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Books > Humanities > History > World history > BCE to 500 CE
This is the concluding volume presenting results of the author's
fieldwork spread over more than fifty years concerning the
Archaeology and Topography of Ancient Boiotia that includes also
discussions of the distribution within the topography of certain
ancient cults, especially those of Artemis, Herakles and the
Horseman Hero. Within the more purely topographic section there is
much discussion of regional defense systems, all set against the
history of the Boiotian League, especially its early coinage, its
origins and its confrontation with Sparta and the pivotal battle of
Leuktra.
How to Do Things with History is a collection of essays that
explores current and future approaches to the study of ancient
Greek cultural history. Rather than focus directly on methodology,
the essays in this volume demonstrate how some of the most
productive and significant methodologies for studying ancient
Greece can be employed to illuminate a range of different kinds of
subject matter. These essays, which bring together the work of some
of the most talented scholars in the field, are based upon papers
delivered at a conference held at Cambridge University in September
of 2014 in honor of Paul Cartledge's retirement from the post of A.
G. Leventis Professor of Ancient Greek Culture. For the better part
of four decades, Paul Cartledge has spearheaded intellectual
developments in the field of Greek culture in both scholarly and
public contexts. His work has combined insightful historical
accounts of particular places, periods, and thinkers with a
willingness to explore comparative approaches and a keen focus on
methodology. Cartledge has throughout his career emphasized the
analysis of practice - the study not, for instance, of the history
of thought but of thinking in action and through action. The
assembled essays trace the broad horizons charted by Cartledge's
work: from studies of political thinking to accounts of legal and
cultural practices to politically astute approaches to
historiography. The contributors to this volume all take the
parameters and contours of Cartledge's work, which has profoundly
influenced an entire generation of scholars, as starting points for
their own historical and historiographical explorations. Those
parameters and contours provide a common thread that runs through
and connects all of the essays while also offering sufficient
freedom for individual contributors to demonstrate an array of rich
and varied approaches to the study of the past.
Silius Italicus' Punica, the longest surviving epic in Latin
literature, has seen a resurgence of interest among scholars in
recent years. A celebration of Rome's triumph over Hannibal and
Carthage during the second Punic war, Silius' poem presents a
plethora of familiar names to its readers: Fabius Maximus, Claudius
Marcellus, Scipio Africanus and, of course, Rome's 'ultimate enemy'
- Hannibal. Where most recent scholarship on the Punica has focused
its attention of the problematic portrayal of Scipio Africanus as a
hero for Rome, this book shifts the focus to Carthage and offers a
new reading of Hannibal's place in Silius' epic, and in Rome's
literary culture at large. Celebrated and demonised in equal
measure, Hannibal became something of an anti-hero for Rome; a man
who acquired mythic status, and was condemned by Rome's authors for
his supposed greed and cruelty, yet admired for his military
acumen. For the first time this book provides a comprehensive
overview of this multi-faceted Hannibal as he appears in the Punica
and suggests that Silius' portrayal of him can be read as the
culmination to Rome's centuries-long engagement with the
Carthaginian in its literature. Through detailed consideration of
internal focalisation, Silius' Hannibal is revealed to be a man
striving to create an eternal legacy, becoming the Hannibal whom a
Roman, and a modern reader, would recognise. The works of Polybius,
Livy, Virgil, and the post Virgilian epicists all have a bit-part
in this book, which aims to show that Silius Italicus' Punica is as
much an example of how Rome remembered its past, as it is a text
striving to join Rome's epic canon.
Eunuchs tend to be associated with eastern courts, popularly
perceived as harem personnel. However, the Roman empire was also
distinguished by eunuchs - they existed as slaves, court officials,
religious figures and free men. This book is the first to be
devoted to the range of Roman eunuchs. Across seven chapters
(spanning the third century BC to the sixth century AD), Shaun
Tougher examines the history of Roman eunuchs, focusing on key
texts and specific individuals. Subjects met include the Galli (the
self-castrating devotees of the goddess the Great Mother),
Terence's comedy The Eunuch (the earliest surviving Latin text to
use the word 'eunuch'), Sporus and Earinus the eunuch favourites of
the emperors Nero and Domitian, the 'Ethiopian eunuch' of the Acts
of the Apostles (an early convert to Christianity), Favorinus of
Arles (a superstar intersex philosopher), the Grand Chamberlain
Eutropius (the only eunuch ever to be consul), and Narses the
eunuch general who defeated the Ostrogoths and restored Italy to
Roman rule. A key theme of the chapters is gender, inescapable when
studying castrated males. Ultimately this book is as much about the
eunuch in the Roman imagination as it is the reality of the eunuch
in the Roman empire.
The emperor Gaius ('Caligula') was assassinated in January A.D.41.
Since he was the last of the Julii, and he left no heir, it seemed
that the dynasty of Caesar and Augustus was finished. Accordingly,
the Republic was restored, but then a coup d'etat by the Praetorian
Guard put Claudius in power . . . the dramatic events of these few
days are a crucial turning-point in Roman history - the moment when
the military basis of the Principate was first made explicit.
Tacitus' account has not survived, and Suetonius and Dio Cassisu
offer no adequate substitute. Fortunately, the Jewish historian
Flavius Josephus chose to insert into his 'Jewish Antiquities' - as
an example of the providence of God - a detailed narrative of the
assassination plot and its aftermath taken from contemporary and
well-informed Roman sources. This new edition of T.P. Wiseman's
acclaimed Death of an Emperor (his translation and commentary of
Josephus' account of Caligula's assassination) includes an updated
bibliography, revised introduction, translation and commentary.
Appendix 1 on the Augustan Palatine has been completely revised to
take account of recent archaeological information.
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