Honouring the work of the renowned historian Margaret Muller, After the Text will appeal to students and academics in Byzantine literature / Covering the use of rhetoric, poetry, fables, and hagiography in Byzantium, those interested in Byzantine Greek will find this book particularly enlightening / These studies illustrate the profound richness of Byzantine culture through its literature by analysing texts within context

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This 1857 volume is a compilation, edited by R. H. Major of the British Museum, of narratives of journeys to India 'in the century preceding the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope; from Latin, Persian, Russian, and Italian sources'. India was regarded as a fabled source of riches even before the time of Alexander the Great, and Major's introduction surveys the surviving accounts of overland journeys there before the fifteenth century, assessing their validity and where possible matching ancient to modern place names.

The Virgilian Tradition II brings together thirteen essays by historian Craig Kallendorf. The essays present a distinctive approach to the reception of the canonical classical author Virgil, that is focused around the early printed books through which that author was read and interpreted within early modern culture. Using the prefaces, dedicatory letters, and commentaries that accompanied the early modern editions of Virgil's Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, and Appendix Virgiliana, they demonstrate how this paratextual material was used by early readers to develop a more nuanced interpretation of Virgil's writings than twentieth-century scholars believed they were capable of. The approach developed throughout this volume shows how the emerging field of book history can enrich our understanding of the reception of Greek and Latin authors. This book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history, as well as those interested in book history and cultural history.

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850 1928) was a pioneer in the academic study of myth in its historical and archaeological context, and was also one of the first women to make a full-time career as an academic. In her introduction to this book (1903), making the point that 'Greek religion' was usually studied using the surviving literary retellings of myths and legends, she states: 'The first preliminary to any scientific understanding of Greek religion is a minute examination of its ritual'. Using the then emerging disciplines of anthropology and ethnology, she demonstrates that the specific mythological tales of the Greeks embody systems of belief or philosophy which are not unique to Greek civilisation but which are widespread among societies both 'primitive' and 'advanced'. Her work was enormously influential not only on subsequent scholars of Greek religion but in the wider fields of literature, anthropology and psychoanalysis.

From Clement to Origen addresses the engagement of a number of pre-Nicene Church Fathers with the surrounding culture. David Rankin considers the historical and social context of the Fathers, grouped in cities and regions, their writings and theological reflections, and discusses how the particular engagement of each with major aspects of the surrounding culture influences, informs and shapes their thought and the articulation of that thought. The social and historical context of the Church Fathers is explored with respect to the Roman state, the imperial office and imperial cult, Greco-Roman class structures and the patron-client system, issues of wealth production and other commercial activity, the major philosophical thinkers in antiquity, and to rhetorical theory and practice and the higher learning of the day.

This volume considers representations of space and movement in sources ranging from Roman comedy to late antique verse, exploring how poetry in the Roman world is fundamentally shaped by its relationship to travel within the geography of Rome's far-reaching empire. The volume surveys Roman poetics of travel and geography in sources ranging from Plautus to Augustan poetry, from the Flavians to Ausonius. The chapters offer a range of approaches to: the complex relationship between Latin poetry, Roman identity, imperialism, and travel and geospatial narratives; and the diachronic and generic evolutions of poetic descriptions of space and mobility. In addition, two chapters, including the concluding one, contextualize and respond to the volume's discussion of poetry by looking at ways in which Romans not only write and read poems about travel and geography, but also make writing and reading part of the experience of traveling, as demonstrated in their epigraphic practices. The collection as a whole offers important insights into Roman poetics and into ancient notions of movement and geographical space. Travel, Geography, and Empire in Latin Poetry will be of interest to specialists in Latin poetry, ancient travel, and Latin epigraphy as well as to those studying travel writing, geography, imperialism, and mobility in other periods. The chapters are written to be accessible to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates.

This volume takes a fresh look at ekphrasis as a textual practice closely connected to our embodied imagination and its verbal dimension; it offers the first detailed study of a large family of ancient ecphrastic shields, often studied separately, but never as an ensemble with its own development. The main objective consists of establishing a theoretical and historical framework that is applied to a series of famous ecphrastic shields starting with the Homeric shield of Achilles. The latter is reinterpreted as a paradigmatic "thing" whose echoing down the centuries is reinforced by the fundamental connection between ekphrasis and artefacts as its primary objects. The book demonstrates that although the ancient sources do not limit ekphrasis to artificial creations, the latter are most efficient in bringing out the intimate affinity between artefacts and vivid mental images as two kind of entities that lack a natural scale and are rightly understood as ontologically unstable. Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature: The World's Forge should be read by those interested in ancient culture, art and philosophy, but also by those fascinated by the broader issue of imagination and by the interplay between the natural and the artificial.

This book presents the first ever English translation of the Medicina Plinii, one of the most influential books of applied medicine and self-medication in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The work, which predates AD 400, was created as a quick reference work for travellers, and became and remained highly influential, as witnessed by frequent references to it and by various later adaptations. Only the rise of scientific medicine and pharmacology led to its demise and confinement in a small corner of specialist studies. It presents more than 1,150 healing methods and recipes mainly adapted from the encyclopedic Natural History of Pliny the Elder, arranged from the patient's head to foot in order that readers could quickly find treatments for their diseases. The Medicina Plinii is of dual interest to present-day scholarship: The book is a monument for the practical application of classical knowledge which has recently found lively interest in the history of science and medicine. At the same time the Medicina Plinii provides a fascinating insight into the realities of the world of Late Antiquity, and into the anxieties of the people living in the vast Roman empire. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and advanced students in the History of Science and Medicine, along with a wider audience interested in medicine, and in life in the Roman world.

If ancient history is particularly susceptible to a top-down approach, due to the nature of our evidence and its traditional exploitation by modern scholars, another ancient history-'from below'-is actually possible. This volume examines the possibilities and challenges involved in writing it. Despite undeniable advances in recent decades, 'our slowness to reconstruct plausible visions of almost any aspect of society beyond the top-most strata of wealth, power or status' (as Nicholas Purcell has put it) remains a persistent feature of the field. Therefore, this book concerns a historical field and social groups that are still today neglected by modern scholarship. However, writing ancient history 'from below' means much more than taking into account the anonymous masses, the subaltern classes and the non-elites. Our task is also, in the felicitous expression coined by Walter Benjamin, 'to brush history against the grain,' to rescue the viewpoint of the subordinated, the traditions of the oppressed. In other words, we should understand the bulk of ancient populations in light of their own experience and their own reactions to that experience. But, how do we do such a history? What sources can we use? What methods and approaches can we employ? What concepts are required to this endeavour? The contributions mainly engage with questions of theory and methodology, but they also constitute inspiring case studies in their own right, ranging from classical Greece to the late antique world. This book is aimed not only at readers working on classical Greece, republican and imperial Rome and late antiquity but at anyone interested in 'bottom-up' history and social and population history in general. Although the book is primarily intended for scholars, it will also appeal to graduate and undergraduate students of history, archaeology and classical studies.

This collection of essays explores the rhetoric and practices surrounding views on life after death and the end of the world, including the fate of the individual, apocalyptic speculation and hope for cosmological renewal, in a wide range of societies from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Byzantine era. The 42 essays by leading scholars in each field explore the rich spectrum of ways in which eschatological understanding can be expressed, and for which purposes it can be used. Readers will gain new insight into the historical contexts, details, functions and impact of eschatological ideas and imagery in ancient texts and material culture from the twenty-fifth century BCE to the ninth century CE. Traditionally, the study of "eschatology" (and related concepts) has been pursued mainly by scholars of Jewish and Christian scripture. By broadening the disciplinary scope but remaining within the clearly defined geographical milieu of the Mediterranean, this volume enables its readers to note comparisons and contrasts, as well as exchanges of thought and transmission of eschatological ideas across Antiquity. Cross-referencing, high quality illustrations and extensive indexing contribute to a rich resource on a topic of contemporary interest and relevance. Eschatology in Antiquity is aimed at readers from a wide range of academic disciplines, as well as non-specialists including seminary students and religious leaders. The primary audience will comprise researchers in relevant fields including Biblical Studies, Classics and Ancient History, Ancient Philosophy, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Art History, Late Antiquity, Byzantine Studies and Cultural Studies. Care has been taken to ensure that the essays are accessible to undergraduates and those without specialist knowledge of particular subject areas.

This book explores the areas in which novels such as Chariton's Callirhoe and Heliodorus's Aithiopika are ideal beyond the ideal love relationship and considers how concepts of the ideal connect to archetypal and literary patterns as well as reflecting contemporary ideological and cultural elements. Readers will gain a better understanding of how necessary is an understanding of these ideal elements to a full understanding of the novels' possible readings and their reader's attitudes. This book sets forth critical methods, subsequently followed, which allows for this exploration of ideal themes. Ideal Themes in the Greek and Roman Novel will be an invaluable resource for scholars of these novels, as well as ancient narratives and classical literature more generally. Scholars of cultural and utopian studies will also find the book useful, as well as some undergraduate students in all these areas.

Prudentius' Crown of Martyrs offers an English translation, with introduction and commentary, of the Liber Peristephanon, Prudentius' vivid collection of lyric hymns in honor of Christian martyrs. To render Prudentius' metrically varied lines for twenty-first-century readers, Len Krisak relies on the inherent iambic nature of English. The introduction offers insight into social, political, and literary features of the fourth century, the life of Prudentius, the poet's other works, his Latinity and mastery of ancient meters, and the manuscript tradition and the reception of Prudentius in the Middle Ages and beyond. Given Prudentius' central place in the history of Latin poetry, this translation is a welcome resource for general readers interested in Western literary history. It will also find a home with scholarly audiences working on Late Antique and Early Christian literature and culture, in a wide variety of college classrooms and in academic libraries.

Piracy, Pillage, and Plunder in Antiquity explores appropriation in its broadest terns in the ancient world, from brigands, mercenaries and state-sponsored "piracy", to literary appropriation and the modern plundering of antiquities. The chronological extent of the studies in this volume, written by an international group of experts, ranges from about 2000 BCE to the 20th century. The geographical spectrum in similarly diverse, encompassing Africa, the Mediterranean, and Mesopotamia, allowing readers to track this phenomenon in various different manifestations. Predatory behaviour is a phenomenon seen in all walks of life. While violence may often be concomitant it is worth observing that predation can be extremely nuanced in its application, and it is precisely this gradation and its focus that occupies the essential issue in this volume. Piracy, Pillage, and Plunder in Antiquity will be of great interest to those studying a range of topics in antiquity, including literature and art, cities and their foundations, crime, warfare, and geography.

A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine discusses prospects and methods for a comprehensive, evidence-based history of Palestine with a critical use of recent historical, archaeological and anthropological methods. This history is not an exclusive history but one that is ethnically and culturally inclusive, a history of and for all peoples who have lived in Palestine. After an introductory essay offering a strategy for creating coherence and continuity from the earliest beginnings to the present, the volume presents twenty articles from twenty-two contributors, fifteen of whom are of Middle Eastern origin or relation. Split thematically into four parts, the volume discusses ideology, national identity and chronology in various historiographies of Palestine, and the legacy of memory and oral history; the transient character of ethnicity in Palestine and questions regarding the ethical responsibilities of archaeologists and historians to protect the multi-ethnic cultural heritage of Palestine; landscape and memory, and the values of community archaeology and bio-archaeology; and an exploration of the "ideology of the land" and its influence on Palestine's history and heritage. The first in a series of books under the auspices of the Palestine History and Heritage Project (PaHH), the volume offers a challenging new departure for writing the history of Palestine and Israel throughout the ages. A New Critical Approach to the History of Palestine explores the diverse history of the region against the backdrop of twentieth-century scholarly construction of the history of Palestine as a history of a Jewish homeland with roots in an ancient, biblical Israel and examines the implications of this ancient and recent history for archaeology and cultural heritage. The book offers a fascinating new perspective for students and academics in the fields of anthropological, political, cultural and biblical history.

This volume provides a detailed examination of nearly 1,400 years of Roman history, from the foundation of the city in the eighth century BC until the evacuation of Roman troops from Alexandria in AD 642 in the face of the Arab conquests. Drawing on a vast array of ancient texts written in Latin, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic, and relying on a host of inscriptions, archaeological data, and the evidence from ancient art, architecture, and coinage, The Roman World from Romulus to Muhammad brings to the fore the men and women who chronicled the story of the city and its empire. Richly illustrated with 71 maps and 228 illustrations-including 20 in colour-and featuring a detailed glossary and suggestions for further reading, this volume examines a broad range of topics, including ancient climate change, literature, historiography, slavery, war and conquest, the development of Christianity, the Jewish revolts, and the role of powerful imperial women. The author also considers the development of Islam within a Roman historical context, examines the events that led to the formation of the post-Roman states in Western Europe, and contemplates aff airs on the imperial periphery in the Caucasus, Ethiopia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Emphasising the voices of antiquity throughout, The Roman World from Romulus to Muhammad is an invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in the beguiling history of the world's most famous empire.

Devastated by two decades of war and ravaged by the spread of the plague, large parts of Italy fell quickly into the hands of a group known to history as the Lombards. By the early 570s the Lombards were firmly established in Italy, which they ruled without ever fully unifying it. The events of the late sixth century shaped early medieval Italy. They also affected how Italian history was written: the Lombards were blamed for plunging the peninsula into the darkness of the Middle Ages, finally ending Roman civilization. But was it really a 'barbarian invasion' that created medieval Italy? What was the role of the imperial authorities and the papacy? In Warfare and the Making of Early Medieval Italy, Eduardo Fabbro brings a new take on the changes that shook Italy at the end of the sixth century. Moving past traditional narratives of barbarians and battles, the book re-evaluates the impact of war in creating early medieval Italy. Fabbro brings to the fore a complex picture that includes not only invading barbarians but also rebelling soldiers, disgruntled farmers, vexed commanders, and cunning adventurers trying to make the best of a bad situation. Through a complete reassessment of contemporary and later sources, this book rewrites the history of the first decades of Lombard rule and shows that warfare's impact went far beyond battles and invasions; it rewired the social and political links that bound the region.

Jeremiah in History and Tradition examines aspects of the Book of Jeremiah from a variety of perspectives including historical, textual, redaction, and feminist criticism, as well as the history of its reception. The book looks afresh at the Book of Jeremiah through the lens of intertextuality and reception history in the broadest sense, exploring Jeremiah in its historical context as well as the later history and interpretation of the text, and also reconsidering aspects of the Book of Jeremiah's traditions. This volume features essays from a unique assembly of scholars, both seasoned and new. It is divided into two parts: "Jeremiah in History", which explores a variety of readings of Jeremiah from the point of view of classical historical criticism; and "Jeremiah in Tradition", which discusses the portraits and use of both the book and the figure of Jeremiah in extra-biblical traditions. Offering challenging new theories, Jeremiah in History and Tradition is invaluable to scholars and students in the field of Biblical Studies. It is a useful resource for anyone working on the interpretation of the biblical text and the readings of the text of Jeremiah throughout history.

This book examines migration and colonialism in the ancient Near East in the late second millennium BCE, with a focus on the Levant. It explores how the area was shaped by these movements of people, especially in forming the new Iron Age societies. The book utilises recent sociological studies on group identity, violence, migration, colonialism and settler colonialism in its reconstruction of related social and political changes. Prime examples of migrations that are addressed include those involving the Sea Peoples and Philistines, ancient Israelites and ancient Arameans. The final chapter sets the developments in the ancient Near East in the context of recent world history from a typological perspective and in terms of the legacy of the ancient world for Judaism and Christianity. Altogether, the book contributes towards an enhanced understanding of migration, colonialism and violence in human history. In addition to academics, this book will be of particular interest to students of this period in the Ancient Near East, as well anyone working on migration and colonialism in the ancient world. The book is also suitable to the general public interested in world history.

Near Eastern Cities from Alexander to the Successors of Muhammad compares the evolution of several cities in the Near East from the time of Alexander the Great until the beginning of the Islamic 'Abbasid Dynasty. This volume examines both archaeological remains and literary sources to explain the diversity of imperial, cultural, and religious influences on urban life. It offers several case studies chosen from different regions of the Roman Near East, demonstrating that Greco-Roman and Islamic culture spread unevenly through these various cities, and that it is impossible to make broad generalizations. It argues instead that there were different patterns of urbanism that demonstrate a continued vitality of civic life up to the 'Abbasid revolution. Near Eastern Cities from Alexander to the Successors of Muhammad will be of particular interest to students of this period in the Ancient Near East, as well as those studying ancient cities and everyday life.

The late Mario Mignucci was one of the most authoritative, original, and influential scholars in the area of ancient philosophy, especially ancient logic. Collected here for the first time are sixteen of his most important essays on Ancient Logic, Language, and Metaphysics. These essays show a perceptive historian and a skillful logician philosophically engaged with issues that are still at the very heart of history and philosophy of logic, such as the nature of predication, identity, and modality. As well as essays found in disparate publications, often not easily available online, the volume includes an article on Plato and the relatives translated into English for the first time and an unpublished paper on De interpretatione 7. Mignucci thinks rigorously and writes clearly. He brings the deep knowledge of a scholar and the precision of a logician to bear on some of the trickiest topics in ancient philosophy. This collection deserves the close attention of anyone concerned with logic, language, and metaphysics, whether in ancient or contemporary philosophy.

Roman Domestic Medical Practice in Central Italy examines the roles that the home, the garden and the members of the household (freeborn, freed and slave) played in the acquisition and maintenance of good physical and mental health and well-being. Focussing on the period from the middle Republic to the early Empire, it considers how comprehensive the ancient Roman general understanding of health actually was, and studies how knowledge regarding various aspects of health was transmitted within the household. Using literary, documentary, archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence from a variety of contexts, this is the first extended volume to provide as comprehensive and detailed a reconstruction of this aspect of ancient Roman private life as possible, complementing existing works on ancient professional medical practice and existing works on domestic medical practice in later historical periods. This volume offers an indispensable resource to social historians, particularly those that focus on the ancient family, and medical historians, particularly those that focus on the ancient world.

The establishment of large-scale water infrastructure is a defining aspect of the process of urbanisation. In places like Britain, the Roman period represents the first introduction of features that can be recognised and paralleled to our modern water networks. Writers have regularly cast these innovations as markers of a uniform Roman identity spreading throughout the Empire, and bringing with it a familiar, modern, sense of what constitutes civilised urban living. However, this is a view that has often neglected to explain how such developments were connected to the important symbolic and ritual traditions of waterscapes in Iron Age Britain. Water and Urbanism in Roman Britain argues that the creation of Roman water infrastructure forged a meaningful entanglement between the process of urbanisation and significant local landscape contexts. As a result, it suggests that archetypal Roman urban water features were often more related to an active expression of local hybrid identities, rather than alignment to an incoming continental ideal. By questioning the familiarity of these aspects of the ancient urban form, we can move away from the unhelpful idea that Roman precedent is a central tenet of the current unsustainable relationship between water and our modern cities. This monograph will be of interest to academics and students studying aspects of Roman water management, urbanisation in Roman Britain, and theoretical approaches to landscape. It will also appeal to those working more generally on past human interactions with the natural world.

This groundbreaking study, among the earliest syntheses on female homosexuality throughout Antiquity, explores the topic with careful reference to ancient concepts and views, drawing fully on the existing visual and written record including literary, philosophical, and scientific documents. Even today, ancient female homosexuals are still too often seen in terms of a mythical, ethereal Sapphic love, or stereotyped as "Amazons" or courtesans. Boehringer's scholarly book replaces these cliches with rigorous, precise analysis of iconography and texts by Sappho, Plato, Ovid, Juvenal, and many other lyric poets, satirists, and astrological writers, in search of the prevailing norms, constraints, and possibilities for erotic desire. The portrait emerges of an ancient society to which today's sexual categories do not apply-a society "before sexuality"-where female homosexuality looks very different, but is nonetheless very real. Now available in English for the first time, Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome includes a preface by David Halperin. This book will be of value to students and scholars of ancient sexuality and gender, and to anyone interested in histories and theories of sexuality.

A revered instructor of the eremitic monks of Nitria, Sketis and Kellia, Evagrius Ponticus is a fascinating yet enigmatic figure in the history of fourth-century mystical thought. This historical and theological re-evaluation of the teaching of Evagrius brings to bear evidence from the Greek and Syriac Evagriana. Focusing on Evagrius' concept of perfection as the acquisition of spiritual knowledge, this book revisits current perceptions of Evagrius's thought and character by comparing and contrasting him with his contemporaries and predecessors, both Christian and pagan. Ideas of the three 'Cappadocians' and the author of the Macariana, as well as Stoic, Neo-Platonic and earlier Christian writers such as Alcinoos, Plotinus, Clement and Origen, are all explored. Konstantinovsky draws attention to a lack of uniformity in the fourth-century views on the origin of the soul, the body-soul relation, and the eschatological destiny of humankind.

Widely acknowledged as the most authoritative Victorian study of ancient Greece, George Grote's twelve-volume work, begun in 1846, established the view of Greek history which still prevails in textbooks and popular accounts of the ancient world today. Grote employs direct and clear language to take the reader from the earliest times of legendary Greece to the death of Alexander and his generation, drawing upon epic poetry and legend, and examining the growth and decline of the Athenian democracy. The work explains Greek political constitutions and philosophy, and interwoven throughout are the important but outlying adventures of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. Volume 1 focuses on the legendary Greece, the times of epic poetry and legend, and explains how what we read today as myth was once, as Grote describes it, 'accredited history which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their past time'.