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Books > Humanities > History > World history > BCE to 500 CE
In Greek Epigraphy and Religion Emily Mackil and Nikolaos
Papazarkadas bring together a series of papers first presented at a
special session of the Second North American Congress of Greek and
Latin Epigraphy (Berkeley 2016). That session was dedicated to the
memory of Sara B. Aleshire, one of the leading Greek epigraphists
of the twentieth century. The volume at hand includes a combination
of previously unpublished inscriptions, overlooked epigraphical
documents, and well known inscribed texts that are reexamined with
fresh eyes and approaches. The relevant documents cover a wide
geographical range, including Athens and Attica, the Peloponnese,
Epirus, Thessaly, the Aegean islands, and Egypt. This collection
ultimately explores the insights provided by epigraphical texts
into the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Greeks, but
also revisits critically some entrenched doctrines in the field of
Greek religion.
Regarded as ancient Greece's greatest orator, Demosthenes lived
through and helped shape one of the most eventful epochs in
antiquity. His political career spanned three decades, during which
time Greece fell victim to Macedonian control, first under Philip
II and then Alexander the Great. Demosthenes' resolute and
courageous defiance of Philip earned for him a reputation as one of
history's outstanding patriots. He also enjoyed a brilliant and
lucrative career as a speechwriter, and his rhetorical skills are
still emulated today by students and politicians alike. Yet he was
a sickly child with an embarrassing speech impediment, who was
swindled out of much of his family's estate by unscrupulous
guardians after the death of his father. His story is one of
triumph over adversity. Modern studies of his life and career take
one of two different approaches: he is either lauded as Greece's
greatest patriot or condemned as an opportunist who misjudged
situations and contributed directly to the end of Greek freedom.
This new biography, the first ever written in English for a popular
audience, aims to determine which of these two people he was:
self-serving cynic or patriot - or even a combination of both. Its
chronological arrangement brings Demosthenes vividly to life,
discussing his troubled childhood and youth, the obstacles he faced
in his public career, his fierce rivalries with other Athenian
politicians, his successes and failures, and even his posthumous
influence as a politician and orator. It offers new insights into
Demosthenes' motives and how he shaped his policy to achieve
political power, all set against the rich backdrop of late
classical Greece and Macedonia.
Described as the Mona Lisa of literature and the world's first
detective story, Sophocles' Oedipus the King is a major text from
the ancient Greek world and an iconic work of world literature.
Aristotle's favourite play, lauded by him as the exemplary Athenian
tragedy, Oedipus the King has retained its power both on and off
the stage. Before Freud's famous interpretation of the play - an
appropriation, some might say - Hlderlin and Nietzsche recognised
its unique qualities. Its literary worth is undiminished,
philosophers revel in its probing into issues of freedom and
necessity and Lacan has ensured its vital significance for
post-Freudian psychoanalysis. This Reader's Guide begins with
Oedipus as a figure from Greek mythology before focusing on
fifth-century Athenian tragedy and the meaning of the drama as it
develops scene by scene on the stage. The book covers the afterlife
of the play in depth and provides a comprehensive guide to further
reading for students.
Greek Heroes in and out of Hades is a study on heroism and
mortality from Homer to Plato. In a collection of thirty enjoyable
essays, Stamatia Dova combines intertextual research and
thought-provoking analysis to shed new light on concepts of the
hero in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Bacchylides 5, Plato's
Symposium, and Euripides' Alcestis. Through systematic readings of
a wide range of seemingly unrelated texts, the author offers a
cohesive picture of heroic character in a variety of literary
genres. Her characterization of Achilles, Odysseus, and Heracles is
artfully supported by a comprehensive overview of the theme of
descent to the underworld in Homer, Bacchylides, and Euripides.
Aimed at the specialist as well as the general reader, Greek Heroes
in and out of Hades brings innovative Classical scholarship and
insightful literary criticism to a wide audience.
The aim idea of this study is to examine, quantify and critically
assess the settlement history of the northern Oman Peninsula from
the Hafit period (late 4th - early 3rd millennium BC) to recent
times.
Lysias was the leading Athenian speech-writer of his generation
(403-380 BC), whose speeches form a leading source for all aspects
of the history of Athenian society during this period. The current
volume focuses on speeches that are important particularly as
political texts, during an unusually eventful post-imperial period
which saw Athens coming to terms with the aftermath of its eventual
defeat in the Peloponnesian War (431-404) plus two traumatic if
temporary oligarchic coups (the Four Hundred in 411, and especially
the Thirty in 404/3). The speeches are widely read today, not least
because of their simplicity of linguistic style. This simplicity is
often deceptive, however, and one of the aims of this commentary is
to help the reader assess the rhetorical strategies of each of the
speeches and the often highly tendentious manipulation of argument.
This volume includes the text of speeches 12 to 16 (reproduced from
Christopher Carey's 2007 Oxford Classical Texts edition, including
the apparatus criticus), with a new facing English translation.
Each speech receives an extensive introduction, covering general
questions of interpretation and broad issues of rhetorical
strategy, while in the lemmatic section of the commentary
individual phrases are examined in detail, providing a close
reading of the Greek text. To maximize accessibility, the Greek
lemmata are accompanied by translations, and individual Greek terms
are mostly transliterated. This is a continuation of the projected
multi-volume commentary on the speeches and fragments begun with
the publication of speeches 1 to 11 in 2007, which will be the
first full commentary on Lysias in modern times.
Drawing on the latest archaeology, epigraphy and historical
interpretation, this major volume presents a survey of ancient
Macedon, important parts of which are published by their excavators
for the first time, including the palace of King Philip II.
Archaeologists and historians of the ancient Greek worlds will
welcome this milestone in the study of this rapidly changing filed,
packed with new information, interpretations and essential
bibliography.
In Byblos in the Late Bronze Age, Marwan Kilani reconstructs the
"biography" of the city of Byblos during the Late Bronze Age.
Commonly described simply as a centre for the trade of wood, the
city appears here as a dynamic actor involved in multiple aspects
of the regional geopolitical reality. By combining the information
provided by written sources and by a fresh reanalysis of the
archaeological evidence, the author explores the development of the
city during the Late Bronze Age, showing how the evolution of a
wide range of geopolitical, economic and ideological factors
resulted in periods of prosperity and decline. The Studies in the
Archaeology and History of the Levant series publishes volumes from
the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. Other series offered
by Brill that publish volumes from the Museum include Harvard
Semitic Studies and Harvard Semitic Monographs,
https://hmane.harvard.edu/publications.
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