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Hellenistic Athletes: Agonistic Cultures and Self-Presentation
By Null Sebastian Scharff. 2024
This is a study of Hellenistic athletics from the perspective of the victors. By analyzing agonistic epigrams as poetry on…
commission, it investigates how successful athletes and horse owners and their sponsors wanted their victories to be understood. Based on the identification of recurring motifs that exceed the conventions of the genre, a multiplicity of agonistic cultures is detected on three different levels – those of the polis, the region and the empire. Kings and queens used athletics in order to legitimate their rule, cities tried to compensate for military defeats by agonistic successes, and victorious aristocrats created virtual halls of fame to emphasize their common regional identity. Without a doubt, athletic victories represented far more than just leisure activities of Hellenistic noblemen. They clearly mattered in terms of politics and social status.The Ancient Art of Thinking For Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times
By Robin Reames. 2024
How rhetoric—the art of persuasion—can help us navigate an age of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and political acrimony The discipline of…
rhetoric was the keystone of Western education for over two thousand years. Only recently has its perceived importance faded. In this book, renowned rhetorical scholar Robin Reames argues that, in today&’s polarized political climate, we should all care deeply about learning rhetoric. Drawing on examples ranging from the destructive ancient Greek demagogue Alcibiades to modern-day conspiracists like Alex Jones, Reames breaks down the major techniques of rhetoric, pulling back the curtain on how politicians, journalists, and &“journalists&” convince us to believe what we believe—and to talk, vote, and act accordingly. Understanding these techniques helps us avoid being manipulated by authority figures who don&’t have our best interests at heart. It also grants us rare insight into the values that shape our own beliefs. Learning rhetoric, Reames argues, doesn&’t teach us what to think but how to think—allowing us to understand our own and others&’ ideological commitments in a completely new way. Thoughtful, nuanced, and leavened with dry humor, The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself offers an antidote to our polarized, post-truth world.Paul and Imperial Divine Honors: Christ, Caesar, and the Gospel
By D. Clint Burnett. 2024
How did the imperial cult affect Christians in the Roman Empire? &“Jesus is lord, not Caesar.&” Many scholars and…
preachers attribute mistreatment of early Christians by Roman authorities to this fundamental confessional conflict. But this mantra relies on a reductive understanding of the imperial cult. D. Clint Burnett examines copious evidence—literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and archaeological—to more accurately reconstruct Christian engagement with imperial divine honors. Outdated narratives often treat imperial divine honors as uniform and centralized, focusing on the city of Rome. Instead, Burnett examines divine honors in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. While all three cities incorporated imperial cultic activity in their social, religious, economic, and political life, the purposes and contours of the practice varied based on the city&’s unique history. For instance, Thessalonica paid divine honors to living Julio-Claudians as tribute for their status as a free city in the empire—and Christian resistance to the practice was seen as a threat to that independence. Ultimately, Burnett argues that early Christianity was not specifically antigovernment but more broadly countercultural, and that responses to this stance ranged from conflict to apathy. Burnett&’s compelling argument challenges common assumptions about the first Christians&’ place in the Roman Empire. This fresh account will benefit Christians seeking to understand their faith&’s place in public life today.The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History
By James Joseph O'Donnell. 2008
“Anexotic and instructive tale, told with life, learning and just the right measure of laughter on every page. O’Donnell combines…
a historian’s mastery of substance with a born storyteller’s sense of style to create a magnificent work of art.” — Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of StateThe dream Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar shared of uniting Europe, the Medi-terranean, and the Middle East in a single community shuddered and then collapsed in the wars and disasters of the sixth century. Historian and classicist James J. O'Donnell—who last brought readers his masterful, disturbing, and revelatory biography of Saint Augustine—revisits this old story in a fresh way, bringing home its sometimes painful relevance to today's issues.With unexpected detail and in his hauntingly vivid style, O'Donnell begins at a time of apparent Roman revival and brings readers to the moment of imminent collapse that just preceded the rise of Islam. Illegal migrations of peoples, religious wars, global pandemics, and the temptations of empire: Rome's end foreshadows today's crises and offers hints how to navigate them—if present leaders will heed this story.Byzantium: A History (Guide To... Ser.)
By John Haldon. 2013
Originally the eastern half of the mighty Roman Empire, Byzantium grew to be one of the longest-surviving empires in world…
history, spanning nine centuries and three continents. It was a land of contrasts – from the glittering centre at Constantinople, to the rural majority, to the heartland of the Orthodox Church – and one surrounded by enemies: Persians, Arabs and Ottoman Turks to the east, Slavs and Bulgars to the north, Saracens and Normans to the west.Written by one of the world’s leading experts on Byzantine history, Byzantium: A History tells the chequered story of a historical enigma, from its birth out of the ashes of Rome in the third century to its era-defining fall at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453.Britannia: Tribal Conflicts and the End of Roman Britain
By Stuart Laycock. 2012
Attempts to understand how Roman Britain ends and Anglo-Saxon England begins have been undermined by the division of studies into…
pre-Roman, Roman and early medieval periods. This groundbreaking new study traces the history of British tribes and British tribal rivalries from the pre-Roman period, through the Roman period and into the post-Roman period. It shows how tribal conflict was central to the arrival of Roman power in Britain and how tribal identities persisted through the Roman period and were a factor in three great convulsions that struck Britain during the Roman centuries. It explores how tribal conflicts may have played a major role in the end of Roman Britain, creating a 'failed state' scenario akin in some ways to those seen recently in Bosnia and Iraq, and brought about the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. Finally, it considers how British tribal territories and British tribal conflicts can be understood as the direct predecessors of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Anglo-Saxon conflicts that form the basis of early English History.Sertorius and the Struggle for Spain
By Philip Matyszak. 2013
The epic battle to liberate Spain from Roman rule is a masterclass of ancient guerilla warfare, recounted by the author…
of Ancient Rome on 5 Denarii a Day. In the year 82 BC, after a brutal civil war, the dictator Sulla took power in Rome. But among those who refused to accept his rule was the young army officer Quintus Sertorius. Sertorius fled, first to Africa and then to Spain, where he made common cause with the native people who had been savagely oppressed by a succession of corrupt Roman governors. Discovering a genius for guerilla warfare—and claiming to receive divine guidance from Artemis—Sertorius came close to driving the Romans out of Spain altogether. Rome responded by sending reinforcements under the control of Gen. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who would go on to become Pompey the Great. The epic struggle between these two commanders, known as the Sertorian War, is a masterclass of ancient strategy and tactical maneuver. Massively outnumbered, Sertorius remained undefeated on the battlefield, but was eventually assassinated by jealous subordinates, none of whom proved a match for Pompey. The tale of Sertorius is both the story of a people struggling to liberate themselves from oppressive rule, and the story of a man who started as an idealist and ended almost as savage and despotic as his enemies. But above all, it is the story of a duel between two great generals, fought between two different styles of army in the valleys of the Spanish interior.This book encapsulates a long period of history of human progress by highlighting crucial social, economic, and cultural dynamics. It…
presents recent historiography and new analytical tools used to analyse multi-dimensional themes involved in social formations in different parts of the world. This is a reader-friendly book with simple and lucid language and fulfils the pressing needs of students studying the course on Social Formations and Cultural Patterns of the ancient and medieval world at various universities across the world. The summary, key words, and representative questions at the end of each chapter would assist in revision and a better understanding of the issues dealt with therein. A detailed chapter-end reference would enable and motivate the readers to engage in further studies for a better understanding of the themes.This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and academics in the area of history – ancient and medieval world history, in particular, and anthropology. It will also be an interesting read for general readers interested in knowing about the ancient and medieval world.The Search for Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery
By Dr Joann Fletcher. 1995
Her power was rivaled only by her beauty. Her face has become one of the most recognizable images in the…
world. She was an independent woman and thinker centuries before her time. But who was Egypt's Queen Nefertiti? After years of intense research, Dr. Joann Fletcher has answered the questions countless researchers before her could not. While studying Egyptian royal wigs, she read a brief mention of an unidentified and mummified body, discovered long ago and believed to belong to an Egyptian of little importance. This body happened to have a wig, which Dr. Fletcher knew was a clear sign of power. After examining the hairpiece and the woman to which it belonged, to the astonishment of her colleagues she identified this body as the missing remains of Queen Nefertiti. The search for Nefertiti had ended. She had been found. But the questions were just beginning. Nefertiti first rose to prominence in Egyptology in 1912, when a three-thousand-year-old bust of the queen was unearthed and quickly became a recognizable artifact around the world. But pieces of Nefertiti's life remained missing. The world had seen what she looked like, but few knew about her place in history. Virtually nothing is recorded about Nefertiti's early years. What is known about her life starts with her rise to power, her breaking through the sex barrier to rule as a virtual co-Pharaoh alongside her husband, Akhenaten. Upon his death she took full control of his kingdom. The Egyptian people loved her and celebrated her beauty in art, but the priests did not feel the same way. They believed Nefertiti's power over her husband was so great that she would instill her monotheistic beliefs upon him, rendering their own power obsolete. Egyptologists concur that it was these priests who, upon Nefertiti's death, had her name erased from public record and any likeness of her defaced. This ultimately led to her being left out of history for three thousand years. In The Search for Nefertiti Dr. Fletcher, an esteemed Egyptologist, traces not only her thirteen-year search for this woman, whose beauty was as great as her power, but also brings to the forefront the way Egypt's royal dead have been treated over time by people as varied as Agatha Christie and Adolf Hitler. She also explores how modern technology and forensics are quickly changing the field of archaeology and, in turn, what we know about history.Reminiscences of a Student's Life
By Jane Ellen Harrison. 2024
The arch, witty, outspoken memoirs of the pioneering archaeologist and scholar Mary Beard has called &“my hero.&”First published by Virginia…
and Leonard Woolf in 1925, Jane Ellen Harrison&’s Reminiscences are the irreverent memoirs of a student who declared Victorian education &“ingeniously useless,&” who blazed a trail for female scholars, and who changed the way we see the ancient world. Growing up in the Yorkshire countryside, Harrison showed an early aptitude for languages: by the age of seventeen, with the help of a governess, she had learned Greek, Latin, German, and some Hebrew. (&“Unfortunately, having no guide, we began with the Psalms, which are hard nuts to crack.&”) She went on to become the most influential Classicist of her generation. Drawing on the insights of Nietzsche, Bergson, and Freud, and on archaeological research, she helped to revolutionize the study of Greek myth. &“The great Mother,&” she wrote, &“is prior to male divinities.&”Unconventional in her private life (&“By what miracle I escaped marriage I do not know, for all my life I fell in love&”), she spent her later years with the poet and novelist Hope Mirrlees, thirty-seven years her junior. Harrison&’s zest for life is everywhere in these pages. Sprightly, amused, and amusing, her Reminiscences form an unforgettable sketch of a woman ahead of her time.Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World (Jewish Lives)
By Martin Goodman. 2024
A vivid account of the political triumphs and domestic tragedies of the Jewish king Herod the Great during the turmoil…
of the Roman revolution &“Herod the Great is typical of Yale&’s Jewish Lives series: short, clear, deeply knowledgeable, deeply illuminating.&”—Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal Herod the Great (73–4 BCE) was a phenomenally energetic ruler who took advantage of the chaos of the Roman revolution to establish himself as a major figure in a changing Roman world and transform the landscape of Judaea. Both Jews and Christians developed myths about his cruelty and rashness: in Christian tradition he was cast as the tyrant who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents; in the Talmud, despite fond memories of his glorious Temple in Jerusalem, he was recalled as a persecutor of rabbis. The life of Herod is better documented than that of any other Jew from antiquity, and Martin Goodman examines the extensive literary and archaeological evidence to provide a vivid portrait of Herod in his sociopolitical context: his Idumaean origins, his installation by Rome as king of Judaea and cultivation of leading Romans, his massive architectural projects, and his presentation of himself as a Jew, most strikingly through the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple. Goodman argues that later stories depicting Herod as a monster derived from public interest in his execution of three of his sons after dramatic public trials foisted on him by a dynastic policy imposed by the Roman emperor.This comprehensive and insightful book brings scientific rigor to the problems of reconstructing the Pharos Lighthouse, one of the Seven…
Wonders of the Ancient World, and understanding how it functioned as the archetypal lighthouse in antiquity, when it was described as a “second Sun”.Conceived by Alexander the Great and designed by Sostratus, the Pharos lighthouse stood as an iconic landmark of Alexandria for sixteen centuries until felled by a calamitous earthquake in the fourteenth century. The study of this great lighthouse has been neglected relative to other ancient Wonders such as the Great Pyramid of Giza. This book reconstructs the tower, its lustrous light, stunning statues and astounding story in diligent detail through archaeological evidence and surviving antique texts and images, providing a fresh evaluation of the Pharos, its history, and its legacy. The Roman writer Achilles Tatius termed the Pharos a “second Sun”; this expression is explained and explored here for the first time, and has dramatic implications for the nature of the Pharos’ light. The volume also explores how the creation of the Pharos was a key stimulus for Alexandrian science and astronomy in antiquity.The Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria provides a fascinating new study of this monument of interest to students and scholars of Hellenistic art, architecture, and science, and readers seeking to learn more about one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.This book, which followed “The House of the Hidden Places”, was and still is one of the deepest insights into…
the real meaning of the Pyramids and their significance as places of initiation for the ancient religion of Egypt. “And I have confined my efforts”, says the author, “to attempting to express in a clear and popular form, which all may easily follow, an outline of those deeply veiled doctrines of which I may have caught a glimpse; and thus to present such an account of the earliest recorded religion as may afford to all some conception of its transcendent majesty and supernal beauty.-Print ed.The Religion of Ancient Greece
By Jane Ellen Harrison. 2024
Harrisons' "Religion of Ancient Greece" is a symbol of the intellectual progress of the early 20th century as the formerly…
hegemonic importance of Rome gave way to interpreting and studying religions based on older and localized archaeological remains and prior analysis from deep antiquity. Here then we have a description of various deities, their history, and allusions to them in Homer and debate over then-contemporary historians.-Print ed.Stonehenge - A New Understanding: Solving The Mysteries Of The Greatest Stone Age Monument
By Mike Parker Pearson. 2013
“The most authoritative, important book on Stonehenge to date.”—Kirkus, starred review Stonehenge stands as an enduring link to our prehistoric…
ancestors, yet the secrets it has guarded for thousands of years have long eluded us. Until now, the millions of enthusiasts who flock to the iconic site have made do with mere speculation—about Stonehenge’s celestial significance, human sacrifice, and even aliens and druids. One would think that the numerous research expeditions at Stonehenge had left no stone unturned. Yet, before the Stonehenge Riverside Project—a hugely ambitious, seven-year dig by today’s top archaeologists—all previous digs combined had only investigated a fraction of the monument, and many records from those earlier expeditions are either inaccurate or incomplete. Stonehenge—A New Understanding rewrites the story. From 2003 to 2009, author Mike Parker Pearson led the Stonehenge Riverside Project, the most comprehensive excavation ever conducted around Stonehenge. The project unearthed a wealth of fresh evidence that had gone untouched since prehistory. Parker Pearson uses that evidence to present a paradigm-shifting theory of the true significance that Stonehenge held for its builders—and mines his field notes to give you a you-are-there view of the dirt, drama, and thrilling discoveries of this history-changing archaeological dig.The Names of the Gods in Ancient Mediterranean Religions (Classical Scholarship in Translation)
By Corinne Bonnet, Ralph Häussler. 2024
From Greece to Palmyra, Tyre or Babylon, the names of the gods, like 'Thundering Zeus', 'Three-faced Moon', 'Baal of the…
Force' or the enigmatic YHWH, reveal their history, family ties, fields of competence and capacity for action. Shared or specific, these names bring to light networks of gods: the Saviour gods, the Ancestral gods, the gods of a city or a family. Names tell stories about the relationship between men and gods, gods and places, places and cultures and so on. They show how gods travel and spread, how they appear and disappear, how they participate in the political, social, intellectual history of each community. Through the study of divine names, the twelve chapters of this book unfold a gallery of portraits that reveal the changing aspects of the divine throughout the ancient Mediterranean.Rome, Blood & Politics: Reform, Murder and Popular Politics in the Late Republic, 133–70 BC
By Gareth C. Sampson. 2019
This in-depth chronicle examines the series of political upheavals that led to division, violence, and civil war in the ancient…
Roman Republic. The last century of the Roman Republic saw the consensus of the ruling elite shattered by a series of high-profile politicians who proposed political or social reform programs, many of which culminated in acts of bloodshed on the streets of Rome itself. This began in 133 BC with the military recruitment reforms of Tiberius Gracchus, which saw him and his supporters lynched by a mob of angry Senators. Gracchus&’s grim example was followed by a series of radical politicians, each with their own agenda that challenged the status quo of the Senatorial elite. Each met a violent response from elements of the ruling order, leading to murder and even battles on the streets of Rome. These bloody political clashes paralyzed the Roman state, eventually leading to its collapse. Covering the period 133–70 BC, this volume analyzes each of the key reformers, what they were trying to achieve and how they met their end, narrating the long decline of the Roman Republic into anarchy and civil war.God's City: Byzantine Constantinople
By Nic Fields. 2017
Byzantium. Was it Greek or Roman, familiar or hybrid, barbaric or civilized, Oriental or Western? In the late eleventh century…
Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Christendom, the seat of the Byzantine emperor, Christs vice-regent on earth, and the center of a predominately Christian empire, steeped in Greek cultural and artistic influences, yet founded and maintained by a Roman legal and administrative system. Despite the amalgam of Greek and Roman influences, however, its language and culture was definitely Greek. Constantinople truly was the capital of the Roman empire in the East, and from its founding under the first Constantinus to its fall under the eleventh and last Constantinus the inhabitants always called themselves Romaioi, Romans, not Hellniks, Greeks. Over its millennium long history the empire and its capital experienced many vicissitudes that included several periods of waxing and waning and more than one golden age.Its political will to survive is still eloquently proclaimed in the monumental double land walls of Constantinople, the greatest city fortifications ever built, on which the forces of barbarism dashed themselves for a thousand years. Indeed, Byzantium was one of the longest lasting social organizations in history. Very much part of this success story was the legendary Varangian Guard, the lite body of axe-bearing Northmen sworn to remain loyal to the true Christian emperor of the Romans. There was no hope for an empire that had lost the will to prosecute the grand and awful business of adventure. The Byzantine empire was certainly not of that stamp.Incidental Archaeologists: French Officers and the Rediscovery of Roman North Africa
By Bonnie Effros. 2018
In Incidental Archaeologists, Bonnie Effros examines the archaeological contributions of nineteenth-century French military officers, who, raised on classical accounts of…
warfare and often trained as cartographers, developed an interest in the Roman remains they encountered when commissioned in the colony of Algeria. By linking the study of the Roman past to French triumphant narratives of the conquest and occupation of the Maghreb, Effros demonstrates how Roman archaeology in the forty years following the conquest of the Ottoman Regencies of Algiers and Constantine in the 1830s helped lay the groundwork for the creation of a new identity for French military and civilian settlers.Effros uses France's violent colonial war, its efforts to document the ancient Roman past, and its brutal treatment of the region's Arab and Berber inhabitants to underline the close entanglement of knowledge production with European imperialism. Significantly, Incidental Archaeologists shows how the French experience in Algeria contributed to the professionalization of archaeology in metropolitan France.Effros demonstrates how the archaeological expeditions undertaken by the French in Algeria and the documentation they collected of ancient Roman military accomplishments reflected French confidence that they would learn from Rome's technological accomplishments and succeed, where the Romans had failed, in mastering the region.Unstoppable Us, Volume 2: Why the World Isn't Fair (Unstoppable Us #2)
By Yuval Noah Harari. 2024
From world-renowned historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, comes the second volume in the bestselling Unstoppable…
Us middle-grade series that traces human development from hunter-gatherer societies to cities and empires.Humans may have taken over the world, but what happened next? How did our hunter-gatherer ancestors become village farmers? Why were kingdoms and laws established? How did we go from being the rulers of Earth to the rulers of each other?And why isn&’t the world fair?The answer to all of that is one of the strangest tales you&’ll ever hear. And it&’s a true story.From cultivating land and sharing resources to building pyramids and paying taxes, prepare to discover how humans created civilization — and suffered the consequences for it.Acclaimed author Yuval Noah Harari is back with another expertly crafted story of how humans became "unstoppable," complete with maps, a timeline, and full-color illustrations that bring his dynamic unputdownable writing to life.