At night, the darkness of the ancient Agora would have been pierced by the lights of oil lamps, and thousands of fragments of these distinctive objects have been found. This booklet presents the development of different styles of lamps and includes a very useful identification guide. The author discusses the manufacture of lamps in Athens, a major industry with over 50 known workshops in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. She also provides illustrations of particularly fine examples, including ornate festival lamps with many nozzles and bizarre shapes.

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.

A hill dominating the Nemea Valley, Tsoungiza is located only 10 kilometers northwest of the citadel of Mycenae. Excavations there have uncovered the remains of a Late Helladic settlement that stood at its southern end. This volume presents the results of these investigations with an unprecedented study of a small settlement's economy and society in the Mycenaean period. Through an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates a wide variety of general and specialist studies, the authors demonstrate how agricultural production, craft activities, and ceremonial practices integrated the inhabitants of Tsoungiza into a regional exchange system within the Bronze Age world. The volume includes contributions by P. Acheson, S. E. Allen, K. M. Forste, P. Halstead, S. M. A. Hoffmann, A. Karabatsoli, K. Kaza-Papageorgiou, B. Lis, R. Mersereau, H. Mommsen, J. B. Rutter, T. Theodoropoulou, and J. E. Tomlinson.

The languages of the ancient world and the mysterious scripts, long undeciphered, in which they were encoded have represented one of the most intriguing problems of classical archaeology in modern times. This celebrated account of the decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris was written by his close collaborator in the momentous discovery. In revealing the secrets of Linear B it offers a valuable survey of late Minoan and Mycenaean archaeology, uncovering fascinating details of the religion and economic history of an ancient civilisation.

Was the fall of Rome a great catastrophe that cast the West into darkness for centuries to come? Or, as scholars argue today, was there no crisis at all, but simply a peaceful blending of barbarians into Roman culture, an essentially positive transformation?
In The Fall of Rome, eminent historian Bryan Ward-Perkins argues that the "peaceful" theory of Rome's "transformation" is badly in error. Indeed, he sees the fall of Rome as a time of horror and dislocation that destroyed a great civilization, throwing the inhabitants of the West back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times. Attacking contemporary theories with relish and making use of modern archaeological evidence, he looks at both the wider explanations for the disintegration of the Roman world and also the consequences for the lives of everyday Romans, who were caught in a world of marauding barbarians, and economic collapse. The book recaptures the drama and violence of the last days of the Roman world, and reminds us of the very real terrors of barbarian occupation. Equally important, Ward-Perkins contends that a key problem with the new way of looking at the end of the ancient world is that all difficulty and awkwardness is smoothed out into a steady and positive transformation of society. Nothing ever goes badly wrong in this vision of the past. The evidence shows otherwise.
Up-to-date and brilliantly written, combining a lively narrative with the latest research and thirty illustrations, this superb volume reclaims the drama, the violence, and the tragedy of the fall of Rome.

Slavery in ancient Greece was commonplace. In this book Sara Forsdyke uncovers the wide range of experiences of slaves and focuses on their own perspectives, rather than those of their owners, giving a voice to a group that is often rendered silent by the historical record. By reading ancient sources 'against the grain,' and through careful deployment of comparative evidence from more recent slave-owning societies, she demonstrates that slaves engaged in a variety of strategies to deal with their conditions of enslavement, ranging from calculated accommodation to full-scale rebellion. Along the way, she establishes that slaves made a vital contribution to almost all aspects of Greek society. Above all, despite their often brutal treatment, they sometimes displayed great ingenuity in exploiting the tensions and contradictions within the system of slavery.

Over his long and illustrious career as Lecturer, Reader and Professor in Edinburgh University (1961-1976), Lawrence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge (1976-2001) and currently Fellow of the McDonald Institute of Archaeology at Cambridge, Anthony Snodgrass has influenced and been associated with a long series of eminent classical archaeologists, historians and linguists. In acknowledgement of his immense academic achievement, this collection of essays by a range of international scholars reflects his wide-ranging research interests: Greek prehistory, the Greek Iron Age and Archaic era, Greek texts and Archaeology, Classical Art History, societies on the fringes of the Greek and Roman world, and Regional Field Survey. Not only do they celebrate his achievements but they also represent new avenues of research which will have a broad appeal.

This all embracing survey of Pompeii provides the most comprehensive survey of the region available. With contributions by well-known experts in the field, this book studies not only Pompeii, but also - for the first time - the buried surrounding cities of Campania. The World of Pompeii includes the latest understanding of the region, based on the up-to-date findings of recent archaeological work. Accompanied by a CD with the most detailed map of Pompeii so far, this book is instrumental in studying the city in the ancient world and is an excellent source book for students of this fascinating and tragic geographic region.

The kilns at Morgantina, site of the well-known excavations in central Sicily, are an outstanding example of multiple potters' workshops in use during the late Hellenistic period. In fully documenting these ten kilns, excavated between 1955 and 1963, Ninina Cuomo di Caprio offers both a representative cross-section of the physical setting of ceramic production in this ancient Greek city and evidence for its daily industrial activity. She includes detailed plans and section drawings of each kiln and formulates hypotheses on its operation in light of modern thermodynamics. The text, which is in Italian, is preceded by an English-language summary. Cuomo di Caprio's archaeological study of the kiln structures and their ceramic products is supplemented by such diagnostic tools as thermoluminescence analysis, neutron activation analysis, X-ray diffraction, and optical examination by polarizing microscope. Opening an entirely new window into the everyday working practices of the Morgantina potters, this study demonstrates that they operated at a very sophisticated level: selecting and purifying specific clays, and adding certain materials to manipulate their working and firing characteristics. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

How do we interpret ancient art created before written texts? Scholars usually put ancient art into conversation with ancient texts in order to interpret its meaning. But for earlier periods without texts, such as in the Bronze Age Aegean, this method is redundant. Using cutting-edge theory from art history, archaeology, and anthropology, Carl Knappett offers a new approach to this problem by identifying distinct actions - such as modelling, combining, and imprinting - whereby meaning is scaffolded through the materials themselves. By showing how these actions work in the context of specific bodies of material, Knappett brings to life the fascinating art of Minoan Crete and surrounding areas in novel ways. With a special focus on how creativity manifests itself in these processes, he makes an argument for not just how creativity emerges through specific material engagements but also why creativity might be especially valued at particular moments.

In this book, Philip Kiernan explores how cult images functioned in Roman temples from the Iron Age to Late Antiquity in the Roman west. He demonstrates how and why a temple's idols, were more important to ritual than other images such as votive offerings and decorative sculpture. These idols were seen by many to be divine and possessed of agency. They were, thus, the primary focus of worship. Aided by cross-cultural comparative material, Kiernan's study brings a biographical approach to explore the 'lives' of idols and cult images - how they were created, housed in temples, used and worshipped, and eventually destroyed or buried. He also shows how the status of cult images could change, how new idols and other cult images were being continuously created, and how, in each phase of their lives, we find evidence for the significant power of idols.

In the Greek Classical period, the symposium-the social gathering at which male citizens gathered to drink wine and engage in conversation-was held in a room called the andron. From couches set up around the perimeter, symposiasts looked inward to the room's center, which often was decorated with a pebble mosaic floor. These mosaics provided visual treats for the guests, presenting them with images of mythological scenes, exotic flora, dangerous beasts, hunting parties, or the spectre of Dionysos: the god of wine, riding in his chariot or on the back of a panther. In The World Underfoot, Hallie M. Franks takes as her subject these mosaics and the context of their viewing. Relying on discourses in the sociology and anthropology of space, she presents an innovative new interpretation of the mosaic imagery as an active contributor to the symposium as a metaphorical experience. Franks argues that the images on mosaic floors, combined with the ritualized circling of the wine cup and the physiological reaction to wine during the symposium, would have called to mind other images, spaces, or experiences, and in doing so, prompted drinkers to reimagine the symposium as another kind of event-a nautical voyage, a journey to a foreign land, the circling heavens or a choral dance, or the luxury of an abundant past. Such spatial metaphors helped to forge the intimate bonds of friendship that are the ideal result of the symposium and that make up the political and social fabric of the Greek polis.

A comprehensive and richly illustrated history of one of the most important athletic, religious, and political sites in the ancient Greek and Roman world The memory of ancient Olympia lives on in the form of the modern Olympic Games. But in the ancient era, Olympia was renowned for far more than its athletic contests. In Olympia, Judith Barringer provides a comprehensive and richly illustrated history of one of the most important sites in the ancient Greek and Roman world, where athletic competitions took place alongside-and were closely connected with-crucial religious and political activities. Barringer describes the development of the Altis, the most sacred area of Olympia, where monuments to athletes successful in the games joined those erected to the gods and battlefield victories. Rival city-states and rulers built monuments to establish eminence, tout alliances, and join this illustrious company in a rich intergenerational dialogue. The political importance of Olympia was matched by its place as the largest sanctuary dedicated to Zeus, king of the gods. Befitting Zeus's role as god of warfare, the Olympian oracle was consulted to ensure good omens for war, and the athletic games embodied the fierce competition of battle. Other gods and heroes were worshipped at Olympia too, Hera, Artemis, and Herakles among them. Drawing on a comprehensive knowledge of the archaeological record, Barringer describes the full span of Olympia's history, from the first monumental building around 600 BC to the site's gradual eclipse in the late Christianized Roman empire. Extensively illustrated with maps and diagrams, Olympia brings the development of Olympia vividly to life for modern readers.

Rome's Capitoline Hill was the smallest of the Seven Hills of Rome. Yet in the long history of the Roman state it was the empire's holy mountain. The hill was the setting of many of Rome's most beloved stories, involving Aeneas, Romulus, Tarpeia, and Manlius. It also held significant monuments, including the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, a location that marked the spot where Jupiter made the hill his earthly home in the age before humanity. This is the first book that follows the history of the Capitoline Hill into late antiquity and the early middle ages, asking what happened to a holy mountain as the empire that deemed it thus became a Christian republic. This is not a history of the hill's tonnage of marble and gold bedecked monuments, but rather an investigation into how the hill was used, imagined, and known from the third to the seventh centuries CE. During this time, the imperial triumph and other processions to the top of the hill were no longer enacted. But the hill persisted as a densely populated urban zone and continued to supply a bridge to fragmented memories of an increasingly remote past through its toponyms. This book is also about a series of Christian engagements with the Capitoline Hill's different registers of memory, the transmission and dissection of anecdotes, and the invention of alternate understandings of the hill's role in Roman history. What lingered long after the state's disintegration in the fifth century were the hill's associations with the raw power of Rome's empire.

The Roman world was diverse and complex. And so were religious understandings and practices as mirrored in the enormous variety presented by archaeological, iconographic, and epigraphic evidence. Conventional approaches principally focus on the political role of civic cults as a means of social cohesion, often considered to be instrumentalised by elites. But by doing so, religious diversity is frequently overlooked, marginalising ‘deviating’ cult activities that do not fit the Classical canon, as well as the multitude of funerary practices and other religious activities that were all part of everyday life. In the Roman Empire, a person’s religious experiences were shaped by many and sometimes seemingly incompatible cult practices, whereby the ‘civic’ and ‘imperial’ cults might have had the least impact of all. The authors rethink these methodologies, arguing for a more dynamic image of religion that takes into account the varied and often contradictory choices and actions of individual, which reflects the discrepant religious experiences in the Roman world. Is it possible to ‘poke into the mind’ of an individual in Roman times, whatever his/her status and ethnicity, and try to understand the individual’s diverse experiences in such a complex, interconnected empire, exploring the choices that were open to an individual? This also raises the question whether the concept of individuality is valid for Roman times. In some periods, the impact of individual actions can be more momentous: the very first adoption of Roman-style sculpture, cult practices or Latin theonyms for indigenous deities can set in motion long-term processes that will significantly influence people’s perceptions of local deities, their characteristics, and functions. Do individual choices and preferences prevail over collective identities in the Roman Empire compared to pre-Roman times? To examine these questions, this volume presents case studies that analyse individual actions in the religious sphere.

Second Edition

"MacKendrick writes so enthusiastically that all laymen who have a serious interest in scholarship and antiquity will delight in following his story." —New York Times Book Review

"An intelligible, well-told tale that recounts . . . what excavators and scholars using the full repertory of modern skills and techniques have in recent years discovered about the remains of an ancient civilization in Italy and what the discoveries mean." —C. H. Kraeling

The Roman Empire is widely admired as a model of civilisation. In this compelling new study Neil Faulkner argues that in fact, it was nothing more than a ruthless system of robbery and violence. War was used to enrich the state, the imperial ruling classes and favoured client groups. In the process millions of people were killed or enslaved.

Within the empire the landowning elite creamed off the wealth of the countryside to pay taxes to the state and fund the towns and villas where they lived. The masses of people - slaves, serfs and poor peasants - were victims of a grand exploitation that made the empire possible. This system, riddled with tension and latent conflict, contained the seeds of its own eventual collapse.

This is the last of five volumes presenting inscriptions discovered in the Athenian Agora between 1931 and 1967. Published here are inscriptions on monuments commemorating events or victories, on statues or other representations erected to honor individuals and deities, and on votive offerings to divinities. Most are dated to between the 4th century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D., but a few survive from the Archaic and Late Roman periods. A final section contains monuments that are potentially, but not certainly, dedicatory in character, and a small number of grave markers omitted from Agora XVII. Each of the 773 catalogue entries includes a description of the object inscribed, bibliography, a transcription of the Greek text, and commentary. There are photographs of each piece of which no adequate illustration has yet been published, including newly joined fragments. The volume concludes with concordances, bibliography, and an index of persons named in the inscriptions.

This book, built around the study of the representation of age and identity in 23,000 Latin funerary epitaphs from the Western Mediterranean in the Roman era, sets out how the use of age in inscriptions, and in turn, time, varied across this region. Discrepancies between the use of time to represent identity in death allow readers to begin to understand the differences between the cultures of Roman Italy and contemporary societies in North Africa, Spain, and southern Gaul. The analysis focuses on the timescapes of cemeteries, a key urban phenomenon, in relation to other markers of time, including the Roman invention of the birthday, the revering of the dead at the Parentalia and the topoi of life's stages. In doing so, the book contributes to our understanding of gender, the city, the family, the role of the military, freed slaves, and cultural change during this period. The concept of the timescape is seen to have varied geographically across the Mediterranean, bringing into question claims of cultural unity for the Western Mediterranean as a region. Mediterranean Timescapes is of interest to students and scholars of Roman history and archaeology, particularly that of the Western Mediterranean, and ancient social history.

Classica et Mediaevalia is an international periodical with articles written by Danish and foreign scholars. They are mainly published in English, but sometimes in French and German as well. From a philological point of view, the periodical deals with Classical Antiquity in general and topics such as history of law, philosophy, and medieval ecclesiastic history. It covers the period from Greek-Roman Antiquity until the Late Middle Ages. Contents include: 'Reflecting (In)Justice' in the Republic's Line and Cave: Thrasymachus and Plato's Level of eikasia * Quorum in the People's Assembly in Classical Athens * Nektanebo in the Vita Aesopi and in Other Narratives * Chalcidian Politicians and Rome between 208 and 168 BC * Rewriting Dido: Ovid, Vergil and the Epistula Didonis ad Aeneam (AL 71 SB) * Seneca on Platonic Apatheia * Octavia and Renaissance Tragedy from Trissino to Shakespeare * A Dramatic Afterlife: The Byzantines on Ancient Drama and Its Authors * Nine Unidentified Verses in the

In the spring of 1900, British archaeologist Arthur Evans began to excavate the palace of Knossos on Crete, bringing ancient Greek legends to life just as a new century dawned amid far-reaching questions about human history, art, and culture. With "Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism," Cathy Gere relates the fascinating story of Evans's excavation and its long-term effects on Western culture. After the World War I left the Enlightenment dream in tatters, the lost paradise that Evans offered in the concrete labyrinth--pacifist and matriarchal, pagan and cosmic--seemed to offer a new way forward for writers, artists, and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Graves, and Hilda Doolittle.

Assembling a brilliant, talented, and eccentric cast at a moment of tremendous intellectual vitality and wrenching change, Cathy Gere paints an unforgettable portrait of the age of concrete and the birth of modernism.

This volume includes: Daniel Koelligen, " , The Watchdog"; Richard L. Phillips, "Invisibility and Sight in Homer: Some Aspects of A. S. Pease Reconsidered"; Antonio Tibiletti, "Pondering Pindaric Superlatives in Context"; Matthew Hiscock, " : A 'Mot Fort' in the Discourse of Classical Athens"; James T. Clark, "Off-Stage Cries? The Performance of Sophocles' Philoctetes 201-218, Trachiniae 863-870, and Euripides' Electra 747-760"; Giuseppe Pezzini, "Terence and the Speculum Vitae: 'Realism' and (Roman) Comedy"; Neil O'Sullivan, "Quotations from Epicurean Philosophy and Greek Tragedy in Three Letters of Cicero"; Ernesto Paparazzo, "A Study of Varro's Account of Roman Civil Theology in the Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum and Its Reception by Augustine and Modern Readers"; Joseph P. Dexter and Pramit Chaudhuri, "Dardanio Anchisae: Hiatus, Homer, and Intermetricality in the Aeneid"; Michael A. Tueller, "Dido the Author: Epigram and the Aeneid"; Benjamin Victor, Nancy Duval, and Isabelle Chouinard, "Subordinating si and ni in Virgil: Some Characteristic Uses, with Remarks on Aeneid 6.882-883"; Richard Gaskin, "On Being Pessimistic about the End of the Aeneid"; Gregory R. Mellen, "Num Delenda est Karthago? Metrical Wordplay and the Text of Horace Odes 4.8"; Kyle Gervais, "Dominoque legere superstes? Epic and Empire at the End of the Thebaid"; D. Clint Burnett, "Temple Sharing and Throne Sharing: A Reconsideration of and in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods"; Charles H. Cosgrove, "Semi-Lyrical Reading of Greek Poetry in Late Antiquity"; Byron MacDougall, "Better Recognize: Anagnorisis in Gregory of Nazianzus's First Invective against Julian"; Alan Cameron, "Jerome and the Historia Augusta"; Jessica H. Clark, "Adfirmare and Appeals to Authority in Servius Danielis"; and Jarrett T. Welsh, "Nonius Marcellus and the Source Called 'Gloss. i.'"

The human race is on a 10,000 year urban adventure. Our ancestors wandered the planet or lived scattered in villages, yet by the end of this century almost all of us will live in cities. But that journey has not been a smooth one and urban civilizations have risen and fallen many times in history. The ruins of many of them still enchant us. This book tells the story of the rise and fall of ancient cities from the end of the Bronze Age to the beginning of the Middle Ages. It is a tale of war and politics, pestilence and famine, triumph and tragedy, by turns both fabulous and squalid. Its focus is on the ancient Mediterranean: Greeks and Romans at the centre, but Phoenicians and Etruscans, Persians, Gauls, and Egyptians all play a part. The story begins with the Greek discovery of much more ancient urban civilizations in Egypt and the Near East, and charts the gradual spread of urbanism to the Atlantic and then the North Sea in the centuries that followed. The ancient Mediterranean, where our story begins, was a harsh environment for urbanism. So how were cities first created, and then sustained for so long, in these apparently unpromising surroundings? How did they feed themselves, where did they find water and building materials, and what did they do with their waste and their dead? Why, in the end, did their rulers give up on them? And what it was like to inhabit urban worlds so unlike our own - cities plunged into darkness every night, cities dominated by the temples of the gods, cities of farmers, cities of slaves, cities of soldiers. Ultimately, the chief characters in the story are the cities themselves. Athens and Sparta, Persepolis and Carthage, Rome and Alexandria: cities that formed great families. Their story encompasses the history of the generations of people who built and inhabited them, whose short lives left behind monuments that have inspired city builders ever since - and whose ruins stand as stark reminders to the 21st century of the perils as well as the potential rewards of an urban existence.

"The Legend of Alexander the Great on Greek and Roman Coins" will for the first time collect, present and examine the portraits and representations of Alexander the Great on ancient coins of the Greek and Roman periods (c.320 BC to AD 400). It offers a firsthand insight into the posthumous appreciation of his legend by Hellenistic kings, Greek cities, and Roman Emperors. Dahmen combines an introduction to the historical background and basic information on the coins with a comprehensive study of Alexander's numismatic iconography. He also discusses in detail examples of coins with Alexander's portrait. Which are part of a selective presentation of representative coin types in the second part of the study (in which an image and discussion is combined with a characteristic quotation of a source from ancient historiography and a short bibliographical reference).
The numismatic material presented, although representative, will exceed any previously published work on the subject. This book will be useful for classicists, archaeologists, historians and art historians and students.