with recent discussion in Mengozzi 2015), who provides an overview of their form and contents, and traces
the links with Ancient Mesopotamian literature and Biblical themes. For these texts, see also Krueger 2003, Frank
2005, Harvey 2005, Mengozzi and Ricossa 2013, Brock 2016, and Butts 2017; while Ruani 2016 is now fundamental
for the literature of controversy in Syriac. For a discussion of the links between dialogue poems and prose dialogues,
see Brock 1983 and 2016, Cameron 1991a, and Frenkel 2016.
3. More on the links between erotapokriseis and prose dialogues follows below. Notable examples of erota-
pokriseis include Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel Questions and Solutions (Zamagni 2008 and 2016) and Ps.-Caesarius’
Quaestiones et responsiones (mid-sixth century; Papadogiannakis 2008, 2011, and 2013a). For the most recent work
see Bussières 2004 and 2013, Efthymiadis 2017, Papadogiannakis 2006 and 2013a, Zamagni 2004, and, especially
helpful for Syriac, Ter Haar Romeny 2004.
1
2 Christians in Conversation
Occasionally Christian dialogues reveal familiarity with Plato’s dialogues

or with the Socratic tradition more broadly, as instantiated in Methodius of
Olympus, Gregory of Nyssa, or Aeneas of Gaza.4 The endurance of the Platonic
tradition is, however, by no means a characteristic feature of all Christian dia-
logues and was far from being the norm. For instance, Basil of Caesarea made
explicit reference to the tradition of Platonic and Aristotelian dialogues in an
attempt to interpret the dialogue form employed by Christian authors, and put
forward Plato’s Laws as a suitable model for Christian writers; conversely, an-
other Christian author, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, declared his intention to depart
from the learned dialogue form used by classical Greek authors. Both Basil and
Theodoret, however, appear as isolated examples, and explicit references to clas-
sical dialogues are somewhat rare in this body of literature.5
Regrettably, most dialogues composed in the late antique period are still little
studied, and often in isolation from one another.6 Several of them have been the
subject of excellent scholarship only in the last two decades, but there is no sys-
tematic overview of these texts, and we still lack a comprehensive study of the
dialogue form throughout the period. Dialogues featuring a Christian and a Jew
as the main speakers have attracted most scholarly attention, particularly in rela-
tion to other instances of adversus Iudaeos literature, but they nonetheless await
to be related to the broader developments of the dialogue form among Christians.
Similarly, Syriac literature offers some of the earliest instances of Christian dia-
logues and shows the pervasiveness of the dialogue form in late antiquity beyond
the language boundary; yet these texts need to be put in relation to the contem-
porary developments in Greek and in Latin. To the eyes of the cultural historian,
Christian dialogues reveal their authors’ awareness of a wide spectrum of religious
opinions, they vividly evoke the religious debates of the time, they embody the
cultural conventions and refinements that late antique men and women expected
from such events, and they propagated the fundamental view that religious differ-
ences could be solved in the context of a public debate. Not only does the extraor-
dinary flourishing of the dialogue form attest to the transformations of ancient
literary and rhetorical traditions, but it also helps us understand the functioning
and the complexities of a lively society that thrived on religious debate.
Structure of the Work
The present study is structured as a comprehensive guide to Christian dialogues

composed in Greek and in Syriac from the earliest examples in the second
4. A full discussion can be found in each relevant entry.

5. See entries 18 and 44.
6. The classic work, now outdated, is Hirzel 1895. Books that partially cover the field are Hoffmann 1966, Voss
1970, and, more recently, Hösle 2012 (a translation of Hösle 2006). See now Cameron and Gaul 2014, and for the
discussion of other recent scholarship see the below.
Introduction 3
century until c. 600 CE, arranged in chronological order so as to emphasize

changes and transformations over time. The chronological and linguistic cov-
erage, which excludes Latin and closes with the end of the sixth century, has been
limited in scope for editorial purposes, but these boundaries are not meant to
overemphasize conventional divides. The guide opens with the Disputatio Iasonis
et Papisci, written in the mid-second century CE, and closes with Anastasius of
Antioch, who wrote his Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Tritheite in the late
sixth century. The developments of dialogue literature from the turn of the sev-
enth century onward, such as the further technicization and formalization of the
argumentation (as attested in Eulogius of Alexandria), and, most noticeably, the
appearance of Christian-Muslim dialogues, were taken as the working limit to
circumscribe the present analysis.7 It is hoped that the present volume will help
study the prehistory of Christian dialogues as well as, the developments of reli-
gious debate from the seventh century onward.
The focus of the volume is on Greek and Syriac, but composition of literature
in dialogue form was not a phenomenon limited to these languages and was al-
most as common in Latin literature, where it was represented by Minucius Felix,
Jerome, Augustine, Sulpicius Severus, and Boethius, among other authors. While
Latin dialogues have been the subject of some initial overviews, Greek and Syriac
dialogues have attracted increasing academic attention in the last decade and still
remain in greater need of systematic work.8 The present guide thus focuses on
dialogues composed in Greek and in Syriac, including those surviving only in
Latin, Syriac, Armenian, or Old Slavonic translations. Dialogues written in Syriac
shed light on the earliest stages of dialogue writing by Christian authors and can
therefore contribute to our understanding of the developments of Greek dialogues
as well. Among the earliest instances of Christian dialogues on doctrinal matters
are the Syriac dialogues against Marcion by Bardaisan of Edessa (now lost), and
the Syriac dialogue The Book of the Laws of the Countries by a pupil of Bardaisan,
which opens by addressing a Marcionite objection to mainstream Christianity.9
(Unfortunately very little survives by the Syrian Simeon of Beth Arsham [d. be-
fore 548], who made a name for himself as a debater and may have written texts
7. For Eulogius of Alexandria, see Roosen 2015. Major questions concerning the composition of dialogues
after the sixth century touch upon the developments of the Byzantine dialogue (the dialogues by Theophylact
Simocatta and Germanus I of Constantinople are not treated in the present work) and the issue of the relationship
between late antique dialogues and Islamic kalām, for which see Cook 1980 and Daiber 2012. For later dialogues,
see Cameron 1996, Cameron and Hoyland 2011, Cameron 2016a, and Cameron and Gaul 2017. For the Syriac, see
Tannous 2008 and Roggema 2016. For the dialogue form in the early Islamic period, see Bertaina 2011.
8. A comprehensive overview of the Latin dialogues can be found in Schmidt 1977, who lists forty-three Latin
dialogues composed before the beginning of the seventh century (sixteen of them authored by Augustine, with
several others misattributed to him); see also Cooper and Dal Santo 2008, Whelan 2017, and Kuper 2017. For Latin
dialogues from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see Cardelle de Hartmann 2007. For the surge of interest
in Greek dialogues during the last decade, see, for instance, the publications by Andrist, Cameron, LaValle, and
Morlet, as well as Bracht 2017, Dubel and Gotteland 2015, Föllinger and Müller 2013, and Goldhill 2008a.
9. See entry 5.
in dialogue form; nor do we have, despite the flourishing of religious debate in the
Sasanian empire during the sixth century, any Eastern Syriac dialogue composed
before the turn of the seventh century).10 Overall, Syriac offers an extremely rich,
and little explored, corpus of controversial and apologetic literature in various
forms that needs to be related to its Greek and Latin counterparts and to be effec-
tively integrated into the cultural history of the late antique world.11
Because of the preliminary state of research on this strand of literature, I have
addressed the dialogues in systematic fashion and structured each entry into
standardized headings (author, full title, original language, date of composi-
tion, modern editions, modern translations, summary, discussion of scholarship,
and a selected bibliography for further study). Dialogues that survive only in
part or in abridged form, but that still provide enough information about the
original text, have been treated as autonomous entries—these include Aristo of
Pella’s Disputatio Iasonis et Papisci and Gaius Romanus’ Dialogue against Proclus.
Conversely, lost dialogues by known authors are mentioned within the full
entries of other surviving dialogues by the same author, as in the case of Origen;
in order to help navigate the material, an index of dialogues and related litera-
ture, arranged alphabetically by author, is found in the end of the book. In a few
instances, given the complexity of the textual tradition or the fragmentary state of
particular dialogues, I have followed past scholarship by incorporating different
texts into one entry, as in the cases of Apollinarius of Laodicea’s lost dialogues,
the anonymous Two Macedonian Dialogues, and Ps.-Athanasius’ Five Dialogues
on the Trinity. I have made an effort to make the list as comprehensive as possible;
but in light of the pervasiveness of dialogue writing in the period in question, the
possibility that additional dialogues will be found cannot be excluded.12
A few texts that display important similarities with our dialogues have not
been included for reasons of form, in that they cannot be considered dialogues,
or chronology, in that they are later than the end of the sixth century. Even though
the author reported some of the exchanges among the speakers, Theodore of
Mopsuestia’s Disputatio cum Macedonianis (CPG 3857; surviving only in Syriac
10. For Simeon, see the entry in Brock et al. 2011, and Walker 2006:175–77; for Babai the Great, see Brock
2011:215–17; and for the debating culture in the Sasanian empire, see Walker 2006. In his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical
Writers (ed. Assemani 1728), ῾Abdīšō῾ Bar Brīkā of Nisibis made reference to some of the texts written (presumably
in dialogue form) by East Syriac authors from the fifth century onward and against religious opponents such as
Jews, Manichaeans, Zoroastrian, and other Christian groups. Although it remains uncertain whether all these were
structured as prose dialogues, the titles include Mari the Persian (fl. mid-fifth century), Against the Magi in Nisibis;
Īšō῾yahb I of Arzon (d. 595), Disputation against a Heretic Bishop; and Nathaniel of Širzor (d. 618), Disputations
against the Severians, Manichaeans, Cantāye, and Māndrāye. See Walker 2006:169–70, and Griffith 1981:170 for the
use of the dialogue form within religious controversy according to the witness of the East Syrian bishop Bar Bahlūl
(tenth century).
11. Ruani 2016.
12. For instance, further analysis is needed of the Syriac manuscripts BL Add. 7199 (= Rosen and Forshall
1838:lviii.4 and 6, with Wright 1870:appendix A), which contains a Dialogue on Calamities Sent by God and a
Dialogue on the Resurrection, and BL Add. 14533 (= Wright 1870:dccclix.55), which contains a Dialogue on Heresies,
but see Ter Haar Romeny 2004:160–63.
Introduction 5
translation) is structured as the narrative account of a debate rather than as a

dialogue proper.13 A letter by Isidore of Pelusium (c. 360–c. 440) also takes the
form of an imaginary dialogue of Isidore with himself as to whether reproach
makes people better or makes them more obstinate in wrongdoing.14 A letter by
Severus of Antioch (d. 538) records excerpts from a conversation that he had
with John of Claudiopolis on Chalcedonian Christology.15 The religious debate
between a Christian and a Zoroastrian in the History of Mar Qardagh, an early-
seventh-century Syriac hagiographical narrative, is an instance of embedded di-
alogue (rather than a self-standing dialogue) that contains important traces of a
long-standing tradition of debate on religious matters in sixth-century Persia.16
Last but not least, it remains unclear whether or not Manichaean literature made
use of the dialogue form as such, since very little of it has survived;17 Faustus of
Mileve’s Capitula (CPL 726), a Manichaean handbook for actual debates, is usu-
ally understood as an instance of question-and-answer literature, or, as it came to
be known, erotapokriseis.18
Twenty-first-century work on textual transmission, chronology, and author-
ship has been instrumental in putting together a comprehensive list of dialogues.
In addition to showing the fluidity of several texts (especially anonymous ones)
and the reuse of existing literature in the composition of new dialogues,19 it is
13. The text is edited and translated into French in Nau 1913:633–67; see Voss 1970:17n20; the question should
be asked, however, about the possible intervention of the translator.
14. Isidore of Pelusium, Ep. 3.397 (PG 78.1036; CPG 5557); Isidore argues that it is best to mix moderation and
reproach. I owe this reference to Christopher Jones.
15. Severus of Antioch, Ep. 6.1 (ed. Brooks 1902:1.1.3–12; English trans. Brooks 1902:2.1.3–11; CPG 7070).
16. Walker 2006, which contains an English translation; Payne 2016.
17. The Cologne Mani Codex (ed. and trans. Cameron and Dewey 1979, 80.6–93.23) contains extracts of dialogic
exchanges between Mani and senior Elcesaites, including passages from a “synod of presbyters” that had been set up
against him (89.6–7); see Lim 1995:70–108. Payne 2016:219 links Mani’s Šābuhragān, the account of Manichaean re-
ligion and cosmology that Mani dedicated to Shapur I, with the practice of disputation on religious matters within the
Sasanian court. However, even though the cosmological account in the Šābuhragān includes some dialogic exchanges
among Xradešahr (standing for Christ), the “sinners,” and the “religious ones,” the text itself does not take the dia-
logue form and has not been included here (for the surviving text, originally written in middle Persian, see the edition
and English translation in MacKenzie 1979 and 1980; see also the Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v.).
18. Van Gaans 2013 for an overview; BeDuhn 2009; ed. Monceaux 1924.
19. Notable examples of textual reuse are the anonymous Dialogue with Adamantius, which makes use
of Methodius’ On Free Will and Aglaophon or On the Resurrection, the Ps.-Athanasian Two Dialogues against the
Macedonians, which reuse one of the authentically Macedonian Two Macedonian Dialogues, and the inclusion of
material perhaps derived from Aristo of Pella’s Disputatio Iasonis et Papisci in the composition of Ps.-Athanasius’
Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei, the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, and the Latin Dialogue of Simon and Theophilus
(attributed to Evagrius; the text and English translation can be found in Varner 2004). Important overlaps in format
and language have also been found between the Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei and a number of Ps.-Athanasian
dialogues, but in these cases the degree of similarity is not enough to prove direct textual dependence beyond their
originating in similar cultural milieux (Andrist 2005:106–21; the Ps.-Athanasian dialogues that shows overlaps with
the Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei are the Disputatio contra Arium, the Five Dialogues on the Trinity, and the Two
Dialogues against the Macedonians, to which can be added the anonymous Dialexis Montanistae et Orthodoxi). Other
dialogues appear to make use of literature that was not originally written in dialogue form, such as Hegemonius’
Acta Archelai (which makes use of authentic Manichaean literature) and Macarius Magnes’ Apocriticus (which pos-
sibly depends on Porphyry’s Against Christians). Others, such as Gregory of Nyssa’s Dialogue on the Soul and the
Resurrection and Against Fate, and the anonymous Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, suggest a link with other literary
genres such as hagiography, epistolography, or catechetical literature, as is discussed in each entry.
now possible to rely on a firmer chronology for several texts than might have
been only few years ago, as is discussed in the relevant entries, while it has also
become clear that some dialogues of uncertain chronology are now unlikely to
fit the time frame of the present work. These are the anonymous Dialogica poly-
morpha antiiudaica (CPG 7796; previously known as Dialogus Papisci et Philonis
Iudaeorum cum Monacho), whose most ancient nucleus dates to the second half
of the seventh century and was expanded during the following decades, as shown
by a remarkably fluid textual tradition;20 the fragmentary Dialogus de S. Trinitate
inter Judaeum et Christianum by Jerome of Jerusalem (CPG 7815), for which
Patrick Andrist suggests a chronology between the end of the seventh and the be-
ginning of the eighth centuries;21 the Dialogue of the Monk and Recluse Moschos
Concerning the Holy Icons (of dubious chronology but likely later than the sixth
century);22 and Ps.-Gregentius’ Dialexis (CPG 7009), for which both the seventh
century and the tenth century were suggested.23
The Greek and Syriac dialogues treated in the present work are thus the fol-
lowing ones (the question mark indicates dubious authorship):24
1. ?Aristo of Pella, Disputatio Iasonis et Papisci (CPG 1101)

2. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho (CPG 1071)
3. Gaius Romanus, Dialogue against Proclus (CPG 1330; fragments)
4. ?Hippolytus, Chapters against Gaius (CPG 1891; fragments)
5. Philip Bardaisanite, The Book of the Laws of the Countries (Syriac) and
Bardaisan’s lost dialogues
6. Anon., Erostrophus (lost; survives in Syriac)
7. Origen, Dialogue with Heraclides (CPG 1481) and lost dialogues
8. Gregory the Wonderworker, To Theopompus, on the Impassibility and
Passibility of God (CPG 1767)
9. Gregory the Wonderworker, Dialogue with Gelian (lost)
10. Anon., Anti-Jewish Dialogue in P.Oxy. 2070 (fragment)
11. Methodius, On Free Will (CPG 1811; incomplete; survives in Old Slavonic)
12. Methodius, On Leprosy (CPG 1815; fragmentary; survives in Old Slavonic)
13. Methodius, Symposium (CPG 1810)
14. Methodius, Aglaophon or On the Resurrection (CPG 1812; fragmentary;
survives in Old Slavonic)
20. Andrist et al. 2013; Aulisa and Schiano 2005:310–26, which contains edition and Italian translation.
21. The surviving text can be found in PG 40:848–60 and 865 (the latter fragment is also edited in Kotter
1969:3: 194 III 125); see Andrist 2017 and Fields 2012.
22. Editio princeps and English translation in Alexakis 1998. While the editor opts for the second third of the
fifth century (Alexakis 1998:210), a later chronology is suggested in Brubaker and Haldon 2011:143n269.
23. Cameron 2014:51–54 for a seventh-century chronology very possibly with later expansions; Berger
2006:100–9, which includes edition and English translation, for the tenth century.
24. Instead of proposing new titles, I refer to the dialogues as they are commonly referred to in modern schol-
arship, whether in Latin or in English. Similarly, for the names of the authors, I use the form that is more commonly
found in contemporary scholarship, despite the inconsistencies, for instance “Diodorus of Tarsus,” but “Theodore of
Mopsuestia.”
Introduction 7
15. Methodius, Xeno or On Things Created (CPG 1817; fragmentary)

16. ?Hegemonius, Acta Archelai (CPG 3570; lost, survives in Latin)
17. Anon., Dialogue with Adamantius (CPG 1726)
18. Diodorus of Tarsus, Two Dialogues (lost)
19. Gregory of Nyssa, Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection (CPG 3149)
20. Gregory of Nyssa, Against Fate (CPG 3152)
21. Macarius Magnes, Apocriticus (CPG 6115)
22. Apollinarius of Laodicea, Dialogi and Quod Deus in carne Christus
(CPG 3663 and 3664; fragments)
23. Didymus the Blind, Disputation with a Heretic (CPG 2565; fragment)
24. Ps.-Athanasius, Disputatio contra Arium (CPG 2250)
25. Anon., Two Macedonian Dialogues (fragments)
26. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood (CPG 3416)
27. Anon., Dialexis Montanistae et Orthodoxi (CPG 2572)
28. Ps.-Athanasius, Five Dialogues on the Trinity (CPG 2284)
29. Ps.-Athanasius, Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei (CPG 2301)
30. Ps.-Athanasius, Two Dialogues against the Macedonians (CPG 2285)
31. Palladius, Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom (CPG 6037)
32. Cyril of Alexandria, On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and in Truth
(CPG 5200)
33. Cyril of Alexandria, Seven Dialogues on the Trinity (CPG 5216)
34. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten (CPG 5227)
35. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ (CPG 5228)
36. Ps.-Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogue with Nestorius (CPG 5438)
37. Theodotus of Ancyra, Contra Nestorium (CPG 6131)
38. Nestorius, Adversus Theopaschitas (CPG 5752; fragments)
39. Nestorius, Dialogue in the Bazaar of Heracleides (CPG 5751)
40. Mark the Monk, Disputatio cum Causidico (CPG 6097)
41. John of Apamea, Six Dialogues with Thomas (Syriac)
42. John of Apamea, Four Dialogues with Eusebius and Eutropius (Syriac)
43. John of Apamea, Dialogue on the Mystery of Baptism (Syriac)
44. Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Eranistes (CPG 6217)
45. Anon., Actus Silvestri (BHG 1628–34; BHL 7725–43; Latin; the origin of
the legend is Syro-Palestinian)
46. Aeneas of Gaza, Theophrastus (CPG 7450)
47. Zacharias of Mytilene, Ammonius (CPG 6996)
48. Zacharias of Mytilene, Life of Severus (CPG 6999)
49. Anon. or Menas, On Political Science
50. Leontius of Byzantium, Dialogus contra Aphthartodocetas (CPG 6813)
51. Leontius of Byzantium, Solutions to the Arguments Proposed by Severus
(CPG 6815)
52. Basil of Cilicia, Against John of Scythopolis (lost)
53. Paul the Persian, Disputatio cum Manichaeo (CPG 7010)
54. John bar Aphthonia, Conversation with the Syrian Orthodox under
Justinian (CPG 7486; Syriac)
55. John the Grammarian of Caesarea, Disputatio cum Manichaeo (CPG 6862)
56. Anon., Dialogus cum Iudaeis (CPG 7803)
57. Anon., Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila (CPG 7794)
58. Paul of Nisibis, Conversation with Caesar (CPG 6897)
59. Anon., Religious Conversation at the Sasanian Court (CPG 6968)
60. Anastasius of Antioch, Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Tritheite
(CPG 6958)
Dialogue and Christianity
The question presents itself whether, and, if so, in what ways, the extensive use
of the dialogue form by Christian authors should inform our understanding of
the historical transformations of debate on matters of religion and philosophy in
late antique society. In particular, a central issue of discussion among scholars
has been whether early Christians engaged in genuine dialogue on religious and
philosophical issues, and how their practices differed from their non-Christian
contemporaries and predecessors. Was there room for discussion and disagree-
ment in matters of Christian faith? Did the search for Christian orthodoxy bring
about the end of open dialogue on religious and philosophical matters? In what
respects did debate in late antiquity differ from debate in classical antiquity?
Whereas Socratic dialogues developed in conjunction with Athenian democracy,
where dialogue was a crucial part of the political process, Christian dialogues
were often written by Christian authors who became notorious for their censo-
rious attitudes toward opposing views on matters of faith. Christian dialogues
have been used to answer some of these questions.25
An influential view was that of Rudolf Hirzel, who in his 1895 classic work
on ancient and modern dialogue argued that the rise of Christianity entailed the
demise of the ancient dialogue as a literary form. Hirzel put forward an opposi-
tional understanding of classical dialogues and Christian dialogues; he implied
that the intellectual openness of dialogue in ancient Greece, as is reflected in the
classical dialogue form, should provide the benchmark for measuring dialogue
and debate in other societies. In this respect, early Christianity appeared to fall
short of the openness of dialogue in classical Athens. Nonetheless, one problem-
atic aspect of Hirzel’s account (as shown by Sandrine Dubel) was Hirzel’s debt to
Diogenes Laertius in his understanding of classical dialogue (see especially D.L.
3.48), and, in particular, to Diogenes’ view of Plato as the author who brought the
dialogue form to perfection. By centering on Plato, Hirzel’s work ended up down-
playing the overall diversity of the dialogue form already in antiquity and tended
25. Lim 1995 and 1995a; an overview on the issue can be found in Van Nuffelen 2014.
Introduction 9
to appraise dialogues exclusively in relation to Platonic models; conversely, the

diversity of ancient dialogues is now being increasingly appreciated thanks to
a renewed scholarly interest in their various forms in antiquity, and a case was
made to understand ancient dialogue as a genre polymorphe.26
To set up an opposition between Platonic and Christian dialogues appears more
and more as an artificial exercise that does not reflect the fluidity of the dialogue
form already in antiquity, an obstacle that hinders the possibility of writing a so-
phisticated historical profile of this form over the centuries. Yet, following Hirzel,
subsequent scholarship often contrasted Christian dialogues with Platonic exam-
ples, while much less has been done to study the variety of both ancient and late
ancient models that were available to Christian authors. More than half a century
after Hirzel, in his 1966 study of Christian dialogues (which regrettably ended with
the fourth century), Manfred Hoffmann attempted to trace the development of the
dialogue form among Christian authors, but also argued that the genuine search
for truth underpinning classical dialogue was replaced in Christian dialogues by
the teaching of the revealed Christian message. In his view, Christian religious
teaching was to be understood as the primary aim in the dialogue form used by
Christian authors; Christian dialogues did not express an effort to establish the
truth, but rather intended to indicate and teach the way to achieve salvation.27
Hoffmann also pointed out that several among the most influential Christian
authors of dialogues were trained in rhetoric and philosophy and must have
been familiar with classical dialogues, but the didactic and catechetic drive that
characterized their written work ultimately overcame the genuinely dialogic ele-
ment inherited from the classical tradition (these authors included Justin Martyr,
Gregory the Wonderworker, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine). As will be dis-
cussed later, a didactic element is indeed a feature of several among late antique
dialogues; yet their instructional drive does not preclude the possibility of un-
derstanding these texts within the religious and rhetorical culture of the period.
In addition, since Christian dialogues display remarkable fluidity in both form
and subject matters, Hoffmann proposed a classification of these texts that was
to prove particularly influential, and described them as “apologetic” (e.g., Aristo
of Pella and Justin Martyr), “dogmatic-polemic” (e.g., Gaius Romanus’ Dialogue
against Proclus and Methodius’ Aglaophon or On the Resurrection), or “Christian-
philosophic” (e.g., The Book of the Laws of the Countries and Gregory of Nyssa’s
Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection), but without addressing the question
of how dialogue became the form of choice for so many Christian authors.28
26. Hirzel 1895:2.380 with Lim 2008:151–52; Dubel 2015. Studies emphasizing the various forms that dialogue
took in antiquity are found in Föllinger and Müller 2013, and Dubel and Gotteland 2015; for the dialogue as a genre
polymorphe see Dubel 2015:12.
27. Hoffmann 1966.
28. Hoffmann 1966:160–62; Bardy 1957 divides Christian dialogues into apologetic, theological, biographic,
and Biblical.
A contrastive approach with classical dialogues again underpinned the work of

Bernd Reiner Voss, the author of the most comprehensive book on Christian dia-
logues published to date (1970), which similarly closes with the beginning of the
fifth century. Voss follows Hoffman in arguing that the purpose of the Christian
dialogue form can rarely be identified with an open-ended search for truth and
thus regards Christian dialogues as inferior in quality to Platonic antecedents
(despite some notable exceptions, such as Aeneas of Gaza’s Theophrastus).29
Underlying Voss’ reconstruction, however, is his belief in the substantial incom-
patibility of philosophy (which makes use of dialogue) and religion (which is ul-
timately irreconcilable with an authentically dialogic form)—another dichotomy
whose strict applicability to our period is under increasing academic scrutiny
and refinement.30 Voss identifies the acceptance of the authority of Scripture as
the fundamental feature common to all Christian dialogues, and he understands
Christian dialogue as gradually morphing into a non-artistic form (“unkün-
stlerisch,” or “nonliterary”), a transformation that provides the chronological
limit to his analysis (the early fifth century). In his view, a tendency toward a lack
of organic structuring (in contrast with classical predecessors) and the reuse of
existing literature to the detriment of genuinely dialogic exchanges became more
and more common in Christian dialogues.
From a historical perspective, however, “non-artistic” features of Christian
dialogues, such as the reuse of existing literature, the inclusion of quotations
from Scripture or patristic florilegia, or the adoption of unrealistic dialogue set-
tings that do not attempt to reproduce plausible conversations, can be taken as
precious historical indicators of different circumstances in the composition, pur-
poses, and circulation of these texts, as well as of the development of the dialogue
from as a whole. Voss does not discuss the question of whether dialogues may
not simply be reflections of historical debates on the ground, but might also have
been themselves designed, at a different level, as culturally contingent tools of
opinion formation within the society that produced them. For instance, in his
analysis Voss misses the chance of seeing, in Christian dialogues, the beginnings
of a broader process of cultural transformation, namely an increasing formalism
and a gradual technicization of theological argumentation that, from the mid-
fifth century onward, made larger use of patristic florilegia and legalistic proofs,
as is well attested in patristic literature and conciliar acts.31 Regrettably, dia-
logues as such are still tangential to the 2007 monograph, by Maijastina Kahlos,
on dialogue and debate between the fourth and fifth centuries CE; similarly, the
29. Voss 1970:39, 364, and passim; Voss 1970:351 for the Theophrastus.
30. Among recent publications on this issue see, for instance, Gerson 2000a, Zachhuber 2019, and the forth-
coming volume by Slaveva-Griffin and Ramelli, which proposes to see the study of philosophy and the study of
religion in late antiquity as two ends of a spectrum, each being the byproduct of specialized interests. See also Hadot
1995 for ancient philosophy as a way of life.
31. See Cameron 2014:47–48, 2013, and 1994.
Introduction 11
abundance of Christian dialogues throughout our period should at least prompt

a new discussion of Richard Lim’s argument for an end of genuine debate in mat-
ters of religion from the turn of the fifth century.32
The issue of whether the rise of Christianity resulted in the demise of ancient
dialogue as a literary form was posed again in 2008 by Simon Goldhill, who makes
use of Christian dialogues to describe Christianity moving toward hierarchy and
the repression of difference and dissent. In his view, this shift was instantiated by
the rarity of Christian dialogues and by the lack of a genuinely dialogic element
within extant examples; yet the issues of openness of extant dialogues, and, more
broadly, of “the dialogic” in ancient literature, are related but distinct questions,
and not limited to self-standing prose dialogues.33 Goldhill’s argument is fur-
ther discussed by Lim in a chapter from the same volume, in which he writes of
the inherent elitism of the classical dialogue, and argues that its implicit idea of
community defined by the common possession of paideia made it less suitable
for Christian authors, who were often inclined to opt for tools of mass commu-
nication. The status-coded forms of speech and elite sociability that underpinned
classical dialogue were alien to the general Christian population, and, in Lim’s
view, this fact determined a lack of investment in the classical dialogue form by
Christians. Lim also argues that Christians dialogued in late antiquity as never
before, but made use of diverse literary forms and techniques that seem to have
“as little in common with Plato’s Symposium as modern Internet chat-room
conversations resemble an early-modern Humanist dialogue.” Dialogue among
Christians does indeed appear as a fluid and diverse form that was not confined
to the literary and philosophical dialogue.34
Lim’s work shows us the necessity, and the untapped potential, of under-
standing Christian dialogues within their historical, cultural, and literary con-
texts, and not exclusively in relation to classical models. There is much room
for the study of the transformations of the dialogue form in its own right within
their late antique context, which was characterized by an increased emphasis
on religion and by a new relation with the Scriptures. In this respect, instances
of dialogue within Rabbinic literature have been studied in their late antique
context and have raised important questions: the Talmud reports exchanges
between rabbis and non-rabbinic figures, such as the so-called “heretics” and
“idolaters,” magicians, philosophers, Roman and Persian officials, and gentile
women among others. The contrast between the apparent inward-looking ori-
entation of Rabbinic texts and the use of the dialogue form for engagement with
outsiders, in addition to the formal complexities of the dialogue form that this
literature takes, have been the subject of a burgeoning strand of scholarship. For
32. Cameron 2014; Kahlos 2007; Lim 1995:106.

33. For an overview see Efthymiadis 2017.
34. Goldhill 2008:5–8; Lim 2008, and 2008:156–57 on the rarity of Christian dialogues during late antiquity.
example, instances of dialogue in the Talmud have been explained in the con-
text of the rabbis’ competition with other elites in late antiquity (these dialogues
assured the rabbinic readers that the rabbis would be able to face challenges
from the outside), or as reflecting the rabbis’ very own anxieties by displacing
problematic internal opinions onto the voices of fictional “others;” or, again, as
the rabbis’ imaginary attempts to participate in broader conversations taking
place outside their doors, such as the religious debates of Christians.35 At the
same time, however, such and similar concerns for identity and authority in
the Talmud have not precluded its study under the lens of literary criticism, an
aspect that is increasingly being the subject of scholarly analysis; indebted to
Mikhail Bakhtin, Daniel Boyarin proposes approaching the Talmud in terms of
intertextuality and as an example of Menippean literature.36
Dialogues and Late Antiquity
When studied in their historical context, the surviving Christian dialogues add
to the picture of a society that thrived on religious debate and invested con-
spicuously in the search for, and articulation of, religious orthodoxy.37 Several
Christian authors adopted and transformed the dialogue form to suit the new
needs of religious debate and, as the present work shows, the vast majority of
Christian dialogues are best understood as designed as tools of persuasion in
the context of historical religious controversies and theological debates. Several
influential Christian authors (in addition to several minor and anonymous ones)
did indeed write dialogues, and chose the dialogue form as the primary vehicle
for argument and apologetic on issues they saw as crucial. Notable examples in-
clude Diodorus of Tarsus, who, in all likelihood, wrote his dialogues (presumably
against Arian doctrine) on occasion of his exile to Armenia under the Arian
persecution by Valens, and John Chrysostom, who chose the dialogue form to
rebuff accusations about his refusal to be ordained as well as a canon to appraise,
and possibly accuse, particular members of the clergy in Antioch. In the context
of the Nestorian controversy, Cyril of Alexandria wrote dialogues to attack and
35. Respectively Kalmin 1994, Hayes 1998, and Bar-Asher Siegal 2018; Kattan Gribetz and Vidas 2012;
Boyarin 2008.
36. Boyarin 2009; Labendz 2013; the 2012 issues 19.2 and 19.3 of the Jewish Studies Quarterly contain a rich
selection of articles on instances of dialogue in the Talmud.
37. Cameron 2014, 1991, and 1991a; Cameron and Hoyland 2011; Déroche 2012:537–38; Lim 2001, 1995, and
1995a; Van Nuffelen 2014; Tannous 2013 for the seventh century; Bertaina 2011 for the Middle East in the early
Islamic period; McLynn 1992 on the fourth century for a diminution of earlier views on the role of violence in re-
ligious controversy; see, for instance, the first imperial edict confirming the Council of Chalcedon (promulgated
in 452; ACO 2.2.113–14 and 2.1.479–80, trans. Price and Gaddis 2005:3.128–30, esp. 128n82) and included in the
Codex Justinianus (1.1.4, ed. and trans. Frier et al. 2016:1.18–19) that forbade any “clergyman or member of the im-
perial service, or any person of any status, [. . .] to lecture on the Christian faith before crowds assembled to listen
[. . .]. For whoever strives to revisit and publicly discuss questions already decided and correctly settled, insults the
judgment of the Most Holy Synod [. . .]. If a clergyman, therefore, dares to discuss religion in public, he shall be
expelled from the community of the clergy [. . .].”
Introduction 13
refute the Christological doctrine attributed to Nestorius; similarly, Nestorius

wrote dialogues against Cyrillian theology; and Theodoret of Cyrrhus wrote a
dialogue against miaphysitism with the aim of defending himself in the con-
text of the accusations that Dioscorus of Alexandria was leveling against him.
In Syriac, Bardaisan wrote dialogues against Marcionites, while Latin authors
who wrote dialogues as apologetic tools within religious controversies include
Jerome, Augustine, and Sulpicius Severus. The practice of writing in dialogue
form was pervasive in early Christian literature, and (as pointed out by Peter
Van Nuffelen) the challenge will be how to best use these dialogues in the study
of modes of public argumentation and cultural and religious interaction during
late antiquity.38
A preliminary question to answer when placing this material in its historical
context is how to understand the link between surviving texts and actual con-
versations on the ground. Some dialogues do indeed record historical debates,
such as Origen’s Dialogue with Heraclides, John bar Aphthonia’s Conversation,
and Paul of Nisibis’ Conversation with Caesar. Yet, are these dialogues “real”? Do
they record conversations as they truly happened? These are natural questions for
the modern (as well as the ancient) reader, given that most dialogues purport to
record actual exchanges, despite notable exceptions such as Theodoret’s Eranistes
and Nestorius’ dialogue included in the Bazaar of Heracleides. However, these
questions can at times be misguided, given how rarely there exists historical ev-
idence validating the conversations recorded. On some occasions the nature of
the textual support, in particular if this was papyrus, has been used to argue that
a dialogue should be understood as the stenographic account of a real debate.
Such was the case for Origen’s Dialogue with Heraclides and Didymus the Blind’s
Disputation with a Heretic.39 On other occasions the apparently flawed or unsys-
tematic arrangement of a particular dialogue has been taken as an indication that
the text could be the record of an actual conversation, given that a work conceived
on paper would presumably have been more effectively and soundly structured.
This last consideration has been applied to the anonymous Dialexis Montanistae
et Orthodoxi and the third of the five Ps.-Athanasian Dialogues on the Trinity, and
may be extended to the second of the two Ps.-Athanasian Dialogues against the
Macedonians.40
A degree of caution, however, should be exerted for understanding surviv-
ing dialogues as records of real conversations or debates. Besides the lack of
corroborating evidence, the danger of taking surviving dialogues as “real” is
exemplified by the conflicting accounts of the historical debate between miaph-
ysite and Chalcedonian bishops sponsored by the emperor Justinian, an actual
38. Van Nuffelen 2016 and 2014; Cameron 2014, esp. 36–38.
39. See the discussion in Morlet 2013:40.
40. See the relevant entries.
historical event for which accounts of both parties survive. Here, each account
provides a strongly slanted picture, passing over embarrassing developments
in the debate and emphasizing others.41 In addition, although stenographic ac-
counts of actual debates did exist (see, for instance, the entry on Origen), these
could easily undergo a substantial editing process to the point of falsifying the
actual debate. Origen lamented the publication and circulation by one of his
opponents of the record of a debate with him that—he alleges—had in fact
never even taken place! Conversely, the identification of the speakers by using
generic labels such as “Orthodox” or “Montanist” may not be sufficient to con-
clude that a particular text was not linked to a real debate, for this terminology
could easily be added during the editing process. Despite these difficulties, as
argued by Van Nuffelen, both fictional dialogues and records of debates can
contribute, in different ways, to the study of the debating culture of the period,
and, in his view, historical debates and fictitious dialogues should be taken as
the two ends of a continuum; following up on this, Robin Whelan makes a con-
vincing case for the role that invented dialogues played in the perpetuation of
religious debate. These dialogues propagated the idea that orthodoxy would be
recognized as the correct and rational doctrine in the context of a debate; they
both reflected and helped create a distinctive culture of religious debate in late
antiquity.42
Especially helpful insights into the link between surviving dialogues and
real debates have been developed by modern scholarship on Christian anti-
Jewish literature, also known as adversus Iudaeos literature. This vast strand of
texts against Judaism took a variety of forms, including not only orations and
treatises, but also dialogues opposing Christian and Jewish speakers, and it is
the subject of a long-standing tradition of scholarship.43 As shown by Vincent
Déroche, Judaism continued to be a serious contestant with Christianity in the
period under analysis, and real debates between Christians and Jews are well
documented.44 Scholars now agree that adversus Iudaeos dialogues are not to
be taken as stenographic transcriptions of real debates, but they may nonethe-
less contain more or less distorted echoes of historical debates and real con-
frontations with contemporary Judaism. In Déroche’s view, adversus Iudaeos
dialogues, and adversus Iudaeos literature more broadly, “may be intended to
serve many functions or to reach many audiences at the same time.”45
41. Brock 2016:110–11; see entry 54.

42. Van Nuffelen 2014; Whelan 2017, esp. 23.
43. For overviews see Schreckenberg 1991, Fredriksen 2003, Lahey 2007, and Carleton Paget 2018; for adversus
Iudaeos dialogues in particular, see Morlet 2013; for anti-Judaism in Syriac see Becker 2016 and Camplani 2013.
44. Lim 1995:1–30; see also entry 1 on the Disputatio Iasonis et Papisci and, for instance, the debates with Jews
mentioned by Origen (Contra Celsum 1.45, 1.55, 2.31, 6.29).
45. Déroche 2012; see entry 1 and Stroumsa 2012 for the Jewish community in late antique Alexandria.
Introduction 15
Different aims may in fact have guided the authors, editors, and compilers
of adversus Iudaeos texts. Andreas Külzer draws attention to the possibility that
dialogues adversus Iudaeos could be used by Christians as preparatory texts
for actual debates with Jews on the ground,46 and a sixth-century anecdote re-
ported by John Moschus linking the composition of adversus Iudaeos texts by
Cosmas the Lawyer with actual debates seems to support this scenario.47 That
dialogues adversus Iudaeos could be used as instructional texts within Christian
catechetical teaching is another hypothesis, and the form of a dialogue with a
Jew on the Old Testament could be an effective didactic tool for the presen-
tation of Christian tenets. Andrist adumbrates the possibility that certain dia-
logues without prologue or narrative voice such as the Ps.-Athanasian Dialogus
Athanasii et Zacchaei might have been intended to be performed or publicly
read, and indeed an ancient reference to the public reading of a dialogue comes
from Cyril of Alexandria.48 Recent cases have been made for a catechetical
purpose of the Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei and the Dialogue of Timothy
and Aquila.49
The scenarios and questions that academic work carried out on adversus
Iudaeos dialogues has raised can thus inform the study of Christian dialogues
more broadly, not least because of the similarities that adversus Iudaeos dialogues
display with dialogues against pagan, Manichaean, or other heterodox groups.50
All surviving adversus Iudaeos dialogues from late antiquity are written from a
Christian perspective and may not allow us to identify an authentically Jewish
voice more easily than do dialogues directed against other heterodox groups.
Also, the juxtaposition, overlap, or even identification of the terms “Jews” and
“heretics” were common in early Christian literature, and may strike us more
than they did the ancients, given the more generic meaning of αἵρεσις as “sect,
group” in Greek than in modern languages. In addition, subjects discussed in
adversus Iudaeos dialogues can have strong Christological relevance, suggesting
that they were part of conversations that took place among Christians in a sim-
ilar way as other “anti-heretical” dialogues. This consideration applies, for in-
stance, to the extremely popular Actus Silvestri, which, although set as a debate
between pope Sylvester and several Jews, center on anti-Arian issues internal to
Christianity. Conversely, the earliest surviving example of anti-Christian Jewish
46. Külzer 1999:88–92, and see Pretty 1997:20–23 for a similar argument in relation to the anti-heretical
Dialogue with Adamantius and Coyle 2007 for the anti-Manichaean Acta Archelai.
47. John Moschus, Pratum spirituale 172 (PG 87.3:3040C–41A) with Andrist 2009:240–42.
48. For performance or public readings of dialogues see Andrist 2017:55–56 and the entries on Cyril’s Seven
Dialogues on the Trinity and on Aeneas of Gaza. For the theatron and issues of performance in Byzantium see
Marciniak 2007.
49. Morlet 2018; Andrist 2013.
50. For work on adversus Iudaeos dialogues see Morlet 2013 and Cameron 2003. See the introduction and ar-
ticles in Becker and Yoshiko Reed 2003 for some of the issues involved in the study of adversus Iudaeos literature in
its historical setting.
polemic dates from as late as the ninth century, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest;
this text has been called a disputation, whereas, before that, a prominent text was
the parodic anti-Gospel known as Toledot Yeshu in its manifold versions.51
Within his work on an adversus Iudaeos dialogue, the anonymous Dialogue
of Timothy and Aquila, Yannis Papadogiannakis argues that both real debates
on the ground and their literary representations as texts were primarily meant
to persuade their audiences and readers, and suggests that one of the reasons
for the enormous diffusion of the dialogue form may lie exactly in its particular
format. The format of a dialogue enables its speakers (in case of a real debate) or
its author (in case of a text written in dialogue form) to make use of several rhe-
torical techniques that a plain speech or a monologue would not allow. Through
these techniques and devices, the speakers in a dialogue (or the author of a text
in dialogue form) could also appeal to the emotions of the audiences (or read-
ers), which could be aroused, for instance, in order to sanction inappropriate
behavior or wrong belief. Not rarely do the authors of extant dialogues make
use of shame, which is usually represented as a speaker’s silence, to indicate the
defeat of a particular party in the conversation.52 In this respect, Christian dia-
logues shed light on the cultural requirements that were expected of late antique
leaders; the rhetorical devices and techniques that their authors employed help
indicate the complexities of the cultural equipment of an educated person of the
time, at the same time creating similar expectations in the readers’ minds.
The Dialogue Form and Rhetorical Training
Catherine Conybeare draws attention to the link between rhetorical training

and the flourishing of the dialogue form among late antique authors. She points
out the considerable effort required for writing a dialogue rather than a mono-
logic treatise, in that “the exposition takes far longer; and the efforts of thinking
oneself into one’s opponent point of view, of imagining objections and que-
ries, is an extraordinary intellectual discipline.” In her view, the composition
of dialogues may grow out of rhetorical training and its contests as much as
from the philosophical tradition.53 Students of rhetoric during the imperial pe-
riod could by all means encounter Plato among their reading of the classics
(and there survive traces of the use of Plato’s dialogues both at the level of the
grammarian and at the level of the rhetorician),54 but whether or not they were
51. Newman 2018; see Lasker and Stroumsa 1996 for The Polemic of Nestor the Priest and Meerson and Shäfer
2014 for the Toledot Yeshu.
52. Papadogiannakis 2018a; Lim 1995:85–86.
53. C. Conybeare, BMCR 2014.08.24 review of Cameron 2014; see also Conybeare 2006:35–41.
54. For the former see, e.g., Aelius Aristides, Or. 32.25 on the grammarian Alexander of Cotiaion, and for the
latter see Aelius Theon’s Progymnasmata, with Pernot 2008:301–5.
Introduction 17
actively trained to perform in a debate or to write in dialogue form is an entirely

different question.55
A systematic inquiry into the relationship between dialogue form and ancient
rhetoric goes beyond the scope of the present work, but, from the very begin-
ning, this relationship seems to have been a complex one. In his analysis of the
origins of the Socratic dialogue, Andrew Ford concludes that “the rhetorical cul-
ture of the fourth century shaped early (Socratic) dialogue at least as deeply as
previous literature or the activities of Socrates”; he points out that it remained
important for Socratic dialogues “to project an identity of their own, especially
since they were confusable with the widely practiced but discreditable genre of
disputation or eristic.”56 Plato himself was anxious about being assimilated to
this literature of disputation, which clearly had many young and enthusiastic
practitioners in fourth-century Athens. This danger was instantiated in full by
Isocrates, who lumped Socratic dialogues together with texts written by those in-
volved in the training in eristic—the so-called eristic dialogues (τοὺς διαλόγους
τοὺς ἐριστικοὺς καλουμένους) that were used among “those who have occu-
pied themselves with questioning and answering, which they call antilogistics.”57
Aristotle, another author of dialogues, similarly expressed criticism for the
teaching in eristic of his time (περὶ τοὺς ἐριστικοὺς λόγους [. . .] ἡ παίδευσις),
in which students were asked to learn speeches “in the form of questions and
answers” (ἐρωτητικοὶ λόγοι) without an appropriate preliminary training
(SE 34=183B35–39),58 but he also singled out as crucial the ethical element in
the Socratic dialogues, in that the speakers prefer an ethical proposition over
another.59
If we jump ahead to the Roman imperial period, instruction in rhetoric began
with a series of exercises of increasing difficulty known as progymnasmata, which
we know from handbooks of rhetoric and school papyri.60 These exercises were of
55. Considerations on the style of a dialogue can be found in Demetrius, On Style 19–21 and 223–35. The
Ps.-Hermogenic treatise from the imperial period known as On Method of Forceful Speaking, chap. 36, includes
dialogue among the literature composed “by a double method” (διά τινος διπλῆς μεθόδου; here it includes also
public speaking, comedy, tragedy, and symposiastic dialogues), and more precisely (ed. and trans. Rabe and
Kennedy 2005:262–65), “[i]‌n a dialogue (διάλογος) the combination is that of ethical (ἠθικοὶ λόγοι) and inves-
tigative speeches (ζητητικοί). Whenever you intermingle conversation and inquiry, the ethical speeches that are
interspersed refresh the mind, and when one is refreshed, the inquiry is brought in, like the tension and relaxing of
an instrument.”
56. Ford 2008:44 and 41–42.
57. Isoc. Panath. 26; and Ant. 45 (trans. Ford 2008:41): οὕς ἀντιλογικοὺς καλοῦσιν.
58. Lim 1995:33–37 and 132; Laborderie 1978:27–40; Marrou 1956:83–84. Compare Plato, Republic 539B
(trans. Reeve 2004:235): [Socrates speaking] “And isn’t it one very effective precaution not to let them taste argu-
ment while they are young? I mean, I don’t suppose it has escaped your notice that when young people get their
first taste of argument, they misuse it as if it were playing a game, always using it for disputation. They imitate those
who have refuted them by refuting others themselves, and, like puppies, enjoy dragging and tearing with argument
anyone within reach.”
59. Ford 2010.
60. Cribiore 2001; Pernot 2008 emphasizes the variance within canonical rhetorical exercises and the possi-
bility that other exercises are unknown to us because are not included in the handbooks that have survived.
diverse kind and soon became standardized, but, however, they did not include
the composition of dialogues as such. Nonetheless an isolated reference to dia-
logue comes from the handbook of rhetoric by Aelius Theon (first century CE),
which allowed the possibility of using the dialogue form (89.30: διαλογικῶς)
within an actual progymnasma, the “narration” (διήγημα). Theon also provided
an example of a “narration” in dialogue form to his readers, and this short dia-
logue, which is plainly narrative, features two characters “one teaching, the other
learning.”61 Accordingly, Theon’s students must have been exposed to the pos-
sibility of using the dialogue form in their public speeches; among late antique
dialogues, a strongly narrative text that adopts a comparable format may be iden-
tified in John Chrysostom’s On the Priesthood.
Two other references to dialogue come, instead, from Latin handbooks of
rhetoric, and add another facet to the complex relation between professional
rhetoric and the dialogue form. One finds that the Rhetorica ad Herennium
(c. 80 BCE) has a section on a rhetorical device known as sermocinatio, “con-
versation, dialogue, ethopoiia,” which “consists in putting in the mouth of some
person language in keeping with his character” (4.55).62 The text goes on by pro-
viding two examples of sermocinatio, one of which, interestingly, takes the form
of a dialogue (4.65). In his analysis of the treatise, Gualtiero Calboli argues that,
here, sermocinatio is best understood as the translation of the Greek διάλογος; it
indicates the characterization, within a speech, of a particular person through a
fictitious dialogue.63
Quintilian too made reference to this device, the sermocinatio, in his treat-
ment of a closely related rhetorical device, which he identified as προσωποποιΐα,
“impersonation.” According to Quintilian, when in a rhetorical setting, by means
of impersonation “we display the inner thoughts of our adversaries as though
they were talking with themselves (but we shall only carry conviction if we rep-
resent them as uttering what they may reasonably be supposed to have had in
their minds); or without sacrifice of credibility we may introduce conversations
between ourselves and others, or of others among themselves, and put words of ad-
vice, reproach, complaint, praise, or pity into the mouths of appropriate person.”64
In addition, Quintilian also wrote that
61. Aelius Theon, Progymnasmata 89.30–90.18 (trans. Kennedy 2003:39–40): “If we wish to use a dialogue
form, we shall suppose some people talking with each other about what has been done, and one teaching, the other
learning, about the occurrences; for example, ῾Often in the past it occurred to me to ask you about what happened
to the Thebans and Plataeans at Plataea, and I would gladly hear now if this is a good opportunity for you to give
a narrative account.’ [. . .] In the same way we shall continue asking and answering in accordance with the rules of
dialogue.”
62. Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.55 (trans. Caplan in Henderson 1954).
63. Calboli 1993:420n277 and 424n290.
64. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 9.2.30 (trans. Butler 1922). Italics added.
Introduction 19
there are some authorities who restrict the term “impersonation”

(προσωποποιΐα) to cases where both persons and words are fictitious, and
prefer to call imaginary conversations between men by the Greek name
of “dialogue” (διάλογος), which some translate by the Latin sermocinatio.
For my own part I have included both under the same generally accepted
term (i.e., “impersonation”). (9.2.31–32, trans. Butler)
In fact, “impersonation,” also known as “speech in character” (προσωποποιΐα or

ἠθοποιΐα in Greek), was an effective rhetorical device; Greek handbooks from
the imperial period show that it soon became a codified and widely practiced
progymnasma within rhetorical training. The question remains whether this ex-
ercise may have overlapped with the intellectual practice underpinning the com-
position of dialogues.65
In the exercise of impersonation, a student of rhetoric was asked to produce
an imitation of someone speaking in a particular situation emphasizing the
character and/or the emotion of the impersonated person.66 The potential im-
pact of this standard rhetorical exercise on dialogue writing awaits systematic
assessment. It should be noticed, for instance, that Celsus’ anti-Christian work
The True Doctrine made great use of impersonation, and included an extensive
speech by a Jew attacking Jesus and, as the work progressed, attacking Christians
in general (Origen, Contra Celsum pref. 6 and 3.1). If one follows Origen, this
section of The True Doctrine was structured as a fictitious public speech (3.1.6:
πεπλασμένη δημηγορία), in which Celsus “represents (προσωποποιεῖ) the Jew as
having a conversation with Jesus himself and refuting him on many charges.”67
It is unlikely that Celsus’ text included also responses from Jesus or from the
Christians (Contra Celsum 1.37, 1.41, 1.48, 1.66, 1.70), but it must nonetheless be
noted that Origen—himself once a grammarian—linked the origin of this kind
of exercise to the early stages of rhetorical training. In his view, Celsus’ rhetor-
ical enterprise was not especially refined, for he introduced the imaginary Jew
“somehow imitating a child having his first lesson with an orator.”68
It still remains to be established what could be the relation, if any, between the
rhetorical structure of Celsus’ text and that of the roughly contemporary Christian
dialogues featuring a Christian opposing a Jew as the main speakers, which were
composed by Aristo of Pella and Justin Martyr.69 A later dialogue adversus Iudaeos,
65. Kennedy 2003; Hunger 1978:1.108–16 contains a systematic overview of ethopoiiai up to later Byzantine
literature (and see Hunger 1978:1.119–20 for a reference to dialogue within the Byzantine rhetorical tradition); con-
versely, for a discussion of rhetorical questions see [Longinus], On the Sublime 18.
66. Kennedy 2003; Gibson 2008.
67. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.28.7– 8 (trans. Chadwick 1953:28): Μετὰ ταῦτα προσωποποιεῖ Ἰουδαῖον
αὐτῷ διαλεγόμενον τῷ Ἰησοῦ καὶ ἐλέγχοντα αὐτὸν περὶ πολλῶν [. . .].
68. Origen, Contra Celsum 1.28.1–2 (trans. Chadwick 1953:27): τρόπον τινὰ μιμησάμενος ἓν ῥήτορος εἰσαγόμενον
παιδίον.
69. Carleton Paget 2017 for a recent case in favor of the authenticity of Celsus’ Jew; see entries 1 and 2, by
Aristo of Pella and Justin Martyr.
the anonymous Dialogus cum Iudaeis (entry 56), includes short dialogues with
characters from the Old Testament that are clearly fictitious; and additional links
between Christian dialogues and professional rhetoric come from Latin texts.70 In
this respect, the study of the rhetorical techniques deployed in the Apocriticus by
Macarius Magnes (entry 21) has been particularly fruitful, for this text includes
textbook examples from late antique rhetorical school curricula. The Apocriticus
reports ethopoiiai in the character of Christ, and instances of amplificatio and of
chreiai, which were the staple of rhetorical training; also, the author paid attention
to style, showing particular care for clauses and phrase units.71
Another group of writers, and one notorious for its internal quarrels, made
use of the dialogue form in the rhetorical realm during the earlier part of the time
frame addressed here. These writers are several Greek imperial authors trained
in rhetoric and, in particular, those associated with the Second Sophistic move-
ment.72 An important author of dialogues was Plutarch, whose Moralia contain
seventeen dialogues—Plutarch used dialogue as a literary form for ethical, re-
ligious, and philosophical discussion, and especially favored it for discussing
theoretical issues of higher complexity or abstraction.73 Dio Chrysostom used
the dialogue form in a conspicuous subgroup of his works and speeches, and
most notably the narrative Borysthenitic and the dramatic Charidemus (Or. 36
and 30). Some of his dialogues may date from his exile, but others may well have
been spoken (Or. 2 and 4).74 Lucian, another prolific author of dialogues, had a
bearded personification of Dialogue accuse him of lowering the level of the dia-
logue form from the heights of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy to that of a
flexible form suitable for satire, comedy, and several diverse purposes (Bis Acc.
33–34), as Byzantine authors later had the chance to appreciate.75
The same dialogue, Lucian’s Bis accusatus sive tribunalia, is also meant to lam-
poon the tribunal setting of the time and stands as a reminder that late Roman
legal practice may well have left traces in the format of extant dialogues. The set-
ting of the Bis accusatus is that of a trial in which speakers pronounce opposing
speeches—and professional rhetoricians trained in this exercise at school through
the equivalent progymnasmata, κατασκευή “confirmation” and ἀνασκευή “refu-
tation.” Conversely, documentary reports of Roman court proceedings, which,
from the first century CE, often take the dialogue form, have been subject of
increasing scholarly attention but still await to be related to dialogue literature;
70. See, for instance, the preface of Vigilius, Dialogue against the Arians, Sabellians, and Photinians (late fifth
century; trans. Whelan 2017:23–24), which explains his choice to introduce imaginary heretical speakers.
71. Schott and Edwards 2015:54–59; Goulet 2003:164–176.
72. Bowersock 1969:89–100 for their professional quarrels.
73. Kechagia-Ovseiko 2017.
74. The surviving corpus by Dio Chrysostom contains several pieces in the dialogue form. See Menchelli 2016
for an overview and the relationship with Platonic and Ps.-Platonic models. See Jones 1978:115 for the possibility of
a public reading of Or. 2 and 4.
75. Saïd 2015; Jones 1986:13.
Introduction 21
it remains to be established, for instance, whether court practice may have influ-
enced the composition of Mark the Monk’s Disputatio cum Causidico (entry 40),
in which the role of the opposing speaker is played by a “renowned lawyer.”76
Among other Second Sophistic authors, Galen is likely to have written dialogues
with polemical intent that are unfortunately lost, while Philostratus wrote at least
two works in dialogue form, the Heroicus and the Nero.77
An instance of dialogue from the setting of a school of rhetoric comes from
the sophist Himerius (mid-fourth century), who used the dialogue form in one
of his speeches delivered at a school occasion (Or. 10). In the preface to the
speech, he explained his choice of the dialogue form by emphasizing the philo-
sophical dignity of the dialogue in a way that retraced Lucian’s characterization
of it in the Bis accusatus. By employing the dialogue form (εἰς σχῆμα διαλόγου),
Himerius also claimed he was making the (relatively) new genre of the propemp-
tic oration “seem older,” and pointed to the advantages of dialogue, including
“relief from monotony, arrangement of the material, also elegance and a dra-
matic flavor throughout.”78 In sum, an overview of dialogue literature in Greek
shows that dialogue, linked to rhetorical school practices, was a form available to
imperial-period authors and rhetoricians like Lucian and Himerius, who, though
fully aware of the dialogue form’s ancient associations with philosophy, did not
hesitate to employ it in rhetorical settings and to apply its force to less conven-
tional dominions.79
76. Palme 2014; Coles 1966; ongoing work by Anna Dolganov; see also, for the later period, the use of direct
speech in the legal papyri from Petra, e.g., P.Petra IV.39 (ed. Arjava et al. 2011).
77. For Galen see his Libr.Propr. 11 = 19.44 Kühn with Hirzel 1895:364. For the Heroicus see Rusten and König
2014 and for the Nero see Bowie 2009:31. Photius, Bibl. cod. 161, mentioned Sopater of Apamea as an author of
dialogues.
78. Penella 2007:112–14; Himerius, Or. 10 (trans. Penella 2007:113–14): “The treatment we give to common
themes is what makes them our own. Thus it is possible through the art of rhetoric to make propemptic orations seem
older, even if they are a recent custom. And that is just what I have done. For I have put the present theme into the
form of a dialogue without compromising the business at hand or destroying the dignity that is owed to the dialogue
form. Although my discourse happens to be ethical, nonetheless in the manner of Plato I latch onto physical and the-
ological considerations, mixing these with the ethical material. And since Plato hides his more divine discussions in
myth, one should observe whether I emulated him in this. As for the other qualities of dialogues—I mean relief from
monotony, arrangement of the material and interludes, also elegance and a dramatic flavor throughout—the written
version of the oration will show better [than anything I might say here] whether or not I succeed in achieving those
qualities. Dialogues begin with a rather plain style so that the nature of diction may produce a sense of simplicity;
then in what follows they become elevated [in style] as the action progresses. Those whose ears have been prepared
by rhetorical training to listen to orations may judge whether or not I have followed this pattern.”
79. There is little in modern scholarship contrasting dialogues by imperial authors and Christian dialogues;
for a view that downplays a direct influence see Beatrice 1983. Mention should also be made of other non-Christian
dialogues from our period, which include texts from the Hermetic corpus (ed. and trans. Scott 1924; see Moreschini
2013 and Fowden 1986) and by isolated Platonist philosophers. In the second century Numenius of Apamea cast
his main work On the Good in dialogue form (ed. Des Places 1973, esp. fr. 3a and 4; Edwards 2011:118 suggests
that Numenius derived both subject and mode of argument from the Platonic corpus), while the Tablet of Cebes
(first or second century CE) provides an example of an instructional dialogue possibly drawing on Stoic and Cynic
material (see Seddon 2005). During the third century, Porphyry, who had used the question-and-answer format in
his teaching (as can be assumed from the form of his commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, trans. Strange 2012; see
Porphyry VP 13 and Dillon 1990:8–9, while see Crawford 2013:158n25 for the possibility that the terminology used
by Cyril of Alexandria to describe the form of the Seven Dialogues on the Trinity is as that employed by Porphyry in
The Dialogue Form and Erotapokriseis
It would not be possible to make justice to late antique dialogues without refer-
ring to another popular strand of literature—the one taking the form of questions
and answers. Literature arranged as questions and answers was widely produced
in the ancient world, and, in Greek, these texts are often referred to as erotapokri-
seis, the term that later Byzantine grammarians used to designate them. Given
its flexibility and the room that it gave for later addition, this was an eminently
versatile form, frequently used in the discussion of philosophical issues (a no-
table example are the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata), but also in the exegesis
of holy texts, in instruction in a variety of fields, and, more broadly, in the or-
ganization of knowledge in subjects as disparate as medicine, grammar, philos-
ophy, or law. During late antiquity, Christians, Jews, Manichaeans, and Muslims
all wrote question-and-answer literature, and produced a large (and still under-
studied) body of texts that should be understood not just in the context of school
and instructional practice, but also more broadly within the culture of conver-
sation, dispute, and religious debate of the period; these collections reflect issues
that were subject of discussion outside the texts themselves. Among Christians,
erotapokriseis were often associated to Scriptural exegesis, but soon their scope
expanded and they were increasingly adopted in catechesis, instruction, and
apologetic more broadly. An apologetic character is visible, for instance, in the
Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos (wrongly attributed to Justin Martyr;
CPG 6285), which included objections against Christianity that ultimately go
back to anti-Christian texts by Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, and were intended
to attack the doctrines of pagans, Jews, and heterodox Christians.80
There are important links between erotapokriseis and dialogues, and, on some
occasions, the two forms may even seem to fade into each other during our pe-
riod. Among the earliest texts that, although usually ascribed to erotapokriseis
literature, nonetheless present features often found in dialogues are the revela-
tion dialogues of Gnostic literature. These texts feature Jesus in conversation with
describing the form of his commentary on Categories), may well have authored a symposiastic dialogue set at the
house of his teacher, Longinus (see Eusebius of Caesarea, PE 10.30 with König 2012:139 and Hirzel 1895:2.361–62).
At the beginning of the fourth century, Dexippus wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories in the form of a
dramatic dialogue featuring himself and his student Seleucus (Dillon 1990; Männlein-Robert 2006:88–90). The
relationship between the two speakers in the dialogue is instructional, but the author indulged in some literary
flourishes and quotations of Hesiod and Pindar, and there are a few lively exchanges. At least two instances of dia-
logue are found in c. third-or fourth-century alchemic texts, one by Comarius the Philosopher and another featur-
ing Cleopatra the Alchemist as a speaker (Ieraci Bio 2006:34n65). Conversely, Priscian of Lydia’s Answers to King
Khosroes of Persia, which record the responses to Chosroes I’s questions on philosophy and sciences by the Athenian
philosophers who took refuge at his court in 531 following the closure of the Academy, does not take the form a
dialogue (Huby et al. 2016); see also Olympiodorus’ take on Socratic dialogue and on the necessity of Socratic phi-
losophy to be learned Socratically (Renaud and Tarrant 2015:192–93).
80. Efthymiadis 2017; Papadogiannakis 2011, 2013a, and forthcoming; Oikonomopoulou 2013; Cameron
1991a and 1994; Rinaldi 1989 for apologetics in eratopokriseis literature; Bardy 1932 for an overview on the form in
Scriptural exegesis.
Introduction 23
one or more of his disciples, and their exchanges, in a clearly instructional rela-
tionship, are mostly set in post-resurrectional settings, as their narrative frame
usually indicates. Jesus bestows esoteric wisdom and clearly plays the role of a
teacher, but, as Michael Kaler argues, the prominent narrative component and
the conversational nature of these texts may strike the reader as a feature of dia-
logue.81 The Dialogus Anatolii, a similarly instructional compilation ascribed to
Anatolius, professor of law in Berytus under Justinian, features a teacher instruct-
ing a pupil and is likely to reflect the use of question-and-answer forms in legal
education.82 The 258 questions making up another instance of erotapokriseis, the
Quaestiones et responsiones (mid-sixth century) that circulated under the name of
Caesarius, brother of Gregory of Nazianzus, are likewise embedded in a contin-
uous dialogue in which the persona of the author-teacher answers the questions
of disciples who are sitting in front of him, possibly in the setting of a monastery.
The speakers of the Quaestiones et responsiones do not have any particular char-
acterization, but, on one occasion, the teacher is made to end a response abruptly,
since the interlocutors have to leave in order to attend the liturgy.83
The difficulty of drawing a line between dialogue and erotapokriseis is per-
haps best instantiated by Leontius of Byzantium’s Solutions to the Arguments
Proposed by Severus (entry 51), in which the speakers do not have a specific char-
acterization, being identified only by their doctrinal affiliation as Orthodox and
Acephalian, and, as the conversation proceeds, they become simply devices for
presenting arguments and counterarguments. Two other dialogues that adopt,
in one or more of their subsections, question-and-answer forms are Mark the
Monk’s Disputatio cum Causidico and John of Apamea’s Four Dialogues with
Eusebius and Eutropius (entries 40 and 42 respectively). Other dialogues that do
not take the question-and-answer form nonetheless feature the primary and the
secondary speakers in a teacher-pupil relationship similar to that of erotapokri-
seis: the instructional nature of these texts indicates particular pedagogic concerns
behind their composition and circulation, and it does not necessarily preclude
an apologetic character in their subject matter, as is shown by the dialogues by
Cyril of Alexandria and by the Syriac Book of the Laws of the Countries.84 These
strongly instructional dialogues tend to be more common in the earlier period,
such as Gregory the Wonderworker’s Dialogue on the Impassibility and Passibility
81. These texts are found in the Nag Hammadi library, in the codex Askewianus (the Pistis Sophia), and in the
codex Brucianus 96 (the Books of Jeu). See Rudolph 1968, who associated them to erotapokriseis literature; Perkins
1980; Koester 1990:173–200; Filoramo 1994; Moreschini 1.141–45 and 169–77; Morlet 2013:25; Moreschini 2013;
Piovanelli 2013; Evans 2015; the second volume of Burke and Landau 2016, currently in preparation, deals with
a number of these texts. Kaler 2013 emphasizes the presence of a frame narrative and their artistic features, and
pushes against direct links between these texts and erotapokriseis literature; he also notices that the very behavior of
the disciples is discussed in the text, as in the case of the Book of the Laws of the Countries.
82. Schönbauer 1933; Schulz 1961:414; Pieler 1978:390; Wibier 2014.
83. Papadogiannakis 2011:271 and 281, and 2013:32–33.
84. Camplani 2016.
of God and Gregory of Nyssa’s Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection, or in
Syriac, such as The Book of the Laws of the Countries and the dialogues by John of
Apamea. Other instructional dialogues are the Erostrophus, the Ps.-Athanasian
Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei, and Palladius’ Dialogue on the Life of John
Chrysostom, though in a different way, in that narration is the predominant form.
In all of these cases, the instructional relationship between the speakers under-
mines a truly dialogic exchange.85
In addition to the occasional similarity in form, however, erotapokriseis and
dialogues should be put in relation to each other because of their common con-
tents and of the intellectual processes that they both represent. Both erotapokri-
seis and dialogues may cover the same topics and may aim at solving the same
disputed issues dealing with Christian religion; at the same time, erotapokriseis
literature offered problems or zetemata that could be reformatted and reworked in
the form of more or less elaborated dialogues. In both erotapokriseis and dialogues
aporiai are raised, debated, and solved; and this is especially clear in a work such
as Macarius Magnes’ dialogue Apocriticus (entry 21), as Yannis Papadogiannis
shows. This dialogue features the main speaker, a Christian, in the process of
responding to a barrage of elaborated aporiai and objections to Christianity of the
same sort found in Ps.-Justin’s Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos; these
collections of zetemata or problemata “almost certainly functioned as disputatious
arguments and exercises in debate as well as a means of instruction”; and the list
of objections by the pagan speaker are conveniently provided at the beginning of
each book of the Apocriticus in the form of an index of questions.86
Toward a Comprehensive Approach?
Since Christian dialogues display important similarities among them as well as

common developments over time, their study can benefit from a more compre-
hensive approach than has been done in the past. There are benefits in bring-
ing together dialogues against different opponents, whether pagans, Jews,
Manichaeans, or other heterodox groups; similarly, the present analysis does not
exclude dialogues that have special relationships with real debates or dialogues
that are plainly works of fiction, for both real and imagined dialogues, against
whichever opponent, attest to the debating and rhetorical culture of the period
and to the refinements that the readers expected from religious debates.87 The texts
85. Compare Arist. SE 2 (165B1–7); Goldhill 2008a:5 argues that “catechism and other question-and-answer
structures are not in any significant sense a dialogue”; Cameron 2014:36. For an assessment on links between
question-and-answer literature and dialogue based on non-Christian texts see Oikonomopoulou 2013. Authors
who wrote both dialogues and question-and-answer literature include Philo of Alexandria (if the fragmentary
De providentia was indeed a dialogue as according to Voss 1970:185n47; see Eusebius of Caesarea, PE 6.13–14),
Plutarch (Kechagia-Ovseiko 2017), and possibly Porphyry (see n70 of this Introduction).
86. Papadogiannakis 2006:99–100 and forthcoming.
87. Van Nuffelen 2014.
Introduction 25
addressed here include dialogues based on historical debates, dialogues that pur-
port to record real conversations for which no corroborating evidence survives,
dialogues that are expressly fictitious, and dialogues that are clearly fanciful pieces
of literature, such as the anonymous Actus Silvestri, the Religious Conversation at
the Sasanian Court, and (at least to some extent) the Ps.-Athanasian Disputatio
contra Arium, with its conversion of Arius that could hardly have been taken at
face value by ancient readers.88 The fictional, and occasionally even the fanciful,
is present in Christian dialogues, whose authors did not hesitate to recreate the
speech of long-dead patristic authorities or heresiarchs such as Athanasius and
Arius; these texts offer abundant material for the elaboration of a theory of fiction
in late antiquity and Byzantium.89
Averil Cameron advocates the suitability of literary analysis for the study of
Christian dialogues and the need to investigate their rhetoric. Kate Cooper and
Matthew Dal Santo point out the invention of “new modes of dialogue” and the
revision of old ones. Claudio Moreschini writes of a revitalization and transfor-
mation of the dialogue form among Christians from the fourth century onward,
after the early experiments by Justin and Methodius that did not radically de-
part from the imitation of existing traditions, notably the Platonic one.90 The
use of Biblical citations, of patristic florilegia, and of legalistic proofs gradually
became a characteristic common to most Christian dialogues, thus pointing
to an increasing formalization of the argumentative strategies they employed,
a tendency that became especially evident in the fifth century with the dia-
logues by Cyril of Alexandria, Theodotus of Ancyra, Nestorius, and Theodoret
of Cyrrhus. Another formal feature that is likely to have become common to
Christian dialogues (and with important implications for their circulation out-
side learned circles) was the systematic indication of the change of speaker on
the manuscripts. While the readers of ancient dialogues had only a colon, which
was sometimes combined with a paragraphus or a stroke in the margin, to in-
dicate the change of speaker, at least some of the authors of Christian dialogues
intended to make reading easier by indicating the speakers’ names (whether
in full or in truncated form) next to the text, as is explained in the prologues
of Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ Eranistes, Leontius of Byzantium’s Dialogus contra
Aphthartodocetas, and Anastasius of Antioch’s Dialogue between an Orthodox
and a Tritheite.91
88. See, however, in entry 24 the caveats on the edited text of the Disputatio contra Arium, which is in need of
a new edition.
89. For the study of fanciful dialogues and for the need for its integration within the study of early Christianity
see Cameron 2015; for work on fictional literature in Byzantium see the articles in Roilos 2014.
90. Cameron 2016a and 2014; Cooper and Dal Santo 2008; Moreschini 2.15–16.
91. Cameron 2014:47–49 and 1994. For the discussion of the indication of speakers see also the entries on
Origen and the Adamantius with Wilson 1970 and Lim 1991. For the minimal indications of speakers in ancient
dialogues see Andrieu 1954:288–97.
In addition, Moreschini remarks that “the aim was to say in the form of di-
alogue what might otherwise be said in the form of a treatise or a letter”; he
argues that from the fourth century onward the dialogue acquired various kinds
and functions that were often combined. For this reason, to attempt a classifi-
cation of dialogues, as Hoffmann had attempted, proves a remarkably complex
issue. Grouping Christian dialogues according to their subject matter (for in-
stance “adversus Iudaeos,” “anti-heretical,” “philosophical,”92 or “biographical”
dialogues) runs the risk of failing to do full justice to the overall similarities of
the texts and of overlooking important aspects of their form, rhetoric, and ar-
gumentative structures that are necessary to explain the huge diffusion of these
texts and offer important insights into the culture of the period. Given their in-
ternal variety, however, to produce a comprehensive and definitive classification
of Christian dialogues can be a frustrating exercise; it may be a salutary reminder
that a similar exercise of classification, even if limited to Plato’s dialogues, has
already revealed its problematic nature to both modern and ancient scholars, in-
cluding Thrasyllus, Albinus, Diogenes Laertius, and the anonymous author of the
Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy.93
Dialogues classified as “philosophical” or “anti-heretical” often deal with
Christian doctrinal or exegetical matters, and the heretical voice that they in-
clude may at times be merely functional to the treatment of their subject.
Dialogues that have been studied as instances of adversus Iudaeos literature may
depend on earlier texts and be related to other strands of literature; this con-
sideration applies to the Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei, which shares its format
and common sources with other Ps.-Athanasian dialogues, and the Dialogue of
Timothy and Aquila, which was very likely informed by existing catechetical liter-
ature.94 Nor are the transmitted titles of great help in this exercise of classification,
since the nomenclature is not consistent, and manuscripts vary in their identifi-
cation of dialogues with terms such as ἀντιβολή, ἀντιλογία, διάλεκτος, διάλεξις,
διάλογος, διάλογος ἱστορικός, ζήτησις, and λόγος; in modern translation these
texts are often referred to as dialogues, disputations, conversations, or debates.95
For the sake of simplicity, all such texts are referred to here as “dialogues,” while
the term “debate” is used to refer to the setting (real or imagined) that can be
implied in a dialogue, and the term “disputation” is normally avoided in that it
92. By “philosophical” or “Christian philosophical,” Hoffmann 1966:105–59 meant, for example, dialogues by
Methodius and Gregory of Nyssa.
93. D.L. 3.48–50; for the contrasting arrangements of Plato’s dialogues by Thrasyllus (d. 36 CE), by Albinus
(mid-second century CE, ed. and trans. Fowler 2016), and by the anonymous author of the Prolegomena to Plato
Philosophy (sixth century CE, chap. 10, ed. and trans. Westerink 1962) see Dillon 1977:305–6; Long 2008; Boys-
Stones 2018:55–56.
94. Andrist 2017:43–48, 2013a, and 2005:106–21 for the Dialogus Athanasii et Zacchaei and Morlet 2018 for
the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila.
95. Conversely, for the nomenclature of Socratic dialogues (which likewise did not have specific nomenclature
and were normally referred to simply as λόγοι) see Ford 2008:34–39 and Albinus, Introductio 2 (ed. Nüsser 1991:30
and Hermann 1853:6.147–48; a new edition and English translation are in Fowler 2016).
Introduction 27
tends to imply a formal and scholastic character. It is not excluded, however, that
systematic work on terminology will yield results, as did Michael Trapp’s analysis
of the dialexis form employed by Maximus of Tyre and Papadogiannakis’ study of
its later use, by Theodoret of Cyrrhus, to address pagan criticism to Christianity.96
At the same time, it should be emphasized that existing literary traditions
are detectable in a number of surviving dialogues. Platonic elements, such
as Platonic language or the emphasis on ethopoiia and the use of a polished
style, are salient features of some dialogues.97 These elements affect dialogues
in different degrees, and particularly the earlier ones, but their identification as
Platonic can at times be controversial.98 Other similarities with Platonic mod-
els include the characterization of the speakers through imagery derived from
Plato, as in Methodius’ On Leprosy or Gregory of Nyssa’s Dialogue on the Soul
and the Resurrection, or the presence of an introductory dialogue as a scene-
setting device (as in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho and Methodius’
Aglaophon), which has been linked to the structure of Plato’s Protagoras and
Republic. Voss goes further and sees the influence, among Christian authors,
of the Introduction to Plato’s dialogues by the Platonist Albinus (second cen-
tury CE): Albinus described the main speakers in Platonic dialogues as having
fixed traits, and this view might have determined, for instance, the character-
ization of the two main speakers in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho as a
philosopher and a sophist.99 Gregory the Wonderworker, whose dialogue On
the Impassibility and Passibility of God shows the influence of Platonic imagery,
went as far as to describe his own instruction by Origen through a comparison
of a conversation with Socrates; yet this stands out as an early and isolated in-
stance among Christian authors of dialogues.100
The dialogues by three authors living between the end of the fifth and the be-
ginning of the sixth century are unusual in that they show a remarkable Platonic
influence. Aeneas of Gaza and Zacharias of Mytilene, both associated to the School
of Gaza, wrote dialogues that opposed aspects of Neoplatonism; although they vary
in their expected readerships and in the extent to which they embrace the Platonic
tradition (as is discussed in each entry), the dialogues by both authors are plainly
and vocally Christian. Conversely, the Christian character of another Platonizing
dialogue, the anonymous (or Menas’) On Political Science, is more lukewarm; it
96. Maximus of Tyre’s dialexeis blended the philosophical (and dialectic) element with the informal discourse
and repertoire of the orator; they brought together a tradition of study and instruction with a tradition of entertain-
ment and play. Trapp 1997:xl–xli and 1997a:1971–75; Papadogiannakis 2012:119–40 (esp. 122–23).
97. Basil of Caesarea, in Ep. 135 (discussed in entry 18), identified these two aspects as Platonic. On the na-
ture of Socratic dialogues see Ford 2008.
98. For an assessment of the Christian dialogue form that downplays the significance of Platonic models see
Horner 2001:66–93, though it focuses on Justin Martyr.
99. See entry 2. Albinus, Introductio 2 (ed. Nüsser 1991:30 and Hermann 1853:6.147–48; a new edition and
English translation are in Fowler 2016 and Boys-Stones 2018); for Albinus see also Ford 2008:34n21 and Dillon
1977:267–306, esp. 304–6.
100. See entry 8 for discussion.
has been suggested that this text reveals a genuine interest in Platonic philosophy
by its author, presumably a representative of the senatorial elite under Justinian.101
Anthony Kaldellis draws attention to the Platonist sympathies by writers living
under the reign of Justinian, such as Procopius, Agathias, and John Lydus, and
possibly in opposition to the regime, but he also writes of the development of a
Christian classicizing culture during the fifth and sixth centuries, whether under-
stood as a turn to the classics within Christian culture, or as a continuation of clas-
sical culture, only by Christians. These dialogues may be understood against this
particular background.102
Scholars have also sought the influence of Aristotle’s dialogues on Christian
dialogues (and, in turn, the influence of Cicero’s dialogues on the Latin ones), but
this tradition has been more difficult to trace.103 The search is complicated be-
cause, unlike Plato’s dialogues, Aristotle’s ones are almost entirely lost; yet Basil of
Caesarea’s Ep. 135 shows that he knew about the dialogues by Aristotle and by his
successor Theophrastus. Some see the influence of Aristotle’s dialogues in the use
of an authorial preface before the beginning of the dialogue proper, as is attested,
for instance, in the dialogues by Cyril of Alexandria and Leontius of Byzantium.
Another feature of Aristotelian dialogues was probably the presence, as one of the
speakers, of the author (or, alternatively, of a main speaker representing the point
of view of the author) who led the conversation and spoke for longer sections,
while, in a format somewhat similar to a lecture, the minor speakers intervened
only occasionally, and more rarely than in the dialogues by Plato.104 Overall, how-
ever, the impact of Aristotle on Christian dialogues seems less conspicuous than
that of Plato; also, knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy was generally scarce in
patristic authors, and, although familiarity with Aristotelian logic, often limited
to the Categories, was not uncommon, explicit references to this tradition were
easily associated with heresy in our period.105 Among Christian dialogues, Ps.-
Athanasius’ Two Dialogues against the Macedonians and Anastasius of Antioch’s
Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Tritheite openly express hostility against the
use of Aristotelian logic in the field of Christian Trinitarian theology (and against
the use of the Categories in particular in the Two Dialogues).
A different consideration should be made about dialogues with biographical
subjects. In the present work, this typology is represented by Palladius’ Dialogue
on the Life of John Chrysostom and Zacharias of Mytilene’s Life of Severus, while
Latin instances include the almost contemporary Sulpicius Severus’ Gallus or
101. See O’Meara 2002, Bell 2009, and entry 49 for discussion.
102. Kaldellis 2007:173–87 and 2007:177n6 for bibliography.
103. Heyden 2009b:128n52; Perrone 1980:417n15; Bardy 1957:941–42; Waszink 1947; Laurenti 1987 and 2003
on Aristotle’s dialogues. Cicero is often considered one of our best sources for Aristotelian dialogues: see Ad Fam.
1.9.23 with Kennedy 1972:208–9 and Fantham 2004; Ad Att. 4.16.2 for the use of prologues; and Ad Att. 13.19.4 with
Beard 1986 for the choice of the speakers.
104. Schorn 2004:35; Laurenti 2003 and 1987:1.67.
105. Cameron 2014:47n47 for references; for Syriac see Watt 2016; King 2013; Lim 1995:130–133 and 231–32.
Introduction 29
Dialogues on the Virtues of St. Martin (c. 404), and, less than two centuries later,
Gregory the Great’s Dialogues (its second book deals with the life of St. Benedict).106
As was stunningly shown by a papyrological find from Oxyrhynchus, the use of
the dialogue form in biography was not a late antique innovation, but may well
have had precedents in the Peripatetic tradition. P.Oxy. 1176 contains a large pas-
sage from a Life of Euripides in dialogue form authored by the Peripatetic Satyrus
of Callatis (late third century BCE), and shows that Satyrus employed the dia-
logue form for a collection of biographies that originally included also the lives
of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.107 From the text that survives, it appears
that Satyrus’ dialogue on the life of Euripides featured one main speaker who
spoke for longer sections and two minor speakers who intervened only occasion-
ally, presumably in some sort of instructional relationship that has been linked to
the format of Aristotle’s dialogues.108 Cicero’s Cato, unfortunately lost, is likely to
have been another instance of this tradition of biography in dialogue form, and
Sulpicius Severus made it abundantly clear in his biographical dialogue Gallus
that Cicero was one, if not the main one, of his literary models.109 It should be
pointed out, however, that strong apologetic concerns guided the authors of both
the biographical dialogues addressed here, Palladius and Zacharias of Mytilene,
as is noted in their entries (31 and 48 respectively).
Another strand within ancient dialogue was that of symposiastic literature,
which adopted the dialogue form and is sometimes described as a subgenre of the
philosophical dialogue. The archetypes of the genre were Plato’s and Xenophon’s
Symposia, but later Greek practitioners include Plutarch, Lucian, Athenaeus, and
Julian; and Macrobius stands out as a Latin example.110 Methodius’ Symposium
is an instance of Christian symposiastic literature in Greek, and has been linked
to Julian’s Caesars within a “third wave” of symposiastic literature in the late im-
perial period. That Methodius’ Symposium remained an isolated example among
Christian authors can be explained through the fact that the social context and
traditional aristocratic feasting implied by the symposium was an obstacle to
the development of such literature among Christians. In fact, the symposiastic
106. Sulpicius’ dialogue is edited by Fontaine and Dupré 2006 and translated into English by Peebles 1949:161–
251; see also Stancliffe 1983; Gregory’s dialogues are edited by De Vogüé and Antin 1978 and translated into English
by Zimmermann 1959; see also Dal Santo 2012.
107. P.Oxy. 1176 (ed. Hunt 1912, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 9:124–82), more recently edited and translated into
German by Schorn 2004; an Italian translation is available in Arrighetti 1964. For the biographic nature of this dia-
logue and the use of the dialogue form in ancient biography with discussion of earlier scholarship see Momigliano
1993:80 and 115.
108. Schorn 2004:31–36 for the nature of Satyrus’ dialogue.
109. Stancliffe 1983:104–7; Jones 1970; Momigliano 1993:80n116.
110. An isolated reference to the tradition of symposiastic dialogue is found in a rhetorical treatise of the
imperial period from the Hermogenic corpus (Ps.-Hermogenes, On Method of Forceful Speaking 36, ed. and trans.
Rabe and Kennedy 2005:262–65). Here, the symposiastic dialogue is described as “a combination of serious and
humourous in regard both to persons and actions” (πλοκὴ σπουδαῖα καὶ γελοῖα καὶ πρόσωπα καὶ πράγματα) and
the models are Plato and Xenophon; see LaValle 2017.
setting of Methodius’ Symposium is symbolic and linked instead to a Christian

type of commensality, the Eucharist.111
Other scholars have seen the influence of existing Christian literature on
Christian dialogues. In this respect, the presence of a judge, or of a group of
judges, to supervise the conversation has been linked to church councils or to
the influence of martyr acts or Ps.-Clementine literature. The present work, how-
ever, shows that explicit references to church councils are rare in the surviving
dialogues (an isolated reference to a church council survives in the later man-
uscript tradition of the Ps.-Athanasian Disputatio contra Arium), and their in-
fluence might more fruitfully be sought in the modes of argumentation within
the dialogues themselves. A template for the presence of a pagan judge can be
identified in the trial scenes of martyr acts or in the Ps.-Clementine Homilies; the
presence of a pagan judge to oversee the debate in the Dialogue with Adamantius
and in the Acta Archelai has been linked to the role played by Faustus in the de-
bate between Simon and Peter in Ps.-Clem. Hom. 16, and there are similarities
in the ways judges are characterized and addressed in both the Homily and the
two dialogues. The roles played by pagan judges in the Actus Silvestri and in the
Religious Conversation at the Sasanian Court await systematic analysis.112
More broadly, an important question is whether Christian authors had a par-
ticular understanding of the dialogue form as such, whether in general or in its
Christian manifestation. During the imperial period, authors such as Lucian,
who personified dialogue as a speaker in his Bis accusatus, and Himerius, who
wrote of the established dignity of the dialogue, reveal awareness of dialogue as a
literary form; and a reflection on the form of Plato’s dialogues is also found in the
Platonic commentary tradition.113 Similarly, second-order observations on the
dialogue form can be found among Christian authors and in Christian dialogues.
The most striking example is perhaps a letter by Basil of Caesarea, written in 373
to Diodorus of Tarsus, who had sent him two dialogues that he had recently com-
posed (see entry 18, ed. Deferrari 1950). Here, Basil contrasted ancient dialogues
and Christian dialogues, and, although allowing a moderate degree of character-
ization of the speakers in Christian dialogues, he understood Christian dialogues
as departing from classical models:
For assuredly your quick wit realizes this—that those philosophers outside
the faith who wrote dialogues, Aristotle and Theophrastus for instance,
at once grappled with the facts themselves, because they realized their
111. König 2008 and 2012. For Julian and Methodius see LaValle 2017 and 2017a and Quiroga Puertas 2017.
For the second-century grammarian Herodianus and the fragments of his work entitled Symposium see Dickey
2014:341 and Hirzel 1895:2.350-52. Jerome, De vir. ill. 80, wrote that he could read a text entitled Symposium by
Lactantius (now lost), “which he wrote as a young man” (quod adolescentulus scripsit). For comparison, see the crit-
icism regarding the setting of the Greek symposium in Philo, De vita contemplativa 57–63; and Schwartz 2008.
112. See the relevant entries.
113. Boys-Stones 2018:55–56.
Introduction 31
own lack of the literary graces of Plato. But Plato with the power of his
eloquence at one and the same time both attacks opinions and ridicules
the persons who represent them, attacking the rashness and recklessness
of Thrasymachus, the levity and conceit of Hippias, and the boastfulness
and pompousness of Protagoras. But whenever he introduces indefinite
characters into his dialogues, he uses his interlocutors merely for the sake
of giving clarity to his subject matter, and brings nothing else from the
characters into the arguments; as he did in the Laws.
So it is necessary also for us [Christians], who do not set out to write
for worldly honour but propose to bequeath to the brethren admonitions
on edifying subjects, if we introduce a character already well known to
the world for rashness of conduct, to weave something derived from the
quality of the character into the text, if it is at all incumbent upon us to
censure men who neglect their duties. But if the material brought into the
dialogue is indefinite, digressions against persons break its unity and tend
to no useful end. (Ep. 135.1.10–2.10; trans. Deferrari 1950, modified)
The passage shows Basil’s awareness of Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ dialogues

as well as his enduring esteem for the literary value of Plato’s dialogues, but also
indicates awareness of the departure of the Christian dialogue form from clas-
sical models.114 On another occasion, in Ep. 210.5, Basil wrote that the material in
Gregory the Wonderworker’s Dialogue with Gelian had been said “agonistically”
(οὐ δογματικῶς εἴρηται, ἀλλ’ἀγωνιστικῶς), a description that could apply more
broadly to several Christian dialogues recording debates between speakers of dif-
fering opinions.
References to the choice of the dialogue form are not unusual in Christian dia-
logues, especially in the ones that are admittedly fictitious. While in Methodius’
On Free Will, it is the speakers who agree on discussing and settling their doc-
trinal differences through interrogation (entry 11; 23: πρὸς ἕκαστον ἀπόκριναι ὧν
ἐρωτῶ), Cyril of Alexandria used the prologues of the On Adoration and of the
Seven Dialogues on Trinity to declare his choice of the dialogue form, which, as
he wrote, requires a “relaxed” style (ἀνειμένος)—the same adjective used in the
handbook on style by Demetrius to qualify dialogic prose (entries 32 and 33).115
Nestorius declared to have chosen the dialogue form because of the need to ex-
amine both the truth and what opposes the truth in order to reach true doctrine,
in the same way as alloyed gold is used to distinguish pure from impure gold.116
When presenting his choice of the dialogue form (διαλογικὸς χαρακτήρ) in the
prologue of his Eranistes, Theodoret of Cyrrhus stated his intention to depart from
114. Cameron 2014:3–4; Courtonne 1955:2.50n2.

115. Demetrius, On Style 19 and 20 (ed. Roberts 1902) about the διαλογική περίοδος; see also Romanus
Sophista, Peri aneimenou libellus (ed. Camphausen 1922).
116. Entry 39; Bedjan 1910:10–11.
“the ancient Greek philosophers (οἱ πάλαι τῶν Ἑλλήνων σοφοί) [. . .], who offered
their books to a well-educated audience for whom life consisted in discussion”;
Theodoret wanted his “work to be easily intelligible and profitable for readers
unacquainted with verbal disputation,” and he therefore placed the names of the
speakers in the left margin of the text so as to render the change of speaker even
more noticeable.117 Similarly, Leontius of Byzantium saw in the dialogue form the
most appropriate format to address and correct objections from his opponents.118
The choice of writing in dialogue form was intentional and calculated, and, in the
views of these authors, necessary to achieve their aim of persuasion.
A Formal Typology
It is possible to suggest a purely formal classification of Christian dialogues, fol-

lowing the work of Anna Maria Ieraci Bio.119 The presence or absence of a nar-
rative voice in the text can be used to distinguish dialogues as either “dramatic,”
when they purport to record the conversation itself without any narration, or
“narrative,” when a narrative voice reports the words of the speakers making use
of formulas such as “he said” and “he replied.”120 In turn, the narrative voice can be
external (or, similarly, authorial), or it can belong to one of the speakers of the dia-
logue, who therefore assumes the role of reporter of the dialogue, as, for instance,
speaker A in Zacharias of Mytilene’s Ammonius and the Christian speaker in the
anonymous Dialogus cum Iudaeis (here, the speaker operates both at the level of
the conversation recorded in the dialogue and at the level of the communication
with the reader). It is also important to emphasize that in “narrative” dialogues
this voice can appear in differing degrees: the extent of the narrative voice can vary
from merely indicating the changes of speaker to a full-fledged narration that sets
the scene and the occasion of the dialogue, records the reactions of the speakers
and of an audience (if present), and reports an epilogue that follows the conver-
sation. The dialogues in which the narrative voice is most extensive are the Acta
Archelai, the Actus Silvestri, and the Religious Conversation at the Sasanian Court.
There is, however, an important caveat in a strict application of “narrative”
versus “dramatic” form in the classification of dialogues: the same function of
indicating the identity of the speakers, the presence of an audience, and the set-
ting of the dialogue may be fulfilled by the voices of the speakers during the
conversation rather than by an external narrative voice. In addition, the division
between dramatic dialogues and narrative dialogues is further complicated when
a speaker in a dramatic dialogue reports an embedded narrative dialogue, thus
117. Entry 44; Ettlinger 2003:29; Lim 1991; Wilson 1970.

118. Entry 51.
119. Ieraci Bio 2006:26–35.
120. The distinction goes back to Plato (Tht. 143b); see Andrieu 1954:284–86.
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Mercedes
mercenaries
merchandise
merchandize
merchant
merchantmen
merchants
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mercies
merciful
mercifully
merciless
mercilessly
mercury
Mercy
mere
merely
MERENPTAH
meres
merest
merge
merged
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merging
meridian
meridional
merit
merited
merits
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message
messages
messenger
messengers
Messieurs
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met
metal
metallic
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metallism
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metals
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mete
meteoric
meteorite
meteorites
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methodical
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Methuen
metre
metres
metric
metropolis
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mewed
MEXICAN
Mexico
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miasms
mice
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Michoacan
micro
microbe
microbes
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microgametes
microscope
microscopic
microzoa
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midday
Middelburg
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middlemen
Midi
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midnight
midshipman
midst
midway
midwinter
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might
mightier
mightiest
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Miguel
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Milan
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mild
milder
mile
mileage
Miles
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militarism
MILITARY
militated
militia
milk
MILL
Millard
Millennial
MILLENNIUM
millenniums
Miller
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millet
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million
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millionaires
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mimicking
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mind
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minded
mindedness
mindful
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miner
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mingled
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minimum
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MINOS
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mints
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minuteness
minutes
minutest
minutiæ
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miracle
miracles
miraculously
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misadventure
misapprehension
misbehaviour
miscalculated
MISCELLANEOUS
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mischievous
misconception
misconduct
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misdeeds
misdemeanor
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misdoing
miserable
miserably
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misgovernment
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missing
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missionary
missioners
MISSIONS
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mist
mistake
mistaken
mistakes
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misunderstanding
misunderstandings
misunderstood
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misused
Mitchel
Mitchell
mitigate
mitigated
Mitry
mix
mixed
mixing
mixture
MM
Mme
moat
moats
mob
Mobile
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mobility
mobilization
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mobilized
mobilizing
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mock
mockery
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mode
model
modeled
models
moderate
moderately
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moderating
moderation
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modest
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modifications
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modifying
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moiled
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molecules
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molestation
molested
molesting
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Mombasa
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momentarily
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momentous
moments
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monarchical
Monarchists
monarchs
monarchy
monasteries
monastery
monastic
Moncada
Monday
Monet
MONETARY
MONEY
moneys
Mongol
Mongolia
Mongolian
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monied
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monks
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monometallism
MONOPOLIES
monopolise
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monopolized
MONOPOLY
monotonous
Monroe
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monsoon
monster
monsters
monstrosity
monstrous
Mont
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MONTENEGRO
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monthly
months
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monuments
Monza
moods
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moored
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morally
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Moreover
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morning
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MOROS
Morozugu
Morrill
Morris
Morrison
Morro
morrow
MORSE
mortal
mortality
mortally
mortars
mortgage
mortgaged
mortgages
mortification
mortifying
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mortised
mortmain
Morton
mosaic
Moscow
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Moslem
MOSLEMS
Mosque
mosques
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mosquitoes
Moss
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mosses
most
mostly
mot
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mote
Mother
motherland
mothers
motion
motionless
motions
motive
motives
motley
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motor
motors
motto
mottoes
Mouillin
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mouldering
moulding
mouldy
mound
mounds
Mount
Mountain
mountainous
Mountains
Mounted
mounting
Mouravieff
mourned
mourning
mourns
Moush
mouth
mouths
movable
move
moveable
Moved
movement
Movements
moves
moving
Mowbray
Mozambique
Mpanjakany
Mr
Mrs
Msiri
MSS
Mu
Mubarak
much
mud
muddy
Mudirieh
Mudirs
Muertos
Muhammadan
Muhammadans
Muhlenberg
Mujelibeh
MUKDEN
Mul
mulatto
mulattoes
mulberry
mule
mules
Mulhall
Mulk
mullah
multiplication
multiplicity
multiplied
multiply
multiplying
multitude
multitudes
multitudinous
Mundella
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MUNICIPAL
municipalities
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municipio
municipios
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munificently
munitions
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Muravieff
MURDER
murdered
murderer
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murders
Murdoch
murmur
Murphy
Murray
Mururuma
muscle
muscles
Muscogee
Muscovite
muscular
museum
museums
MUSIC

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Christians in Conversation: A Guide to

Late Antique Dialogues in Greek and

History and Identity in the Late Antique Near East

Explaining the Cosmos

Universal Salvation in Late Antiquity

The Poetics of Late Antique Literature

Rome’s Holy Mountain

The Qur'an and Late Antiquity

Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-​Roman Europe

Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

You must not circulate this work in any other form

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Guide to the Dialogues 39

14. Methodius, Aglaophon or On the Resurrection 82

53. Paul the Persian, Disputatio cum Manichaeo 199

General Bibliography 233

T he work for the present book originates from my involvement

ACO Schwartz, E., ed. Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum. Berlin

Occasionally Christian dialogues reveal familiarity with Plato’s dialogues

Structure of the Work

The present study is structured as a comprehensive guide to Christian dialogues

4. A full discussion can be found in each relevant entry.

century until c. 600 CE, arranged in chronological order so as to emphasize

translation) is structured as the narrative account of a debate rather than as a

1. ?Aristo of Pella, Disputatio Iasonis et Papisci (CPG 1101)

15. Methodius, Xeno or On Things Created (CPG 1817; fragmentary)

Dialogue and Christianity

to appraise dialogues exclusively in relation to Platonic models; conversely, the

A contrastive approach with classical dialogues again underpinned the work of

abundance of Christian dialogues throughout our period should at least prompt

32. Cameron 2014; Kahlos 2007; Lim 1995:106.

Dialogues and Late Antiquity

refute the Christological doctrine attributed to Nestorius; similarly, Nestorius

41. Brock 2016:110–​11; see entry 54.

The Dialogue Form and Rhetorical Training

Catherine Conybeare draws attention to the link between rhetorical training

actively trained to perform in a debate or to write in dialogue form is an entirely

there are some authorities who restrict the term “impersonation”

In fact, “impersonation,” also known as “speech in character” (προσωποποιΐα or

The Dialogue Form and Erotapokriseis

Toward a Comprehensive Approach?

Since Christian dialogues display important similarities among them as well as

setting of Methodius’ Symposium is symbolic and linked instead to a Christian

The passage shows Basil’s awareness of Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ dialogues

114. Cameron 2014:3–​4; Courtonne 1955:2.50n2.

It is possible to suggest a purely formal classification of Christian dialogues, fol-

117. Entry 44; Ettlinger 2003:29; Lim 1991; Wilson 1970.

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Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe

41. Brock 2016:110–11; see entry 54.

114. Cameron 2014:3–4; Courtonne 1955:2.50n2.