Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens examines the emerging concern for controlling states of psychological ecstasy in the history of western thought, focusing on ancient Greece (c. 750 - 146 BCE), particularly the Classical Period (c. 500 - 336 BCE) and especially the dialogues of the Athenian philosopher Plato (427 - 347 BCE). Employing a diverse array of materials ranging from literature, philosophy, medicine, botany, pharmacology, religion, magic, and law, Pharmakon fundamentally reframes the conceptual context of how we read and interpret Plato's dialogues. Michael A. Rinella demonstrates how the power and truth claims of philosophy, repeatedly likened to a pharmakon, opposes itself to the cultural authority of a host of other occupations in ancient Greek society who derived their powers from, or likened their authority to, some pharmakon. These included Dionysian and Eleusinian religion, physicians and other healers, magicians and other magic workers, poets, sophists, rhetoricians, as well as others. Accessible to the general reader, yet challenging to the specialist, Pharmakon is a comprehensive examination of the place of drugs in ancient thought that will compel the reader to understand Plato in a new way.

Any reader of scholarship on the ancient and early medieval world will be familiar with the term 'Germanic', which is frequently used as a linguistic category, ethnonym, or descriptive identifier for a range of forms of cultural and literary material. But is the term meaningful, useful, or legitimate? The term, frequently applied to peoples, languages, and material culture found in non-Roman north-western and central Europe in classical antiquity, and to these phenomena in the western Roman Empire's successor states, is often treated as a legitimate, all-encompassing name for the culture of these regions. Its usage is sometimes intended to suggest a shared social identity or ethnic affinity among those who produce these phenomena. Yet, despite decades of critical commentary that have highlighted substantial problems, its dominance of scholarship appears not to have been challenged. This edited volume, which offers contributions ranging from literary and linguistic studies to archaeology, and which span from the first to the sixteenth centuries AD, examines why the term remains so pervasive despite its problems, offering a range of alternative interpretative perspectives on the late and post-Roman worlds.

From Homer to Aristotle, understanding anger and harnessing its power was at the core of Hellenic civilization. Homer created the framework for philosophical inquiries into anger, one that persisted until it was overturned by Stoicism and Christianity. Plato saw anger as the guardian of justice and Aristotle conceived of it as bound to friendship. Yet both showed that anger can become a guardian of injustice and a defender of our psychological abnormalities. Plato claimed that reason is a tertiary factor in controlling anger and Aristotle argued that non-cognitive powers can issue commands for anger's arousal - findings that shed light as to why cognitive therapeutic approaches often prove to be ineffective. Both proposed nurturing the "thumos," the receptacle of anger and the seat of self-esteem. Aristotle's view of public anger as an early warning sign of social dissolution continues to be relevant to this day. In this carefully argued study, Kostas Kalimtzis examines the theories of anger in the context of the ancient world with an eye to their implications for the modern predicament.

The ancient city of Rome was the site of daily activities as well as famous historical events. It was not merely a backdrop, but rather an active part of the experiences of its inhabitants, shaping their actions and infusing them with meaning. During each period in Rome's imperial history, her emperors also used the city as a canvas to be painted on, transforming it according to their own ideals or ambitions. Rather than being organized by sites or monuments, Rome: A Sourcebook on the Ancient City is divided into thematic chapters. At the intersection of topography and socio-cultural history, this volume examines the cultural and social significance of the sites of ancient Rome from the end of the Republic in the age of Cicero and Julius Caesar, to the reign of Constantine. Drawing on literary and historical sources, this is not simply a tour of the baths and taverns, the amphitheatres and temples of imperial Rome but rather a journey through the city that is fully integrated with Roman society.

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.

Drawing on archaeological findings from the Maya lowlands, War Owl Falling shows how innovation and creativity led to social change in ancient societies. Markus Eberl discusses the ways eighth-century Maya (and Maya commoners in particular) reinvented objects and signs that were associated with nobility, including scepters, ceramic vessels, ballgame equipment, and the symbol of the owl. These inventions, he argues, reflect assertions of independence and a redistribution of power that contributed to the Maya collapse in the Late Classic period. Eberl emphasizes that individual decision-making - the ability to imagine alternate worlds and to act on that vision - plays a large role in changing social structure over time. Pinpointing where and when these Maya inventions emerged, how individuals adopted them and why, War Owl Falling connects technological and social change in a novel way.

Karl Valentin once asked: "How can it be that only as much happens as fits into the newspaper the next day?" He focussed on the problem that information of the past has to be organised, arranged and above all: selected and put into form in order to be perceived as a whole. In this sense, the process of selection must be seen as the fundamental moment - the "Urszene" - of making History. This book shows selection as highly creative act. With the richness of early medieval material it can be demonstrated that creative selection was omnipresent and took place even in unexpected text genres. The book demonstrates the variety how premodern authors dealt with "unimportant", unpleasant or unwanted past. It provides a general overview for regions and text genres in early medieval Europe.

The Bronze Age of Europe is a crucial formative period that underlay the civilisations of Greece and Rome, fundamental to our own modern civilisation. A systematic description of it appeared in 2013, but this work offers a series of personal studies of aspects of the period by one of its best known practitioners. The book is based on the idea that different aspects of the Bronze Age can be studied as a series of "lives": the life of people and peoples, of objects, of places, and of societies. Each of these is taken in turn and a range of aspects presented that offer interesting insights into the period. These are based on recent research (for instance on the genetic history of the Old World) as well as on fundamental earlier studies. In addition, there is a consideration of the history of Bronze Age studies, the "life of the Bronze Age". The book provides a novel approach to the Bronze Age based on the personal interests of a well-known Bronze Age scholar. It offers insights into a period that students of other aspects of the ancient world, as well as Bronze Age specialists and general readers, will find interesting and stimulating.

This volume is dedicated to the topic of the human evaluation and interpretation of animals in ancient and medieval cultures. From a transcultural perspective contributions from Assyriology, Byzantine Studies, Classical Archaeology, Egyptology, German Medieval Studies and Jewish History look into the processes and mechanisms behind the transfer by people of certain values to animals, and the functions these animal-signs have within written, pictorial and performative forms of expression.

The ancient Chinese were profoundly influenced by the Sun, Moon and stars, making persistent efforts to mirror astral phenomena in shaping their civilization. In this pioneering text, David W. Pankenier introduces readers to a seriously understudied field, illustrating how astronomy shaped the culture of China from the very beginning and how it influenced areas as disparate as art, architecture, calendrical science, myth, technology, and political and military decision-making. As elsewhere in the ancient world, there was no positive distinction between astronomy and astrology in ancient China, and so astrology, or more precisely, astral omenology, is a principal focus of the book. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including archaeological discoveries, classical texts, inscriptions and paleography, this thought-provoking book documents the role of astronomical phenomena in the development of the 'Celestial Empire' from the late Neolithic through the late imperial period.

The refreshed insights into early-imperial Roman historiography this book offers are linked to a recent discovery. In the spring of 2014, the binders of the archive of Robert Marichal were dusted off by the ERC funded project PLATINUM (ERC-StG 2014 n Degrees636983) in response to Tiziano Dorandi's recollections of a series of unpublished notes on Latin texts on papyrus. Among these was an in-progress edition of the Latin rolls from Herculaneum, together with Marichal's intuition that one of them had to be ascribed to a certain 'Annaeus Seneca'. PLATINUM followed the unpublished intuition by Robert Marichal as one path of investigation in its own research and work. Working on the Latin P.Herc. 1067 led to confirm Marichal's intuitions and to go beyond it: P.Herc. 1067 is the only extant direct witness to Seneca the Elder's Historiae. Bringing a new and important chapter of Latin literature arise out of a charred papyrus is significant. The present volume is made up of two complementary sections, each of which contains seven contributions. They are in close dialogue with each other, as looking at the same literary matter from several points of view yields undeniable advantages and represents an innovative and fruitful step in Latin literary criticism. These two sections express the two different but interlinked axes along which the contributions were developed. On one side, the focus is on the starting point of the debate, namely the discovery of the papyrus roll transmitting the Historiae of Seneca the Elder and how such a discovery can be integrated with prior knowledge about this historiographical work. On the other side, there is a broader view on early-imperial Roman historiography, to which the new perspectives opened by the rediscovery of Seneca the Elder's Historiae greatly contribute.

Key aspects of philhellenism - political self-determination, freedom, beauty, individual greatness - originate in antiquity and present a complex reception history. The force of European philhellenism derives from ancient Roman idealizations, which have been drawn on by European movements since the Enlightenment. How is philhellenism able to transcend national, cultural and epochal limits? The articles collected in this volume deal with (1) the ancient conceptualization of philhellenism, (2) the actualization and politicization of the term at the time of the European Restoration (1815-30), and (3) the transformation of philhellenism into a pan-European movement. During the Greek struggle for independence the different receptions of philhellenism regain a common focus; philhellenism becomes an inextricable element in the creation of a pan-European identity and a starting point for the regeneration and modernization of Greece. - It is easy to criticize the tradition of philhellenism as being simplistic, naive, and self-serving, but there is an irreducibly utopian element in later philhellenic idealizations of ancient Greece.

This informative and enjoyable book surveys many aspects of the personal and emotional lives and belief systems of the ancient Greeks, focusing on such issues as familial life, religious piety, and ethnic identity. This work explores various aspects of ancient Greek personal and emotional lives, beginning with their understandings of their own bodies, individual and personal relationships, and ending with their feelings about religion and the afterlife. It covers ancient Greek culture from the early Archaic period in the 8th century BCE through the Late Classical period in the 4th century BCE. Readers will be fascinated to learn what the Greeks thought about the gods, physical deformity, citizenship, nymphs, goats, hospitality, and sexual relations that would be considered incest by modern standards. The content of the book provides an intimate sense of what the ancient Greeks were actually like, connecting ancient experiences to present-day culture. The chapters span a wide range of topics, including the human body, family and societal relationships, city life, the world as they knew it, and religious belief. The author draws extensively on primary sources to allow the reader to "hear" the Greeks speak for themselves and presents evidence from literature, art, and architecture in order to depict the ancient Greeks as living, breathing, thinking, and feeling people. Provides an unprecedented survey of ancient Greeks that describes the full scope of the personal and emotional lives of the actual people who gave rise to Greek laws, literature, and culture Reconstructs the everyday, emotional experiences of individuals in the ancient world and depicts the ways in which details of private life affected the individual's world view Covers all regions inhabited by the Greeks from the Archaic through the Classical periods, including the Greek mainland and islands, western Turkey, the Black Sea, North Africa, Sicily, and southern Italy

In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is the main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no severe rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to think, with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the digressions have the greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the dialogues there is also a certain natural growth or unity; the beginning is not forgotten at the end, and numerous allusions and references are interspersed, which form the loose connecting links of the whole. We must not neglect this unity, but neither must we attempt to confine the Platonic dialogue on the Procrustean bed of a single idea. (Compare Introduction to the Phaedrus.) Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters of Plato in this matter. First, they have endeavoured to hang the dia-logues upon one another by the slightest threads; and have thus been led to opposite and contradictory assertions respec-ting their order and sequence. The mantle of Schleiermacher has descended upon his successors, who have applied his method with the most various results.

The awe with which Plato regarded the character of 'the great' Parmenides has extended to the dialogue which he calls by his name. None of the writings of Plato have been more copiously illustrated, both in ancient and modern times, and in none of them have the interpreters been more at variance with one another. Nor is this surprising. For the Parmenides is more fragmentary and isolated than any other dialogue, and the design of the writer is not expressly stated. The date is uncertain; the relation to the other writings of Plato is also uncertain; the connexion between the two parts is at first sight extremely obscure; and in the latter of the two we are left in doubt as to whether Plato is speaking his own sentiments by the lips of Parmenides, and overthrowing him out of his own mouth, or whether he is propounding consequences which would have been admitted by Zeno and Parmenides themselves. The contradictions which follow from the hypotheses of the one and many have been regarded by some as transcendental mysteries; by others as a mere illustration, taken at random, of a new method. They seem to have been inspired by a sort of dialectical frenzy, such as may be supposed to have prevailed in the Megarian School (compare Cratylus, etc.). The criticism on his own doctrine of Ideas has also been considered, not as a real criticism, but as an exuberance of the metaphysical imagination which enabled Plato to go beyond himself.

In his illuminating, well-researched book examining the site of Et-Tell, also known as Bethsaida, Carl E. Savage explores archaeological evidence to offer readers a portrait of the religious beliefs and practices of the community living near the north shore of the Sea of Galilee during the first century CE. In the study of the cultural and social matrix of the first century in the Galilee, scholars have commonly prioritized written sources over archaeological evidence because written sources seem to contribute more directly to an understanding of the religious beliefs and practices of a community. However, there exist many competing views of the landscape during that time due to the varying interpretations of the textual sources. Using archaeological data from Bethsaida itself, Savage investigates the material practices of Bethsaida's ancient inhabitants, describing these practices as significant indicators of their sense of place both ideologically and geographically. He evaluates the historical plausibility of various social reconstructions for the region, and finds that the image that emerges of first-century Bethsaida is one similar to those of other Jewish communities in the Galilee.

This engaging text offers a concise, readable description of our common Western heritage. Providing a tightly focused narrative and interpretive structure, Brian Pavlac covers the basic historical information that all educated adults should know. His joined terms "supremacies and diversities" develop major themes of conflict and creativity throughout history. "Supremacies" centers on the use of power to dominate societies, ranging from warfare to ideologies. Supremacy, Pavlac shows, seeks stability, order, and incorporation. "Diversities" encompasses the creative impulse that produces new ideas, as well as efforts of groups of people to define themselves as "different." Diversity creates change, opportunity, and individuality. These concepts of historical tension and change, whether applied to political, economic, technological, social, or cultural trends, offer a cohesive explanatory organization. The text is also informed by five other topical themes: technological innovation, migration and conquest, political and economic decision-making, church and state, and disputes about the meaning of life. The third edition has added new primary source projects, improved maps and illustrations to enhance the visual dimension, Written with flair, this easily accessible yet deeply knowledgeable text provides all the essentials for a course on Western civilization. Conceived as a seamless, affordable overview, not artificially boiled down from a lengthier text, it can be used as one volume or two briefer volumes, divided at 1500. See Volume 1. See Volume 2.