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14 - The education of orphans: a reassessment of the evidence of Libanius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Sabine R. Hübner
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
David M. Ratzan
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

How should I rate my orphan state? I would have been so glad to see my father in his old age, but I know this for certain, that if my father had reached a ripe old age, I would now be engaged upon a different life path.

So says Libanius in the first part of his Autobiography (Or. 1.6), in which he attempted to appraise the positive and negative influence of certain events on his life. The loss of his father when he was an eleven-year-old boy apparently was not a catastrophe that shattered his life. The sophist's regret at being deprived of the comfort of a fatherly presence was counterbalanced by his realization that the event had unforeseen positive consequences. His father would not have allowed him the many years of study he enjoyed but instead would have prevented his academic career and made sure that he engaged in local politics, the law courts, or the imperial administration. Paradoxically, therefore, his personal loss allowed Libanius a degree of freedom from parental control that permitted him to follow his calling.

Libanius' orations, and particularly the narrative of his life, reveal circumstances that might temper the harshness of an orphan state and which allowed him to become an acclaimed sophist and teacher in fourth-century Antioch. The letters of Libanius, too, introduce to the reader many of the students who attended his school of rhetoric – almost 200 young men, of whom 134 can be placed in a period of fifteen school years.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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