In The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian H. Bull argues that the treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus reflect the spiritual exercises and ritual practices of loosely organized brotherhoods in Egypt. These small groups were directed by Egyptian priests educated in the traditional lore of the temples, but also conversant with Greek philosophy. Such priests, who were increasingly dispossessed with the gradual demise of the Egyptian temples, could find eager adherents among a Greek-speaking audience seeking for the wisdom of the Egyptian Hermes, who was widely considered to be an important source for the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato. The volume contains a comprehensive analysis of the myths of Hermes Trismegistus, a reevaluation of the Way of Hermes, and a contextualization of this ritual tradition.

Studies of the peoples of Anatolia take for granted the existence and importance of regional ethnic communities on the peninsula when investigating issues of identity, ethnic origins, and cultural assimilation (especially Hellenization). In reviewing the scholarship, Jeremy LaBuff argues that such assumptions lead to problematic conclusions that ignore or poorly apply recent theoretical work on ethnicity and current critiques of the assimilation model. A critical consideration of this work leads to an appreciation for the somewhat limited, and at times non-existent, role of regional ethnicity to the experiences of the inhabitants and communities of Anatolia, who mainly promoted more local forms of belonging in the face of the attempted orderings of ethnographic and imperial discourses.

This is a pioneering study that examines the sale of sex in classical Athens from a commercial (rather than from a cultural or moral) perspective. Following the author's earlier book on Athenian banking, Athenian Prostitution analyzes erotic business at Athens not anachronistically, but in the context of the Athenian economy. For the Athenians, the social acceptability and moral standing of human labor was largely determined by the conditions under which work was performed. Pursued in a context characteristic of servile endeavor, prostitution-like all forms of slave labor-was contemptible. Pursued under conditions appropriate to non-servile endeavor, prostitution-like all forms of free labor-was not violative of Athenian work ethics. As a mercantile activity, however, prostitution was not untouched by Athenian antagonism toward commercial and manual pursuits; as the "business of sex," prostitution further evoked negativity from segments of Greek opinion uncomfortable with any form of carnality. Yet ancient sources also adumbrate another view, in which the sale of sex, lawful and indeed pervasive at Athens, is presented alluringly. In Athenian Prostitution, Edward E. Cohen explores the high compensation earned by female sexual entrepreneurs who often controlled prostitutional businesses that were perpetuated from generation to generation on a matrilineal basis, and that benefitted from legislative restrictions on pimping. The author juxtaposes the widespread practice of "prostitution pursuant to written contract" with legislation targeting male prostitutes functioning as governmental leaders, and explores the seemingly contradictory phenomena of extensive sexual exploitation of slave prostitutes (male and female) coexisting with Athenian society's pride in its legislative protection of slaves and minors against sexual outrage.

A systematic and historical treatment of the civil and criminal procedure of Cicero's time. At the same time, the author examines the legal difficulties and contradictions found in Cicero's writings on procedure. With a subject index and index to passages found in Cicero's works. Of value to the student of Roman Law, ciminal and military procedure and law, and the history of European courts.

Winner of the 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award The Later Han dynasty, also known as Eastern Han, ruled China for the first two centuries of the Christian era. Comparable in extent and power to the early Roman empire, it dominated east Asia from present-day Vietnam to the Mongolian steppe. Rafe de Crespigny presents here the first full account of this period in Chinese history to be found in a Western language. Commencing with a detailed account of the imperial capital, the history describes the nature of government, the expansion of the Chinese people to the south, the conflicts of scholars and officials with eunuchs at court, and the final collapse which followed the rebellion of the Yellow Turbans and the rise of regional warlords.

Mercury's Wings: Exploring Modes of Communication in the Ancient World is the first-ever volume of essays devoted to ancient communications. Comparable previous work has been mainly confined to articles on aspects of communication in the Roman empire. This set of 18 essays with an introduction by the co-editors marks a milestone, therefore, that demonstrates the importance and rich further potential of the topic. The authors, who include art historians, Assyriologists, Classicists and Egyptologists, take the broad view of communications as a vehicle not just for the transmission of information, but also for the conduct of religion, commerce, and culture. Encompassed within this scope are varied purposes of communication such as propaganda and celebration, as well as profit and administration. Each essay deals with a communications network, or with a means or type of communication, or with the special features of religious communication or communication in and among large empires. The spatial, temporal, and cultural boundaries of the volume take in the Near East as well as Greece and Rome, and cover a period of some 2,000 years beginning in the second millennium BCE and ending with the spread of Christianity during the last centuries of the Roman Empire in the West. In all, about one quarter of the essays deal with the Near East, one quarter with Greece, one quarter with Greece and Rome together, and one quarter with the Roman empire and its Persian and Indian rivals. Some essays concern topics in cultural history, such as Greek music and Roman art; some concern economic history in both Mesopotamia and Rome; and some concern traditional historical topics such as diplomacy and war in the Mediterranean world. Each essay draws on recent work in the theory of communications.

Situated within contemporary posthumanism, this volume offers theoretical and practical approaches to materiality in Greek tragedy. Established and emerging scholars explore how works of the three major Greek tragedians problematize objects and affect, providing fresh readings of some of the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The so-called new materialisms have complemented the study of objects as signifiers or symbols with an interest in their agency and vitality, their sensuous force and psychosomatic impact-and conversely their resistance and irreducible aloofness. At the same time, emotion has been recast as material "affect," an intense flow of energies between bodies, animate and inanimate. Powerfully contributing to the current critical debate on materiality, the essays collected here destabilize established interpretations, suggesting alternative approaches and pointing toward a newly robust sense of the physicality of Greek tragedy.

Canidia is one of the most well-attested witches in Latin literature. She appears in no fewer than six of Horace's poems, three of which she has a prominent role in. Throughout Horace's Epodes and Satires she perpetrates acts of grave desecration, kidnapping, murder, magical torture and poisoning. She invades the gardens of Horace's literary patron Maecenas, rips apart a lamb with her teeth, starves a Roman child to death, and threatens to unnaturally prolong Horace's life to keep him in a state of perpetual torment. She can be seen as an anti-muse: Horace repeatedly sets her in opposition to his literary patron, casts her as the personification of his iambic poetry, and gives her the surprising honor of concluding not only his Epodes but also his second book of Satires. This volume is the first comprehensive treatment of Canidia. It offers translations of each of the three poems which feature Canidia as a main character as well as the relevant portions from the other three poems in which Canidia plays a minor role. These translations are accompanied by extensive analysis of Canidia's part in each piece that takes into account not only the poems' literary contexts but their magico-religious details.