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Books > Humanities > History > World history > BCE to 500 CE
This study examines how Tacitus' representation of speech
determines the roles of speakers within the political sphere, and
explores the possibility of politically effective speech in the
principate. It argues against the traditional scholarly view that
Tacitus refuses to offer a positive view of senatorial power in the
principate: while senators did experience limitations and changes
to what they could achieve in public life, they could aim to create
a dimension of political power and efficacy through speeches
intended to create and sustain relations which would in turn
determine the roles played by both senators or an emperor. Ellen
O'Gorman traces Tacitus' own charting of these modes of speech,
from flattery and aggression to advice, praise, and censure, and
explores how different modes of speech in his histories should be
evaluated: not according to how they conform to pre-existing
political stances, but as they engender different political worlds
in the present and future. The volume goes beyond literary analysis
of the texts to create a new framework for studying this essential
period in ancient Roman history, much in the same way that Tacitus
himself recasts the political authority and presence of senatorial
speakers as narrative and historical analysis.
Classical Memories is an intervention into the field of adaptation
studies, taking the example of classical reception to show that
adaptation is a process that can be driven by and produce
intertextual memories. I see 'classical memories' as a
memory-driven type of adaptation that draws on and reproduces
schematic and otherwise de-contextualised conceptions of antiquity
and its cultural 'exports' in, broadly speaking, the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries. These memory-driven adaptations differ,
often in significant ways, from more traditional adaptations that
seek to either continue or deconstruct a long-running tradition
that can be traced back to antiquity as well as its canonical
points of reception in later ages. When investigating such a
popular and widespread set of narratives, characters, and images
like those that remain of Graeco-Roman antiquity, terms like
'adaptation' and 'reception' could and should be nuanced further to
allow us to understand the complex interactions between modern
works and classical antiquity in more detail, particularly when it
pertains to postcolonial or post-digital classical reception. In
Classical Memories, I propose that understanding certain types of
adaptations as intertextual memories allows us to do just that.
What are the borders of the Promised Land in the Hebrew Bible? What
drives and characterizes the descriptions given of them? The
starting point for this research lies in the premise that, despite
their detailed geographical nature, the biblical texts are not
genuinely geographical documents. They are more appropriately to be
understood and examined as literary texts composed in the service
of an ideological agenda. In order to comprehend properly the idea
of the Promised Land presented in the Hebrew Bible-its definitions,
dimensions, and significance-we must understand that the
descriptions belong to diverse literary genres, were composed
according to various literary devices that require decoding, and
that reflect a range of perspectives, outlooks, and notions. All
the Boundaries of the Land provides engaging fresh perspectives on
the variant views of the Promised Land in the interface between
literature, history, geography, and ideology. It does not intend to
answer the question of how the borders of the land altered
throughout the course of history. The reader will find no maps or
outlines in this book. The emphasis is on the literary tools that
were employed by the biblical authors who described the borders,
and the ideological motives that guided them. Erratum: All the
Boundaries of the Land: The Promised Land in Biblical Thought in
Light of the Ancient Near East was published with the support of
the Israel Science Foundation (ISF). They funded the translation of
the book into English and enabled Nili Wazana to make her research
accessible to the wider scientific community. The preface to the
book mistakenly fails to mention their contribution, thanking
instead the Israel Academy of Science. Future editions will
acknowledge the author's gratitude to the Israel Science
Foundation.
"The Spartacus War" is the extraordinary story of the most famous
slave rebellion in the ancient world, the fascinating true story
behind a legend that has been the inspiration for novelists,
filmmakers, and revolutionaries for 2,000 years. Starting with only
seventy-four men, a gladiator named Spartacus incited a rebellion
that threatened Rome itself. With his fellow gladiators, Spartacus
built an army of 60,000 soldiers and controlled the southern
Italian countryside. A charismatic leader, he used religion to win
support. An ex-soldier in the Roman army, Spartacus excelled in
combat. He defeated nine Roman armies and kept Rome at bay for two
years before he was defeated. After his final battle, 6,000 of his
followers were captured and crucified along Rome's main southern
highway.
"The Spartacus War" is the dramatic and factual account of one
of history's great rebellions. Spartacus was beaten by a Roman
general, Crassus, who had learned how to defeat an insurgency. But
the rebels were partly to blame for their failure. Their army was
large and often undisciplined; the many ethnic groups within it
frequently quarreled over leadership. No single leader, not even
Spartacus, could keep them all in line. And when faced with a
choice between escaping to freedom and looting, the rebels chose
wealth over liberty, risking an eventual confrontation with Rome's
most powerful forces.
The result of years of research, "The Spartacus War" is based
not only on written documents but also on archaeological evidence,
historical reconstruction, and the author's extensive travels in
the Italian countryside that Spartacus once conquered.
This second volume of collected essays, complement to volume one,
focuses upon the art and culture of the third millennium B.C.E. in
ancient Mesopotamia. Stress is upon the ability of free-standing
sculpture and public monuments not only to reflect cultural
attitudes, but to affect a viewing audience. Using Sumerian and
Akkadian texts as well as works, the power of visual experience is
pursued toward an understanding not only of the monuments but of
their times and our own. "These beautifully produced volumes bring
together essays written over a 35-year period, creating a whole
that is much more than the sum of its parts...No library should be
without this impressive collection." J.C. Exum
The proceedings of the conference Egypt, Canaan and Israel:
History, Imperialism, Ideology and Literature include the latest
discussions about the political, military, cultural, economic,
ideological, literary and administrative relations between Egypt,
Canaan and Israel during the Second and First Millennia BC
incorporating texts, art, and archaeology.
This volume aims to revisit, further explore and tease out the
textual, but also non-textual sources in an attempt to reconstruct
a clearer picture of a particular aspect of sexuality, i.e. sexual
practices, in Greco-Roman antiquity. Sexual practices refers to a
part of the overarching notion of sexuality: specifically, the acts
of sexual intercourse, the erogenous capacities and genital
functions of male and female body, and any other physical or
biological actions that define one's sexual identity or
orientation. This volume aims to approach not simply the acts of
sexual intercourse themselves, but also their legal, social,
political, religious, medical, cultural/moral and interdisciplinary
(e.g. emotional, performative) perspectives, as manifested in a
range of both textual and non-textual evidence (i.e. architecture,
iconography, epigraphy, etc.). The insights taken from the
contributions to this volume would enable researchers across a
range of disciplines - e.g. sex/gender studies, comparative
literature, psychology and cognitive neuroscience - to use
theoretical perspectives, methodologies and conceptual tools to
frame the sprawling examination of aspects of sexuality in broad
terms, or sexual practices in particular.
Cleopatra tells the story of the girl queen who inherited the
richest empire in the world - one that stretched from the scorching
deserts of lower Egypt to the shining Mediterranean metropolis of
Alexandria. In his concise biography, Historian Jacob Abbott brings
to life the intrigue, romance and dramatic action of Cleopatra's
life and times.
Building on and updating some of the issues addressed in Starting
to Teach Latin, Steven Hunt provides a guide for novice and more
experienced teachers of Latin in schools and colleges, who work
with adapted and original Latin prose texts from beginners' to
advanced levels. It draws extensively on up-to-date theories of
second language development and on multiple examples of the
practices of real teachers and students. Hunt starts with a
detailed look at deductive, inductive and active teaching methods,
which support teachers in making the best choices for their
students' needs and for their own personal preferences, but goes on
to organise the book around the principles of listening, reading,
speaking and writing Latin. It is designed to be informative,
experimental and occasionally provocative. The book closes with two
chapters of particular contemporary interest: 'Access, Diversity
and Inclusion' investigates how the subject community is meeting
the challenge of teaching Latin more equitably in today's schools;
and 'The Future' offers some thoughts on lessons that have been
learnt from the experiences of online teaching practices during the
Covid-19 lockdowns. Practical examples, extensive references and a
companion website at www.stevenhuntclassics.com are included.
Teachers of Latin will find this book an invaluable tool inside and
outside of the classroom.
Although the relationship of Greco-Roman historians with their
readerships has attracted much scholarly attention, classicists
principally focus on individual historians, while there has been no
collective work on the matter. The editors of this volume aspire to
fill this gap and gather papers which offer an overall view of the
Greco-Roman readership and of its interaction with ancient
historians. The authors of this book endeavor to define the
physiognomy of the audience of history in the Roman Era both by
exploring the narrative arrangement of ancient historical prose and
by using sources in which Greco-Roman intellectuals address the
issue of the readership of history. Ancient historians shaped their
accounts taking into consideration their readers' tastes, and this
is evident on many different levels, such as the way a historian
fashions his authorial image, addresses his readers, or uses
certain compositional strategies to elicit the readers' affective
and cognitive responses to his messages. The papers of this volume
analyze these narrative aspects and contextualize them within their
socio-political environment in order to reveal the ways ancient
readerships interacted with and affected Greco-Roman historical
prose.
This is an unrivalled collection of source material on women in the
ancient Greek world including literary, rhetorical, philosophical
and legal sources, and papyri and inscriptions. The study of women
in the ancient Mediterranean world is a topic of growing interest
among classicists and ancient historians, and also students of
history, sociology and women's studies. This volume is an essential
resource supplying a compilation of source material in translation,
with contextual commentaries, a glossary of key terms and an
annotated bibliography. Texts come from literary, rhetorical,
philosophical and legal sources, as well as papyri and
inscriptions, and each text will be placed into the cultural mosaic
to which it belongs. Ranging geographically from the ancient Near
East through Egypt and Greece to Rome and its wider empire, the
volume follows a clear chronological structure. Beginning in the
eighth century BCE the coverage continues through archaic and
Classical Athens, Etruscan Italy and the Roman Republic, concluding
with the late Roman Empire and the advent of Christianity. "The
Continuum Sources in Ancient History" series presents a definitive
collection of source material in translation, combined with expert
contextual commentary and annotation to provide a comprehensive
survey of each volume's subject. Material is drawn from literary,
as well as epigraphic, legal and religious, sources. Aimed
primarily at undergraduate students, the series will also be
invaluable for researchers, and faculty devising and teaching
courses.
A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative
survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes
covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social,
spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the
Human Body in Antiquity (750 BCE - 1000 CE) Edited by Daniel
Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of
the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda
Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of
the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda
Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University
College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in
the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome
Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College
London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age
of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library
of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College
of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in
the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier,
University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of
Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters:
1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex and Sexuality 4.
Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and
Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age,
Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine
and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The
Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad
overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through
history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly
illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most
authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body
through history.
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