|
|
Books > Humanities > History > World history > BCE to 500 CE
Aristotle's theory of eternal continuous motion and his argument
from everlasting change and motion to the existence of an unmoved
primary cause of motion, provided in book VIII of his Physics, is
one of the most influential and persistent doctrines of ancient
Greek philosophy. Nevertheless, the exact wording of Aristotle's
discourse is doubtful and contentious at many places. The present
critical edition of Ishaq ibn Hunayn's Arabic translation (9th c.)
is supposed to replace the faulty edition by A. Badawi and aims at
contributing to the clarification of these textual difficulties by
means of a detailed collation of the Arabic text with the most
important Greek manuscripts, supported by comprehensive Greek and
Arabic glossaries.
This book on the Yahwist comes at the end of a long career of
research on the Pentateuch in general and the Yahwist in
particular. Van Seters's interest in the Yahwist was stimulated by
the 1964 presidential address of the Society of Biblical
Literature, given by Professor Fredrick Winnett, "Rethinking the
Foundations," which focused on the Yahwist in Genesis. This
interest followed a path of work on issues surrounding the Yahwist
that culminated in three volumes, Prologue to History: The Yahwist
as Historian in Genesis (1992), The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as
Historian in Exodus-Numbers (1994), and A Law Book for the
Diaspora: Revision in the Study of the Covenant Code (2003). Over
the last few years, it has become clear to Van Seters that readers
of the three volumes on the Yahwist, which total more than 1,000
pages, easily lose sight of the Yahwist's work as a whole and the
way in which it provides a historical prologue and framework for D
and the DtrH. In this book, Van Seters seeks to provide a summary
sketch of the J history and to make clear how the Priestly corpus
has been composed as a supplement to the Yahwist with a radically
different form and point of view that has obscured the Yahwist's
historical narrative and theological perspective. Part one lays out
in simple terms the basic form, structure, and theological
perspective of the Yahwist's history, where it has been interrupted
by the inclusions of P, and how it is integrated into DtrH. The
essays in part two are intended to bring the scholarly discussion
of Van Seters's earlier books on the Yahwist more up to date, and
their order corresponds roughly to the order of the narrative in
the first part of the book. Some of these articles have been
published previously, but others are new and quite recent,
including "The Yahwist as Historian.
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.
Virgil's Georgics depicts the world and its peoples in great
detail, but this geographical interest has received little detailed
scholarly attention. Hundreds of years later, readers in the
British empire used the poem to reflect upon their travels in acts
of imagination no less political than Virgil's own. Virgil's Map
combines a comprehensive survey of the literary, economic, and
political geography of the Georgics with a case study of its
British imperial reception c. 1840-1930. Part One charts the poem's
geographical interests in relation to Roman power in and beyond the
Mediterranean; shifting readers' attention away from Rome, it
explores how the Georgics can draw attention to alternative,
non-Roman histories. Part Two examines how British travellers
quoted directly from the poem to describe peoples and places across
the world, at times equating the colonial subjects of European
empires to the 'happy farmers' of Virgil's poem, perceived to be
unaware, and in need, of the blessings of colonial rule. Drawing
attention to the depoliticization of the poem in scholarly
discourse, and using newly discovered archival material, this
interdisciplinary work seeks to re-politicize both the poem and its
history in service of a decolonizing pedagogy. Its unique dual
focus allows for an extended exploration, not just of geography and
empire, but of Europe's long relationship with the wider world.
This volume presents the results of the fourteenth workshop of the
international network 'Impact of Empire'. It focuses on the ways in
which Rome's dominance influenced, changed, and created landscapes,
and examines in which ways (Roman) landscapes were narrated and
semantically represented. To assess the impact of Rome on
landscapes, some of the twenty contributions in this volume analyse
functions and implications of newly created infrastructure. Others
focus on the consequences of colonisation processes, settlement
structures, regional divisions, and legal qualifications of land.
Lastly, some contributions consider written and pictorial
representations and their effects. In doing so, the volume offers
new insights into the notion of 'Roman landscapes' and examines
their significance for the functioning of the Roman empire.
This revealing study shows how careful analysis of recent farming
practices, and related cultural traditions, in communities around
the Mediterranean can enhance our understanding of prehistoric and
Greco-Roman societies. * Includes a wealth of original interview
material and data from field observation * Provides original
approaches to understanding past farming practices and their social
contexts * Offers a revealing comparative perspective on
Mediterranean societies agronomy * Identifies a number of
previously unrecorded climate-related contrasts in farming
practices, which have important socio-economic significance *
Explores annual tasks, such as tillage and harvest; inter-annual
land management techniques, such as rotation; and intergenerational
issues, including capital accumulation
Interest in food and drink as an academic discipline has been
growing significantly in recent years. This sourcebook is a unique
asset to many courses on food as it offers a thematic approach to
eating and drinking in antiquity. For classics courses focusing on
ancient social history to introductory courses on the history of
food and drink, as well as those offerings with a strong
sociological or anthropological approach this volume provides an
unparalleled compilation of essential source material. The
chronological scope of the excerpts extends from Homer in the
Eighth Century BCE to the Roman emperor Constantine in the Fourth
Century CE. Each thematic chapter consists of an introduction along
with a bibliography of suggested readings. Translated excerpts are
then presented accompanied by an explanatory background paragraph
identifying the author and context of each passage. Most of the
evidence is literary, but additional sources - inscriptional, legal
and religious - are also included.
On the Agora traces the evolution of the main public square of the
Greek polis for the six centuries from the death of Alexander the
Great in 323 BC to the height of the Roman Empire and the Herulian
invasion of Greece in 267 AD. Drawing on literary, epigraphic and,
especially, archaeological evidence, the book takes a comparative
approach to consider how the layout and function of agoras in
cities throughout Greece changed during centuries that witnessed
far reaching transformations in culture, society and political
life. The book challenges the popular view of the post-Classical
agora as characterised by decline, makes important arguments about
how we use evidence to understand ancient public spaces and
proposes many new interpretations of individual sites.
The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur is a collection of literary
letters between the Ur III monarchs and their high officials at the
end of the third millennium B.C. The letters cover topics of royal
authority and proper governance, defense of frontier regions, and
the ultimate disintegration of the empire and represent the largest
corpus of Sumerian prose literature we possess. This long-awaited
edition, based on extensive collation of almost all extant
manuscripts, numbering more than a hundred, includes detailed
historical and literary analyses, and copious philological
commentary. It entirely supersedes the Michalowski's oft-cited
unpublished Yale dissertation of 1976. The edition is accompanied
by an extensive analysis of the place of the letters in early
second-millennium schooling, treating the letters as literature,
followed by chapters that contextualize the epistolary material
within historical and historiographic contexts, utilizing many
Sumerian archival, literary, and historical sources. The main
objective here is to try to navigate the complex issues of
authenticity, authority, and fiction that arise from the study of
these literary artifacts. In addition, Michalowski offers new
hypotheses about many aspects of late third-millennium history,
including essays on military history and strategy, on frontiers, on
the nature and putative character of nomadism at the time, as well
as a long chapter on the role of a people designated as Amorites.
The included DVD includes various photographs at high resolution of
most of the tablets included in the study.
The Confucian-Legalist State analyzes the history of China between
the 11th century BCE and 1911 under the guidance of a new theory of
social change. It centers on two questions. First, how and why
China was unified and developed into a bureaucratic empire under
the state of Qin in 221 BCE? Second, how was it that, until the
nineteenth century, the political and cultural structure of China
that was institutionalized during the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE
- 8 CE) showed great resilience, despite great changes in
demography, socioeconomic structure, ethnic composition, market
relations, religious landscapes, technology, and in other respects
brought by rebellions or nomadic conquests? In addressing these two
questions, author Dingxin Zhao also explains numerous other
historical patterns of China, including but not limited to the
nature of ancient China's interstate relations, the logics behind
the rising importance of imperil Confucianism during the Western
Han dynasty and behind the formation of Neo-Confucian society
during the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE), the changing nature of
China's religious ecology under the age of Buddhism and
Neo-Confucianism, the pattern of interactions between nomads and
sedentary Chinese empires, the rise and dominance of civilian
government, and China's inability to develop industrial capitalism
without the coercion of Western imperialism.
"This book is the true story of my (Art Winstanley) involvement in
the Denver Police scandal of the early 1960s. I was the first
policeman arrested and the first to be sent to the Colorado Stated
Penitentiary in Canon City in the largest case of police corruption
in U.S. history"--Back cover.
Knossos is one of the most important sites in the ancient
Mediterranean. It remained amongst the largest settlements on the
island of Crete from the Neolithic until the late Roman times, but
aside from its size it held a place of particular significance in
the mythological imagination of Greece and Rome as the seat of King
Minos, the location of the Labyrinth and the home of the Minotaur.
Sir Arthur Evans’ discovery of ‘the Palace of Minos’ has
indelibly associated Knossos in the modern mind with the ‘lost’
civilisation of Bronze Age Crete. The allure of this ‘lost
civilisation’, together with the considerable achievements of
‘Minoan’ artists and craftspeople, remain a major attraction
both to scholars and to others outside the academic world as a
bastion of a romantic approach to the past. In this volume, James
Whitley provides an up-to-date guide to the site and its function
from the Neolithic until the present day. This study includes a
re-appraisal Bronze Age palatial society, as well as an exploration
of the history of Knossos in the archaeological imagination. In
doing so he takes a critical look at the guiding assumptions of
Evans and others, reconstructing how and why the received view of
this ancient settlement has evolved from the Iron Age up to the
modern era.
This book offers a concise introduction to Xenophon, the Athenian
historian, political thinker, moral philosopher and literary
innovator who was also a pupil of Socrates, a military general on
campaign in Persia, and an exile in residence in the Peloponnese
during the late fifth and fourth centuries BC. Alive during one of
the most turbulent periods in Greek history, Xenophon wrote
extensively about the past and present. In doing so he not only
invented several new genres, but also developed pointed political
analyses and probing moral critiques. It is the purpose of this
book to explore Xenophon's life, writing and ideas, and reception
through thematic studies that draw upon the full range of his work.
Starting with his approach to the past and to Socrates, it
demonstrates how the depiction of events and people from previous
times and places are inflected with contemporary concerns about
political instability and the challenges of leadership, as well as
by a 'Socratic' perspective on politics and morality. The following
in-depth examination of Xenophon's theories concerning political
organization and the bases for a good life highlight the
interconnectivity of his ideas about how to live together and how
to live well. Although Xenophon addresses conceptual issues, his
writings provide a practical response to real-life problems.
Finally, an evaluation of his significance as an inspiration to
later writers in their creative interrogations of human affairs
brings the investigations to a close. This book thus illuminates
Xenophon's importance within the vibrant intellectual culture of
ancient Greece as an active participant in and evaluator of his
world, as well as his impact over time.
Authorship and Greek Song is a collection of papers dealing with
various aspects of authorship in the song culture of Ancient
Greece. In this cultural context the idea of the poet as author of
his poems is complicated by the fact that poetry in archaic Greece
circulated as songs performed for a variety of audiences, both
local and "global" (Panhellenic). The volume's chapters discuss
questions about the importance of the singers/performers; the
nature of the performance occasion; the status of the poet; the
authority of the poet/author and/or that of the performer; and the
issues of authenticity arising when poems are composed under a
given poet's name. The volume offers discussions of major authors
such as Pindar, Sappho, and Theognis.
This book involves a new historiographical study of the Hellenica
Oxyrhynchia that defines its relationship with fifth- and
fourth-century historical works as well as its role as a source of
Diodorus' Bibliotheke. The traditional and common approach taken by
those who studied the HO is primarily historical: scholars have
focused on particular, often isolated, topics such as the question
of the authorship, the historical perspective of the HO against
other Hellenica from the 4th century BC. This book is
unconventional in that it offers a study of the HO and fifth- and
fourth-century historical works supported by papyrological
enquiries and literary strategies, such as intertextuality and
narratology, which will undoubtedly contribute to the progress of
research in ancient historiography.
This study focuses on the metaphysics of the great Arabic
philosopher Avicenna (or Ibn Sina, d. 1037 C.E.). More
specifically, it delves into Avicenna's theory of quiddity or
essence, a topic which seized the attention of thinkers both during
the medieval and modern periods. Building on recent contributions
in Avicennian studies, this book proposes a new and comprehensive
interpretation of Avicenna's theory of 'the pure quiddity' (also
known as 'the quiddity in itself') and of its ontology. The study
provides a careful philological analysis of key passages gleaned
from the primary sources in Arabic and a close philosophical
contextualization of Avicenna's doctrines in light of the legacy of
ancient Greek philosophy in Islam and the early development of
Arabic philosophy (falsafah) and theology (kalam). The study pays
particular attention to how Avicenna's theory of quiddity relates
to the ancient Greek philosophical discussion about the universals
or common things and Mu'tazilite ontology. Its main thesis is that
Avicenna articulated a sophisticated doctrine of the ontology of
essence in light of Greek and Bahshamite sources, which decisively
shaped subsequent intellectual history in Islam and the Latin West.
In Renewing Royal Imagery: Akhenaten and Family in the Amarna
Tombs, Arlette David offers a systematic, in-depth analysis of the
visual presentation of ancient Egyptian kingship during Akhenaten's
reign (circa 1350 B.C.) in the elite tombs of his new capital,
domain of his god Aten, and attempts to answer two basic questions:
how can Amarna imagery look so blatantly Egyptian and yet be
intrinsically different? And why did it need to be so?
This book is a re-edition and detailed study of a parchment codex
from Egypt of the fourth century CE with Greek and Coptic recipes
for healing through magic and pharmacology (Ann Arbor, University
of Michigan Library Ms. 136). A text and annotated translation were
published in a brief journal article by William H. Worrell in 1935,
but the codex has been understudied since then. This new edition
offers advances in readings and interpretation, a thorough
philological commentary, and accompanying studies on the ritual and
medical traditions to which the codex belongs and its position in
the linguistic landscape of Egypt. The recipes comprise magical
rituals for healing and broader personal advancement,
pharmacological and related medical recipes, and advice for the
management of a household. Traditional Egyptian religion and ritual
are illustrated in interaction with medical practices of Hellenic
culture more recently introduced to Egypt, and the archaic, even
poetic language of some of the Coptic invocations featuring the
Egyptian gods Amun and Thoth share pages with an incantation
constructed from the verses of Homer.
This study examines how Tacitus' representation of speech
determines the roles of speakers within the political sphere, and
explores the possibility of politically effective speech in the
principate. It argues against the traditional scholarly view that
Tacitus refuses to offer a positive view of senatorial power in the
principate: while senators did experience limitations and changes
to what they could achieve in public life, they could aim to create
a dimension of political power and efficacy through speeches
intended to create and sustain relations which would in turn
determine the roles played by both senators or an emperor. Ellen
O'Gorman traces Tacitus' own charting of these modes of speech,
from flattery and aggression to advice, praise, and censure, and
explores how different modes of speech in his histories should be
evaluated: not according to how they conform to pre-existing
political stances, but as they engender different political worlds
in the present and future. The volume goes beyond literary analysis
of the texts to create a new framework for studying this essential
period in ancient Roman history, much in the same way that Tacitus
himself recasts the political authority and presence of senatorial
speakers as narrative and historical analysis.
Classical Memories is an intervention into the field of adaptation
studies, taking the example of classical reception to show that
adaptation is a process that can be driven by and produce
intertextual memories. I see 'classical memories' as a
memory-driven type of adaptation that draws on and reproduces
schematic and otherwise de-contextualised conceptions of antiquity
and its cultural 'exports' in, broadly speaking, the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries. These memory-driven adaptations differ,
often in significant ways, from more traditional adaptations that
seek to either continue or deconstruct a long-running tradition
that can be traced back to antiquity as well as its canonical
points of reception in later ages. When investigating such a
popular and widespread set of narratives, characters, and images
like those that remain of Graeco-Roman antiquity, terms like
'adaptation' and 'reception' could and should be nuanced further to
allow us to understand the complex interactions between modern
works and classical antiquity in more detail, particularly when it
pertains to postcolonial or post-digital classical reception. In
Classical Memories, I propose that understanding certain types of
adaptations as intertextual memories allows us to do just that.
|
|