New compendium of the history of philosophy in the seven first centuries of our era (Antiquity 5 of the new "Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie" founded by Friedrich Ueberweg, published by Schwabe Verlag, Basel, with more than 50 collaborators from USA, England, Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Switzerland. ///// In this final volume of the “Grundriss” series “Die Philosophie der Antike” more than 50 experts and worldwide leaders in their particular fields present the highly multifaceted Pagan, Jewish and early Christian philosophical heritage of the first seven centuries after Christ, which not only set the foundations for western and Byzantine but also for Islamic thinking. With its detailed and comprehensive descriptions reflecting state-of-the- art philosophical-historical research, the work aims at becoming a long-term primal source of information about the Imperial and Late Roman Period, not only for researchers in the fields of classical studies, theology, philosophy, Jewish and Islam studies, but for humanities in general. The tripartite volume is designed in a mixed structure focusing mainly on chronological order, but also taking into account the teacher-student relationship, the school affiliation and secondarily the religious affiliation and geographical location of an author. Thus, the – at times surprising and in some cases even interreligious – relations between authors and schools are clearly identified. By this procedure, the fascinating era that continues to have an effect on our modern culture is vividly described and made accessible for the present times.

In his Dionysiaca (44-46), partly a paraphrase of Euripides’ Bacchae in hexameters, Nonnus presents an un-Euripidean reading of Euripides’ play. A detailed comparison of motives and an analysis of allusions and intertextual references show that some of Nonnus’ alterations of Euripides’ model are caused by the transposition of drama into epos. Others are due to his intention to smooth down some of the typical ambivalences of the Bacchae, e.g. the role and behaviour of the god Dionysus or the guilt of the ‘theomachos’ Pentheus, and leave room for associations with Christianity and an interpretatio Christiana.

Unlike Aeschylus, who in his Seven against Thebes offers a partisan vision of the conflict between Eteocles and Polyneices and consequently between the Thebans and the Argives, Euripides in his Phoenician Women seeks emphatically to create a sensation of impartiality towards both parts. On the concrete level, he achieves it especially by introducing Polyneices into the plot and limiting Eteocles' protagonism. On the general level, he eliminates the opposition between both armies and creates a more positive image of the Argives, with the exception of Capaneus.

Sigismund Evenius war von 1622 bis 1631 Schulrektor am Magdeburger Gymnasium und ein Anhänger der muttersprachlichen Reformpädagogik von Wolfgang Ratke.

In order to understand the Posthomerica, or further, to show how such an understanding could be more appropriate to modern scholarship, it will be useful to set Quintus Smyrnaeus within his temporal context - a context that is not known an a definite sense: it might have taken place in the period of the Second Sophistic, in the third century A.D., or even at the rising of Late Antiquity literature. So it could be useful to tighten up the paths and detours, the forms and zhe transformations of literature at this time. Where do we find then Quintus Smyrnaeus?