Top 10 best historical biographies

To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. To browse Academia. This article aims at presenting a specific aim of late antique biographical discourse: presenting to the reader an ideal, but nonetheless practical, way of life to put into practice. Furthermore, these two texts are particularly interesting to determine the reason why late antique authors from the 4th and the 5th century CE used biographical discourse to present an ideal way of life and how this specific aim was achieved.

By giving a concrete or practical example of the good life, biographical discourse can indeed be seen as a particularly adequate type of discourse to present and exhort the reader to imitate a particular way of life. By providing a practical exemple of the good life, biographical discourse facilitates the imitation of such a life, more than a theoretical discourse would do.

Presenting an ideal way of life is one of the recurring objectives of late antique biographical discourse. In this regard, Gregory of Nyssa's biographical works are particularly interesting because he spells out their aim, unlike Marinus and many other late antique authors. However, in Marinus' biographical discourse, the structure as well as the social and pedagogical context suggest an edifying goal.

5 examples of biography

Morever, the readers are not only invited to remember and applaud their lives, but encouraged to live and emulate such a virtuous lifestyle. On the contrary, it is the main purpose of the biographical discourse. Biographical discourse, therefore, exceeds just simple praise or recollection, as it will become clear below when I will discuss he Life of Proclus.

Moses can be just as much a model as Gregory haumaturgus or Macrina, because the model of virtue is more important than the individual concretizing this model in its own life. Like Gregory of Nyssa, the aim of Marinus when writing a biographical discourse on Proclus is not only rhetorical. Marinus is certainly writing a rhetorical encomium in praise of his Neoplatonic master, 18 but he also provides an example of the virtuous life to lead the reader towards virtue.