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Gods and Goddesses in Ancient Italy
By Edward Bispham, Daniele Miano. 2020
This collection explores the multifaceted nature of the gods and goddesses worshipped in ancient Italy. It examines Italic, Etruscan, and…
Latin deities in context and in the material remains, and also in the Greco-Roman written record and later scholarship which drew on these texts. Many deities were worshipped in ancient Italy by different individuals and communities, using different languages, at different sanctuaries, and for very different reasons. This multiplicity creates challenges for modern historians of antiquity at different levels. How do we cope with it? Can we reduce it to the conceptual unity necessary to provide a meaningful historical interpretation? To what extent can deities named in different languages be considered the equivalent of one another (e.g. Artemis and Diana)? How can we interpret the visual representations of deities that are not accompanied by written text? Can we reconstruct what these deities meant to their local worshippers although the overwhelming majority of our sources were written by Romans and Greeks? The contributors of this book, a group of ten scholars from the UK, Italy, France, and Poland, offer different perspectives on these problems, each concentrating on a particular god or goddess. Gods and Goddesses in Ancient Italy offers an invaluable resource for anyone working on ancient Roman and Italian religion.Why America Is Not a New Rome (The mit Press Ser.)
By Vaclav Smil. 2010
An investigation of the America-Rome analogy that goes deeper than the facile comparisons made on talk shows and in glossy…
magazine articles.America's post–Cold War strategic dominance and its pre-recession affluence inspired pundits to make celebratory comparisons to ancient Rome at its most powerful. Now, with America no longer perceived as invulnerable, engaged in protracted fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and suffering the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, comparisons are to the bloated, decadent, ineffectual later Empire. In Why America Is Not a New Rome, Vaclav Smil looks at these comparisons in detail, going deeper than the facile analogy-making of talk shows and glossy magazine articles. He finds profound differences.Smil, a scientist and a lifelong student of Roman history, focuses on several fundamental concerns: the very meaning of empire; the actual extent and nature of Roman and American power; the role of knowledge and innovation; and demographic and economic basics—population dynamics, illness, death, wealth, and misery. America is not a latter-day Rome, Smil finds, and we need to understand this in order to look ahead without the burden of counterproductive analogies. Superficial similarities do not imply long-term political, demographic, or economic outcomes identical to Rome's.The Emperor Domitian
By Brian Jones. 1992
Domitian, Emperor of Rome AD 81-96, has traditionally been portrayed as a tyrant, and his later years on the throne…
as a `reign of terror'. Brian Jones' biography of the emperor, the first ever in English, offers a more balanced interpretation of the life of Domitian, arguing that his foreign policy was realistic, his economic programme rigorously efficient and his supposed persecution of the early Christians non-existent.Central to an understanding of the emperor's policies, Brian Jones proposes, is his relationship with his court, rather than with the senate. Roamn historians will have to take account of this new biography which in part represents a rehabilitation of Domitian.This ambitious book addresses questions concerning an old theme - the rise and fall of ancient civilization - but does…
so from a distinctive theoretical perspective by taking its lead from the work of the great German sociologist Max Weber.Ancient Greek Agriculture: An Introduction
By Signe Isager, Jens Erik Skydsgaard. 1992
The initial focus of Ancient Greek Agriculture is firmly on the art of agriculture proper, the tools and the technique,…
the plants cultivated and the animals reared. Thereafter, Isager and Skydsgaard focus on the position of agriculture in the society of gods and men in the Greek city-states . The arguments of Ancient Greek Agriculture are strengthened by the book's close adherence to contemporary Greek sources, literary as well as archaeological, avoiding the use of later as well as Roman material.Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece
By Dennis D. Hughes. 1992
Numerous ancient texts describe human sacrifices and other forms of ritual killing: in 480 BC Themistocles sacrifices three Persian captives…
to Dionysus; human scapegoats called pharmakoi are expelled yearly from Greek cities, and according to some authors they are killed; Locrin girls are hunted down and slain by the Trojans; on Mt Lykaion children are sacrificed and consumed by the worshippers; and many other texts report human sacrifices performed regularly in the cult of the gods or during emergencies such as war and plague. Archaeologists have frequently proposed human sacrifice as an explanation for their discoveries: from Minoan Crete children's bones with knife-cut marks, the skeleton of a youth lying on a platform with a bronze blade resting on his chest, skeletons, sometimes bound, in the dromoi of Mycenaean and Cypriot chamber tombs; and dual man-woman burials, where it is suggested that the woman was slain or took her own life at the man's funeral. If the archaeologists' interpretations and the claims in the ancient sources are accepted, they present a bloody and violent picture of the religious life of the ancient Greeks, from the Bronze Age well into historical times. But the author expresses caution. In many cases alternative, if less sensational, explanations of the archaeological are possible; and it can often be shown that human sacrifices in the literary texts are mythical or that late authors confused mythical details with actual practices.Whether the evidence is accepted or not, this study offers a fascinating glimpse into the religious thought of the ancient Greeks and into changing modern conceptions of their religious behaviour.Lysimachus: A Study in Early Hellenistic Kingship
By Dr Helen Lund, Helen S. Lund. 1992
Although shortlived, Lysimachus' Hellespontine empire foreshadowed those of Pergamum and Byzantium. Lund's book sets his actions significantly within the context…
of the volatile early Hellenistic world and views them as part of a continuum of imperial rule in Asia minor. She challenges the assumption that he was a vicious, but ultimately incompetent tyrant.Plutarch and the Historical Tradition
By Philip A. Stadter. 1992
These essays, by experts in the field from five countries, examine Plutarch's interpretative and artistic reshaping of his historical sources…
in representative lives. Diverse essays treat literary elements such as the parallelism which renders a pair of lives a unit or the themes which unify the lives. Others consider the selecting, combining, simplifying, and enlarging employed in composition. The construction of a Plutarchian life, the essays demonstrate, required careful selection and creative reworking of the historical material available.Women in Athenian Law and Life
By Roger Just. 1991
This book provides a comprehensive account of the Athenians' conception of women during the classical period of the fifth and…
fourth centuries BC. Though nothing remains that represents the authentic voice of the women themselves, there is a wealth of evidence showing how men sought to define women. By working through a range of material, from the provisions of Athenian law through to the representations of tragedy and comedy, the author builds up, in the manner of an anthropological ethnography, a coherent and integrated picture of the Athenians' notion of `woman'.Egypt's Making: The Origins of Ancient Egypt 5000-2000 BC
By Michael Rice. 1991
Already a classic and widely used text, this second edition has been wholly revised and updated in the light of…
the many discoveries made since its first publication. Michael Rice's bold and original work evokes the fascination and wonder of the most ancient period of Egypt's history. Covering a huge range of topics, including formative influences in the political and social organization and art of Egypt, the origins of kingship, the age of pyramids, the nature of Egypt's contact with the lands around the Arabian Gulf, and the earliest identifiable developments of the historic Egyptian personality. Egypt's Making is a scholarly yet readable and imaginative approach to this compelling ancient civilization.Plato's Invisible Cities: Discourse and Power in the Republic
By Adi Ophir. 1991
This book offers an original and detailed reading of Plato's Republic, one of the most influential philosophical works in the…
emergence of Western philosophy. The author discusses the Republic in terms of discursive events and political acts. Plato's act is placed in the context of a politico-discursive crisis in Athens at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth century B.C that gave rise to the dialogue's primary question, that of justice. The originality of Dr. Ophir lies in the way he reconstructs the Republic's different spatial settings - utopian, mythical, dramatic and discursive - using them as the main thread of his interpretation. Against the background of Plato's critique of the organisation of civic-space in the Greek polis, the author relates the spatial settings in the Plato text to each other. This provides a basis for a re-examination of the relationship between philosophy and politics, which Plato's work advocates, and which it actually enacted.This volume explores the reception of the classical past in the works of twentieth-century American dramatist Robert E. Sherwood and…
his use of the ancient world to critique key events and trends in American history. It explores his comedies and the influence of both Greek Old and New Comedy, as well as his mediation of his experiences in World War I through Livy’s account of the war with Carthage. During the 1930s, Sherwood used the Peloponnesian War as a template for bringing to the attention of an unaware public the danger of an impending war between the forces of democracy and the totalitarianism represented by Nazi Germany, and post-war he raised awareness of the dangers of nuclear war through the lens of the Greek gods. As well as looking at his use of the classical past in his work, since Sherwood wrote drama deeply concerned with the major social and political events of his day, his plays open windows onto the major social and political challenges facing the United States and the world from the outbreak of World War I until the beginning of the nuclear age. This volume will be of interest to anyone working on the Classical Tradition and Classical Reception, as well as to students of twentieth-century American literature, drama, history, and politics.Torture and Truth (New Ancient World Ser.)
By Page DuBois. 1991
First published in 1991, this book — through the examination of ancient Greek literary, philosophical and legal texts — analyses how the…
Athenian torture of slaves emerged from and reinforced the concept of truth as something hidden in the human body. It discusses the tradition of understanding truth as something that is generally concealed and the ideas of ‘secret space’ in both the female body and the Greek temple. This philosophy and practice is related to Greek views of the ‘Other’ (women and outsiders) and considers the role of torture in distinguishing slave and free in ancient Athens. A wide range of perspectives — from Plato to Sartre — are employed to examine the subject.Compiled in China in the fourth–third centuries BCE, The Book of Lord Shang argues for a new powerful government to…
rule over society and turn every man into a diligent tiller and valiant soldier. Creating a “rich state and a strong army” will be the first step toward unification of “All-under-Heaven.” These ideas served the state of Qin that eventually created the first imperial polity on Chinese soil. In Yuri Pines’s translation, The Book of Lord Shang’s intellectual boldness and surprisingly modern-looking ideas shine through, underscoring the text’s vibrant contribution to global political thought.The Book of Lord Shang is attributed to the statesman and theorist Shang Yang and his followers. It epitomizes the ideology of China’s so-called Legalist School of thought. In the ninety years since the work’s previous translation, major breakthroughs in studies of the book’s dating and context have recast our understanding of its messages. Pines applies these advances to a whole new reading of the text’s content and function in the sociopolitical life of its times and subsequent centuries. This abridged and revised edition of Pines’s annotated translation is ideal for newcomers to the book while also guiding early Chinese scholars and comparatists. It highlights the text’s practical success and its influence on political thought and political practice in traditional and modern China.Democracy and Money: Lessons for Today from Athens in Classical Times (Banking, Money and International Finance)
By George C. Bitros, Nicholas C. Kyriazis, Emmanouil M. Economou. 2020
The authors of this book argue that post-war fiscal and monetary policies in the U.S. are prone to more frequent…
and more destabilizing domestic and international financial crises. So, in the aftermath of the one that erupted in 2008, they propose that now we are sleepwalking into another, which under the prevailing institutional circumstances could develop into a worldwide financial Armageddon. Thinking ahead of such a calamity, this book presents for the first time a model of democratic governance with privately produced money based on the case of Athens in Classical times, and explains why, if it is conceived as a benchmark for reference and adaptation, it may provide an effective way out from the dreadful predicament that state managed fiat money holds for the stability of Western-type democracies and the international financial system. As the U.S. today, Athens at that time reached the apex of its military, economic, political, cultural, and scientific influence in the world. But Athens triumphed through different approaches to democracy and fundamentally different fiscal and monetary policies than the U.S. Thus the readers will have the opportunity to learn about these differences and appreciate the potential they offer for confronting the challenges contemporary democracies face under the leadership of the U.S. The book will find audiences among academics, university students, and researchers across a wide range of fields and subfields, as well as legislators, fiscal and monetary policy makers, and economic and financial consultants.Comedy and Religion in Classical Athens: Narratives of Religious Experiences in Aristophanes' Wealth
By Francisco Barrenechea. 2018
This book opens up a new perspective on Aristophanic drama and its relationship to Greek religion It focuses on…
the comedy Wealth whose fantasy of universal enrichment is structured upon a rich and largely unexplored framework of traditional stories of Greek religious experiences such as oracles miracle cures and the introduction of new gods The book examines the form and function of these stories and explores how the playwright adapts them for his own comic purposes grounding his comic fantasy on stories of philanthropic divinities who dependably respond to the needs of their worshippers The collaboration of these deities who act in tandem with their worshippers achieves the comic fantasy Francisco Barrenechea also addresses the larger question of how comedy participated in the religion of its time by imagining and dramatizing beliefs and reveals the salutary bond that can exist between humor and religion in generalAlexander the Great
By Robin Lane Fox. 2004
Robin Lane Fox's superb account searches through the mass of conflicting evidence and legend to focus on Alexander as a…
man of his own time. Combining historical scholarship and acute psychological insight, it brings this colossal figure vividly to life.Rome and Its Empire (Routledge Revivals)
By Stephen Johnson. 1989
The legacy of Rome is still very much with us in Europe. It forms part of our cultural backdrop, and…
is enshrined in the European mind, whether through classical literature, education and jurisprudence, or spectacular ruins. In Rome and Its Empire, first published in 1989, Stephen Johnson examines our understanding of the archaeological aspects of Roman civilisation, and traces the development of archaeology from the earliest post-Roman times, through to its real discovery in the eighteenth century, and its burgeoning in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Various areas of modern archaeological thought and practice are examined with regard to the study of Roman archaeology. The emphasis is on how archaeologists examine and classify material, and the various ways in which valid historical conclusions are deduced from that evidence. Johnson concludes by exploring how techniques from other disciplines are now being applied to archaeological study, and indicates what we may yet learn from this.One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love (New Ancient World Ser.)
By David M Halperin. 1990
Halperin's subject is the erotics of male culture in ancient Greece. Arguing that the modern concept of "homosexuality" is an…
inadequate tool for the interpretation of these features of sexual life in antiquity, Halperin offers an alternative account that accords greater prominence to the indigenous terms in which sexual experiences were constituted in the ancient Mediterranean world. Wittily and provocatively written, Halperin's meticulously drawn windows onto ancient sexuality give us a new meaning to the concept of "Greek love."Bibliography Of The Amarna Perio
By Martin. 1990