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.

Singing for the Gods develops a new approach towards an old question in the study of religion - the relationship of myth and ritual. Focusing on ancient Greek religion, Barbara Kowalzig exploits the joint occurrence of myth and ritual in archaic and classical Greek song-culture. She shows how choral performances of myth and ritual, taking place all over the ancient Greek world in the early fifth century BC, help to effect social and political change in their own time. Religious song emerges as integral to a rapidly changing society hovering between local, regional, and panhellenic identities and between aristocratic rule and democracy. Drawing on contemporary debates on myth, ritual, and performance in social anthropology, modern history, and theatre studies, this book establishes Greek religion's dynamic role and gives religious song-culture its deserved place in the study of Greek history.

The Syriac treatise published in the present volume is in many respects a unique text. Though it has been preserved anonymously, there remains little doubt that it belongs to Porphyry of Tyre. Accordingly, it enlarges our knowledge of the views of the most famous disciple of Plotinus. The text is an important witness to Platonist discussions on First Principles and on Plato's concept of Prime Matter in the Timaeus. It contains extensive quotations from Atticus, Severus, and Boethus. This text thus provides us with new textual witnesses to these philosophers, whose legacy remains very poorly attested and little known. Additionally, the treatise is a rare example of a Platonist work preserved in the Syriac language. The Syriac reception of Plato and Platonic teachings has left rather sparse textual traces, and the question of what precisely Syriac Christians knew about Plato and his philosophy remains a debated issue. The treatise provides evidence for the close acquaintance of Syriac scholars with Platonic cosmology and with philosophical commentaries on Plato's Timaeus.

A major new history of Athens' remarkably long and influential life after the collapse of its empire To many the history of post-Classical Athens is one of decline. True, Athens hardly commanded the number of allies it had when hegemon of its fifth-century Delian League or even its fourth-century Naval Confederacy, and its navy was but a shadow of its former self. But Athens recovered from its perilous position in the closing quarter of the fourth century and became once again a player in Greek affairs, even during the Roman occupation. Athenian democracy survived and evolved, even through its dealings with Hellenistic Kings, its military clashes with Macedonia, and its alliance with Rome. Famous Romans, including Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, saw Athens as much more than an isolated center for philosophy. Athens After Empire offers a new narrative history of post-Classical Athens, extending the period down to the aftermath of Hadrian's reign.

An in-depth archaeological report featuring graffiti found during a recent excavation at the Ancient Greek city of Smyrna. The graffiti published in this richly-illustrated volume were discovered during an excavation of the Roman basilica in the Ancient Greek city of Smyrna, known today as Izmir, which is situated on the Aegean coast of modern Turkey. The project, which began in 2003, has unearthed a multitude of graffiti and drawings encompassing a wide range of subjects and interests, including local politics, nautical vessels, sex, and wordplay. Each graffito artifact holds the potential for vast historical and cultural data, rescued in this volume from the passage of time and razing ambitions of urban development. Given the city's history, the potential wealth of knowledge to be gleamed from these discoveries is substantial: Smyrna has an uninterrupted history of settlement since the Neolithic-Copper ages, and remains today a major city and Mediterranean seaport at the crossroads of key trade routes. The present volume provides comprehensive editions of the texts, descriptions of the drawings, and an extensive introduction to the subjects of the graffiti, how they were produced, and who was responsible for them. A complete set of color photographs is included.

When thinking about the Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel's haunting words resound like an echo of the sea and its millenary history. From Prehistory until today, the Mediterranean has been setting, witness and protagonist of mythical adventures, of encounters with the Other, of battles and the rise and fall of cultures and empires, of the destinies of humans. Braudel's appeal for a long duree history of the Mediterranean challenged traditional views that often present it as a sea fragmented and divided through periods. This volume proposes a journey into the bright and dark sides of the ancient Mediterranean through the kaleidoscopic gaze of artists who from the Renaissance to the 21st century have been inspired by its myths and history. The view of those who imagined and recreated the past of the sea has largely contributed to the shaping of modern cultures which are inexorably rooted and embedded in Mediterranean traditions. The contributions look at modern visual reinterpretations of ancient myths, fiction and history and pay particular attention to the theme of sea travel and travellers, which since Homer's Odyssey has become the epitome of the discovery of new worlds, of cultural exchanges and a metaphor of personal developments and metamorphoses.

This is a collection of essays by leading scholars examining the period of transition between Persian and Greek rule of Judah, ca. 400-200 BCE. "Judah Between East and West" is a collection of essays by leading scholars in the field, presenting the main findings of a recent conference of British and Israeli scholars at held at Tel Aviv University. The contributions focus on the period of transition between Persian and Greek rule of Judah, ca. 400-200 BCE, though some of the essays are extended outside these time limits. The volume aims to explore this period in all its complexity, as far as the limitations of a single publication allows! Subjects covered include the archaeology of Maresha/Marisa, Jewish identity, Hellenization/Hellenism, Ptolemaic administration in Judah, biblical and Jewish literature of the early Greek period, the size and status of Jerusalem, the Samaritans in the transition period, and Greek foundations in Palestine. "The Library of Second Temple Studies" is a premier book series that offers cutting-edge work for a readership of scholars, teachers, postgraduate students and advanced undergraduates in the field of Second Temple studies. All the many and diverse aspects of Second Temple study are represented and promoted, including innovative work from historical perspectives, studies using social-scientific and literary theory, and developing theological, cultural and contextual approaches.

The objective of Walking through Jordan is to acknowledge and honor the singular achievements and wider impacts of Jordan's most prominent survey archaeologist, Burton MacDonald. MacDonald is a biblical scholar by training who has written extensively about the Iron Age and early Christianity. However, unlike many biblical scholars, MacDonald has also undertaken large regional survey projects which encompass the entire gamut of Jordanian prehistory and history. Thus, his work is unique in that it attracts the interest of a wide range of scholars.Contributing scholars from around the world reflect on three important areas of MacDonald's archaeological contributions: on archaeological survey in general, including those focusing on methodology and/or field projects that depend to a large extent on surveys, MacDonald's five major surveys- papers that incorporate data from his field projects and sites tested or excavated by others that were first identified by his work, and the archaeology of the Bronze and Iron Ages, as well as the Roman Period and the early Christian era. Despite his important contributions to prehistoric archaeology, the early historical periods constitute the main emphasis of Burton's scholarly output.

Did scribes intentionally change the text of the New Testament? This book argues they did not and disputes the claims that variant readings are theologically motivated. Using evidence gathered from some of the earliest surviving biblical manuscripts these essays reconstruct the copying habits of scribes and explore the contexts in which they worked. Alongside these are studies of selected early Christian writings, which illustrate attitudes to and examples of textual change.

Transcending ethnic, linguistic, and religious boundaries, early empires shaped thousands of years of world history. Yet despite the global prominence of empire, individual cases are often studied in isolation. This series seeks to change the terms of the debate by promoting cross-cultural, comparative, and transdisciplinary perspectives on imperial state formation prior to the European colonial expansion.
Two thousand years ago, up to one-half of the human species was contained within two political systems, the Roman empire in western Eurasia (centered on the Mediterranean Sea) and the Han empire in eastern Eurasia (centered on the great North China Plain). Both empires were broadly comparable in terms of size and population, and even largely coextensive in chronological terms (221 BCE to 220 CE for the Qin/Han empire, c. 200 BCE to 395 CE for the unified Roman empire). At the most basic level of resolution, the circumstances of their creation are not very different. In the East, the Shang and Western Zhou periods created a shared cultural framework for the Warring States, with the gradual consolidation of numerous small polities into a handful of large kingdoms which were finally united by the westernmost marcher state of Qin. In the Mediterranean, we can observe comparable political fragmentation and gradual expansion of a unifying civilization, Greek in this case, followed by the gradual formation of a handful of major warring states (the Hellenistic kingdoms in the east, Rome-Italy, Syracuse and Carthage in the west), and likewise eventual unification by the westernmost marcher state, the Roman-led Italian confederation. Subsequent destabilization occurred again in strikingly similar ways: both empires came to be divided into two halves, one that contained the original core but was more exposed to the main barbarian periphery (the west in the Roman case, the north in China), and a traditionalist half in the east (Rome) and south (China).
These processes of initial convergence and subsequent divergence in Eurasian state formation have never been the object of systematic comparative analysis. This volume, which brings together experts in the history of the ancient Mediterranean and early China, makes a first step in this direction, by presenting a series of comparative case studies on clearly defined aspects of state formation in early eastern and western Eurasia, focusing on the process of initial developmental convergence. It includes a general introduction that makes the case for a comparative approach; a broad sketch of the character of state formation in western and eastern Eurasia during the final millennium of antiquity; and six thematically connected case studies of particularly salient aspects of this process.

This volume sheds light on how particular constructions of the 'Other' contributed to an ongoing process of defining what 'Israel' or an 'Israelite' was, or was supposed to be in literature taken to be authoritative in the late Persian and Early Hellenistic periods. It asks, who is an insider and who an outsider? Are boundaries permeable? Are there different ideas expressed within individual books? What about constructions of the (partial) 'Other' from inside, e.g., women, people whose body did not fit social constructions of normalness? It includes chapters dealing with theoretical issues and case studies, and addresses similar issues from the perspective of groups in the late Second Temple period so as to shed light on processes of continuity and discontinuity on these matters. Preliminary forms of five of the contributions were presented in Thessaloniki in 2011 in the research programme, 'Production and Reception of Authoritative Books in the Persian and Hellenistic Period,' at the Annual Meeting of European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS).

Philip and Alexander of Macedon transformed a weak kingdom in northern Greece into a globe-spanning empire. In so doing, they changed the course of history. By the end of his short life, Alexander the Great had eclipsed the power of Persia, crossed the Hindu Kush and marched into what is now Pakistan, redrawing the map of the ancient world to create an empire that stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indian subcontinent. But his success was not just the product of his own genius and restless energy, it was built on decades of effort by his father. History has portrayed Philip II of Macedon as an old man, one-eyed and limping, whose convenient assassination allowed Alexander the Great to come to power. However, there was far more to him than this. Through decades of hard fighting and clever diplomacy, Philip unified his country and conquered Greece. His son inherited all of this at the perfect moment and age for him to chance his luck and win greater glory. Between them, Philip and Alexander played a key role in spreading Greek language and culture over a vast area, the consequences of which were many and profound, for it led to the New Testament being written in Greek, and a Greek-speaking 'Roman' empire surviving in the eastern Mediterranean for a thousand years after the last emperor to rule from Italy. As authoritative as it is accessible, Philip and Alexander is the latest in a much-praised sequence of essential ancient histories from Adrian Goldsworthy; it is the work of a master historian at the peak of his powers. Praise for Philip and Alexander: 'A thrilling read, as sweeping as Alexander's conquests' TOM HOLLAND 'Sterling scholarship, engaging prose, insightful analysis and unbiased assessment' VICTOR DAVID HANSON 'History-writing at its best. Expert, fluent and vivid' BARRY STRAUSS