Plutarch's Lives: Parallelism and Purpose Aedited by Noreen Humble Plutarch's Parallel Lives were written to compare famous Greeks and Romans. This most obvious aspect of their parallelism is frequently ignored in the drive to mine Plutarch for historical fact. However, the eleven contributors to the present volume, who include most of the world's leading commentators on Plutarch, together bring out many ways in which Plutarch invoked aspects of parallelism. They show how pervasive and how central the whole notion was to his thinking. With new analysis of the synkriseis; with discussion of parallels within and across the Lives and in the Moralia; with an examination of why the basic parallel structure of the Lives lost its importance in the Renaissance, this volume presents fresh ideas on a neglected topic crucial to Plutarch's literary creation.

This is the first detailed and comprehensive study of the shipshed complexes which housed the great navies of the Greco-Roman world, including Athens and Carthage. These complexes represented some of the largest and most expensive building projects of antiquity, and the volume provides a comprehensive survey of the archaeological and literary evidence. It explains how the buildings were carefully designed to keep warships dry and out of reach of shipworm, whilst enabling them to be launched quickly, easily and safely when required. It also serves as a handbook for archaeologists who may excavate such buildings, which are often difficult to identify and interpret. The analytical chapters are complemented by a full and detailed catalogue of known sheds, with plans for all the major sites specially drawn for easy comparison. The book thus provides an indispensable guide for all those interested in these buildings and in the maritime infrastructure of the ancient world.

Women in Mycenaean Greece is the first book-length study of women in the Linear B tablets from Mycenaean Greece and the only to collect and compile all the references to women in the documents of the two best attested sites of Late Bronze Age Greece - Pylos on the Greek mainland and Knossos on the island of Crete. The book offers a systematic analysis of women's tasks, holdings, and social and economic status in the Linear B tablets dating from the 14th and 13th centuries BCE, identifying how Mycenaean women functioned in the economic institutions where they were best attested - production, property control, land tenure, and cult. Analysing all references to women in the Mycenaean documents, the book focuses on the ways in which the economic institutions of these Bronze Age palace states were gendered and effectively extends the framework for the study of women in Greek antiquity back more than 400 years. Throughout, the book seeks to establish whether gender practices were uniform in the Mycenaean states or differed from site to site and to gauge the relationship of the roles and status of Mycenaean women to their Archaic and Classical counterparts to test if the often-proposed theories of a more egalitarian Bronze Age accurately reflect the textual evidence. The Linear B tablets offer a unique, if under-utilized, point of entry into women's history in ancient Greece, documenting nearly 2000 women performing over fifty task assignments. From their decipherment in 1952 one major gap in the scholarly record remained: a full accounting of the women who inhabited the palace states and their tasks, ranks, and economic contributions. Women in Mycenaean Greece fills that gap recovering how class, rank, and other social markers created status hierarchies among women, how women as a group functioned relative to men, and where different localities conformed or diverged in their gender practices.

The first three centuries AD saw the spread of new religious ideas through the Roman Empire, crossing a vast and diverse geographical, social and cultural space. In this innovative study, Anna Collar explores both how this happened and why. Drawing on research in the sociology and anthropology of religion, physics and computer science, Collar explores the relationship between social networks and religious transmission to explore why some religious movements succeed, while others, seemingly equally successful at a certain time, ultimately fail. Using extensive epigraphic data, Collar provides new interpretations of the diffusion of ideas across the social networks of the Jewish Diaspora and the cults of Jupiter Dolichenus and Theos Hypsistos, and in turn offers important reappraisals of the spread of religious innovations in the Roman Empire. This study will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of ancient history, archaeology, ancient religion and network theory.

In this revised and all-colour edition of her indispensable guide to the ancient Games, Judith Swaddling traces their mythological and religious origins, and describes the events, the sacred ceremony and the celebrations that were an essential part of the Olympic festival. A large, detailed model based on modern research and excavation reconstructs the site of ancient Olympia, where alongside religious and civic buildings there grew an elaborate sports complex with a stadium for 40,000 spectators, indoor and outdoor training facilities, hot and cold baths, a swimming pool and a race-course. Later chapters cover the diet and medical treatment of athletes, sponsorship, patronage, propaganda and revivals of the Games and a brand new chapter, based on the latest research discusses the literary sources for the Olympic Games. The expanded final chapter on the modern Games is written in collaboration with Stewart Binns, an expert in this field who has worked closely with the International Olympic Committee over many years, and has been revised to bring the story up to the preparations for the London 2012 Games. Illustrated with gorgeous, full-colour photography and covering thousands of years of Olympic history, this fascinating book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Olympic Games.

This book is a comprehensive examination of Olympic victor lists. The origins, development, content, and structure of Olympic victor lists are explored and explained, and a number of important questions, such as the source and reliability of the year of 776 for the first Olympics, are addressed. Olympic victor lists emerge as a clearly defined type of literature that is best understood as a group of closely related texts. This book offers a fresh perspective on works by familiar writers such as Diodorus Siculus and a sense of the potential importance of less-well-known authors such as Phlegon of Tralleis.

Coinage is one of our key sources for the rich and fascinating history of the Hellenistic world (323-31 BC). This book provides students of the period with an up-to-date introduction to Hellenistic gold, silver and bronze coins in their cultural and economic contexts. It also offers new perspectives on four major themes in contemporary Hellenistic history: globalisation, identity, political economy and ideology. With more than 250 illustrations, and written in a lucid and accessible style, this book sheds new light on the diverse and multicultural societies of the Hellenistic world, from Alexander to Augustus. The author assumes no prior knowledge of Hellenistic history, and all Greek and Latin texts are translated throughout.

The antiquary Sir William Gell (1777 1836) was most famous for his two books on the archaeological discoveries at Pompeii (also reissued in this series) but his interest in the topography of classical sites resulted in several other publications, including this two-volume work, first published in 1834. The work was intended to accompany a map (available to download at http: //www.cambridge.org/9781108042109) of the territory of Ancient Rome, for which the field research and surveying activities were carried out in 1822. It provides alphabetical entries (from Abbatone to Zagarolo) on all the sites in Rome and its environs, with their modern names and populations, and their significance in ancient history and literature. Volume 2 also contains essays on the history and languages of Ancient Italy, and supplements to various entries, where new discoveries had been made during the course of the work's preparation.

Like fragments of overheard conversations, the thousands of informal inscriptions scratched and painted on potsherds, tiles, and other objects give us a unique insight into the everyday life of the Athenian Agora. Some are marks of ownership, or the notes of merchants, but many are sexual innuendos, often accompanied by graphic illustrations. Using her wide contextual knowledge, the author suggests why these scraps of sentences were written, and what they can tell us about one of the first widely literate societies.

In this book, Adam Rogers examines the late Roman phases of towns in Britain. Critically analysing the archaeological notion of decline, he focuses on public buildings, which played an important role, administrative and symbolic, within urban complexes. Arguing against the interpretation that many of these monumental civic buildings were in decline or abandoned in the later Roman period, he demonstrates that they remained purposeful spaces and important centres of urban life. Through a detailed assessment of the archaeology of late Roman towns, this book argues that the archaeological framework of decline does not permit an adequate and comprehensive understanding of the towns during this period. Moving beyond the idea of decline, this book emphasises a longer-term perspective for understanding the importance of towns in the later Roman period.

The late sixth century was a period of considerable change in Etruria; this change is traditionally seen as the adoption of superior models from Greece. In a re-alignment of agency, this 2007 book examines a wide range of Etruscan material culture - mirrors, tombs, sanctuaries, houses and cities - in order to demonstrate the importance of local concerns in the formation of Etruscan material culture. Drawing on theoretical developments, the book emphasises the deliberate nature of the smallest of changes in material culture form, and develops the concept of surface as a unifying key to understanding the changes in the ways Etruscans represented themselves in life and death. This concept allows a uniquely holistic approach to the archaeology of Etruscan society and has the potential for other archaeological investigations. The book will interest all scholars and students of classical archaeology.

This 1957 book describes a series of early Greek tombs, unwittingly discovered in 1933 on the slopes of the Acropolis of Knossos in Crete by a peasant. The excavation was carried out in 1933 and 1935 by two former Directors of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, Humfry Payne and Alan Blakeway, both of whom died before the material could be prepared for preparation. It was eventually presented by one of the members of their party, James Brock, on behalf of the British School. The tombs are described as far as possible in chronological order, so that the illustrations of their contents convey an impression of the development of Cretan art. The catalogue contains more than 1300 vases, nearly all of them complete and many of the highest quality. From detailed analyses of the pottery, a continuous sequence of ceramic phases, spanning nearly four centuries, can be established.

The crisis of the Roman Republic and its transformation into an Empire have fascinated generations of scholars. It has long been assumed that a dramatic demographic decline of the rural free peasantry (which was supplanted by slaves) triggered the series of social and economic developments which eventually led to Rome's political crisis during the first century BC. This book contributes to a lively debate by exploring both the textual and the archaeological evidence, and by tracing and reassessing the actual fate of the Italian rural free population between the Late Republic and the Early Empire. Data derived from a comparative analysis of twenty-seven archaeological surveys - and about five thousand sites - allow Dr Launaro to outline a radically new picture according to which episodes of local decline are placed within a much more generalised pattern of demographic growth.

Roman Britain has given us an enormous number of artefacts. Yet few books available today deal with its whole material culture as represented by these artefacts. This introduction, aimed primarily at students and general readers, begins by explaining the process of identifying objects of any period or material. A series of themed chapters, written by experts in their particular area of interest, then discusses artefacts from the point of view of their use. The contributors' premise is that every object was designed for a particular purpose, which may have been to satisfy a general need or the specific need of an individual. If the latter, the maker, the owner and the end user may have been one and the same person; if the former, the manufacturer had to provide objects that others would wish to purchase or exchange. Understanding this reveals a fascinating picture of life in Roman Britain.

George Dennis (1814 1898) was a British antiquarian who was the first modern investigator of ancient Etruria and Etruscan archaeological remains. After visiting Etruria several times between 1842 and 1847, Dennis entered the diplomatic service, becoming pro consul to Sicily in 1863. These volumes, first published in 1848, are the result of his travels in Etruria and contain the first scholarly account of Etruscan archaeological sites. Originally written as a guide for tourists who wished to see ancient sites beyond the familiar Roman remains, the book describes the antiquities in each Etruscan city in great detail, with major centres such as Veii having a section each for the city and cemetery remains. Illustrated with images of antiquities, architectural remains and plans of the larger sites, this volume provides valuable information on sites which have since been lost, destroyed or damaged. Volume 1 includes the sites of Veii and Tarquinia.

George Dennis (1814 1898) was a British antiquarian who was the first modern investigator of ancient Etruria and Etruscan archaeological remains. After visiting Etruria several times between 1842 and 1847, Dennis entered the diplomatic service, becoming pro consul to Sicily in 1863. These volumes, first published in 1848, are the result of his travels in Etruria and contain the first scholarly account of Etruscan archaeological sites. Originally written as a guide for tourists who wished to see ancient sites beyond the familiar Roman remains, the book describes the antiquities in each Etruscan city in great detail, with major centres such as Veii having a section each for the city and cemetery remains. Illustrated with images of antiquities, architectural remains and plans of the larger sites, this volume provides valuable information on sites which have since been lost, destroyed or damaged. Volume 2 includes the sites of Chiusi and Perugia.

Moving out from a particular problem about a particular Athenian festival, the late Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood investigates central questions concerning Athenian festivals and the myths that underlay them. She studies the role played at festivals by hereditary religious associations, showing how simple actions of undressing, veiling, bathing, and re-dressing a statue created a symbolic drama of abnormality, reversion to primeval time, and renewal for the Athenians. Sourvinou-Inwood also offers a reading of the ever controversial Parthenon frieze. Her book, brought to completion by Robert Parker, displays all the attention to detail and the concern for methodological rigour that have made her an iconic figure among students of Greek religion.

This volumepresents acollection of essays on different aspects of Roman sarcophagi. These varied approaches will produce fresh insights into a subject which is receiving increased interest in English-language scholarship, with a new awareness of the important contribution that sarcophagi can make to the study of the social use and production of Roman art. The book will therefore be a timely addition to existing literature. Metropolitan sarcophagi are the main focus of the volume, which will cover a wide time range from the first century AD to post classical periods (including early Christian sarcophagi and post-classical reception). Other papers will look at aspects of viewing and representation, iconography, and marble analysis. There will be an Introduction written by the co-editors.

Charles Thomas Newton (1816-1894) was a British archaeologist specialising in Greek and Roman artefacts. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford before joining the British Museum as an assistant in the Antiquities Department. Newton left the Museum in 1852 to explore the coasts and islands of Asia Minor. In 1856 he discovered the remains of the Mausoleum of Helicarnassus, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. He was appointed Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities in 1860 and remained in the position until 1880. First published in 1880, this volume is a compilation of lectures on archaeology and classical art which he delivered over the course of his career. They are arranged chronologically and cover topics as diverse as the study of archaeology, Greek sculptures and the arrangement of antiquities in the British Museum, providing valuable information on early methods of archaeology and the study of classical art.

In Isis in a Global Empire, Lindsey Mazurek explores the growing popularity of Egyptian gods and its impact on Greek identity in the Roman Empire. Bringing together archaeological, art historical, and textual evidence, she demonstrates how the diverse devotees of gods such as Isis and Sarapis considered Greek ethnicity in ways that differed significantly from those of the Greek male elites whose opinions have long shaped our understanding of Roman Greece. These ideas were expressed in various ways - sculptures of Egyptian deities rendered in a Greek style, hymns to Isis that grounded her in Greek geography and mythology, funerary portraits that depicted devotees dressed as Isis, and sanctuaries that used natural and artistic features to evoke stereotypes of the Nile. Mazurek's volume offers a fresh, material history of ancient globalization, one that highlights the role that religion played in the self-identification of provincial Romans and their place in the Mediterranean world.

First published in 1912, this volume provides a list of all Romano-British structures in the British Isles known at the time of publication, complete with references to published works on each structure, arranged by county. This volume omits burial sites and circumstantial evidence for occupation, focusing on a wide range of excavated structures ranging from military defences to foundations and pavements. The detailed references for each structure provide a valuable resource for researching the extent of previous excavations on a site, and for recovering information on structures which have since been lost or destroyed. Modern discoveries can also be placed in context with earlier excavations in the same area. The author, Arthur H. Lyell (d. 1925), was a prominent archaeologist specialising in Roman Britain.

William Martin Leake (1777 1860) was a British military officer and classical scholar specialising in reconstructing the topography of ancient cities. He was a founding member of the Royal Geographical Society and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815. First published in 1846, this volume was originally intended as a supplement to Leake's authoritative topographical survey of the Peloponnese, Travels in the Morea, also reissued in this series. The book is organised as a series of articles referencing historical sites, providing detailed descriptions of artefacts, sites and geographical features mentioned in Travels in the Morea, using information from the French Commission of Geography, Natural History and Archaeology which visited the area between 1829 and 1831. Leake was the first scholar to identify many ancient sites in the Peloponnese, and his precise observations led to his publications becoming authoritative for the classical archaeological sites of the region.

Late Bronze Age tombs in Greece and their attendant mortuary practices have been a topic of scholarly debate for over a century, dominated by the idea of a monolithic culture with the same developmental trajectories throughout the region. This book contributes to that body of scholarship by exploring both the level of variety and of similarity that we see in the practices at each site and thereby highlights the differences between communities that otherwise look very similar. The introduction of wealthy burials in the transition from the Middle Helladic period and the building of elaborate tombs during the Late Bronze Age underscores a long-acknowledged change in cultural importance of burials and their locations for contemporary society. Initially archaeologists were interested in these tombs because of the impressive finds that were discovered in them, but as the body of literature on mortuary rituals has grown more recently these tombs have been utilized as lenses through which we can study the related society in novel ways. By bringing together an international group of scholars working on tombs and cemeteries on mainland Greece, Crete, and in the Dodecanese we are afforded a unique view of the development and diversity of these communities. The papers provide a penetrative analysis of the related issues by discussing tombs connected with sites ranging in size from palaces to towns to villages and in date from the start to the end of the Late Bronze Age. Death in Late Bronze Age Greece contextualizes the mortuary studies in recent debates on diversity at the main palatial and secondary sites and between the economic and political strategies and practices throughout Greece. The papers in the volume illustrate the pervasive connection between the mortuary sphere and society through the creation and expression of cultural narratives, and draw attention to the social tensions played out in the mortuary arena.

In this new edition of Greek and Roman Technology, the authors translate and annotate key passages from ancient texts to provide a history and analysis of the origins and development of technology in the classical world. Sherwood and Nikolic, with Humphrey and Oleson, provide a comprehensive and accessible collection of rich and varied sources to illustrate and elucidate the beginnings of technology. Among the topics covered are energy, basic mechanical devices, hydraulic engineering, household industry, medicine and health, transport and trade, and military technology. This fully revised Sourcebook collects more than 1,300 passages from over 200 ancient sources and a diverse range of literary genres, such as the encyclopaedic Natural History of Pliny the Elder, the poetry of Homer and Hesiod, the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Lucretius, the agricultural treatises of Varro, Columella, and Cato, the military texts of Philo of Byzantium and Aeneas Tacticus, as well as the medical texts of Galen, Celsus, and the Hippocratic Corpus. Almost 100 line drawings, indexes of authors and subjects, introductions outlining the general significance of the evidence, notes to explain the specific details, and current bibliographies are included. This new and revised edition of Greek and Roman Technology will remain an important and vital resource for students of technology in the ancient world, as well as those studying the impact of technological change on classical society.