0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Browse All Departments
Price
  • R50 - R100 (14)
  • R100 - R250 (3,836)
  • R250 - R500 (5,079)
  • R500+ (3,628)
  • -
Status
Format
Author / Contributor
Publisher

Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works > Classical, early & medieval

Fragments of Old Comedy, Volume II - Diopeithes to Pherecrates (Hardcover): Ian C. Storey Fragments of Old Comedy, Volume II - Diopeithes to Pherecrates (Hardcover)
Ian C. Storey
R796 Discovery Miles 7 960 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The era of Old Comedy (c. 485 c. 380 BCE), when theatrical comedy was created and established, is best known through the extant plays of Aristophanes, but there were many other poets whose comedies survive only in fragments. This new Loeb edition, the most extensive selection of the fragments available in English, presents the work of fifty-six poets, including Cratinus and Eupolis, the other members (along with Aristophanes) of the canonical Old Comic triad.

For each poet and play there is an introduction, brief notes, and select bibliography. Also included is a selection of ancient testimonia to Old Comedy, nearly one hundred unattributed fragments (both book and papyri), and descriptions of twenty-five vase-paintings illustrating Old Comic scenes. The texts are based on the monumental edition of Kassel and Austin, updated to reflect the latest scholarship.

L. Annaei Senecae Opera Quae Supersunt - Volumen III (Latin, Hardcover, Reprint 2011 ed.): Lucius Annaeus Seneca L. Annaei Senecae Opera Quae Supersunt - Volumen III (Latin, Hardcover, Reprint 2011 ed.)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca; Edited by Friedrich Haase
R5,468 Discovery Miles 54 680 Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Callimachus - The Hymns (Paperback): Susan A Stephens Callimachus - The Hymns (Paperback)
Susan A Stephens
R1,172 Discovery Miles 11 720 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Callimachus was arguably the most important poet of the Hellenistic age, for two reasons: his engagement with previous theorists of poetry and his wide-ranging poetic experimentation. Of his poetic oeuvre, which exceeded what we now have of Theocritus, Aratus, Posidippus, and Apollonius combined, only his six hymns and around fifty of his epigrams have survived intact. His enormously influential Aetia, the collection of Iambi, the Hecale, and all of his prose output have been reduced to a handful of citations in later Greek lexica and handbooks or papyrus fragments. In recent years excellent commentaries and synthetic studies of the Aetia, the Iambi, and the Hecale have appeared or are about to appear. But there is no modern study in English of the collection of hymns. And while there are excellent commentaries in English on three of the hymns (Apollo, Athena, Demeter), the commentaries on Zeus and on Delos are limited in scope, and there is no commentary at all on the Artemis hymn. Synthetic studies in English for the most part treat only one hymn, not the collection, and tend to focus on Callimachus' intertextual relationships with his predecessors and/or his influence on Roman poetry. Yet recent work is requiring scholars to broaden their perspective and to consider Callimachus' religious, civic, and geo-political contexts much more systematically in attempting to understand the hymns. A further incentive is that apart from the Homeric and Orphic hymns, Callimachus' are the only other hymns that have survived intact; those written in earlier periods are now reduced to fragments. For these reasons a study of the six hymns together is a desideratum. An additional reason is that Callimachus' collection of six hymns is very likely to have been an authorially arranged poetry book, quite possibly the earliest such book that we have intact; therefore, it allows a unique perspective on the evolution of the form. This volume offers a text and commentary of all six hymns for advanced students of classics and classical scholars, as well as interpretive essays on each hymn that integrate what has been the dominant paradigm-intertextuality-into a broader focus on Callimachus' context. Her introduction treats the transmission of the hymns, the potential for and likelihood of the Homeric hymns as models, the hymns as a poetry book, their language and meter (especially in light of recent work done on this topic), performance practices, and their relationship to cult, court, local geographies, and panhellenic sanctuaries. For each hymn Stephens presents the Greek text, a translation, and a brief commentary containing important information or parallels for interpretation.

Selfhood and Rationality in Ancient Greek Philosophy - From Heraclitus to Plotinus (Hardcover): A. A. Long Selfhood and Rationality in Ancient Greek Philosophy - From Heraclitus to Plotinus (Hardcover)
A. A. Long
R2,768 Discovery Miles 27 680 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

A. A. Long presents fourteen essays on the themes of selfhood and rationality in ancient Greek philosophy. The discussion ranges over seven centuries of innovative thought, starting with Heraclitus' injunction to listen to the cosmic logos, and concluding with Plotinus' criticism of those who make embodiment essential to human identity. For the Greek philosophers the notion of a rational self was bound up with questions about divinity and happiness called eudaimonia, meaning a god-favoured life or a life of likeness to the divine. While these questions are remote from current thought, Long also situates the book's themes in modern discussions of the self and the self's normative relation to other people and the world at large. Ideas and behaviour attributed to Socrates and developed by Plato are at the book's centre. They are preceded by essays that explore general facets of the soul's rationality. Later chapters bring in salient contributions made by Aristotle and Stoic philosophers. All but one of these pieces has been previously published in periodicals or conference volumes, but the author has revised and updated everything. The book is written in a style that makes it accessible to many kinds of reader, not only professors and graduate students but also anyone interested in the history of our identity as rational animals.

Desire in the Iliad - The Force That Moves the Epic and Its Audience (Hardcover): Rachel H. Lesser Desire in the Iliad - The Force That Moves the Epic and Its Audience (Hardcover)
Rachel H. Lesser
R3,036 Discovery Miles 30 360 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This is the first study to examine desire in the Iliad in a comprehensive way, and to explain its relationship to the epic's narrative structure and audience reception. Rachel H. Lesser offers a new reading of the poem that shows how the characters' desires, especially those of the mortal hero Achilleus and the divine king Zeus, motivate plot and keep the audience engaged with the epic until and even beyond its end. The author argues that the characters' desires are primarily organized in narrative triangles that feature two parties in conflict over a third. A variety of desires animate these triangles, including sexual passion, longing for a lost loved one, yearning for lamentation, and aggressive desires for vengeance and status, and they are signified with terms such as eros, himeros, pothe, menos, thumos, boule, and eeldor, as well as through the epic's thematic emotions of grief and anger. Desire in the Iliad shows how the mortals' and gods' triangular desires together drive and shape two Iliadic plots, the main plot of Achilleus' withdrawal from the fighting and then return to battle, and the "superplot" of the larger Trojan War story. The author also argues that these plots and their motivating desires arouse the listener's-or reader's-own corresponding desires: narrative desire to know and understand the Iliad's full story, sympathetic desire for characters' welfare, and empathetic passions, longings, and wishes. Our desires invest us in the epic narrative and their resolution brings us satisfaction.

Studies on the Derveni Papyrus, volume II (Hardcover): Glenn W. Most Studies on the Derveni Papyrus, volume II (Hardcover)
Glenn W. Most
R3,674 Discovery Miles 36 740 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Studies on the Derveni Papyrus, volume II brings together two new editions of the first fragmentarily extant columns of the Derveni Papyrus and seven scholarly articles devoted to their interpretation. The Derveni Papyrus is by far the most important textual discovery of the 20th century regarding early Greek philosophy, religion, exegetical theory and practice, linguistic ideas, and a host of other areas and issues. But the editorial and interpretative history of this extraordinary document has been very checkered. While the interpretation of the better preserved later columns is still highly controversial in many regards, at least the text of those columns has by and large found a scholarly consensus; but the editorial and interpretative situation with the worse preserved first columns is quite different. This volume offers not one but two editions of the first columns, by Richard Janko and by Valeria Piano, given that it is not currently possible to agree upon a single edition; and it explains clearly and in detail the papyrological problems and doubts that lead to these two editions, making it possible for readers (even non-papyrologists) to form their own informed judgment about the most likely readings to be adopted. Furthermore, it contains a number of articles by leading scholars on the Derveni Papyrus, above all offering original solutions to the question of the relation between the earlier and the later columns, but also providing analysis and interpretation of other, related problems.

Arete and the Odyssey's Poetics of Interrogation - The Queen and Her Question (Hardcover): Justin Arft Arete and the Odyssey's Poetics of Interrogation - The Queen and Her Question (Hardcover)
Justin Arft
R3,654 Discovery Miles 36 540 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Arete and the Odyssey's Poetics of Interrogation explores how the enigmatic Phaeacian queen, Arete, is at the heart of an epic-scale "poetics of interrogation" used throughout the Odyssey to negotiate Odysseus' kleos, or epic renown. Arete's interrogation of Odysseus has been especially problematic in scholarship, but diachronic and synchronic analysis of similar interrogations across Indo-European, Orphic, and Greek epigrammatic corpora show that the "stranger's interrogation" is a formula that demands performance and negotiation of status. Within the Odyssey, this interrogation is part of an intraformular network used to generate kleos, and the queen's question initiates the longest and most complex negotiation of Odysseus' status in epic and memory. Arete's role as interrogator not only explains her strange authority and resonance with both Penelope and comparative afterlife figures, but it also establishes a gendered, agonistic tension between she and her husband, Alkinoos, that influences the structure, genre, and narratology of performances across the Phaeacian episode. This book reinterprets the Odyssey's central episode and challenges several assumptions about Nausikaa and Alkinoos' famed hospitality, even demonstrating how the Apologue is organized as a response to competing inquiries into Odysseus' fundamental status in tradition. The Odyssey ultimately navigates away from Odysseus' public reputation and roots his status in private memories, and Arete's carefully arranged interventions signal the larger process by which the Odyssey immortalizes Odysseus in poetry as a nostos hero. The queen and her question invite new applications of oral poetics that shed light on the structure, composition, and reperformance of the Odyssey.

Valerius Flaccus: Argonautica, Book 8 - Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Hardcover): Cristiano Castelletti Valerius Flaccus: Argonautica, Book 8 - Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Hardcover)
Cristiano Castelletti; Edited by Antony Augoustakis, Marco Fucecchi, Gesine Manuwald
R5,272 Discovery Miles 52 720 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This is the first dedicated commentary on the eighth and final book of Valerius Flaccus' Flavian epic Argonautica. It includes the Latin text, a new English translation, and detailed discussion of a range of literary, linguistic, and textual issues. It is the final work of the promising scholar Cristiano Castelletti, edited by friends and colleagues. The edition benefits from his wide-ranging knowledge of ancient poetry and provides perceptive insights into the texture of this important book. It will make the final section of the poem more easily accessible to an international readership and addresses questions of the original length of the poem, of intertextuality, and of poetic practices in late first-century CE Rome.

The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics - Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species (Hardcover): Ruth Vanita The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics - Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species (Hardcover)
Ruth Vanita
R2,731 Discovery Miles 27 310 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This book shows that many characters in the Sanskrit epics - men and women of all varnas and mixed-varna - discuss and criticize discrimination based on gender, varna, poverty, age, and disability. On the basis of philosophy, logic and devotion, these characters argue that such categories are ever-changing, mixed and ultimately unreal therefore humans should be judged on the basis of their actions, not birth. The book explores the dharmas of singleness, friendship, marriage, parenting, and ruling. Bhakta poets such as Kabir, Tulsidas, Rahim and Raidas drew on ideas and characters from the epics to present a vision of oneness. Justice is indivisible, all bodies are made of the same matter, all beings suffer, and all consciousnesses are akin. This book makes the radical argument that in the epics, kindness to animals, the dharma available to all, is inseparable from all other forms of dharma.

Republic (Paperback): Plato Republic (Paperback)
Plato
R214 Discovery Miles 2 140 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Plato's The Republic has influenced Western philosophers for centuries, with its main focus on what makes a well-balanced society and individual.

The Selected Letters of Cassiodorus - A Sixth-Century Sourcebook (Hardcover): Cassiodorus The Selected Letters of Cassiodorus - A Sixth-Century Sourcebook (Hardcover)
Cassiodorus; Translated by M. Shane Bjornlie
R3,074 R1,934 Discovery Miles 19 340 Save R1,140 (37%) Ships in 12 - 19 working days

One of the great Christian scholars of antiquity and a high-ranking public official under Theoderic, King of the Ostrogoths, Cassiodorus compiled edicts, diplomatic letters, and legal documents while in office. The collection of his writings, the Variae, remains among the most important sources for the sixth century, the period during which late antiquity transitioned to the early middle ages. Translated and selected by scholar M. Shane Bjornlie, The Selected Letters gathers the most interesting evidence from the Veriae for understanding the political culture, legal structure, intellectual and religious worldviews, and social evolution during the twilight of the late-Roman state. Bjornlie's invaluable introduction discusses Cassiodorus's work in civil, legal, and financial administration, revealing his interactions with emperors, kings, bishops, military commanders, private citizens, and even criminals. Section notes introduce each letter to contextualize its themes and connection with other letters, opening a window to Cassiodorus's world.

Nominalization in Latin (Hardcover): Olga Spevak Nominalization in Latin (Hardcover)
Olga Spevak
R3,036 Discovery Miles 30 360 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This book investigates the properties of Latin nouns that have a systematic correspondence with a clause structure - referred to as verbal nouns - on the basis of data from a range of text types, both narrative and technical. Olga Spevak explores the much-debated concepts of 'abstract nouns' in general and 'verbal derivatives' in particular, and shows that syntactic parameters are helpful in establishing a better classification for what have traditionally been called nomina actionis. She adopts a descriptive approach and provides methods and criteria for identifying these nouns and for distinguishing them from nouns with concrete reference. This distinction is important both for a full understanding of Latin texts and for the presentation of the words themselves in dictionaries. The analysis reveals that verbal nouns, gerunds, gerundives, participles in participial clauses, and in part also infinitives, are competing expressions with a low degree of 'sententiality'; they serve to condense clausal expressions, to varying extents, and they form a system in which the elements are partly overlapping and partly complementary. The fact that Latin does not have a verbal noun available for every verb can therefore be understood as simply a facet of this complex system.

Melusine (Hardcover, New ed of 1895): A.K. Donald Melusine (Hardcover, New ed of 1895)
A.K. Donald
R1,860 R1,667 Discovery Miles 16 670 Save R193 (10%) Ships in 12 - 19 working days
Plato: Phaedrus (Paperback, New Impression): Plato Plato: Phaedrus (Paperback, New Impression)
Plato; Edited by R. Hackforth
R1,105 Discovery Miles 11 050 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The dialogue begins with a playful discussion of erotic passion, then extends the theme to consider the nature of inspiration, love and knowledge. The centerpiece is the myth of the charioteer - the famous and moving account of the vision, fall and incarnation of the soul. Professor Hackforth here translates the dialogue for the student and general reader. There is a running commentary on the course of the argument and the meaning of the key Greek terms, and a full intoduction to explain the philosophical background and the place of this work among Plato's writings.

In Defence of the Republic (Paperback): Cicero In Defence of the Republic (Paperback)
Cicero; Edited by Siobhan McElduff
R336 R306 Discovery Miles 3 060 Save R30 (9%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

Cicero (106-43BC) was the most brilliant orator in Classical history. Even one of the men who authorized his assassination, the Emperor Octavian, admitted to his grandson that Cicero was: 'an eloquent man, my boy, eloquent and a lover of his country'. This new selection of speeches illustrates Cicero's fierce loyalty to the Roman Republic, giving an overview of his oratory from early victories in the law courts to the height of his political career in the Senate. We see him sway the opinions of the mob and the most powerful men in Rome, in favour of Pompey the Great and against the conspirator Catiline, while The Philippics, considered his finest achievements, contain the thrilling invective delivered against his rival, Mark Antony, which eventually led to Cicero's death.

Homer the Rhetorician - Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad (Hardcover): Baukje van den Berg Homer the Rhetorician - Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad (Hardcover)
Baukje van den Berg
R3,036 Discovery Miles 30 360 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Homer the Rhetorician is the first monograph study devoted to the monumental Commentary on the Iliad by Eustathios of Thessalonike, one of the most renowned orators and teachers of the Byzantine twelfth century. Homeric poetry was a fixture in the Byzantine educational curriculum and enjoyed special popularity under the Komnenian emperors. For Eustathios, Homer was the supreme paradigm of eloquence and wisdom. Writing for an audience of aspiring or practising prose writers, he explains in his commentary what it is that makes Homer's composition so successful in rhetorical terms. This study explores the exemplary qualities that Eustathios recognizes in the poet as author and the Iliad as rhetorical masterpiece. In this way, it advances our understanding of the rhetorical thought of a leading intellectual and the role of a cultural authority as respected as Homer in one of the most fertile periods in Byzantine literary history.

Imagining the Chorus in Augustan Poetry (Hardcover): Lauren Curtis Imagining the Chorus in Augustan Poetry (Hardcover)
Lauren Curtis
R2,795 Discovery Miles 27 950 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

From archaic Sparta to classical Athens the chorus was a pervasive feature of Greek social and cultural life. Until now, however, its reception in Roman literature and culture has been little appreciated. This book examines how the chorus is reimagined in a brief but crucial period in the history of Latin literature, the early Augustan period from 30 to 10 BCE. It argues that in the work of Horace, Virgil, and Propertius, the language and imagery of the chorus articulate some of their most pressing concerns surrounding social and literary belonging in a rapidly changing Roman world. By re-examining seminal Roman texts such as Horace's Odes and Virgil's Aeneid from this fresh perspective, the book connects the history of musical culture with Augustan poetry's interrogation of fundamental questions surrounding the relationship between individual and community, poet and audience, performance and writing, Greek and Roman, and tradition and innovation.

Aeneid 3 (Latin, Paperback): Vergil Aeneid 3 (Latin, Paperback)
Vergil; Edited by Christine Perkell, Randall Ganiban
R553 Discovery Miles 5 530 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

This book is part of a series of individual volumes covering Books 1-6 of Vergil's Aeneid. Each book includes an introduction, notes, bibliography, commentary and glossary, and is edited by an Vergil scholar.

This is Book Three in the series.

Revenge and Gender in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Paperback): Lesel Dawson, Fiona McHardy Revenge and Gender in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Paperback)
Lesel Dawson, Fiona McHardy
R920 Discovery Miles 9 200 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Explores the representation of revenge from Classical to early modern literature This collection explores a range of literary and historical texts from ancient Greece and Rome, medieval Iceland and medieval and early modern England to provide an understanding of wider historical continuities and discontinuities in representations of gender and revenge. It brings together approaches from literary criticism, gender theory, feminism, drama, philosophy and ethics to allow greater discussion between these subjects and across historical periods and to provide a more complex and nuanced understanding of the ways in which ideas about gender and revenge interrelate. Key features: The coverage, from classical through to renaissance literature, gives a sense of how the revenge motifs work over time with gender in mind It will appeal to a wide readership including those working in classics; medieval and renaissance literature; gender studies; revenge and revenge tragedy; the intertextual relations between ancient, medieval and early modern texts It considers what constitutes the literary revenge tragedy tradition, suggesting points of continuity and difference as well as rethinking the parameters of the genre Contributors include Edith Hall, Alison Findlay and Janet Clare

The Solitary Sphere in the Age of Virgil (Hardcover): Aaron J. Kachuck The Solitary Sphere in the Age of Virgil (Hardcover)
Aaron J. Kachuck
R2,922 Discovery Miles 29 220 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The Solitary Sphere in the Age of Virgil uses an enriched tripartite model of Roman culture-touching not only the public and the private, but also the solitary-in order to present a radical re-interpretation of Latin literature and of the historical causes of this third sphere's relative invisibility in scholarship. By connecting Cosmos and Imperium to the Individual, the solitary sphere was not so much a way of avoiding politics, as a political education in itself. As re-imagined by literature in this age literature, this sphere was an essential space for the formation of the new Roman citizen of the Augustan revolution, and was behind many of the notable features of the literary revolution of Virgil's age: the expansion of the possibilities of the book of poetry, the birth of the literary cursus, new coordinations of cosmology and politics within strictly organized schemes, the attraction of first-person genres, and the subjective style. Through close readings of Cicero's late works and the oeuvres of Virgil, Horace, and Propertius and the works of other authors in the age of Virgil, The Solitary Sphere thus presents a revelatory reassessment of the classicism of classical Roman literature, and contributes to the study of pre-modern culture more generally, especially for traditions that have taken antiquity as too fixed a point in their own literary, religious, and cultural histories.

Reading Heliodorus' Aethiopica (Hardcover): Ian Repath, Tim Whitmarsh Reading Heliodorus' Aethiopica (Hardcover)
Ian Repath, Tim Whitmarsh
R3,031 Discovery Miles 30 310 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Heliodorus' Aethiopica (Ethiopian Story) is the latest, longest, and greatest of the ancient Greek romances. It was hugely admired in Byzantium, and caused a sensation when it was rediscovered and translated into French in the 16th century: its impact on later European literature (including Shakespeare and Sidney) and art is incalculable. As with all post-classical Greek literature, its popularity dived in the 19th century, thanks to the influence of romanticism. Since the 1980s, however, new generations of readers have rediscovered this extraordinary late-antique tale of adventure, travel, and love. Recent scholars have demonstrated not just the complexity and sophistication of the text's formal aspects, but its daring experiments with the themes of race, gender, and religion. This volume brings together fifteen established experts in the ancient romance from across the world: each explores a passage or section of the text in depth, teasing out its subtleties and illustrating the rewards reaped thanks to slow, patient readings of what was arguably classical antiquity's last classic.

Thinking of Death in Plato's Euthydemus - A Close Reading and New Translation (Hardcover): Gwenda-lin Grewal Thinking of Death in Plato's Euthydemus - A Close Reading and New Translation (Hardcover)
Gwenda-lin Grewal
R3,036 Discovery Miles 30 360 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Thinking of Death places Plato's Euthydemus among the dialogues that surround the trial and death of Socrates. A premonition of philosophy's fate arrives in the form of Socrates' encounter with the two-headed sophist pair, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who appear as if they are the ghost of the Socrates of Aristophanes' Thinkery. The pair vacillate between choral ode and rhapsody, as Plato vacillates between referring to them in the dual and plural number in Greek. Gwenda-lin Grewal's close reading explores how the structure of the dialogue and the pair's back-and-forth arguments bear a striking resemblance to thinking itself: in its immersive remove from reality, thinking simulates death even as it cannot conceive of its possibility. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus take this to an extreme, and so emerge as the philosophical dream and sophistic nightmare of being disembodied from substance. The Euthydemus is haunted by philosophy's tenuous relationship to political life. This is played out in the narration through Crito's implied criticism of Socrates-the phantom image of the Athenian laws-and in the drama itself, which appears to take place in Hades. Thinking of death thus brings with it a lurid parody of the death of thinking: the farce of perfect philosophy that bears the gravity of the city's sophistry. Grewal also provides a new translation of the Euthydemus that pays careful attention to grammatical ambiguities, nuances, and wit in ways that substantially expand the reader's access to the dialogue's mysteries.

Andromache, Hecuba, Trojan Women (Hardcover): Euripides Andromache, Hecuba, Trojan Women (Hardcover)
Euripides; Translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien; Introduction by Ruth Scodel
R1,095 R1,031 Discovery Miles 10 310 Save R64 (6%) Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Diane Arnson Svarlien's translation of Euripides' Andromache , Hecuba , and Trojan Women exhibits the same scholarly and poetic standards that have won praise for her Alcestis , Medea , Hippolytus . Ruth Scodel's Introduction examines the cultural and political context in which Euripides wrote, and provides analysis of the themes, structure, and characters of the plays included. Her notes offer expert guidance to readers encountering these works for the first time.

Plutarch's Cities (Hardcover): Lucia Athanassaki, Frances Titchener Plutarch's Cities (Hardcover)
Lucia Athanassaki, Frances Titchener
R3,667 Discovery Miles 36 670 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Plutarch's Cities is the first comprehensive attempt to assess the significance of the polis in Plutarch's works from several perspectives, namely the polis as a physical entity, a lived experience, and a source of inspiration, the polis as a historical and sociopolitical unit, the polis as a theoretical construct and paradigm to think with. The book's multifocal and multi-perspectival examination of Plutarch's cities - past and present, real and ideal-yields some remarkable corrections of his conventional image. Plutarch was neither an antiquarian nor a philosopher of the desk. He was not oblivious to his surroundings but had a keen interest in painting, sculpture, monuments, and inscriptions, about which he acquired impressive knowledge in order to help him understand and reconstruct the past. Cult and ritual proved equally fertile for Plutarch's visual imagination. Whereas historiography was the backbone of his reconstruction of the past and evaluation of the present, material culture, cult, and ritual were also sources of inspiration to enliven past and present alike. Plato's descriptions of Athenian houses and the Attic landscape were also a source of inspiration, but Plutarch clearly did his own research, based on autopsy and on oral and written sources. Plutarch, Plato's disciple and Apollo's priest, was on balance a pragmatist. He did not resist the temptation to contemplate the ideal city, but he wrote much more about real cities, as he experienced or imagined them.

On Living and Dying Well (Paperback): Cicero On Living and Dying Well (Paperback)
Cicero; Translated by Thomas Habinek
R330 R299 Discovery Miles 2 990 Save R31 (9%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

In the first century BCE, Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, statesman, and defender of republican values, created these philosophical treatises on such diverse topics as friendship, religion, death, fate and scientific inquiry. A pragmatist at heart, Cicero's philosophies were frequently personal and ethical, drawn not from abstract reasoning but through careful observation of the world. The resulting works remind us of the importance of social ties, the questions of free will, and the justification of any creative endeavour. This lively, lucid new translation from Thomas Habinek, editor of Classical Antiquity and the Classics and Contemporary Thought book series, makes Cicero's influential ideas accessible to every reader. This edition also includes additional materials by Siobhan McElduff.

Free Delivery
Pinterest Twitter Facebook Google+
You may like...
Neural Network Perspectives on Cognition…
A. Browne Paperback R1,833 Discovery Miles 18 330
Artificial Neural Networks in Finance…
Hardcover R2,560 Discovery Miles 25 600
Tribe of Mentors - Short Life Advice…
Timothy Ferriss Paperback  (5)
R535 R491 Discovery Miles 4 910
Global Nonlinear Dynamics for…
Stefano Lenci, Giuseppe Rega Hardcover R4,388 Discovery Miles 43 880
Loop Tiling for Parallelism
Jingling Xue Hardcover R4,507 Discovery Miles 45 070
Particle Damping Technology Based…
Zheng Lu, Sami F. Masri, … Hardcover R4,404 Discovery Miles 44 040
Parallel Computing Using Optical…
Keqin Li, Yi Pan, … Hardcover R4,526 Discovery Miles 45 260
Linux Iptables Pocket Reference
Gregor N. Purdy Paperback R265 R195 Discovery Miles 1 950
The Semantics and Proof Theory of the…
David J. Pym Hardcover R4,544 Discovery Miles 45 440
Learning eBPF - Programming the Linux…
Liz Rice Paperback R1,107 R973 Discovery Miles 9 730

 

Partners