Nepos' biographies as encomia: A philological and linguistic analysis.

Abstract

This dissertation undertakes the task of determining (without taxonomic analysis) the generic/rhetorical structure of the biographies of Nepos' Liber de excellentibus ducibus exteranun gentium (De ducibus), according to the linguistic model of genre analysis of John M. Swales (Chapter 2), in order to both circumvent and solve the problems of not being able to combine Leo's individual generic characteristics of biography into a unified generic structure applicable to this corpus and of the conflicting viewpoints about the actual genre of Nepos biographies (Chapter 1). The generic structure of Nepos' biographies determined by genre analysis (presented in Chapter 3 with significant contributions of individual biographies to this determination) is found to correspond to the generic structure of encomium presented in classical rhetorical handbooks (Chapter 5) which means that the structure of Nepos' biographies is subsumed under the rhetorical (not the historical or philosophical) classification of literature. The new description of the generic structure of Nepos' biographies allows the comparison in Chapter 5 to show that the descriptions of encomium are unclear (probably because encomium mixes the (normally separate) oratorial structures of narratio and probatio). There is extensive discussion of: the Miltiades (Chapter 3) for the stage dealing with the subject's heroic deeds; the Conon and Timoleon (Chapter 4) because of their importance in the discovery of Nepos' generic structure; and the Chabrias, Timotheus, Iphicrates, and Epaminondas (Chapter 4) in order to show that Leo's generic characteristics of chronological arrangement, topical arrangement, literary style, and summary style (long considered to indicate separate generic structures) represent predictable variations on the single generic structure presented in Chapter 3. The overall purpose of the De ducibus (important to Swales' model) is presented (Chapter 6) as being the praise of Hannibal (like the praise of Helen), which can be seen in Nepos' innovation on the praise of the censured, in the arrangement of the biographies within the De ducibus, and in Nepos' method of introducing the Hannibal. The Conclusion recapitulates these findings, and suggests possible future research.