Until the Renaissance the centrality of Roman tragedy in Western society and culture was unchallenged. Studies on Roman Republican tragedy and on Imperial Roman tragedy by the contributors have been directing the gaze of scholarship back to Roman tragedy. This volume has two goals: first, to demonstrate that Republican tragedy had a far more central role in shaping Imperial tragedy than is currently thought, and quite possibly more important than Classical Greek tragedy. Second, the influence of other Roman literary genres on Roman tragedy is greater than has formerly been credited. Studies on von Kleist and Shelley, Eliot and Claus help reconstruct the ancient Roman stage by showing how moderns had thought to change it for contemporary aesthetics.

Long believed to be the cradle of Vietnamese civilization, the Red River Delta of Vietnam has been referenced by Vietnamese and Chinese writers for centuries, many recording colorful tales and legends about the region's prehistory. One of the most enduring accounts relates the story of the Au Lac Kingdom and its capital, known as Co Loa. According to legend, the city was founded during the third century BC and massive rampart walls protected its seat of power. Over the past two millennia, Co Loa has become emblematic of an important foundational era for Vietnamese civilization. Today, the ramparts of this ancient city still stand in silent testament to the power of past societies. However, there are ongoing debates about the origins of the site, the validity of legendary accounts, and the link between the prehistoric past with later Vietnamese society. Recent decades of archaeology in the region have provided a new dimension to further explore these issues, and to elucidate the underpinnings of civilization in northern Vietnam. Nam C. Kim's The Origins of Ancient Vietnam explores the origins of an ancient state in northern Vietnam, an area long believed to be the cradle of Vietnamese civilization. In doing so, it analyzes the archaeological record and the impact of new information on extant legends about the region and its history. Additionally, Kim presents the archaeological case for this momentous development, placing Co Loa within a wider archaeological consideration of emergent cities, states, and civilizations.

This volume provides a series of contributions on the crucial aspects relating to the Bible and the Late Bronze Age period. The volume is introduced with a background essay surveying the main areas of history and current scholarship relating to Late Bronze Age Palestine and to the Egyptian New Kingdom (Dynasties 18-20) domination of the region, as well as the question of the biblical account of the same geographical area and historical period. Specific chapters address a range of key concerns: the history of Egypt's dealing with Canaan is surveyed in chapters by Grabbe and Dijkstra. The Amarna texts are also dealt with by Lemche, Mayes and Grabbe. The archaeology is surveyed by van der Steen. The Merenptah Stela mentioning Israel is of considerable interest and is discussed especially by Dijkstra. This leads on to the burning question of the origins of Israel which several of the contributors address. Another issue is whether the first Israelite communities practised egalitarianism, an issue taken up by Guillaume, with a response by Kletter.

The origin of world civilization can be traced to the Indus Valley cradle, where brilliant and original thinkers made groundbreaking discoveries. The history of these discoveries is recorded in the vast Sanskrit literature.

In this study, author M. K. Agarwal explores the cultural and historical significance of the region. He explores Indus Valley culture, which encouraged creative thought-as opposed to the Abrahamic faiths, which herded followers into dogmatic thinking. He holds that these religions prospered because of their unfettered hatred of the Vedic-Hindu-Buddhist peoples, who were demonized as pagans to be murdered, tortured, raped, enslaved, and robbed. He also considers the achievements of that culture, such as the creation of the most affluent, most scientifically advanced, and most spiritual of all societies, with archeological moorings that can be traced back to 8000 BC.

No other region can even come close to transforming people and culture like the Indus Valley, but the world's Vedic roots have been ignored, shunned, and covered up. Uncover the history that has been lost and develop a deeper appreciation for the true cradle of human civilization with "The Vedic Core of Human History."

Roman cities have rarely been studied from the perspective of women, and studies of Roman women mainly focus on the city of Rome. Studying the civic participation of women in the towns of Italy outside Rome and in the numerous cities of the Latin-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire, this books offers a new view on Roman women and urban society in the Roman Principate. Drawing on epigraphy and archaeology, and to a lesser extent on legal and literary texts, women's civic roles as priestesses, benefactresses and patronesses or 'mothers' of cities and associations (collegia and the Augustales) are brought to the fore. In contrast to the city of Rome, which was dominated by the imperial family, wealthy women in the local Italian and provincial towns had ample opportunity to leave their mark on the city. Their motives to spend their money, time and energy for the benefit of their cities and the rewards their contributions earned them take centre stage. Assessing the meaning and significance of their contributions for themselves and their families and for the cities that enjoyed them, the book presents a new and detailed view of the role of women and gender in Roman urban life.

The goal of this inscription-based study is to shed new light on Hellenistic and Roman Delphi by placing inscribed honours at the front and centre of the investigation. This book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive and coherent discussion of the Delphic gift-giving system, its regional interactions, and its honorific network. It employs both conventional and new scientific methods, including an analysis of quantitative trends in the epigraphic records and a Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach. The volume also addresses a broad spectrum of epigraphic topics and discusses current research questions as well as future perspectives.

In Taming Ares Emiliano J. Buis examines the sources of classical Greece to challenge both the state-centeredness of mainstream international legal history and the omnipresence of war and excessive violence in ancient times. Making ample use of epigraphic as well as literary, rhetorical, and historiographical sources, the book offers the first widespread account of the narrative foundations of the (il)legality of warfare in the classical Hellenic world. In a clear yet sophisticated manner, Buis convincingly proves that the traditionally neglected study of the performance of ancient Greek poleis can contribute to a better historical understanding of those principles of international law underlying the practices and applicable rules on the use of force and the conduct of hostilities.

Many of the wars of the Late Republic were largely civil conflicts. There was, therefore, a tension between the traditional expectation that triumphs should be celebrated for victories over foreign enemies and the need of the great commanders to give full expression to their prestige and charisma, and to legitimize their power. Triumphs in the Age of Civil War rethinks the nature and the character of the phenomenon of civil war during the Late Republic. At the same time it focuses on a key feature of the Roman socio-political order, the triumph, and argues that a commander could in practice expect to triumph after a civil war victory if it could also be represented as being over a foreign enemy, even if the principal opponent was clearly Roman. Significantly, the civil aspect of the war did not have to be denied. Carsten Hjort Lange provides the first study to consider the Roman triumph during the age of civil war, and argues that the idea of civil war as "normal" reflects the way civil war permeated the politics and society of the Late Roman Republic.

Since it was written by tragedians and employed a number of formal tragic elements, satyr drama is typically categorized as a sub-genre of Greek tragedy. This categorization, however, gives an incomplete picture of the complicated relationship of the satyr play to other genres of drama in ancient Greece. For example, the humorous chorus of half-man, half-horse satyrs suggests sustained interaction between poets of comedy and satyr play. In Satyric Play, Carl Shaw notes the complex, shifting relationship between comedy and satyr drama, from sixth-century BCE proto-drama to classical productions staged at the Athenian City Dionysia and bookish Alexandrian plays of the third century BCE, and argues that comedy and satyr plays influenced each other in nearly all stages of their development. This is the first book to offer a complete, integrated analysis of Greek comedy and satyr drama, analyzing the details of the many literary, aesthetic, historical, religious, and geographical connections to satyr drama. Ancient critics and poets allude to comic-satyric associations in surprising ways, vases indicate a common connection to komos (revelry) song, and the plays themselves often share titles, plots, modes of humor, and even on occasion choruses of satyrs. Shaw's insight into this evidence reveals the relationship between satyr drama and Greek comedy to be much more intimately connected than we had known and, in fact, much closer than that between satyr drama and tragedy. Satyric Play brings new light to satyr drama as a complex, artful, inventive, and even cleverly paradoxical genre.

Cavan W. Concannon makes a significant contribution to Pauline studies by imagining the responses of the Corinthians to Paul's letters. Based on surviving written materials and archaeological research, this book offers a textured portrait of the ancient Corinthians with whom Paul conversed, argued, debated, and partnered, focusing on issues of ethnicity, civic identity, politics, and empire. In doing so, the author provides readers a unique opportunity to assess anew, and imagine possibilities beyond, Paul's complicated legacy in shaping Western notions of race, ethnicity, and religion.

Circum Mare: Themes in Ancient Warfare presents a thematic approach to current directions in ancient military studies with case studies on topics including the economics of warfare, military cohesion, military authority, irregular warfare, and sieges. Bringing together research on cultures from across the Mediterranean world, ranging from Pharaonic Egypt to Late Antique Europe and from Punic Spain to Persian Anatolia, the collection demonstrates both the breadth of the current field and a surprising number of synergies.

The book presents an analysis of communicative structures and deictic elements in Hellenistic dedicatory epigrams. Moving from the most recent linguistic theories on pragmatics and considering together both Stein- and Buchepigramme, this study investigates the linguistic means that are employed in texts transmitted on different media (the stone and the book) to point to and describe their spatial and temporal context. The research is based on the collection of a new corpus of Hellenistic book and inscribed dedicatory epigrams, which were compared to pre-Hellenistic dedicatory epigrams in order to highlight the crucial changes that characterise the development of the epigrammatic genre in the Hellenistic era. By demonstrating that the evolution of the epigrammatic genre moved on the same track for book and stone epigrams, this work offers an important contribution to the ongoing debate on the history of the epigrammatic genre and aims to stimulate further reflection on a poetic genre, which, since its origins in the Greek world, has been successful both in ancient and modern literary traditions.