Herodotus is the epochal authority who inaugurated the European and Western consciousness of collective identity, whether in an awareness of other societies and of the nature of cultural variation itself or in the fashioning of Greek self-awareness - and necessarily that of later civilizations in?uenced by the ancient Greeks - which was perpetually in dialogue and tension with other ways of living in groups. In this book, 14 contributors explore ethnicity - the very self-understanding of belonging to a separate body of human beings - and how it evolves and consolidates (or ethnogenesis). This inquiry is focussed through the lens of Herodotus as our earliest master of ethnography, in this instance not only as the stylized portrayal of other societies, but also as an exegesis on how ethnocultural di?erentiation may a?ect the lives, and even the very existence, of one's own people. Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus is one facet of a project that intends to bring Portuguese and English-speaking scholars of antiquity into closer cooperation. It has united a cross-section of North American classicists with a distinguished cohort of Portuguese and Brazilian experts on Greek literature and history writing in English.

Drawing on case studies that range from the early Iron Age Mediterranean to medieval Britain, the contributing authors showcase the importance of looking at strong social ties in the transmission of complex information, which requires relationships structured through mutual trust, memory, and reciprocity. They highlight the importance of sanctuaries in the process of information transmission; the power of narrative in creating a sense of community even across geographical space; and the control of social systems in order to facilitate or stifle new information transfer. This book demonstrates the value of searching the past for powerful social connections, offers us the chance to tell more human stories through our analyses, and represents an essential new addition to the study and use of networks in archaeology and history. The book will be useful to academics and students working in the Digital Humanities, History, Archaeology.

Appeals to readers of varied interests across historical times and places. In addition to attracting students of the early-U.S. and late-Roman republics, amateur historians who enjoy connections between the classical past and modern world will find the work useful and entertaining. This work also demonstrates the continued need for connecting different fields of history, while also helping students understand their connection to the ancient past.

From flowers and perfumes to urban sanitation and personal hygiene, smell-a sense that is simultaneously sublime and animalistic-has played a pivotal role in western culture and thought. Greek and Roman writers and thinkers lost no opportunity to connect the smells that bombarded their senses to the social, political and cultural status of the individuals and environments that they encountered: godly incense and burning sacrifices, seductive scents, aromatic cuisines, stinking bodies, pungent farmyards and festering back-streets. The cultural study of smell has largely focused on pollution, transgression and propriety, but the olfactory sense came into play in a wide range of domains and activities: ancient medicine and philosophy, religion, botany and natural history, erotic literature, urban planning, dining, satire and comedy-where odours, aromas, scents and stenches were rich and versatile components of the ancient sensorium. The first comprehensive introduction to the role of smell in the history, literature and society of classical antiquity, Smell and the Ancient Senses explores and probes the ways that the olfactory sense can contribute to our perceptions of ancient life, behaviour, identity and morality.

'Buy the book; it's very entertaining.' David Aaronovitch, The Times A Financial Times, BBC History and Spectator Book of the Year On 8 June 218 AD, a fourteen-year-old Syrian boy, egged on by his grandmother, led an army to battle in a Roman civil war. Against all expectations, he was victorious. Varius Avitus Bassianus, known to the modern world as Heliogabalus, was proclaimed emperor. The next four years were to be the strangest in the history of the empire. Heliogabalus humiliated the prestigious Senators and threw extravagant dinner parties for lower-class friends. He ousted Jupiter from his summit among the gods and replaced him with Elagabal. He married a Vestal Virgin - twice. Rumours abounded that he was a prostitute. In the first biography of Heliogabalus in over half a century, Harry Sidebottom unveils the high drama of sex, religion, power and culture in Ancient Rome as we've never seen it before.

This book introduces the reader to the approach and general philosophy of the use of art as an additional language in group therapy. It demonstrates the usefulness of the language of art in enabling group therapists and their clients to understand group members' perceptions of constructs and realities.

These essays examine how various communities remembered and commemorated their shared past through the lens of utopia and its corollary, dystopia, providing a framework for the reinterpretation of rapidly changing religious, cultural, and political realities of the turbulent period from 300 to 750 CE. The common theme of the chapters is the utopian ideals of religious groups, whether these are inscribed on the body, on the landscape, in texts, or on other cultural objects. The volume is the first to apply this conceptual framework to Late Antiquity, when historically significant conflicts arose between the adherents of four major religious identities: Greaco-Roman 'pagans', newly dominant Christians; diaspora Jews, who were more or less persecuted, depending on the current regime; and the emerging religion and power of Islam. Late Antiquity was thus a period when dystopian realities competed with memories of a mythical Golden Age, variously conceived according to the religious identity of the group. The contributors come from a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, religious studies, ancient history, and art history, and employ both theoretical and empirical approaches. This volume is unique in the range of evidence it draws upon, both visual and textual, to support the basic argument that utopia in Late Antiquity, whether conceived spiritually, artistically, or politically, was a place of the past but also of the future, even of the afterlife. Memories of Utopia will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, and art historians of the later Roman Empire, and those working on religion in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.

The first to systematically compare biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Greek creation accounts and to show that Genesis 1-3 is heavily indebted to Plato's Timaeus and other cosmogonies by Greek natural philosophers.

Comprehensive overview of the entire Near East, including Egypt and ancient Israel, allowing students to work comparatively across cultures. New edition incorporates new insights from recent technological advances, and recent interest in subject territories and imperialism in the Near East. Incorporates archaeological and art historical evidence, encouraging students to engage with material culture as important evidence of the past. "Debating the evidence" section discusses controversial issues in Near Eastern studies, allowing students to engage with these important topics.

Appeals to readers of varied interests across historical times and places. In addition to attracting students of the early-U.S. and late-Roman republics, amateur historians who enjoy connections between the classical past and modern world will find the work useful and entertaining. This work also demonstrates the continued need for connecting different fields of history, while also helping students understand their connection to the ancient past.

By integrating evidence of the form and function of religiosities in contexts of mobility and migration, this volume reconstructs mobility-informed aspects of civic and household religiosities in Israel and its world. Readers will find a robust theoretical framework for studying cultures of mobility and religiosities in the ancient past, as well as a fresh understanding of the scope and texture of mobility-informed religious identities that composed broader Yahwistic religious heritage. This book will be of use to both specialists and informed readers interested in the history of mobilities and migrations in the ancient Near East, as well as those interested in the development of Yahwism in its biblical and extra-biblical forms.

"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" - Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus A story of gods and mortals, of such famous episodes as the Trojan Horse and Achilles mortally wounded in his heel, of warriors such as Odysseus and Hector, of beauties such as Helen, of leaders such as Agamemnon and Menelaus, the Trojan War is a classic story from the ancient world that never ceases to lose its appeal. But how well do we really know it? Do we remember Odysseus feigning madness to avoid the battle? Or Achilles, that great warrior, disguising himself as a woman so that he didn't have to fight? Troy - An Epic Tale of Rage, Deception & Destruction tells the story of the Trojan War from its beginnings with the sparring of the gods to the love story between Paris and Helen to the war fleet, the siege, and on to the final battles and destruction of the city. From a conflict that's set in motion by Helen - 'the face that launched a thousand ships' - it ends, ten years later, with Odysseus setting sail on what turns out to be his own ten- year voyage home. The book offers a fascinating history that provides a broader context for the war, examining the social and political background, the role of women in Greek society, and the weapons and style of warfare practiced. It also highlights where sources differ on aspects of the story. Illustrated with more than 180 colour and black-and-white artworks, photographs and maps, the book is an expertly written account and investigation of one of the classic stories of ancient mythology.

This book seeks to restore Homer to his rightful place among the principal figures in the history of political and moral philosophy. Through this fresh and provocative analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Peter J. Ahrensdorf examines Homer's understanding of the best life, the nature of the divine, and the nature of human excellence. According to Ahrensdorf, Homer teaches that human greatness eclipses that of the gods, that the contemplative and compassionate singer ultimately surpasses the heroic warrior in grandeur, and that it is the courageously questioning Achilles, not the loyal Hector or even the wily Odysseus, who comes closest to the humane wisdom of Homer himself. Thanks to Homer, two of the distinctive features of Greek civilization are its extraordinary celebration of human excellence, as can be seen in Greek athletics, sculpture, and nudity, and its singular questioning of the divine, as can be seen in Greek philosophy.

This volume offers a detailed case study of the internationally acclaimed online programmes in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, UK. It distils over a decade of online teaching experience and student feedback, providing guidance for instructors developing their own online offerings. Today, many universities are actively encouraging their teaching staff towards the development of: * online programmes (programmes to be taught entirely online) and/or * online units (units to be incorporated into "blended" programmes taught partially online and partially face-to-face). Unfortunately, the staff tasked with the development of online learning rarely have access to the expertise that they need to help them utilise their teaching skills to their full potential. Technical assistance may be provided by the university e-learning department, but pedagogical and practical help - the support of colleagues with many years' experience teaching online - is lacking. Written by experts, the book provides an invaluable guide for those wishing - or being compelled - to establish their own online courses within the humanities.

An authoritative and radical rethinking of the history of Ancient Britain and Ancient Ireland, based on remarkable new archaeological finds.

British history is traditionally regarded as having started with the Roman Conquest. But this is to ignore half a million years of prehistory that still exert a profound influence. Here Francis Pryor examines the great ceremonial landscapes of Ancient Britain and Ireland Stonehenge, Seahenge, Avebury and the Bend of the Boyne as well as the discarded artefacts of day-to-day life, to create an astonishing portrait of our ancestors.

This major re-revaluation of pre-Roman Britain, made possible in part by aerial photography and coastal erosion, reveals a much more sophisticated life in Ancient Britain and Ireland than has previously been supposed."

Diodoros of Sicily (c.90-c.30 BC) spent thirty years producing an encyclopedic compendium of world history from its mythical beginnings to his own day. His is the only surviving, connected account of Greek affairs from 480/79 to 302/1. The books translated in this volume cover the years from the end of the Peloponnesian War to the aftermath of the Battle of Mantineia in 362/1. These were crucial years in the struggle for supremacy in Greece amongst the Greek states, Sparta, Athens and Thebes, before they were overtaken by the unexpected rise of Macedon. Diodoros also provides the only extant account of the career of Dionysios I of Syracuse and the Cypriot war between Persia and Evagoras of Salamis. The translation is supported by extensive notes and the Introduction examines Diodoros' moral and educational purpose in writing, the plan of his work, his sources, and his qualities as a historian.

This book offers a clear and novel method from inserting mystical ideals into theatrical productions. This book introduces a new way of understanding the history of theatre. This book gives an east-to-understand overview of mystical thinking. This book lays out a clear understanding of how theatre might positively influence the audience and society.

Pliny and the Eruption of Vesuvius is a forensic examination of two of the most famous letters from the ancient Mediterranean world, Pliny the Younger's Epistulae 6.16 and 6.20, which offer a contemporary account of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. This volume provides the first comprehensive full-length treatment of these documents, contextualized by evidence-rich biographies for both Plinys, and a synthesis of the latest archaeological and volcanological research which answers questions about the eruption date. A new collation of sources results in a detailed manuscript tradition and an authoritative Latin text, while commentaries on each letter offer copiously referenced insights on their structure, style, and meaning. This book offers a thorough companion to these letters, and to the eruption, which will be of interest not only to those working on Vesuvius, Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the works of Pliny, but also to general readers, Latin students, and scholars of the Roman world more broadly.

Combines both archaeological and textual data

It explores how the Presocratic natural philosophers and early Hippocratic medical writers developed theories which drew from wider investigations into physiology and psychology, the natural world and the self, while also engaging with wider literary depictions and established cultural beliefs. attention is devoted from the outset to sleep and dreams in Homer and the mythic tradition, as well as to depictions across lyric, drama and historiography.

The Tropologion is considered the earliest known extant chant book from the early Christian world which was in use until the twelfth century. The study of this book is still in its infancy. It has generally been believed that the book has survived in Georgian translation under the name 'ladgari' but similar books have been discovered in Greek, Syriac and Armenian. All the copies clearly show that the spread and the use of the book were much greater than we had previously assumed and the Georgian ladgari is only one of its many versions. The study of these issues unquestionably confirms the earliest stage of the compilation of the book, in Jerusalem or its environs, and shows its uninterrupted development from Jerusalem to the Stoudios monastery, the most important monastery of Constantinople. Over time many new pieces and new authors were added to the Tropologion. It is almost certain that it was the Stoudios school of poet-composers that divided the content of the Tropologion and compiled separate collections of books, each one containing a major liturgical cycle. In the beginning all of the volumes kept the old title but in the tenth century the copies of the book were renamed, probably according to the liturgical repertory included, and by the thirteenth century the title 'Tropologion' is no longer found in the Greek sources as it became superfluous, and fell out of use.