Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > History > World history > BCE to 500 CE
The story of humanity is the story of textiles-as old as civilization itself. Textiles created empires and powered invention. They established trade routes and drew nations' borders. Since the first thread was spun, fabric has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel traces this surprising history, exposing the hidden ways textiles have made our world. The origins of chemistry lie in the coloring and finishing of cloth. The beginning of binary code-and perhaps all of mathematics-is found in weaving. Selective breeding to produce fibers heralded the birth of agriculture. The belt drive came from silk production. So did microbiology. The textile business funded the Italian Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; it left us double-entry bookkeeping and letters of credit, the David and the Taj Mahal. From the Minoans who exported woolen cloth colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to the Romans who wore wildly expensive Chinese silk, the trade and production of textiles paved the economic and cultural crossroads of the ancient world. As much as spices or gold, the quest for fabrics and dyes drew sailors across strange seas, creating an ever-more connected global economy. Synthesizing groundbreaking research from economics, archaeology, and anthropology, Postrel weaves a rich tapestry of human cultural development.
What is the origin of the stories of the Round Table, of Excalibur and the Holy Grail, of Sir Launcelot and Guinevere? And where was Camelot?King Arthur's name has echoed down the centuries, conjuring up rich images of mystery and power, chivalry and romance. But did he exist at all? There is no evidence to prove he reigned in the fifth and sixth centuries; no eye-witness accounts of his coronation and no reliable manuscripts outlining his deeds. This full-colour guide examines the facts of the legends in the tantalising puzzle of King Arthur and his knights. Learn about the origins of the Round Table, the cult of chivalry and conflict between knights, and Arthur's shape-shifting half-sister Moran le Fay. From the origins of Arthurian legend to the new phase in the Arthurian cyce in the romantic revival of the early nineteenth century, read about the tantalizing puzzle that is King Arthur.Look out for more Pitkin guides on the very best of British history, heritage and travel.
In Unwritten Rome, a new book by the author of Myths of Rome, T.P. Wiseman presents us with an imaginative and appealing picture of the early society of pre-literary Rome-as a free and uninhibited world in which the arts and popular entertainments flourished. This original angle allows the voice of the Roman people to be retrieved empathetically from contemporary artefacts and figured monuments, and from selected passages of later literature.How do you understand a society that didn't write down its own history? That is the problem with early Rome, from the Bronze Age down to the conquest of Italy around 300 BC. The texts we have to use were all written centuries later, and their view of early Rome is impossibly anachronistic. But some possibly authentic evidence may survive, if we can only tease it out - like the old story of a Roman king acting as a magician, or the traditional custom that may originate in the practice of ritual prostitution. This book consists of eighteen attempts to find such material and make sense of it.
AUTHORITATIVE AND ACCESSIBLE, THIS LANDMARK WORK IS THE FIRST SINGLE-VOLUME HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY SHARED FOR DECADES 'A cerebrally enjoyable survey, written with great clarity and touches of wit' Sunday Times The story of philosophy is an epic tale: an exploration of the ideas, views and teachings of some of the most creative minds known to humanity. But there has been no comprehensive history of this great intellectual journey since 1945. Intelligible for students and eye-opening for philosophy readers, A. C. Grayling covers with characteristic clarity and elegance subjects like epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, logic, and the philosophy of mind, as well as the history of debates in these areas, through the ideas of celebrated philosophers as well as less well-known influential thinkers. The History of Philosophy takes the reader on a journey from the age of the Buddha, Confucius and Socrates. Through Christianity's dominance of the European mind to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. On to Mill, Nietzsche, Sartre, then the philosophical traditions of India, China and the Persian-Arabic world. And finally, into philosophy today.
Now in its fourth edition, this highly acclaimed sourcebook examines the public and private lives and legal status of Greek and Roman women. The texts represent women of all social classes, from public figures remembered for their deeds (or misdeeds), to priestesses, poets, and intellectuals, to working women, such as musicians, wet nurses, and prostitutes, to homemakers. The editors have selected texts from hard-to-find sources, such as inscriptions, papyri, and medical treatises, many of which have not previously been translated into English. The resulting compilation is both an invaluable aid to research and a clear guide through this complex subject. Building on the third edition's appendix of updates, the fourth adds many new and unusual texts and images, as well as such student-friendly features as a map and chapter overviews. Many notes and explanations have been revised with the non-classicist in mind.
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.
The Greek myths are among the world's most important cultural building
blocks and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus
on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories.
Can the truth about Jesus be uncovered--even without a body or a crime scene? Join cold-case detective and bestselling author J. Warner Wallace as he investigates Jesus using an innovative and unique approach he employs to solve real missing person murder cases. In Person of Interest, Wallace carefully sifts through the evidence from history alone, without relying on the New Testament. You'll understand like never before how Jesus, the most significant person in history, changed the world. Features:
Detective J. Warner Wallace listened to a pastor talk about Jesus and wondered why anyone would think Jesus was a person of interest. Wallace was skeptical of the Bible, but he’d investigated several no-body homicide cases in which there was no crime scene, no physical evidence, and no victim's body. Could the historical life and actions of Jesus be investigated in the same way? In Person of Interest, Wallace describes his own personal investigative journey from atheism to Christianity as he carefully considers the evidence. Creative, compelling, and fully illustrated, Person of Interest will strengthen the faith of believers while engaging those who are skeptical and distrusting of the New Testament.
What is one of the best ways to successfully predict the future? Winston Churchill believed that the further back you look, the further forward you are likely to be able to see. This intriguing book is testimony to this idea. It looks back two thousand years to the Roman Empire to help us to see into our own future. We imagine the Roman Empire as being a world very distant from ours, so distant that we may think we have nothing to learn from them. That however would be a mistake. The causes of the triumphs and disasters of our times are much the same as those of the Roman Empire. The Romans were people like us and the wisest of their great men and women were as wise as the best of ours. Unfortunately, the most foolish of theirs were just as the foolish as the worst of ours. Pugnare is the first historical account of the Roman Empire written from a practical business perspective. It is also about people, because business is about people. We can learn a lot from their behaviour, from their successes and failures.
An energetic new translation of an ancient Roman masterpiece about a failed coup led by a corrupt and charismatic politician In 63 BC, frustrated by his failure to be elected leader of the Roman Republic, the aristocrat Catiline tried to topple its elected government. Backed by corrupt elites and poor, alienated Romans, he fled Rome while his associates plotted to burn the city and murder its leading politicians. The attempted coup culminated with the unmasking of the conspirators in the Senate, a stormy debate that led to their execution, and the defeat of Catiline and his legions in battle. In How to Stop a Conspiracy, Josiah Osgood presents a brisk, modern new translation of the definitive account of these events, Sallust's The War with Catiline-a brief, powerful book that has influenced how generations of readers, including America's founders, have thought about coups and political conspiracies. In a taut, jaw-dropping narrative, Sallust pleasurably combines juicy details about Catiline and his louche associates with highly quotable moral judgments and a wrenching description of the widespread social misery they exploited. Along the way, we get unforgettable portraits of the bitter and haunted Catiline, who was sympathetic to the plight of Romans yet willing to destroy Rome; his archenemy Cicero, who thwarts the conspiracy; and Julius Caesar, who defends the conspirators and is accused of being one of them. Complete with an introduction that discusses how The War with Catiline has shaped and continues to shape our understanding of how republics live and die, and featuring the original Latin on facing pages, this volume makes Sallust's gripping history more accessible than ever before.
From the bestselling author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the fascinating story of how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power for more than 2,000 years What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book-against a background of today's "sculpture wars"-Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the "Twelve Caesars," from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian. Twelve Caesars asks why these murderous autocrats have loomed so large in art from antiquity and the Renaissance to today, when hapless leaders are still caricatured as Neros fiddling while Rome burns. Beginning with the importance of imperial portraits in Roman politics, this richly illustrated book offers a tour through 2,000 years of art and cultural history, presenting a fresh look at works by artists from Memling and Mantegna to the nineteenth-century American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, as well as by generations of weavers, cabinetmakers, silversmiths, printers, and ceramicists. Rather than a story of a simple repetition of stable, blandly conservative images of imperial men and women, Twelve Caesars is an unexpected tale of changing identities, clueless or deliberate misidentifications, fakes, and often ambivalent representations of authority. From Beard's reconstruction of Titian's extraordinary lost Room of the Emperors to her reinterpretation of Henry VIII's famous Caesarian tapestries, Twelve Caesars includes fascinating detective work and offers a gripping story of some of the most challenging and disturbing portraits of power ever created. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Herodotus is the epochal authority who inaugurated the European and Western consciousness of collective identity, whether in an awareness of other societies and of the nature of cultural variation itself or in the fashioning of Greek self-awareness - and necessarily that of later civilizations in?uenced by the ancient Greeks - which was perpetually in dialogue and tension with other ways of living in groups. In this book, 14 contributors explore ethnicity - the very self-understanding of belonging to a separate body of human beings - and how it evolves and consolidates (or ethnogenesis). This inquiry is focussed through the lens of Herodotus as our earliest master of ethnography, in this instance not only as the stylized portrayal of other societies, but also as an exegesis on how ethnocultural di?erentiation may a?ect the lives, and even the very existence, of one's own people. Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus is one facet of a project that intends to bring Portuguese and English-speaking scholars of antiquity into closer cooperation. It has united a cross-section of North American classicists with a distinguished cohort of Portuguese and Brazilian experts on Greek literature and history writing in English.
Libanius of Antioch (AD 314-393) stands out as a fundamental source for the history of the Greek East in the 4th century AD. Nearly half the important figures in the Eastern empire of his day are known in part or in full through his works alone. Some 700 people, including many of the key players of the age, are known through his vast collection of letters, the largest to survive from antiquity. letters in this volume offer are addressed to a wide range of people, from family members to old schoolmates and pupils, from provincial governors to the most important officials of the imperial court.
Offers up to date full colour maps of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.
This is a Syriac text written, in all probability, by an inhabitant of Edessa almost immediately after the conclusion of the war between Rome and Persia in 502-506 AD. Although that conflict is treated in other ancient texts, none of them can match "Joshua" in his wealth of detail, his familiarity with the region where the hostilities occurred, and his proximity in time to the events. The Chronicle also vividly describes the famine and plague that swept through Edessa in the years immediately before the war. The work is a document of great importance for both the social and military history of late antiquity, remarkable for the information it provides on Roman and Persian empires alike.
First published in 1972, this book remains the most comprehensive and reliable study of this complex epoch. By starting from first principles and classifying and surveying the main available evidence, Kitchen establishes a comprehensive full-scale chronology of the XXI-XXV dynasties. He is then able to present a compact historical outline of almost five centuries of Egyptian history that is invaluable for scholars and the general reader alike. This edition includes the 1986 supplement, and a second preface written in 1995 which takes into account research and discoveries since the previous edition.
This is a full-scale translation and commentary in English of Aurelius Victor's De Caesaribus, which provides a brief survey of the emperors of Rome from Octavian Augustus in 30 BC to Constantius II in AD 360. The book comprises an introduction, translation and full historical/historiographical commentary, and contains maps, a select bibliography and an index.
The fifth century brought great changes to Roman Gaul, including the expansion of the Christian church, the disappearance of the Roman imperial presence, and the arrival and settlement of various barbarian peoples. In this volume, the letters of Ruricius, bishop of Limoges (c. 485-510), and those written to him -- by Faustus of Riez, Sedatus of Nimes. Caesarius of Aries, Euphrasius of Clermont, Graecus of Marseilles, Victorinus of Frejus, Sidonius Apollinaris, Paulinus of Bordeaux, and Taurentius -- give insight into the personal lives and feelings of those who experienced these transformations first hand. The collection affords an unparalleled view of Gaul in the last quarter of the fifth century, when it seemed that the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse would become the primary barbarian power in the region. In an intimate and domestic way, these personal correspondences describe what happened in Gaul after the final Roman withdrawal just before A.D. 480. They illustrate how literary culture continued under barbarian rule, and demonstrate how well-to-do Gauls responded to the changing times. They provide priceless insights not only into the private and public lives of the individual letter writers but also into life and activities in Visigothic Gaul at the local level in general. Surprisingly, they suggest how little impact the Visigoths actually had on many individuals present at the "end of Roman Gaul.
Best Books of 2022 Financial Times 'A literary phenomenon.' - Times Literary Supplement 'Imaginative, lively and contemporary...masterly.' - Economist 'Vallejo enlivens history with imagination and personal anecdote' - Observer 'A mindboggling history of the earliest books... the story she tells is impressively rip-roaring' - Daily Telegraph 'Packed with fascinating insights.' - The i Review Long before books were mass produced, those made of reeds from along the Nile were worth fighting and dying for. Journeying along the battlefields of Alexander the Great, beneath the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, at Cleopatra's palaces and the scene of Hypatia's murder, award-winning author Irene Vallejo chronicles the excitement of literary culture in the ancient world, and the heroic efforts that ensured this impressive tradition would continue. Weaved throughout are fascinating stories about the spies, scribes, illuminators, librarians, booksellers, authors, and statesmen whose rich and sometimes complicated engagement with the written word bears remarkable similarities to the world today: Aristophanes and the censorship of the humourists, Sappho and the empowerment of women's voices, Seneca and the problem of a post-truth world. Vallejo takes us to mountainous landscapes and the roaring sea, to the capitals where culture flourished and the furthest reaches where knowledge found refuge in chaotic times. In this sweeping tour of the history of books, the wonder of the ancient world comes alive and along the way we discover the singular power of the written word.
Marcel Simon's classic study examines Jewish-Christian relations in the Roman Empire from the second Jewish War (132-5 CE) to the end of the Jewish Patriarchate in 425 CE. First published in French in 1948, the book overturns the then commonly held view that the Jewish and Christian communities gradually ceased to interact and that the Jews gave up proselytizing among the gentiles. On the contrary, Simon maintains that Judaism continued to make its influence felt on the world at large and to be influenced by it in turn. He analyses both the antagonisms and the attractions between the two faiths, and concludes with a discussion of the eventual disappearance of Judaism as a missionary religion. The rival community triumphed with the help of a Christian imperial authority and a doctrine well adapted to the Graeco-Roman mentality. |
You may like...
Qumran in en om die Bybel - 'n Nuwe blik…
Joan Annandale-Potgieter
Paperback
|