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Books > Humanities > History > World history > BCE to 500 CE
The study of Roman sculpture has been an essential part of the
disciplines of Art History and Classics since the eighteenth
century. From formal concerns such as Kopienkritic (copy criticism)
to social readings of plebeian and patrician art and beyond,
scholars have returned to Roman sculpture to answer a variety of
questions about Roman art, society, and history. Indeed, the field
of Roman sculptural studies encompasses not only the full
chronological range of the Roman world but also its expansive
geography, and a variety of artistic media, formats, sizes, and
functions. Exciting new theories, methods, and approaches have
transformed the specialized literature on the subject in recent
decades. Rather than creating another chronological ARCH15OXH of
representative examples of various periods, genres, and settings,
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture synthesizes current best
practices for studying this central medium of Roman art, situating
it within the larger fields of art history, classical archaeology,
and Roman studies. This volume fills the gap between introductory
textbooks-which hide the critical apparatus from the reader-and the
highly focused professional literature. The handbook conveniently
presents new technical, scientific, literary, and theoretical
approaches to the study of Roman sculpture in one reference volume
and complements textbooks and other publications that present
well-known works in the corpus. Chronologically, the volume
addresses material from the Early Republican period through Late
Antiquity. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture not only
contributes to the field of classical art and archaeology but also
provides a useful reference for classicists and historians of the
ancient world.
Perhaps no other single Roman speech exemplifies the connection
between oratory, politics and imperialism better than Cicero's De
Provinciis Consularibus, pronounced to the senate in 56 BC. Cicero
puts his talents at the service of the powerful "triumviri"
(Caesar, Crassus and Pompey), whose aims he advances by appealing
to the senators' imperialistic and chauvinistic ideology. This
oration, then, yields precious insights into several areas of late
republican life: international relations between Rome and the
provinces (Gaul, Macedonia and Judaea); the senators' view on
governors, publicani (tax-farmers) and foreigners; the dirty
mechanics of high politics in the 50s, driven by lust for
domination and money; and Cicero's own role in that political
choreography. This speech also exemplifies the exceptional range of
Cicero's oratory: the invective against Piso and Gabinius calls for
biting irony, the praise of Caesar displays high rhetoric, the
rejection of other senators' recommendations is a tour de force of
logical and sophisticated argument, and Cicero's justification for
his own conduct is embedded in the self-fashioning narrative which
is typical of his post reditum speeches. This new commentary
includes an updated introduction, which provides the readers with a
historical, rhetorical and stylistic background to appreciate the
complexities of Cicero's oration, as well as indexes and maps.
This study, first published in German in 1975, addresses the need
for a comprehensive account of Roman social history in a single
volume. Specifically, Alfoeldy attempts to answer three questions:
What is the meaning of Roman social history? What is entailed in
Roman social history? How is it to be conceived as history?
Alfoeldy's approach brings social structure much closer to
political development, following the changes in social institutions
in parallel with the broader political milieu. He deals with
specific problems in seven periods: Archaic Rome, the Republic down
to the Second Punic War, the structural change of the second
century BC, the end of the Republic, the Early Empire, the crisis
of the third century AD and the Late Empire. Excellent
bibliographical notes specify the most important works on each
subject, making it useful to the graduate student and scholar as
well as to the advanced and well-informed undergraduate.
This is the first comprehensive and fully illustrated study of
silver vessels from ancient Macedonia from the 4th to the 2nd
centuries BC. These precious vessels formed part of dining sets
owned by the royal family and the elite and have been discovered in
the tombs of their owners. Eleni Zimi presents 171 artifacts in a
full-length study of form, decoration, inscriptions and
manufacturing techniques, set against contemporary comparanda in
other media (clay, bronze, glass). She adopts an art historical and
sociological approach to the archaeological evidence and
demonstrates that the use of silver vessels as an expression of
wealth and a status symbol is not only connected with the wealth
spread in the empire after Alexander's the Great expedition to the
East, but constitutes a practice reflecting the opulence and
appreciation for luxury at least in the Macedonian court from the
reign of Philip II onwards.
With a blend of narrative and analysis, this book explores the
extent to which mercenaries have been used, from Sumer to Rome, and
the reasons governments hired them when they could conscript native
citizens.
The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia is a unique blend of
comprehensive overviews on archaeological, philological,
linguistic, and historical issues at the forefront of Anatolian
scholarship in the 21st century. Anatolia is home to early complex
societies and great empires, and was the destination of many
migrants, visitors, and invaders. The offerings in this volume
bring this reality to life as the chapters unfold nearly ten
thousand years (ca. 10,000-323 B.C.E.) of peoples, languages, and
diverse cultures who lived in or traversed Anatolia over these
millennia. The contributors combine descriptions of current
scholarship on important discussion and debates in Anatolian
studies with new and cutting edge research for future directions of
study. The fifty-four chapters are presented in five separate
sections that range in topic from chronological and geographical
overviews to anthropologically based issues of culture contact and
imperial structures, and from historical settings of entire
millennia to crucial data from key sites across the region. The
contributors to the volume represent the best scholars in the field
from North America, Europe, Turkey, and Asia. The appearance of
this volume offers the very latest collection of studies on the
fascinating peninsula known as Anatolia.
An amusing, fascinating and intriguing description of the origins
of everyday phrases, the titles in the 'Well I Never Knew That '
series reveals how many of our common expressions and sayings came
to be.
Stonehenge was not an observatory used by druidical
astronomer-priests. It was, instead, a monument in which the moon
and the sun and the dead were joined together. In this book the
author explains how people in the British Isles, four thousand or
more years ago, identified life and death with the cycle of
midwinter and midsummer and with the risings and settings of the
sun and moon. This is why so many megalithic monuments have
astronomical sightlines built into them. This book describes how
astronomical customs developed in the British Isles. Unlike other
works about 'megalithic astronomy' technical explanations about
azimuths and declinations are kept to their simplest. The emphasis
here is upon people rather than pertrubations and eclipses.
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