Caecilius of Calacte
Caecilius of Calacte · Arts & Literature
Rhetorician and literary critic of Augustan Rome, the first Jew noted for literary activity at Rome
Ier siècle av. n. è., Calacte, Sicile — Ier siècle, Rome
Calacte, Rome
Caecilius of Calacte is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Rhetorician and literary critic of Augustan Rome, the first Jew noted for literary activity at Rome
Origins and early life
Caecilius of Calacte was a Greek rhetorician and literary critic born in Sicily who worked in Rome in the age of Augustus, in the last decades before our era.
Work and career
The Byzantine lexicon called the Suda records that he was 'of the Jewish faith' and possibly a former slave — and this fiche says plainly that his Jewishness rests on that single ancient statement, explicit but uncorroborated by a second source, which standard classical scholarship nonetheless accepts; the Jewish Encyclopedia calls him 'the first Jew noted for literary activity at Rome'. With Dionysius of Halicarnassus, his friend, he was one of the two most important critics of his generation, a champion of the pure Attic style against the excesses of Asianism.
He wrote a treatise On the Sublime that the anonymous author of the surviving masterpiece of that name set out to answer — so that Caecilius's lost book is the source and the rival of one of the founding texts of literary criticism — as well as studies of the ten Attic orators, a comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero, a lexicon of rhetoric and historical works, of which only fragments survive in later citations. Nothing more is known of his life.
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Source: https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3885-caecilius-of-calacte
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Rhetorician and literary critic of Augustan Rome, the first Jew noted for literary activity at Rome
Source: https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3885-caecilius-of-calacte
