Monday, October 6, 2025

Bruno D. Alfonzo | PhD Candidate | Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Netherlands) and Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Argentina)

Seminar Title: Hellenistic Biography and the Shaping of Tradition

Seminar Chair Discussant: Dr. Sergi Grau Guijarro (University of Barcelona)

Abstract
The transformation of biography in the Hellenistic period played a decisive role in the shaping of cultural tradition. Classical biography, structured around the exemplum, sought to provide moral instruction through the portrayal of exemplary figures. In contrast, Hellenistic biography introduced a more critical dimension, becoming a scholarly tool for organizing cultural memory and a key instrument in the construction of the canon. Within the intellectual environment of libraries and scholarly institutions, biography functioned both as narrative and as method. It transmitted exemplary lives while also mediating the preservation and interpretation of authors, intertwining with philological practices. At the same time, biographical writing incorporated anecdotal and entertaining elements, showing that erudition and amusement were part of a shared cultural logic rather than mutually exclusive domains. 

The competing traditions about Epicurus and the “two deaths” attributed to him provide a concrete example of these dynamics. One version presents a serene, philosophical death consistent with his teaching, while another describes a grotesque and painful end framed as poetic justice. This contrast exemplifies the polemical uses of biography and its role in crystallizing memory. Hellenistic biography thus emerges as a constitutive practice in the definition and transmission of what antiquity came to regard as its own tradition.