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Books > History > World history > BCE to 500 CE
In 1869 the late Richard Henry Dana, Jr., prepared a new edition of
his "Two Years Before the Mast''. In presenting the first 'author's
edition' to the public, he has been encouraged to add an account of
a visit to the old scenes, made twenty-four years after, together
with notices of the subsequent story and fate of the vessels, and
of some of the persons with whom the reader is made acquainted. The
popularity of this book has been so great and continued that it is
now proposed to make an illustrated edition with new material.
The fourth-century Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, his
brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus)
are famous primarily for their contributions to Trinitarian
theology. Scholars have also been interested in the Cappadocians'
experiments in communal asceticism, which had a lasting impact on
Christian theology and monastic vocation. Vasiliki Limberis has
discovered a hitherto untold element in the history of these
seminal figures. Simply stated, for the Cappadocians all aspects of
Christian life were best communicated, understood, and indeed
lived, through the prism of martyr piety. Limberis shows that the
cult of the martyrs was absolutely central to the formation of
Christian life for them and the laity. The local martyr cults were
so powerful that the Cappadocians promoted their own kin as
martyrs. This ensured that their families, soon after their deaths,
would be imitated by the local people, and in future generations
they would be honored as saints by all. Limberis documents the rich
variety of ways the Cappodocians made use of the martyrs. Of
particular interest are the complex rituals of the panegyris, a
yearly celebration that honored the martyrs, creating social ties
that spanned class barriers. Building projects also honored the
martyrs, housed their loved ones, and created sacred space in their
communities. Limberis calls attention to the pivotal roles played
by the mothers and sisters of the Cappadocians in promoting martyr
piety and examines the importance in their lives of material
vehicles of sanctity such as eulogia breads and holy oil, and
practices such as fasting, vigils, vows and prayers. The
Cappadocians were of the generation that bridged the Church of the
martyrs and the Church triumphant of the Roman state. This book
shows how they reshaped martyr piety to suit the needs of this
changing landscape, and made it the basis of a new understanding of
Christian identity.
The Oxford History of Classical Reception (OHCREL), of which the
present volume is the first to appear, is designed to offer a
comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in
which literary texts of the classical world have been responded to
and refashioned by English writers. Covering the full range of
English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day,
OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents
cutting-edge new research, employing an international team of
expert contributors for each of the volumes. OHCREL endeavours to
interrogate, rather than inertly reiterate, conventional
assumptions about literary 'periods', the processes of
canon-formation, and the relations between literary and
non-literary discourse. It conceives of 'reception' as a complex
process of dialogic exchange and, rather than offering large
cultural generalizations, it engages in close critical analysis of
literary texts. It explores in detail the ways in which English
writers' engagement with classical literature casts as much light
on the classical originals as it does on the English writers' own
cultural context. When completed, this 5-volume history will be one
of the largest, and potentially most important projects, in the
field of classical reception ever undertaken. This third volume
covers the years 1660-1790.
Hermann Gunkel was a scholar in the generation of the origins of
Assyriology, the spectacular discovery by George Smith of fragments
of the "Chaldean Genesis," and the Babel-Bibel debate. Gunkel's
thesis, inspired by materials supplied to him by the Assyriologist
Heinrich Zimmern, was to take the Chaoskampf motif of Revelation as
an event that would not only occur at the end of the world but had
already happened at the beginning, before Creation. In other words,
in this theory, one imagines God in Genesis 1 as first having
battled Rahab, Leviathan, and Yam (the forces of Chaos) in a grand
battle, and only then beginning to create. The problem with
Gunkel's theory is that it did not simply identify common elements
in the mythologies of the ancient Near East but imposed upon them a
structure dictating the relationships between the elements, a
structure that was based on inadequate knowledge and a forced
interpretation of his sources. On the other hand, one is not
entitled to insist that there was no cultural conversation among
peoples who spent the better part of several millennia trading
with, fighting, and conquering one another. Creation and Chaos
attempts to address some of these issues. The contributions are
organized into five sections that address various aspects of the
issues raised by Gunekl's theories.
This book explores the development of tombs as a cultural
phenomenon in ancient Egypt and examines what tombs reveal about
ancient Egyptian culture and Egyptians belief in the afterlife. *
Investigates the roles of tombs in the development of funerary
practices * Draws on a range of data, including architecture,
artifacts and texts * Discusses tombs within the context of
everyday life in Ancient Egypt * Stresses the importance of the
tomb as an eternal expression of the self
Sacred Thresholds. The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity
offers a far-reaching account of boundaries within pagan and
Christian sanctuaries: gateways in a precinct, outer doors of a
temple or church, inner doors of a cella. The study of these
liminal spaces within Late Antiquity - itself a key period of
transition during the spread of Christianity, when cultural
paradigms were redefined - demands an approach that is both
interdisciplinary and diachronic. Emilie van Opstall brings
together both upcoming and noted scholars of Greek and Latin
literature and epigraphy, archaeology, art history, philosophy, and
religion to discuss the experience of those who crossed from the
worldly to the divine, both physically and symbolically. What did
this passage from the profane to the sacred mean to them, on a
sensory, emotive and intellectual level? Who was excluded, and who
was admitted? The articles each offer a unique perspective on pagan
and Christian sanctuary doors in the Late Antique Mediterranean.
Brill's Companion to the Reception of Aristophanes provides a
substantive account of the reception of Aristophanes (c. 446-386
BC) from Antiquity to the present. Aristophanes was the renowned
master of Old Attic Comedy, a dramatic genre defined by its topical
satire, high poetry, frank speech, and obscenity. Since their
initial production in classical Athens, his comedies have
fascinated, inspired, and repelled critics, readers, translators,
and performers. The book includes seventeen chapters that explore
the ways in which the plays of Aristophanes have been understood,
appropriated, adapted, translated, taught, and staged. Careful
attention has been given to critical moments of reception across
temporal, linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries.
Sex: Vice and Love from Antiquity to Modernity examines theimpact
that sexual fantasies about the classical world have had onmodern
Western culture. * Offers a wealth of information on sex in the
Greek andRoman world * Correlates the study of classical sexuality
with modern Westerncultures * Identifies key influential themes in
the evolution of eroticdiscourse from antiquity to modernity *
Presents a serious and thought-provoking topic with
greataccessibility
An updated history of classical philology had long been a
desideratum of scholars of the ancient world. The volume edited by
Diego Lanza and Gherardo Ugolini is structured in three parts. In
the first one ("Towards a science of antiquity") the approach of
Anglo-Saxon philology (R. Bentley) and the institutionalization of
the discipline in the German academic world (C.G. Heyne and F.A.
Wolf) are described. In the second part ("The illusion of the
archetype. Classical Studies in the Germany of the 19th Century")
the theoretical contributions and main methodological disputes that
followed are analysed (K. Lachmann, J.G. Hermann, A. Boeckh, F.
Nietzsche and U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff). The last part ("The
classical philology of the 20th century") treats the redefinition
of classical studies after the Great War in Germany (W. Jaeger) and
in Italy (G. Pasquali). In this context, the contributions of
papyrology and of the new images of antiquity that have emerged in
the works of writers, narrators, and translators of our time have
been considered. This part finishes with the presentation of some
of the most influential scholars of the last decades (B. Snell,
E.R. Dodds, J.-P. Vernant, B. Gentili, N. Loraux).
The Short Chronicle is an eyewitness report on the demise of the
Sasanian and Byzantines Empires and the beginning of the Islamic
period. It uses official Sasanian sources and Syriac church
documents and mentions for the first time new Arab cities,
including Mosul, Kufa, and Basra.
This book is written by E.A. Wallis Budge, who was fanatically
interested in Ancient languages. Fatherless and leaving school at
12 he worked as a clerk for W.H. Smith and studied Hebrew and
Syriac in his spare time. He became interested in learning the
ancient Assyrian language, so spent his spare time in the British
Museum where he was allowed to study cuneiformtablets in the
office. He often walked to St Paul's Cathedral to study during his
lunch break and when the organist noticed his passion for Assyrian
he contacted Budge's employer, the Conservative Member of
Parliament W.H. Smith, as well as the former Liberal Prime Minister
W.E. Gladstone, and asked them to help Budge. They agreed to help
him raise the money to attend Cambridge University, where Budge
studied Semitic languages, including Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic and
Arabic, continuing to study Assyrian on his own. Hence, this book
is a work of passion, elucidating nine of the most fascinating and
important Egyptian legends. These include The Legend of the
Creation, The Legend of the Destruction of Mankind and The Legend
of Isis and Osiris. This version comes complete with the nineteen
original illustrations.
Who was Homer? This book takes us beyond the legends of the blind
bard or the wandering poet to explore an author about whom nothing
is known, except for his works. It offers a reading of the ancient
biographies as clues to the reception of the Homeric poems in
Antiquity and provides an introduction to the oral tradition which
lay at the source of the Homeric epics. Above all, it takes us into
the world of the Odyssey, a world that lies between history and
fiction. It guides the reader through a poem which rivals the
modern novel in its complexity, demonstrating the unity of the poem
as a whole. It defines the many and varied figures of otherness by
which the Greeks of the archaic period defined themselves and
underlines the values promoted by the poem's depictions of men,
women, and gods. Finally, it asks why, throughout the centuries
from Homer to Kazantzakis and Joyce, the hero who never forgets his
homeland and dreams constantly of return has never ceased to be the
incarnation of what it is to be human.
This translation is a revised and much expanded version of the
original French text, and includes a new chapter on the
representation of women in the Odyssey and an updated bibliography.
Constantine the Great is one of those rare historical figures who
is nearly as controversial today as he was in his own time. Lauded,
both then and now, as a military hero who ended the brutal
persecutions of Christians and as the first Roman emperor to
himself embrace Christianity, Constantine is just as often vilified
as a destructive innovator, a coddler of heretics, and a tyrannical
hypocrite with the blood of his own family on his hands. The Life
of the Blessed Emperor Constantine was penned shortly after the
emperor's death in AD 337 by the great Church historian Eusebius
Pamphilus, bishop of C]sarea. Though criticized as mere panegyric
lionizing Constantine's virtues while ignoring his flaws,
Eusebius's Life is nonetheless the most substantial and detailed
biography of the first Christian emperor to come down to us from
antiquity. The work is also the sole source for several key
episodes in Constantine's life--including the emperor's famous
vision of a cross in the sky accompanied by the words, "Conquer by
this."
Over the last 40 years, the study of word-order variation has
become a prominent and fruitful field of research. Researchers of
linguistic typology have found that every language permits a
variety of word-order constructions, with subject, verb, and
objects occupying varying positions relative to each other. It is
frequently possible to classify one of the word orders as the basic
or unmarked order and the others as marked. Moshavi's study
investigates word order in the finite nonsubordinate clause in
classical Biblical Hebrew. A common marked construction in this
type of clause is the preposing construction, in which a subject,
object, or adverbial is placed before the verb. In this work,
Moshavi formally distinguishes preposing from other marked and
unmarked constructions and explores the distribution of these
constructions in Biblical Hebrew. She carries out a contextual
analysis of a sample (the book of Genesis) of preposed clauses in
order to determine the pragmatic functions that preposing may
express. Moshavi's thesis is that the majority of preposed clauses
can be classified as one of two syntactic-pragmatic constructions:
focusing or topicalization. This meticulous yet approachable study
will be useful both to students of Biblical Hebrew and to persons
doing general study of syntax, especially those interested in the
connection between linguistic form and pragmatic meaning.
Throughout Egypt's long history, pottery sherds and flakes of
limestone were commonly used for drawings and short-form texts in a
number of languages. These objects are conventionally called
ostraca, and thousands of them have been and continue to be
discovered. This volume highlights some of the methodologies that
have been developed for analyzing the archaeological contexts,
material aspects, and textual peculiarities of ostraca.
Quadratic equations, Pythagoras' theorem, imaginary numbers, and pi
- you may remember studying these at school, but did anyone ever
explain why? Never fear - bestselling science writer, and your new
favourite maths teacher, Michael Brooks, is here to help. In The
Maths That Made Us, Brooks reminds us of the wonders of numbers:
how they enabled explorers to travel far across the seas and
astronomers to map the heavens; how they won wars and halted the
HIV epidemic; how they are responsible for the design of your home
and almost everything in it, down to the smartphone in your pocket.
His clear explanations of the maths that built our world, along
with stories about where it came from and how it shaped human
history, will engage and delight. From ancient Egyptian priests to
the Apollo astronauts, and Babylonian tax collectors to juggling
robots, join Brooks and his extraordinarily eccentric cast of
characters in discovering how maths made us who we are today.
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