Diederik Burgersdijk

Utrecht University | UU · Department of History and Art History

This introduction presents an analysis of Grotius’s treatise ‘On Public Partnership with Unbelievers’ ( De societate publica cum infidelibus ). It was probably written between 1606 and 1609, when Grotius served as a legal advisor of the Dutch East India Company ( voc ). In his treatise, Grotius explains what kinds of partnerships with non-Christian...

After his life-long reign, opinions about the legacy of Augustus have not always been positive, witness the negative representations of his power by Pliny in his Panegyricus to Trajan, or the history of his contemporary Tacitus. Augustus’ fame seems to have faded in later antiquity. At a closer inspection, however, it appears that his name and fame...

In this article, I analyse two specimina of imperial panegyrical poetry, addressed at persons who hold lower ranks in the imperial hierarchy than the emperor: Constantine’s son Crispus in the first quarter of the fourth century AD in Optatianus Porfyrius’ hexametric poetry, and Honorius’ cousin (and sister by adoption, as well as mother-in-law) Ser...

In this article, I explore the question in how far Palmyra can be considered part of the Silk Road. The question is partly a matter of definition, partly of source criticism: what is, in general, understood by the Silk Road in geographical, temporal and material terms, and how does Palmyra fit into this picture? The question is prompted by the fact...

This article has been published under the title ‘Rome en Palmyra in de crisis van de derde eeuw n.Chr.’, in Phoenix 53.1 (2007) 5-22; it has been translated (lightly revised, but not updated) into English to accompany the talk 'Palmyra on the Silk Road', to be presented at the International Symposium on Hellenistic Legacies on the Silk Road, Nankai...

A comparison between two novels by Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant, Corinne and Adolphe, their autobiographical contents and responses and their common model in Virgil's Aeneid.

LATE-ANTIQUE PANEGYRIC - Laudani (C.) (ed.) Nazario: Panegirico in onore di Costantino . (Biblioteca della Tradizione Classica 12.) Pp. 463. Bari: Cacucci Editore, 2014. Paper, €45. ISBN: 978-88-6611-405-5. - D. Burgersdijk

Ammianus Marcellinus’ excursus on the Huns and Alans in the thirty-first and last book of his Res Gestae, in which he creates an image of an enemy that threatens the Roman empire, mainly serves to enhance the suspense in the final part of his narrative. It contains a message to the reigning emperor to defend the borders between barbarism and civili...

A report of the conference Images and Emperors in the Fourth Century AD, held in Soeterbeek, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 17-19 September 2015.

Ancient biography is now a well-established and popular field of study among classicists as well as many scholars of literature and history more generally. In particular biographies offer important insights into the dynamics underlying ancient performance of the self and social behaviour, issues currently of crucial importance in classical studies....

Rose (C.B.) The Archaeology of Greek and Roman Troy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xv + 406, illus. £65. 9780521762076. - Volume 135 - Diederik Burgersdijk

N. W. BERNSTEIN, ETHICS, IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY IN LATER ROMAN DECLAMATION. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. x + 229. isbn9780199964116. £50.00. - Volume 105 - Diederik Burgersdijk

In this paper, I will outline the main traits of the research field of Imagology, and raise the question how it could be applied to the study of Roman emperorship, in order to prepare the ground for discussion at the Images and Emperors Conference at Soeterbeeck, Radboud University (17-19 September 2015). Firstly, an example of how different people...

Introduction the catalogue 'Sicily and the Sea', accompanying the exhibition at the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam.

In this article, the panegyrical tendencies in the Historia Augusta (especially to be found in the lives of Claudius, Tacitus, Aurelian, and Probus) are compared with the possible model of Pliny's Panegyricus to the emperor Trajan, who is considered the optimus princeps all through Late Antiquity. It is observed that there are many similar strategi...

Departing from the progress in Constantinian studies in the last few decades, in this article the collection of imperial biographies called the Historia Augusta (HA) is reconsidered as an anti-Constantinian scripture. After all, the HA, as a literary product, is presented to the reader as a scripture from the (post-)tetrarchic era, by way of its am...

Burgersdijk analyseerde stilistische en structurele aspecten van de Historia Augusta, een laat-antieke verzameling van Romeinse keizerbiografieën (waarin de keizers van Hadrianus tot Diocletianus, 117 - 284 b.c., worden beschreven). Uit de studie blijkt dat er aanzienlijke verschillen zijn tussen de verschillende delen van het werk, wat wijst op he...

The account of the Palmyrene queen Zenobia in the Historia Augusta, a collection of imperial lives from the later 4th c. AD, is by far the longest in the book on the thirty tyrants (usurpers and pretenders to the imperial throne). Zenobia's life is the central theme in the book, and portrays Zenobia on the one had as a depth in Roman imperial histo...

This article investigated the stylistic phenomenon of enjambement (run-over lines in verse) in Virgil's Aeneid book 4. The focus is on the 'Homeric' use of enjambement in terms of obligatory and additive use, and the development of enjambement use in later, post-classical literature. Part of the investigation is the search for a definition, for whi...