Hospitality in Antiquity - Livy's Concept of Its Humanizing Force (Paperback)

An original and pioneering study of the step-by-step development of the law of hospitality, Hospitality in Antiquity offers an illuminating analysis of an ethical concept that played an important role in antiquity. It was a concept that predisposed the Graeco-Roman world toward the ethical imperative of the brotherhood of man and the Stoic concept of the mystical body.

Bolchazy's work, resulting from comparative studies of ancient and modern primitive societies and of classical mythology and literature, shows how human relationships evolved from xenophobia to altruism in several discernable stages: (1) absolute xenophobia; (2) apotropaic stage of hospitality; (3) Medea stage; (4) theoxenic stage of hospitality; (5) the jus hospitii, jus dei stage; (6) contractual stage; (7) altruistic stage of hospitality -- all culminating in the pre-Christian Stoic doctrine of the mystical body.

The work further analyses Livy's endorsement of hospitality as more humanitarian than the imperialistic virtues of virtus, clementia, justitia, and pietas on the political platform of Augustus.

The significance of the work lies in its contribution to the fields of ethics, history of religion, Livian studies, cultural anthropology of the pre-classical and classical world, and to Christian ethical syncretism.