12-23-2013, 10:07 AM
For a minute there I thought you meant the neoplatonist so I was like...well no, ca. 5th century A.D lol.
As for this one, it depends. We know with reasonable certainty that he was a student of Posidonios (lucky!) and that's a really good terminus. Generally speaking its hard to get closer than the generic date you've given unless the author a) deliberately mentions an event or b) the Greek/Latin is obvious - this can happen by century but seldom by decade.
That being said, these kinds of texts are full of rhetorical and literary devices and you can sort of establish a relative chronology based on that, but it will highly approximate. If, as is possible, this sort of book was written as a literary exercises/deliberate homage to an earlier model you would posit it to be midway throughout his career. We don't have enough work to make deliberate stylistic judgements though. Or rather, I don't know enough about this text.
See Philip A. Stadter's "The Ars Tactica of Arrian: Tradition and Originality" which basically discusses some of these issues, at the very least its a good argument for adopting the Roman reading method e.g reading related texts in a circle.
As for this one, it depends. We know with reasonable certainty that he was a student of Posidonios (lucky!) and that's a really good terminus. Generally speaking its hard to get closer than the generic date you've given unless the author a) deliberately mentions an event or b) the Greek/Latin is obvious - this can happen by century but seldom by decade.
That being said, these kinds of texts are full of rhetorical and literary devices and you can sort of establish a relative chronology based on that, but it will highly approximate. If, as is possible, this sort of book was written as a literary exercises/deliberate homage to an earlier model you would posit it to be midway throughout his career. We don't have enough work to make deliberate stylistic judgements though. Or rather, I don't know enough about this text.
See Philip A. Stadter's "The Ars Tactica of Arrian: Tradition and Originality" which basically discusses some of these issues, at the very least its a good argument for adopting the Roman reading method e.g reading related texts in a circle.
Jass
