This book focuses on the development of Platonic philosophy at the hands of Roman writers between the first century BCE and the early fifth century CE. It discusses the interpretation of Plato's Timaeus by Cicero, Apuleius, Calcidius, and Augustine, and examines how these authors created new contexts and settings for the intellectual heritage they received and thereby contributed to the construction of the complex and multifaceted genre of Roman Platonism. It takes advantage of the authors' treatment of Plato's Timaeus as a continuous point of reference to illustrate the individuality and originality of each writer in his engagement with this Greek philosophical text; each chooses a specific vocabulary, methodology, and literary setting for his appropriation of Timaean doctrine. The authors' contributions to the dialogue's history of transmission are shown to have enriched and prolonged the enduring significance of Plato's cosmology.

This book, newly translated from the original Spanish, first offers a summary of the main theories about what we today call the State', a category that draws together various interests in the research into the past of human societies and, at the same time, inspires passionate political and ideological debate. The authors review political philosophies from Greek antiquity to contemporary evolutionism. They then examine how the State has been viewed and studied within archaeology in the twentieth century, and offer an alternative approach based upon historical materialism. Their argument that this method can be profitably used to study the archaeological record is a sophisticated and creative contribution to current theory, and will inspire debate about its implications for our understanding of human history.

Diodoros of Sicily's book XIX is the main source for the history of the Diadochoi, Alexander the Great's Successors, from 317 to 311 BCE. With the first full-scale commentary on this text in any language Alexander Meeus offers a detailed and reliable guide to the complicated historical narrative and the fascinating ethnographic information transmitted by Diodoros, which includes the earliest accounts of Indian widow burning and Nabataean culture. Studying both history and historiography, this volume elucidates a crucial stage in the creation of the Hellenistic world in Greece and the Near East as well as the confusing source tradition. Diodoros, a long neglected author indispensable for much of our knowledge of Antiquity, is currently enjoying growing scholarly interest. An ample introduction discusses his historical methods and sheds light on his language and style and on the manuscript transmission of books XVII-XX. By negotiating between diametrically opposed scholarly opinions a new understanding of Diodoros' place in the ancient historiographical tradition is offered. The volume is of interest to scholars of ancient historiography, Hellenistic history, Hellenistic prose and the textual transmission of the Bibliotheke.

War, the most profitable economic activity in the ancient world, transferred wealth violently from the vanquished to the victor. Invasions, massacres, confiscations, deportations, the sacking of cities, and the selling of survivors into slavery all redistributed property with epic consequences for kings and commoners alike. The most notable example occurred in the late fourth century BC, when Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire. For all of its savagery, this invasion has generally been heralded as a positive economic event for all concerned. Even those harshly critical of the king today tend to praise his plundering of Persia as a means of liberating the moribund resources of the East. To test that popular interpretation, this book investigates the kinds and quantities of treasure seized by the Macedonian king, from gold and silver to land and slaves. It reveals what became of the king's wealth, and what Alexander's redistribution of these vast resources can tell us about his much-disputed policies and personality. Although war made Alexander unbelievably wealthy, it distracted him from managing his spoils competently. Much was wasted, embezzled, deliberately destroyed, or idled again unprofitably. These facts force us to reassess the notion, prevalent since the nineteenth century, that Alexander the Great used the profits of war to improve the ancient economies in the lands that he conquered.

The Persica is an extensive history of Assyria and Persia written by the Greek historian Ctesias, who served as a doctor to the Persian king Artaxerxes II around 400 BCE. Written for a Greek readership, the Persica influenced the development of both historiographic and literary traditions in Greece. It also, contends Matt Waters, is an essential but often misunderstood source for the history of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Waters, as a historian of Persia with command of Akkadian, Elamite, and Old Persian languages in addition to Latin and Greek, offers a fresh interdisciplinary analysis of the Persica. He shows in detail how Ctesias' history, though written in a Greek literary style, was infused with two millennia of Mesopotamian and Persian motifs, legends, and traditions. This Hellenized version of Persian culture was enormously influential in antiquity, shaping Greek stereotypes of effeminate Persian monarchs, licentious and vengeful queens, and conniving eunuchs. Waters' revealing study contributes significantly to knowledge of ancient historiography, Persian dynastic traditions and culture, and the influence of Near Eastern texts and oral tradition on Greek literature.

Biological literature of the Roman imperial period remains somehow 'underestimated'. It is even quite difficult to speak of biological literature for this period at all: biology (apart from medicine) did not represent, indeed, a specific 'subgenre' of scientific literature. Nevertheless, writings as disparate as Philo of Alexandria's Alexander, Plutarch's De sollertia animalium or Bruta ratione uti, Aelian's De Natura Animalium, Oppian's Halieutika, Pseudo-Oppian's Kynegetika, and Basil of Caeserea's Homilies on the Creation engage with zoological, anatomic, or botanical questions. Poikile Physis examines how such writings appropriate, adapt, classify, re-elaborate and present biological knowledge which originated within the previous, mainly Aristotelian, tradition. It offers a holistic approach to these works by considering their reception of scientific material, their literary as well as rhetorical aspects, and their interaction with different socio-cultural conditions. The result of an interdisciplinary discussion among scholars of Greek studies, philosophy and history of science, the volume provides an initial analysis of forms and functions of biological literature in the imperial period.

Situated within contemporary posthumanism, this volume offers theoretical and practical approaches to materiality in Greek tragedy. Established and emerging scholars explore how works of the three major Greek tragedians problematize objects and affect, providing fresh readings of some of the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The so-called new materialisms have complemented the study of objects as signifiers or symbols with an interest in their agency and vitality, their sensuous force and psychosomatic impact-and conversely their resistance and irreducible aloofness. At the same time, emotion has been recast as material "affect," an intense flow of energies between bodies, animate and inanimate. Powerfully contributing to the current critical debate on materiality, the essays collected here destabilize established interpretations, suggesting alternative approaches and pointing toward a newly robust sense of the physicality of Greek tragedy.

A body of theory has developed about the role and function of memory in creating and maintaining cultural identity. Yet there has been no consideration of the rich Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions of laments for fallen cities in commemorating or resolving communal trauma. This volume offers new insights into the trope of the fallen city in folk-song and a variety of literary genres. These commemorations reveal memories modified by diverse agendas, and contains narrative structures and motifs that show the meaning of memory-making about fallen cities. Opening a new avenue of research into the Mediterranean genre of city lament, this book examines references to, or re-workings of, otherwise lost texts or ways of commemorating fallen cities in the extant texts, and with greater emphasis than usual on the point of view of the victors.

This edition of Thucylides epic chronicle, The History of the Peloponnesian War, contains all eight books in the authoritative English translation of Richard Crawley. Thucylides himself was an Athenian general who personally witnessed the various skirmishes of the war. Ordering all of the events chronologically - a first for any work of history - he offers a straightforward account of the conflict, straying little to personal opinions or permitting his history to be influenced by the politics of the era. For this, Thucylides' is lauded for his methodical telling of each battle, which offers the reader insight into Greek and Spartan tactics and cultures. Throughout the history, we are given transcripts of various speeches. Although the inclusion of such lengthy quotations of sources is unheard of in modern history books, the presence of lengthy oratory in Thucylides' history is considered to be a cultural trait: speech and rhetoric were prized in Greece as the prime means of transferring knowledge.

The Ossetes, a small nation inhabiting two adjacent states in the central Caucasus, are the last remaining linguistic and cultural descendants of the ancient nomadic Scythians who dominated the Eurasian steppe from the Balkans to Mongolia for well over one thousand years. A nominally Christian nation speaking a language distantly related to Persian, the Ossetes have inherited much of the culture of the medieval Alans who brought equestrian culture to Europe. They have preserved a rich oral literature through the epic of the Narts, a body of heroic legends that shares much in common with the Persian Book of Kings and other works of Indo-European mythology. This is the first book devoted to the little-known history and culture of the Ossetes to appear in any Western language. Charting Ossetian history from Antiquity to today, it will be a vital contribution to the fields of Iranian, Caucasian, Post-Soviet and Indo-European Studies.