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Dan maar geen ‘vrai klassischer Philolog’? De verschillende gezichten van het hellenisme in het werk van Franz Cumont

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Abstract

This article examines the role which different concepts of ‘ancient Greece’ played in the work of the Belgian classicist and historian of religions Franz Cumont (1868-1947). Prompted by a recent cinematic interpretation of the Persian Wars, it introduces different views on ancient Greeks, both from Antiquity and from the long 19th century. Subsequently, the nuanced and sometimes surprising views of Cumont will be analyzed, whose work centers around the interaction between ‘East’ and ‘West’ in Antiquity: the Hellenization of the Middle East and a perceived religious Orientalization of the Roman West during the Empire. While Cumont condemned the hellenocentric tendencies so common within the tradition of Classical Studies in the 19th century, the article also argues that his characterization of the ancient Greeks and of the process of Hellenization was very much akin to the narrow philhellenic discourse which he refuted.

How to Cite:

Scheerlinck, E., (2014) “Dan maar geen ‘vrai klassischer Philolog’? De verschillende gezichten van het hellenisme in het werk van Franz Cumont”, Tetradio 23(1): 4, 81–100. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tetradio.91835