front cover of Dangerous Counsel
Dangerous Counsel
Accountability and Advice in Ancient Greece
Matthew Landauer
University of Chicago Press, 2019
We often talk loosely of the “tyranny of the majority” as a threat to the workings of democracy. But, in ancient Greece, the analogy of demos and tyrant was no mere metaphor, nor a simple reflection of elite prejudice. Instead, it highlighted an important structural feature of Athenian democracy. Like the tyrant, the Athenian demos was an unaccountable political actor with the power to hold its subordinates to account. And like the tyrant, the demos could be dangerous to counsel since the orator speaking before the assembled demos was accountable for the advice he gave.
           
With Dangerous Counsel, Matthew Landauer analyzes the sometimes ferocious and unpredictable politics of accountability in ancient Greece and offers novel readings of ancient history, philosophy, rhetoric, and drama. In comparing the demos to a tyrant, thinkers such as Herodotus, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristophanes were attempting to work out a theory of the badness of unaccountable power; to understand the basic logic of accountability and why it is difficult to get right; and to explore the ways in which political discourse is profoundly shaped by institutions and power relationships. In the process they created strikingly portable theories of counsel and accountability that traveled across political regime types and remain relevant to our contemporary political dilemmas.
 
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Dangerous Gifts
Gender and Exchange in Ancient Greece
By Deborah Lyons
University of Texas Press, 2012

Deianeira sends her husband Herakles a poisoned robe. Eriphyle trades the life of her husband Amphiaraos for a golden necklace. Atreus’s wife Aerope gives away the token of his sovereignty, a lamb with a golden fleece, to his brother Thyestes, who has seduced her. Gifts and exchanges always involve a certain risk in any culture, but in the ancient Greek imagination, women and gifts appear to be a particularly deadly combination.

This book explores the role of gender in exchange as represented in ancient Greek culture, including Homeric epic and tragedy, non-literary texts, and iconographic and historical evidence of various kinds. Using extensive insights from anthropological work on marriage, kinship, and exchange, as well as ethnographic parallels from other traditional societies, Deborah Lyons probes the gendered division of labor among both gods and mortals, the role of marriage (and its failure) in transforming women from objects to agents of exchange, the equivocal nature of women as exchange-partners, and the importance of the sister-brother bond in understanding the economic and social place of women in ancient Greece. Her findings not only enlarge our understanding of social attitudes and practices in Greek antiquity but also demonstrate the applicability of ethnographic techniques and anthropological theory to the study of ancient societies.

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Dante's Epistle to Cangrande
Robert Hollander
University of Michigan Press, 1994
Dante's epistle to Can Grande de la Scala seemingly provides keys to the Divine Comedy; hence it has posed awkward problems for many students of the poet. On one hand, those who discount "authorial intention" are confronted with Dante's own reading of his poem, an apparently explicit statement of his intentions. On the other, the epistle offers information on how to interpret the poem's allegorical elements, which are at odds with modern sensibilities.

In Dante's Epistle to Cangrande Robert Hollander commandingly marshals new evidence to demonstrate that the epistle should be considered authentically Dantean. He further provides enlightening discussion of the nature of tragedy and comedy in the Divine Comedy. The author draws authoritatively on the extensive array of medieval and modern commentaries stored in electronic form by the Dartmouth Dante Project, of which he is the director.

Dante's Epistle to Cangrande makes a signal contribution to Dante studies. Naturally of interest to students of Dante's work, it will also be important reading for those concerned with literary critical questions such as authorial intent, programmatic statements, and allegorical interpretations of literature.
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Darius in the Shadow of Alexander
Pierre Briant
Harvard University Press, 2015

The last of Cyrus the Great’s dynastic inheritors and the legendary enemy of Alexander the Great, Darius III ruled over a Persian Empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indus River. Yet, despite being the most powerful king of his time, Darius remains an obscure figure.

As Pierre Briant explains in the first book ever devoted to the historical memory of Darius III, the little that is known of him comes primarily from Greek and Roman sources, which often present him in an unflattering light, as a decadent Oriental who lacked the masculine virtues of his Western adversaries. Influenced by the Alexander Romance as they are, even the medieval Persian sources are not free of harsh prejudices against the king Dārā, whom they deemed deficient in the traditional kingly virtues. Ancient Classical accounts construct a man who is in every respect Alexander’s opposite—feeble-minded, militarily inept, addicted to pleasure, and vain. When Darius’s wife and children are captured by Alexander’s forces at the Battle of Issos, Darius is ready to ransom his entire kingdom to save them—a devoted husband and father, perhaps, but a weak king.

While Darius seems doomed to be a footnote in the chronicle of Alexander’s conquests, in one respect it is Darius who has the last laugh. For after Darius’s defeat in 331 BCE, Alexander is described by historians as becoming ever more like his vanquished opponent: a Darius-like sybarite prone to unmanly excess.

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The Dawn of Christianity
People and Gods in a Time of Magic and Miracles
Robert Knapp
Harvard University Press, 2017

Ordinary people of antiquity interacted with the supernatural through a mosaic of beliefs and rituals. Exploring everyday life from 200 BCE to the end of the first century CE, Robert Knapp shows that Jews and polytheists lived with the gods in very similar ways. Traditional interactions provided stability even in times of crisis, while changing a relationship risked catastrophe for the individual, his family, and his community. However, people in both traditions did at times leave behind their long-honored rites to try something new. The Dawn of Christianity reveals why some people in Judea and then in the Roman and Greek worlds embraced a new approach to the forces and powers in their daily lives.

Knapp traces the emergence of Christianity from its stirrings in the eastern Mediterranean, where Jewish monotheism coexisted with polytheism and prayer mixed with magic. In a time receptive to prophetic messages and supernatural interventions, Jesus of Nazareth convinced people to change their beliefs by showing, through miracles, his direct connection to god-like power. The miracle of the Resurrection solidified Jesus’s supernatural credentials. After his death, followers continued to use miracles and magic to spread Jesus’s message of reward for the righteous in this life and immortality in the next.

Many Jews and polytheists strongly opposed the budding movement but despite major setbacks Christianity proved resilient and adaptable. It survived long enough to be saved by a second miracle, the conversion of Emperor Constantine. Hand in hand with empire, Christianity began its long march through history.

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De Causis Plantarum, Volume I
Books 1–2
Theophrastus
Harvard University Press, 1976

The first fruits of Greek botany.

Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.

In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.

In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.

Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.

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De Causis Plantarum, Volume II
Books 3–4
Theophrastus
Harvard University Press, 1976

The first fruits of Greek botany.

Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.

In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.

In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.

Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.

[more]

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De Causis Plantarum, Volume III
Books 5–6
Theophrastus
Harvard University Press, 1976

The first fruits of Greek botany.

Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.

In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.

In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.

Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.

[more]

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Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt
John H. Taylor
University of Chicago Press, 2001
Of all the ancient peoples, the Egyptians are perhaps best known for the fascinating ways in which they grappled with the mysteries of death and the afterlife. This beautifully illustrated book draws on the British Museum's world-famous collection of mummies and other funerary evidence to offer an accessible account of Egyptian beliefs in an afterlife and examine the ways in which Egyptian society responded materially to the challenges these beliefs imposed.

The author describes in detail the numerous provisions made for the dead and the intricate rituals carried out on their behalf. He considers embalming, coffins and sarcophagi, shabti figures, magic and ritual, and amulets and papyri, as well as the mummification of sacred animals, which were buried by the millions in vast labyrinthine catacombs.

The text also reflects recent developments in the interpretation of Egyptian burial practices, and incorporates the results of much new scientific research. Newly acquired information derives from a range of sophisticated applications, such as the use of noninvasive imaging techniques to look inside the wrappings of a mummy, and the chemical analysis of materials used in the embalming process. Authoritative, concise, and lucidly written, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt illuminates aspects of this complex, vibrant culture that still perplex us more than 3,000 years later.
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Death by Philosophy
The Biographical Tradition in the Life and Death of the Archaic Philosophers Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus
Ava Chitwood
University of Michigan Press, 2004

How does one die by philosophy? In Diogenes Laertius, philosophers jump into volcanoes, bury themselves in dung, get eaten by dogs, hang themselves, drown, and vanish into thin air -- sometimes all in a single lifetime. But what happens when we look beyond the fantastic and absurd to examine the particular ways that the philosophers' lives and deaths are recounted?
Ava Chitwood's reexamination of Diogenes Laertius's philosophical biographies opens a new window on the intellectual culture and context in which the work of philosophers like Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus was read, received, and transmitted. Chitwood's analysis also suggests a methodology for understanding the interplay between biography and philosophy and for evaluating biographical sources.
While Chitwood's approach combines the disciplines of classical philology and philosophy, Death by Philosophy is not intended solely for the specialist. This investigation offers the modern reader a fascinating, fresh, and entertaining view of the ancient literary and philosophical world.
Ava Chitwood is Assistant Professor of Classics, at the University of South Florida.
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The Death of Socrates
Emily Wilson
Harvard University Press, 2007

There were heroic lives and deaths before and after, but none quite like Socrates'. He did not die by sword or spear, braving all to defend home and country, but as a condemned criminal, swallowing a painless dose of poison. And yet Socrates' death in 399 BCE has figured large in our world ever since, shaping how we think about heroism and celebrity, religion and family life, state control and individual freedom, the distance of intellectual life from daily activity--many of the key coordinates of Western culture. In this book Emily Wilson analyzes the enormous and enduring power the trial and death of Socrates has exerted over the Western imagination.

Beginning with the accounts of contemporaries like Aristophanes, Xenophon, and, above all, Plato, the book offers a comprehensive look at the death of Socrates as both a historical event and a controversial cultural ideal. Wilson shows how Socrates' death--more than his character, actions, or philosophical beliefs--has played an essential role in his story. She considers literary, philosophical, and artistic works--by Cicero, Erasmus, Milton, Voltaire, Hegel, and Brecht, among others--that used the death of Socrates to discuss power, politics, religion, the life of the mind, and the good life. As highly readable as it is deeply learned, her book combines vivid descriptions, critical insights, and breadth of research to explore how Socrates' death--especially his seeming ability to control it--has mattered so much, for so long, to so many different people.

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Declamations, Volume I
Controversiae, Books 1–6
Seneca the Elder
Harvard University Press, 1974

Mock trial—Roman style.

Roman secondary education aimed principally at training future lawyers and politicians. Under the late Republic and the Empire, the main instrument was an import from Greece: declamation, the making of practice speeches on imaginary subjects. There were two types of such speeches: controversiae on law-court themes, suasoriae on deliberative topics. On both types a prime source of our knowledge is the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a Spaniard from Cordoba, father of the distinguished philosopher. Towards the end of his long life (?55 BC–?AD 40) he collected together ten books devoted to controversiae (some only preserved in excerpt) and at least one (surviving) of suasoriae. These books contained his memories of the famous rhetorical teachers and practitioners of his day: their lines of argument, their methods of approach, their idiosyncrasies, and above all their epigrams. The extracts from the declaimers, though scrappy, throw invaluable light on the influences that colored the styles of most pagan (and many Christian) writers of the Empire. Unity is provided by Seneca’s own contribution, the lively prefaces, engaging anecdotes about speakers, writers, and politicians, and brisk criticism of declamatory excess.

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Declamations, Volume II
Controversiae, Books 7–10. Suasoriae. Fragments
Seneca the Elder
Harvard University Press

Mock trial—Roman style.

Roman secondary education aimed principally at training future lawyers and politicians. Under the late Republic and the Empire, the main instrument was an import from Greece: declamation, the making of practice speeches on imaginary subjects. There were two types of such speeches: controversiae on law-court themes, suasoriae on deliberative topics. On both types a prime source of our knowledge is the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a Spaniard from Cordoba, father of the distinguished philosopher. Towards the end of his long life (?55 BC–?AD 40) he collected together ten books devoted to controversiae (some only preserved in excerpt) and at least one (surviving) of suasoriae. These books contained his memories of the famous rhetorical teachers and practitioners of his day: their lines of argument, their methods of approach, their idiosyncrasies, and above all their epigrams. The extracts from the declaimers, though scrappy, throw invaluable light on the influences that colored the styles of most pagan (and many Christian) writers of the Empire. Unity is provided by Seneca’s own contribution, the lively prefaces, engaging anecdotes about speakers, writers, and politicians, and brisk criticism of declamatory excess.

[more]

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The Deipnosophists, Volume VI
Books 13–14.653b
Athenaeus
Harvard University Press

Athenaeus (ca. 170–ca. 230 CE), a Greek of Naucratis in Egypt, lived in Rome and wrote a historical work now lost. Of the fifteen books of his surviving Deipnosophists ('Sophists at Dinner'), the first two and parts of the third, eleventh, and fifteenth exist only in summary, the rest apparently complete. In it he pretends to tell a friend about a banquet at a scholar's house whither the learned guests brought extracts from poetry for recitation and discussion. Much of the matter however concerns the food provided and accessories. One learns about cooks, strange dishes, wines, menu cards, and countless other matters. Athenaeus was an antiquarian. The whole work, which mentions nearly eight hundred writers and two thousand five hundred writings, is a large treasury of information not only about table matters but also music, dances, games, and all sorts of literary subjects. And it abounds in quotations, mostly made direct by Athenaeus himself, from authors whose writings have not survived.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of The Deipnosophists is in seven volumes. There is a comprehensive index in the final volume.

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The Deipnosophists, Volume VII
Books 14.653b-15
Athenaeus
Harvard University Press

Athenaeus (ca. 170–ca. 230 CE), a Greek of Naucratis in Egypt, lived in Rome and wrote a historical work now lost. Of the fifteen books of his surviving Deipnosophists ('Sophists at Dinner'), the first two and parts of the third, eleventh, and fifteenth exist only in summary, the rest apparently complete. In it he pretends to tell a friend about a banquet at a scholar's house whither the learned guests brought extracts from poetry for recitation and discussion. Much of the matter however concerns the food provided and accessories. One learns about cooks, strange dishes, wines, menu cards, and countless other matters. Athenaeus was an antiquarian. The whole work, which mentions nearly eight hundred writers and two thousand five hundred writings, is a large treasury of information not only about table matters but also music, dances, games, and all sorts of literary subjects. And it abounds in quotations, mostly made direct by Athenaeus himself, from authors whose writings have not survived.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of The Deipnosophists is in seven volumes. There is a comprehensive index in the final volume.

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Democracy Ancient and Modern
Finley, M. I.
Rutgers University Press, 2019
Western democracy is now at a critical juncture. Some worry that power has been wrested from the people and placed in the hands of a small political elite. Others argue that the democratic system gives too much power to a populace that is largely ill-informed and easily swayed by demagogues.
 
This classic study of democratic principles is thus now more relevant than ever. A renowned historian of antiquity and political philosophy, Sir M.I. Finley offers a comparative analysis of Greek and modern conceptions of democracy. As he puts the ancient Greeks in dialogue with their contemporary counterparts, Finley tackles some of the most pressing issues of our day, including public apathy, partisanship, consensus politics, distrust of professional politicians, and the limits of free speech.
 
Including three lectures that Finley delivered at Rutgers University, plus two additional essays that further illuminate his thinking, Democracy Ancient and Modern explores the dramatic differences between the close-knit civil society of the ancient Greeks and our own atomized mass societies. By mapping out democracy’s past and its present manifestations, this book helps us plot a course for democracy’s future.  
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Democracy and Classical Greece
Second Edition
J. K. Davies
Harvard University Press, 1993
The art of classical Greece, and its political and philosophical ideas, have had a profound influence on Western civilization. It was in the fifth and fourth centuries BC that this Greek culture—material, political and intellectual—reached its zenith. At the same time, the Greek states were at their most powerful and quarrelsome. J. K. Davies traces the flowering of this extraordinary society, drawing on a wealth of documentary material: houses and graves, extant sculpture and vases, as well as the writings of historians, orators, biographers, dramatists, and philosophers.
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Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens
Deborah Boedeker
Harvard University Press, 1998

Athens in the fifth century B.C. offers a striking picture: the first democracy in history; the first empire created and ruled by a Greek city; and a flourishing of learning, philosophical thought, and visual and performing arts so rich as to leave a remarkable heritage for Western civilization. To what extent were these three parallel developments interrelated? An international group of fourteen scholars expert in different fields explores here the ways in which the fifth-century "cultural revolution" depended on Athenian democracy and the ways it was influenced by the fact that Athens was an imperial city.

The authors bring to this analysis their individual areas of expertise--in the visual arts, poetry and drama, philosophy, archaeology, religion, and social, economic, and political history--and a variety of theoretical approaches. The product of a colloquium at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens sheds new light on a much debated question that has wide implications. The book is illustrated and enriched by a comprehensive bibliography on the subject.

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Democracy’s Slaves
A Political History of Ancient Greece
Paulin Ismard
Harvard University Press, 2017

The ancient Greek statesman is a familiar figure in the Western political tradition. Less well known is the administrator who ran the state but who was himself a slave. Challenging the modern belief that democracy and bondage are incompatible, Paulin Ismard directs our attention to the cradle of Western democracy, ancient Athens, where the functioning of civic government depended crucially on highly skilled experts who were literally public servants—slaves owned by the city-state rather than by private citizens.

Known as dēmosioi, these public slaves filled a variety of important roles in Athenian society. They were court clerks, archivists, administrators, accountants, and policemen. Many possessed knowledge and skills beyond the attainments of average citizens, and they enjoyed privileges, such as the right to own property, that were denied to private slaves. In effect, dēmosioi were Western civilization’s first civil servants—though they carried out their duties in a condition of bound servitude.

Ismard detects a radical split between politics and administrative government at the heart of Athenian democracy. The city-state’s managerial caste freed citizens from the day-to-day responsibilities of running the state. By the same token, these public servants were unable to participate in the democratic process because they lacked the rights of full citizenship. By rendering the state’s administrators politically invisible, Athens warded off the specter of a government capable of turning against the citizens’ will. In a real sense, Ismard shows, Athenian citizens put the success of their democratic experiment in the hands of slaves.

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Democratic Law in Classical Athens
By Michael Gagarin
University of Texas Press, 2020

The democratic legal system created by the Athenians was completely controlled by ordinary citizens, with no judges, lawyers, or jurists involved. It placed great importance on the litigants’ rhetorical performances. Did this make it nothing more than a rhetorical contest judged by largely uneducated citizens that had nothing to do with law, a criticism that some, including Plato, have made?

Michael Gagarin argues to the contrary, contending that the Athenians both controlled litigants’ performances and incorporated many other unusual features into their legal system, including rules for interrogating slaves and swearing an oath. The Athenians, Gagarin shows, adhered to the law as they understood it, which was a set of principles more flexible than our current understanding allows. The Athenians also insisted that their legal system serve the ends of justice and benefit the city and its people. In this way, the law ultimately satisfied most Athenians and probably produced just results as often as modern legal systems do. Comprehensive and wide-ranging, Democratic Law in Classical Athens offers a new perspective for viewing a legal system that was democratic in a way only the Athenians could achieve.

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Democratic Swarms
Ancient Comedy and the Politics of the People
Page duBois
University of Chicago Press, 2022
Considers how ancient Greek comedy offers a model for present-day politics.
 
With Democratic Swarms, Page duBois revisits the role of Greek comedy in ancient politics, considering how it has been overlooked as a political medium by modern theorists and critics. Moving beyond the popular readings of ancient Greece through the lens of tragedy, she calls for a revitalized look at Greek comedy. Rather than revisiting the sufferings of Oedipus and his family or tragedy’s relationship to questions of sovereignty, this book calls for comedy—its laughter, its free speech, its wild swarming animal choruses, and its rebellious women—to inform another model of democracy.
 
Ancient comedy has been underplayed in the study of Greek drama. Yet, with the irrepressible energy of the comic swarm, it provides a unique perspective on everyday life, gender and sexuality, and the utopian politics of the classical period of Athenian democracy. Using the concepts of swarm intelligence and nomadic theory, duBois augments tragic thought with the resistant, utopian, libidinous, and often joyous communal legacy of comedy, and she connects the lively anti-authoritarianism of the ancient comic chorus with the social justice movements of today.
 
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Demons and Dancers
Performance in Late Antiquity
Ruth Webb
Harvard University Press, 2008

Compared to the wealth of information available to us about classical tragedy and comedy, not much is known about the culture of pantomime, mime, and dance in late antiquity. Charges of obscenity and polemical anti-theater discourse have, at times, erased these popular performance traditions from the modern imagination. Demons and Dancers returns us to the times and places where those great ancient theaters were more than picturesque ruins dotting the Mediterranean landscape.

Ruth Webb fills this gap in our knowledge of the ancient world and provides us with a richly detailed look at social life in the late antique period through an investigation of its performance culture. The book focuses on the eastern empire, from Greece proper to modern-day Turkey and Egypt, between the second and sixth centuries CE. Using some of the tools provided by modern performance theory, this book explains how audiences interpreted the actions on stage, how the status of male and female performers shifted across time and place, how skilled the actors actually were (it was commonplace to dismiss these performers for their lack of skill), and what role spectacles involving spoken and sung words, as well as stylized gestures, had in Greco-Roman civic life.

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Description of Greece, Volume I
Books 1–2 (Attica and Corinth)
Pausanias
Harvard University Press, 2004

Antiquity’s original travel guide.

Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.

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Description of Greece, Volume II
Books 3–5 (Laconia, Messenia, Elis 1)
Pausanias
Harvard University Press

Antiquity’s original travel guide.

Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.

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Description of Greece, Volume III
Books 6–8.21 (Elis 2, Achaia, Arcadia)
Pausanias
Harvard University Press

Antiquity’s original travel guide.

Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.

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Description of Greece, Volume IV
Books 8.22–10 (Arcadia, Boeotia, Phocis and Ozolian Locri)
Pausanias
Harvard University Press

Antiquity’s original travel guide.

Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.

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Description of Greece, Volume V
Maps, Plans, Illustrations, and General Index
Pausanias
Harvard University Press

Antiquity’s original travel guide.

Pausanias, born probably in Lydia in Asia Minor, was a Greek of the second century AD, about 120–180, who traveled widely not only in Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, but also in Greece and in Italy, including Rome. He left a description of Greece in ten books, which is like a topographical guidebook or tour of Attica, the Peloponnese, and central Greece, filled out with historical accounts and events and digressions on facts and wonders of nature. His chief interest was in monuments of art and architecture, especially the most famous of them; the accuracy of his descriptions is proved by surviving remains.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Pausanias is in five volumes; the fifth volume contains maps, plans, illustrations, and a general index.

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Desert Ascetics of Egypt
Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom
Arc Humanities Press, 2023
Egypt is revered as the home of the famous Desert Ascetics, who first embraced a monastic life and established homosocial communities on the borders of their urban centres in the Nile Valley. Regarded as angels and warriors, the wisdom of the Desert Ascetics formed part of the oral and literary tradition of wonder-working saints whose commitment to asceticism was legendary and inspirational. This book grounds the mythologized stories of Desert Ascetics in the materiality of the desert, demonstrating the closeness of the desert, the connections between non-monastic and monastic communities, and the exciting insights into lived monasticism through the archaeology of monasticism in Egypt.
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The Devil and the Dolce Vita
Catholic Attempts to Save Italy's Soul, 1948-1974
Roy Domenico
Catholic University of America Press, 2021
Italy’s economic expansion after World War Two triggered significant social and cultural change. Secularization accompanied this development and triggered alarm bells across the nation’s immense Catholic community. The Devil and the Dolce Vita is the story of that community – the church of Popes Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI, the lay Catholic Action association, and the Christian Democratic Party – and their efforts in a series of culture wars to preserve a traditional way of life and to engage and tame the challenges of a rapidly modernizing society. Roy Domenico begins this study during the heady days of the April 1948 Christian Democratic electoral triumph and ends when pro-divorce forces dealt the Catholics a defeat in the referendum of May 1974 where their hopes crashed and probably ended. Between those two dates Catholics engaged secularists in a number of battles – many over film and television censorship, encountering such figures as Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. The Venice Film Festival became a locus in the fight as did places like Pozzonovo, near Padua, where the Catholics directed their energies against a Communist youth organization; and Prato in Tuscany where the bishop led a fight to preserve church weddings. Concern with proper decorum led to more skirmishes on beaches and at resorts over modest attire and beauty pageants. By the 1960s and 1970s other issues, such as feminism, a new frankness about sexual relations, and the youth rebellion emerged to contribute to a perfect storm that led to the divorce referendum and widespread despair in the Catholic camp.
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Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine
Ancient Sources, Translations, and Modern Medical Analyses
Translated and with Commentary by JoAnn Scurlock and Burton R. Andersen
University of Illinois Press, 2005
To date, the pathbreaking medical contributions of the early Mesopotamians have been only vaguely understood. Due to the combined problems of an extinct language, gaps in the archeological record, the complexities of pharmacy and medicine, and the dispersion of ancient tablets throughout the museums of the world, it has been nearly impossible to get a clear and comprehensive view of what medicine was really like in ancient Mesopotamia.
The collaboration of medical expert Burton R. Andersen and cuneiformist JoAnn Scurlock makes it finally possible to survey this collected corpus and discern magic from experimental medicine in Ashur, Babylon, and Nineveh. Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine is the first systematic study of all the available texts, which together reveal a level of medical knowledge not matched again until the nineteenth century A.D. Over the course of a millennium, these nations were able to develop tests, prepare drugs, and encourage public sanitation. Their careful observation and recording of data resulted in a description of symptoms so precise as to enable modern identification of numerous diseases and afflictions.
 
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Dialoguing in Late Antiquity
Averil Cameron
Harvard University Press

Christians talked, debated, and wrote dialogues in late antiquity and on throughout Byzantium. Some were philosophical, others more literary, theological, or Platonic; Aristotle also came into the picture as time went on. Sometimes the written works claim to be records of actual public debates, and we know that many such debates did take place and continued to do so. Dialoguing in Late Antiquity takes up a challenge laid down by recent scholars who argue that a wall of silence came down in the fifth century AD, after which Christians did not “dialogue.”

Averil Cameron now returns to questions raised in her book Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (1991), drawing on the large repertoire of surviving Christian dialogue texts from late antiquity to make a forceful case for their centrality in Greek literature from the second century and the Second Sophistic onward. At the same time, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity points forward to the long and neglected history of dialogue in Byzantium. Throughout this study, Cameron engages with current literary approaches and is a powerful advocate for the greater integration of Christian texts by literary scholars and historians alike.

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Diaspora
Jews amidst Greeks and Romans
Erich S. Gruen
Harvard University Press, 2004

What was life like for Jews settled throughout the Mediterranean world of Classical antiquity--and what place did Jewish communities have in the diverse civilization dominated by Greeks and Romans? In a probing account of the Jewish diaspora in the four centuries from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East to the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E., Erich Gruen reaches often surprising conclusions.

By the first century of our era, Jews living abroad far outnumbered those living in Palestine and had done so for generations. Substantial Jewish communities were found throughout the Greek mainland and Aegean islands, Asia Minor, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, Egypt, and Italy. Focusing especially on Alexandria, Greek cities in Asia Minor, and Rome, Gruen explores the lives of these Jews: the obstacles they encountered, the institutions they established, and their strategies for adjustment. He also delves into Jewish writing in this period, teasing out how Jews in the diaspora saw themselves. There emerges a picture of a Jewish minority that was at home in Greco-Roman cities: subject to only sporadic harassment; its intellectuals immersed in Greco-Roman culture while refashioning it for their own purposes; exhibiting little sign of insecurity in an alien society; and demonstrating both a respect for the Holy Land and a commitment to the local community and Gentile government. Gruen's innovative analysis of the historical and literary record alters our understanding of the way this vibrant minority culture engaged with the dominant Classical civilization.

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Dictator
The Evolution of the Roman Dictatorship
Mark B. Wilson
University of Michigan Press, 2021

Roman consuls were routinely trained by background and experience to handle the usual problems of a twelve-month turn in office.  But what if a crisis arose that wasn’t best met by whoever happened to be in office that year? The Romans had a mechanism for that: the dictatorship, an alternative emergency executive post that granted total, unanswerable power to that man who was best suited to resolve the crisis and then stand down, restoring normality. This office was so useful and effective that it was invoked at least 85 times across three centuries against every kind of serious problem, from conspiracies and insurgencies to the repelling of invaders to propitiation of the gods.

In Dictator: The Evolution of the Roman Dictatorship, Mark B. Wilson makes the first detailed and comprehensive examination of the role and evolution of the dictatorship as an integral element of the Roman Republic. Each stage of a dictatorship—need, call, choice, invocation, mandate, imperium, answerability, colleague, and renunciation—is explored, with examples and case studies illustrating the dictators’ rigorous adherence to a set of core principles, or, in rare cases of deviation, showing how exceptions tended to demonstrate the rule as vividly as instances. Wilson also charts the flexibility of the dictatorship as it adapted to the needs of the Republic, reshaping its role in relation to the consuls, the senate, and the people.

The routine use of the dictatorship is only part of the story. The abandonment and disuse of the dictatorship for 120 years, its revival under Sulla, and its appropriation and transformation under Caesar are all examined in detail, with attention paid to what the dictatorship meant to the Romans of the late Republic, alternative means of crisis resolution in contrast with the dictatorship, and the groundwork laid in those last two centuries for that which was to come. Dictator provides a new basis for discussion and debate relating to the Roman dictatorship, Roman crisis management, and the systems and institutions of the Roman Republic.

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Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?
An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination
Paul Veyne
University of Chicago Press, 1988
"[Veyne's] present book has some kinship with his sprightly theoretical work Comment on ecrit l'histoire; and he declares that its aim was to provoke reflection on the way our conception of truth is built up and changes over the centuries. . . . The style is brilliant and exhilarating."—Jasper Griffin, Times Literary Supplement
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Didymus the Blind and the Alexandrian Christian Reception of Philo
Justin M. Rogers
SBL Press, 2017

Explore the Jewish traditions preserved in the commentaries of a largely neglected Alexandrian Christian exegete

Justin M. Rogers surveys commentaries on Genesis, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Zechariah by Didymus the Blind (ca. 313–398 CE), who was regarded by his students as one of the greatest Christian exegetes of the fourth century. Rogers highlights Didymus’s Jewish sources, zeroing in on traditions of Philo of Alexandria, whose treatises were directly accessible to Didymus while he was authoring his exegetical works. Philonic material in Didymus is covered by extensive commentary, demonstrating that Philo was among the principle sources for the exegetical works of Didymus the Blind. Rogers also explores the mediating influence of the Alexandrian Christian tradition, focusing especially on the roles of Clement and Origen.

Features

  • Fresh insights into the Alexandrian Christian reception of Philo
  • A thorough discussion of Didymus’s exegetical method, particularly in the Commentary on Genesis
  • Examination of the use and importance of Jewish and Christian sources in Late Antique Christian commentaries
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Dining in a Classical Context
William J. Slater, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 1991
An investigation of the role of the feast as a cultural focus for the classical world
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Diodorus Siculus, Books 11-12.37.1
Greek History, 480-431 BC—the Alternative Version
Translated with introduction and commentary by Peter Green
University of Texas Press, 2006

2007 — A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book

Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 100-30 BCE) is our only surviving source for a continuous narrative of Greek history from Xerxes' invasion to the Wars of the Successors following the death of Alexander the Great. Yet this important historian has been consistently denigrated as a mere copyist who slavishly reproduced the works of earlier historians without understanding what he was writing. By contrast, in this iconoclastic work Peter Green builds a convincing case for Diodorus' merits as a historian. Through a fresh English translation of a key portion of his multi-volume history (the so-called Bibliotheke, or "Library") and a commentary and notes that refute earlier assessments of Diodorus, Green offers a fairer, better balanced estimate of this much-maligned historian.

The portion of Diodorus' history translated here covers the period 480-431 BCE, from the Persian invasion of Greece to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. This half-century, known as the Pentekontaetia, was the Golden Age of Periclean Athens, a time of unprecedented achievement in drama, architecture, philosophy, historiography, and the visual arts. Green's accompanying notes and commentary revisit longstanding debates about historical inconsistencies in Diodorus' work and offer thought-provoking new interpretations and conclusions. In his masterful introductory essay, Green demolishes the traditional view of Diodorus and argues for a thorough critical reappraisal of this synthesizing historian, who attempted nothing less than a "universal history" that begins with the gods of mythology and continues down to the eve of Julius Caesar's Gallic campaigns.

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Diodorus Siculus, The Persian Wars to the Fall of Athens
Books 11-14.34 (480-401 BCE)
Translated with Introduction and Notes by Peter Green
University of Texas Press, 2010

Only one surviving source provides a continuous narrative of Greek history from Xerxes' invasion to the Wars of the Successors following the death of Alexander the Great—the Bibliotheke, or "Library," produced by Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 90–30 BCE). Yet generations of scholars have disdained Diodorus as a spectacularly unintelligent copyist who only reproduced, and often mangled, the works of earlier historians. Arguing for a thorough critical reappraisal of Diodorus as a minor but far from idiotic historian himself, Peter Green published Diodorus Siculus, Books 11-12.37.1, a fresh translation, with extensive commentary, of the portion of Diodorus's history dealing with the period 480–431 BCE, the so-called "Golden Age" of Athens.

This is the only recent modern English translation of the Bibliotheke in existence. In the present volume—the first of two covering Diodorus's text up to the death of Alexander—Green expands his translation of Diodorus up to Athens' defeat after the Peloponnesian War. In contrast to the full scholarly apparatus in his earlier volume (the translation of which is incorporated) the present volume's purpose is to give students, teachers, and general readers an accessible version of Diodorus's history. Its introduction and notes are especially designed for this audience and provide an up-to-date overview of fifth-century Greece during the years that saw the unparalleled flowering of drama, architecture, philosophy, historiography, and the visual arts for which Greece still remains famous.

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Dionysiaca, Volume II
Books 16–35
Nonnos
Harvard University Press

Epic revels.

Nonnos of Panopolis in Egypt, who lived in the fifth century of our era, composed the last great epic poem of antiquity. The Dionysiaca, in forty-eight books, has for its chief theme the expedition of Dionysus against the Indians; but the poet contrives to include all the adventures of the god (as well as much other mythological lore) in a narrative that begins with chaos in heaven and ends with the apotheosis of Ariadne’s crown. The wild ecstasy inspired by the god is certainly reflected in the poet’s style, which is baroque, extravagant, and unrestrained. It seems that Nonnos was in later years converted to Christianity, for in marked contrast to the Dionysiaca, a poem dealing unreservedly with classical myths and redolent of a pagan outlook, there is extant and ascribed to him a hexameter paraphrase of the Gospel of John.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Dionysiaca is in three volumes.

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Dionysiaca, Volume III
Books 36–48
Nonnos
Harvard University Press

Epic revels.

Nonnos of Panopolis in Egypt, who lived in the fifth century of our era, composed the last great epic poem of antiquity. The Dionysiaca, in forty-eight books, has for its chief theme the expedition of Dionysus against the Indians; but the poet contrives to include all the adventures of the god (as well as much other mythological lore) in a narrative that begins with chaos in heaven and ends with the apotheosis of Ariadne’s crown. The wild ecstasy inspired by the god is certainly reflected in the poet’s style, which is baroque, extravagant, and unrestrained. It seems that Nonnos was in later years converted to Christianity, for in marked contrast to the Dionysiaca, a poem dealing unreservedly with classical myths and redolent of a pagan outlook, there is extant and ascribed to him a hexameter paraphrase of the Gospel of John.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Dionysiaca is in three volumes.

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Dionysus, Christ, and the Death of God, Volume 1
The Great Mediations of the Classical World
Giuseppe Fornari
Michigan State University Press, 2020
This magisterial reflection on the history and destiny of the West compares Greco-Roman civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition in order to understand what both unites and divides them. Mediation, understood as a collective, symbolic experience, gives society unity and meaning, putting human beings in contact with a universal object known as the world or reality. But unity has a price: the very force that enables peaceful coexistence also makes us prone to conflict. As a result, in order to find a common point of convergence—of at-one-ment—someone must be sacrificed. Sacrifice, then, is the historical pillar of mediation. It was endorsed in a cosmic-religious sense in antiquity and rejected for ethical reasons in modernity, where the Judeo-Christian tradition plays an intermediate role in condemning sacrificial violence as such, while accepting sacrifice as a voluntary act offered to save other human beings. Today, as we face the collapse of all shared mediations, this intermediating solution offers a way out of our moral and cultural plight.
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front cover of Dionysus, Christ, and the Death of God, Volume 2
Dionysus, Christ, and the Death of God, Volume 2
Christianity and Modernity
Giuseppe Fornari
Michigan State University Press, 2020
This magisterial reflection on the history and destiny of the West compares Greco-Roman civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition in order to understand what both unites and divides them. Mediation, understood as a collective, symbolic experience, gives society unity and meaning, putting human beings in contact with a universal object known as the world or reality. But unity has a price: the very force that enables peaceful coexistence also makes us prone to conflict. As a result, in order to find a common point of convergence—of at-one-ment—someone must be sacrificed. Sacrifice, then, is the historical pillar of mediation. It was endorsed in a cosmic-religious sense in antiquity and rejected for ethical reasons in modernity, where the Judeo-Christian tradition plays an intermediate role in condemning sacrificial violence as such, while accepting sacrifice as a voluntary act offered to save other human beings. Today, as we face the collapse of all shared mediations, this intermediating solution offers a way out of our moral and cultural plight.
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Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine
By John M. Riddle
University of Texas Press, 1985

For 1,600 years Dioscorides (ca. AD 40–80) was regarded as the foremost authority on drugs. He knew mild laxatives and strong purgatives, analgesics for headaches, antiseptics for wounds, emetics to rid one of ingested poisons, chemotherapy agents for cancer treatments, and even oral contraceptives. Why, then, have his works remained obscure in recent centuries? Because of one small oversight (Dioscorides himself thought it was self-evident): he failed to describe his method for organizing drugs by their affinities. This omission led medical authorities to use his materials as a guide to pharmacy while overlooking Dioscorides' most valuable contribution—his empirically derived method for observing and classifying drugs by clinical testing.

Dioscorides' De materia medica, a five-volume work, was written in the first century. Here revealed for the first time is the thesis that Dioscorides wrote more than a lengthy guide book. He wrote a great work of science. He had said that he discovered the natural order and would demonstrate it by his arrangement of drugs from plants, minerals, and animals. Until John M. Riddle's pathfinding study, no one saw the genius of his system. Botanists from the eighteenth century often attempted to find his unexplained method by identifying the sequences of his plants according to the Linnean system but, while there are certain patterns, there remained inexplicable incoherencies. However, Dioscorides' natural order as set down in De materia medica was determined by drug affinities as detected by his acute, clinical ability to observe drug reactions in and on the body. So remarkable was his ability to see relationships that, in some cases, he saw what we know to be common chemicals shared by plants of the same and related species and other natural product drugs from animal and mineral sources.

Western European and Islamic medicine considered Dioscorides the foremost authority on drugs, just as Hippocrates is regarded as the Father of Medicine. They saw him point the way but only described the end of his finger, despite the fact that in the sixteenth century alone there were over one hundred books published on him. If he had explained what he thought to be self-evident, then science, especially chemistry and medicine, would almost certainly have developed differently. In this culmination of over twenty years of research, Riddle employs modern science and anthropological studies innovatively and cautiously to demonstrate the substance to Dioscorides' authority in medicine.

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Diplomacy by Design
Luxury Arts and an "International Style" in the Ancient Near East, 1400-1200 BCE
Marian H. Feldman
University of Chicago Press, 2006
Art and international relations during the Late Bronze Age formed a symbiosis as expanded travel and written communications fostered unprecedented cultural exchange across the Mediterranean. Diplomacy in these new political and imperial relationships was often maintained through the exchange of lavish art objects and luxury goods. The items bestowed during this time shared a repertoire of imagery that modern scholars call the first International Style in the history of art.

Marian Feldman's Diplomacy by Design examines the profound connection between art produced during this period and its social context, revealing inanimate objects as catalysts—or even participants—in human dynamics. Feldman's fascinating study shows the ways in which the exchange of these works of art actively mediated and strengthened political relations, intercultural interactions, and economic negotiations. Previous studies of this international style have focused almost exclusively on stylistic attribution at the expense of social contextualization. Written by a specialist in ancient Near Eastern art and archaeology who has excavated and traveled extensively in this area of the world, Diplomacy by Design provides a much broader consideration of the symbolic power of material culture and its centrality in the construction of human relations. 


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Discarded, Discovered, Collected
The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection
Arthur Verhoogt
University of Michigan Press, 2017
The first-ever history of Michigan’s celebrated collection of papyri offers nonspecialists an inviting encounter with the ancient world
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Discourse, Knowledge, and Power in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses
Evelyn Adkins
University of Michigan Press, 2022

In ancient Rome, where literacy was limited and speech was the main medium used to communicate status and identity face-to-face in daily life, an education in rhetoric was a valuable form of cultural capital and a key signifier of elite male identity. To lose the ability to speak would have caused one to be viewed as no longer elite, no longer a man, and perhaps even no longer human. We see such a fantasy horror story played out in the Metamorphoses  or The Golden Ass, written by Roman North African author, orator, and philosopher Apuleius of Madauros—the only novel in Latin to survive in its entirety from antiquity. In the novel’s first-person narrative as well as its famous inset tales such as the Tale of Cupid and Psyche, the Metamorphoses is invested in questions of power and powerlessness, truth and knowledge, and communication and interpretation within the pluralistic but hierarchical world of the High Roman Empire (ca. 100–200 CE).

Discourse, Knowledge, and Power presents a new approach to the Metamorphoses: it is the first in-depth investigation of the use of speech and discourse as tools of characterization in Apuleius’ novel. It argues that discourse, broadly defined to include speech, silence, written text, and nonverbal communication, is the primary tool for negotiating identity, status, and power in the Metamorphoses. Although it takes as its starting point the role of discourse in the characterization of literary figures, it contends that the process we see in the Metamorphoses reflects the real world of the second century CE Roman Empire. Previous scholarship on Apuleius’ novel has read it as either a literary puzzle or a source-text for social, philosophical, or religious history. In contrast, this book uses a framework of discourse analysis, an umbrella term for various methods of studying the social political functions of discourse, to bring Latin literary studies into dialogue with Roman rhetoric, social and cultural history, religion, and philosophy as well as approaches to language and power from the fields of sociology, linguistics, and linguistic anthropology. Discourse, Knowledge, and Power argues that a fictional account of a man who becomes an animal has much to tell us not only about ancient Roman society and culture, but also about the dynamics of human and gendered communication, the anxieties of the privileged, and their implications for swiftly shifting configurations of status and power whether in the second or twenty-first centuries.

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The Discourse of Marriage in the Greco-Roman World
Edited by Jeffrey Beneker and Georgia Tsouvala
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
The famous polymath Plutarch often discussed the relationship between spouses in his works, including Marriage Advice, Dialogue on Love, and many of the Parallel Lives. In this collection, leading scholars explore the marital views expressed in Plutarch's works and the art, philosophy, and literature produced by his contemporaries and predecessors.
Through aesthetically informed and sensitive modes of analysis, these contributors examine a wealth of representations—including violence in weddings and spousal devotion after death. The Discourse of Marriage in the Greco-Roman World demonstrates the varying conceptions of an institution that was central to ancient social and political life—and remains prominent in the modern world. This volume will contribute to scholars' understanding of the era and fascinate anyone interested in historic depictions of marriage and the role and status of women in the late Hellenistic and early Imperial periods.
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Discourses 1–11
Dio Chrysostom
Harvard University Press

The man with the golden mouth.

Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus (AD ca. 40–ca. 120), of Prusa in Bithynia, Asia Minor, inherited with his brothers large properties and debts from his generous father Pasicrates. He became a skilled rhetorician hostile to philosophers. But in the course of his travels he went to Rome in Vespasian’s reign (69–79) and was converted to Stoicism. Strongly critical of the emperor Domitian (81–96) he was about 82 banned by him from Italy and Bithynia and wandered in poverty, especially in lands north of the Aegean, as far as the Danube and the primitive Getae. In 97 he spoke publicly to Greeks assembled at Olympia, was welcomed at Rome by emperor Nerva (96–98), and returned to Prusa. Arriving again at Rome on an embassy of thanks about 98–99 he became a firm friend of emperor Trajan. In 102 he traveled to Alexandria and elsewhere. Involved in a lawsuit about plans to beautify Prusa at his own expense, he stated his case before the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, 111–112. The rest of his life is unknown.

Nearly all of Dio’s extant Discourses (or Orations) reflect political concerns (the most important of them dealing with affairs in Bithynia and affording valuable details about conditions in Asia Minor) or moral questions (mostly written in later life; they contain much of his best writing). Some philosophical and historical works, including one on the Getae, are lost. What survives of his achievement as a whole makes him prominent in the revival of Greek literature in the last part of the first century and the first part of the second.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Dio Chrysostom is in five volumes.

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Discourses 12–30
Dio Chrysostom
Harvard University Press

The man with the golden mouth.

Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus (AD ca. 40–ca. 120), of Prusa in Bithynia, Asia Minor, inherited with his brothers large properties and debts from his generous father Pasicrates. He became a skilled rhetorician hostile to philosophers. But in the course of his travels he went to Rome in Vespasian’s reign (69–79) and was converted to Stoicism. Strongly critical of the emperor Domitian (81–96) he was about 82 banned by him from Italy and Bithynia and wandered in poverty, especially in lands north of the Aegean, as far as the Danube and the primitive Getae. In 97 he spoke publicly to Greeks assembled at Olympia, was welcomed at Rome by emperor Nerva (96–98), and returned to Prusa. Arriving again at Rome on an embassy of thanks about 98–99 he became a firm friend of emperor Trajan. In 102 he traveled to Alexandria and elsewhere. Involved in a lawsuit about plans to beautify Prusa at his own expense, he stated his case before the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, 111–112. The rest of his life is unknown.

Nearly all of Dio’s extant Discourses (or Orations) reflect political concerns (the most important of them dealing with affairs in Bithynia and affording valuable details about conditions in Asia Minor) or moral questions (mostly written in later life; they contain much of his best writing). Some philosophical and historical works, including one on the Getae, are lost. What survives of his achievement as a whole makes him prominent in the revival of Greek literature in the last part of the first century and the first part of the second.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Dio Chrysostom is in five volumes.

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Discourses 31–36
Dio Chrysostom
Harvard University Press

The man with the golden mouth.

Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus (AD ca. 40–ca. 120), of Prusa in Bithynia, Asia Minor, inherited with his brothers large properties and debts from his generous father Pasicrates. He became a skilled rhetorician hostile to philosophers. But in the course of his travels he went to Rome in Vespasian’s reign (69–79) and was converted to Stoicism. Strongly critical of the emperor Domitian (81–96) he was about 82 banned by him from Italy and Bithynia and wandered in poverty, especially in lands north of the Aegean, as far as the Danube and the primitive Getae. In 97 he spoke publicly to Greeks assembled at Olympia, was welcomed at Rome by emperor Nerva (96–98), and returned to Prusa. Arriving again at Rome on an embassy of thanks about 98–99 he became a firm friend of emperor Trajan. In 102 he traveled to Alexandria and elsewhere. Involved in a lawsuit about plans to beautify Prusa at his own expense, he stated his case before the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, 111–112. The rest of his life is unknown.

Nearly all of Dio’s extant Discourses (or Orations) reflect political concerns (the most important of them dealing with affairs in Bithynia and affording valuable details about conditions in Asia Minor) or moral questions (mostly written in later life; they contain much of his best writing). Some philosophical and historical works, including one on the Getae, are lost. What survives of his achievement as a whole makes him prominent in the revival of Greek literature in the last part of the first century and the first part of the second.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Dio Chrysostom is in five volumes.

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Discourses 37–60
Dio Chrysostom
Harvard University Press

The man with the golden mouth.

Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus (AD ca. 40–ca. 120), of Prusa in Bithynia, Asia Minor, inherited with his brothers large properties and debts from his generous father Pasicrates. He became a skilled rhetorician hostile to philosophers. But in the course of his travels he went to Rome in Vespasian’s reign (69–79) and was converted to Stoicism. Strongly critical of the emperor Domitian (81–96) he was about 82 banned by him from Italy and Bithynia and wandered in poverty, especially in lands north of the Aegean, as far as the Danube and the primitive Getae. In 97 he spoke publicly to Greeks assembled at Olympia, was welcomed at Rome by emperor Nerva (96–98), and returned to Prusa. Arriving again at Rome on an embassy of thanks about 98–99 he became a firm friend of emperor Trajan. In 102 he traveled to Alexandria and elsewhere. Involved in a lawsuit about plans to beautify Prusa at his own expense, he stated his case before the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, 111–112. The rest of his life is unknown.

Nearly all of Dio’s extant Discourses (or Orations) reflect political concerns (the most important of them dealing with affairs in Bithynia and affording valuable details about conditions in Asia Minor) or moral questions (mostly written in later life; they contain much of his best writing). Some philosophical and historical works, including one on the Getae, are lost. What survives of his achievement as a whole makes him prominent in the revival of Greek literature in the last part of the first century and the first part of the second.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Dio Chrysostom is in five volumes.

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Discourses 61–80. Fragments. Letters
Dio Chrysostom
Harvard University Press

The man with the golden mouth.

Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus (AD ca. 40–ca. 120), of Prusa in Bithynia, Asia Minor, inherited with his brothers large properties and debts from his generous father Pasicrates. He became a skilled rhetorician hostile to philosophers. But in the course of his travels he went to Rome in Vespasian’s reign (69–79) and was converted to Stoicism. Strongly critical of the emperor Domitian (81–96) he was about 82 banned by him from Italy and Bithynia and wandered in poverty, especially in lands north of the Aegean, as far as the Danube and the primitive Getae. In 97 he spoke publicly to Greeks assembled at Olympia, was welcomed at Rome by emperor Nerva (96–98), and returned to Prusa. Arriving again at Rome on an embassy of thanks about 98–99 he became a firm friend of emperor Trajan. In 102 he traveled to Alexandria and elsewhere. Involved in a lawsuit about plans to beautify Prusa at his own expense, he stated his case before the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, 111–112. The rest of his life is unknown.

Nearly all of Dio’s extant Discourses (or Orations) reflect political concerns (the most important of them dealing with affairs in Bithynia and affording valuable details about conditions in Asia Minor) or moral questions (mostly written in later life; they contain much of his best writing). Some philosophical and historical works, including one on the Getae, are lost. What survives of his achievement as a whole makes him prominent in the revival of Greek literature in the last part of the first century and the first part of the second.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Dio Chrysostom is in five volumes.

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Discourses, Books 1–2
Epictetus
Harvard University Press

From slave to sage.

Epictetus was a crippled Greek slave of Phrygia during Nero’s reign (AD 54–68) who heard lectures by the Stoic Musonius before he was freed. Expelled with other philosophers by the emperor Domitian in 89 or 92, he settled permanently in Nicopolis in Epirus. There, in a school that he called “healing place for sick souls” he taught a practical philosophy, details of which were recorded by Arrian, a student of his, and survive in four books of Discourses and a smaller Encheiridion, a handbook that gives briefly the chief doctrines of the Discourses. He apparently lived into the reign of Hadrian (AD 117–138).

Epictetus was a teacher of Stoic ethics, broad and firm in method, sublime in thought, and now humorous, now sad or severe in spirit. How should one live righteously? Our god-given will is our paramount possession, and we must not covet others’. We must not resist fortune. Man is part of a system; humans are reasoning beings (in feeble bodies) and must conform to god’s mind and the will of nature. Epictetus presents us also with a pungent picture of the perfect (Stoic) man.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Epictetus is in two volumes.

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Discourses, Books 3–4. Fragments. The Encheiridion
Epictetus
Harvard University Press

From slave to sage.

Epictetus was a crippled Greek slave of Phrygia during Nero’s reign (AD 54–68) who heard lectures by the Stoic Musonius before he was freed. Expelled with other philosophers by the emperor Domitian in 89 or 92, he settled permanently in Nicopolis in Epirus. There, in a school that he called “healing place for sick souls” he taught a practical philosophy, details of which were recorded by Arrian, a student of his, and survive in four books of Discourses and a smaller Encheiridion, a handbook that gives briefly the chief doctrines of the Discourses. He apparently lived into the reign of Hadrian (AD 117–138).

Epictetus was a teacher of Stoic ethics, broad and firm in method, sublime in thought, and now humorous, now sad or severe in spirit. How should one live righteously? Our god-given will is our paramount possession, and we must not covet others’. We must not resist fortune. Man is part of a system; humans are reasoning beings (in feeble bodies) and must conform to god’s mind and the will of nature. Epictetus presents us also with a pungent picture of the perfect (Stoic) man.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Epictetus is in two volumes.

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Discourses on Livy
Niccolò Machiavelli
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Discourses on Livy is the founding document of modern republicanism, and Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov have provided the definitive English translation of this classic work. Faithful to the original Italian text, properly attentive to Machiavelli's idiom and subtlety of thought, it is eminently readable. With a substantial introduction, extensive explanatory notes, a glossary of key words, and an annotated index, the Discourses reveals Machiavelli's radical vision of a new science of politics, a vision of "new modes and orders" that continue to shape the modern ethos.

"[Machiavelli] found in Livy the means to inspire scholars for five centuries. Within the Discourses, often hidden and sometimes unintended by their author, lie the seeds of modern political thought. . . . [Mansfield and Tarcov's] translation is careful and idiomatic."—Peter Stothard, The Times

"Translated with painstaking accuracy—but also great readability."—Weekly Standard

"A model of contemporary scholarship and a brave effort at Machiavelli translation that allows the great Florentine to speak in his own voice."—Choice
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Discourses on Livy
Niccolò Machiavelli
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Discourses on Livy is the founding document of modern republicanism, and Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov have provided the definitive English translation of this classic work. Faithful to the original Italian text, properly attentive to Machiavelli's idiom and subtlety of thought, it is eminently readable. With a substantial introduction, extensive explanatory notes, a glossary of key words, and an annotated index, the Discourses reveals Machiavelli's radical vision of a new science of politics, a vision of "new modes and orders" that continue to shape the modern ethos.

"[Machiavelli] found in Livy the means to inspire scholars for five centuries. Within the Discourses, often hidden and sometimes unintended by their author, lie the seeds of modern political thought. . . . [Mansfield and Tarcov's] translation is careful and idiomatic."—Peter Stothard, The Times

"Translated with painstaking accuracy—but also great readability."—Weekly Standard

"A model of contemporary scholarship and a brave effort at Machiavelli translation that allows the great Florentine to speak in his own voice."—Choice
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The Discovery of the Fact
Clifford Ando and William P. Sullivan, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2020
The Discovery of the Fact draws on expertise from lawyers, historians of philosophy, and scholars of classical studies and ancient history, to take a very modern perspective on an underexplored but essential domain of ancient legal history. Everyone is familiar with courts as adjudicators of facts. But legal institutions also played an essential role in the emergence of the notion of the fact, and contributed in a vital way to commonplace understandings of what is knowable and what is not. These issues have a particular importance in ancient Greece and Rome, the first western societies in which state law and state institutions of dispute resolution visibly play a decisive role in ordinary social and economic relations. The Discovery of the Fact investigates, historically and comparatively, the relationships among the law, legal institutions, and the boundaries of knowledge in classical Greece and Rome. Societies wanted citizens to conform to the law, but how could this be insured? On what foundation did ancient courts and institutions base their decisions, and how did they represent the reasoning behind their decisions when announcing them? Slaves were owned like things, and yet they had minds that ancients conceded were essentially unknowable. What was to be done? And where  has the boundary been drawn between questions of law and questions of fact when designing processes of dispute resolution?
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The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age
J. Lesley Fitton
Harvard University Press, 1996

J. Lesley Fitton traces this exciting tale of scholarly discovery and weaves it into an engaging, in-depth portrait of Greek Bronze Age civilizations, from their dawning on the Cycladic Isles in the third millennium B.C. to their later flowering in Minoan Crete and then in the Mycenaean centers and finally to their mysterious disappearance in the twelfth century B.C. The result is an elegant assimilation of vast historical detail and a well-illustrated tour of the art and artifacts, the grand palaces and tombs, the mythical heroes and Trojan treasures that form at least one cradle of our own civilization.

Fitton begins with the early finds of travelers, advances in geology, and research into Homer's identity. She vividly recreates the heroic age of the first archaeological excavations, particularly Heinrich Schliemann's fascinating work at Troy and Mycenae, and Arthur Evans's pioneering excavation and restoration of the Palace of Minos on Crete. The persistent search for signs of writing among Bronze Age Greeks culminates in Fitton's description of the 1952 deciphering of the earliest script used to write Greek. And as her account extends into the present, it encompasses the important contributions of the archaeologists Alan Wace and Carl Blegen, the War's impact on research, and a concise summation of current scholarly trends.

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Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 1923

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

Hippocrates, said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BC, learned medicine and philosophy; traveled widely as a medical doctor and teacher; was consulted by King Perdiccas of Macedon and Artaxerxes of Persia; and died perhaps at Larissa. Apparently he rejected superstition in favor of inductive reasoning and the study of real medicine as subject to natural laws, in general and in individual people as patients for treatment by medicines and surgery. Of the roughly seventy works in the “Hippocratic Collection” many are not by Hippocrates; even the famous oath may not be his. But he was undeniably the “Father of Medicine.”

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

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Disputes and Democracy
The Consequences of Litigation in Ancient Athens
By Steven Johnstone
University of Texas Press, 1999

Athenians performed democracy daily in their law courts. Without lawyers or judges, private citizens, acting as accusers and defendants, argued their own cases directly to juries composed typically of 201 to 501 jurors, who voted on a verdict without deliberation. This legal system strengthened and perpetuated democracy as Athenians understood it, for it emphasized the ideological equality of all (male) citizens and the hierarchy that placed them above women, children, and slaves.

This study uses Athenian court speeches to trace the consequences for both disputants and society of individuals' decisions to turn their quarrels into legal cases. Steven Johnstone describes the rhetorical strategies that prosecutors and defendants used to persuade juries and shows how these strategies reveal both the problems and the possibilities of language in the Athenian courts. He argues that Athenian "law" had no objective existence outside the courts and was, therefore, itself inherently rhetorical. This daring new interpretation advances an understanding of Athenian democracy that is not narrowly political, but rather links power to the practices of a particular institution.

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Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires
Alan Lenzi
SBL Press, 2014

Advance your understanding of divination’s role in supporting or undermining imperial aspirations in the ancient Near East

This collection examines the ways that divinatory texts in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East undermined and upheld the empires in which the texts were composed, edited, and read. Nine essays and an introduction engage biblical scholarship on the Prophets, Assyriology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the critical study of Ancient Empires.

Features:

  • Interdisciplinary approaches include propaganda studies
  • Essays examine how biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts were shaped by political and theological empires
  • Index of ancient sources
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The Divine Spark of Syracuse
Ingrid D. Rowland
Brandeis University Press, 2018
Focusing on the figures of Plato, Archimedes, and Caravaggio, The Divine Spark of Syracuse discloses the role that Syracuse, a Greek cultural outpost in Sicily, played in fueling creative energies. Among the topics this book explores are Plato and the allegory of the cave, and the divine spark mentioned in his Seventh Letter. It also considers the machines of Archimedes, including his famous screw, and the variety of siege and antisiege weapons that he developed for the defense of his hometown during the siege of Syracuse during the Second Punic War, including “the hand” (a giant claw), the “burning mirror,” and the catapult. The final chapter offers a look at the artist and roustabout Caravaggio. On the run after yet another street brawl, Caravaggio traveled to Syracuse, where he painted Burial of St. Lucy (Santa Lucia) in 1608. Typical of his late works, the painting is notable for its subdued tones and emotional and psychological delicacy. This captivating book lends clear insight into the links between the sense of place and inspiration in philosophy, mathematics, and art. Rowland is the most learned tour guide we could ask for.
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Documents from the Luciferians
In Defense of the Nicene Creed
Colin M. Whiting
SBL Press, 2019

Six important documents for scholars of early church history

This volume includes English translations of several documents concerning the Luciferians, a group of fourth-century Christians whose name derives from the bishop Lucifer of Cagliari. Documents include a confession of faith written for Emperor Theodosius I and a theological treatise written for his wife by Luciferian clergyman Faustinus, the first English translation of a Luciferian petition to Theodosius that focuses on the persecution the community has suffered, Theodosius’s imperial law in response to the Luciferians, two letters composed by Luciferians that purport to represent correspondence from the bishop Athanasius of Alexandria to Lucifer, and the priest Jerome’s Dialogus adversus Luciferianos. These texts highlight connections between developments in Christian theology and local Christian communities in the course of the fourth century.

Features:

  • The first English translation of Faustinus’s Libellus precum
  • An overview of the development of late antique theology and Christianity
  • An introduction to Luciferian beliefs and the translated texts
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Domitian’s Rome and the Augustan Legacy
Edited by Raymond Marks and Marcello Mogetta
University of Michigan Press, 2021

The legacy of the Roman emperor Augustus and the culture of his age was profound and immediately evident after his death in 14 CE. His first four successors based their claims to rule on kinship with him, thus establishing the Julio-Claudian dynasty (14–68 CE), and plied an evolving form of the Principate, the political arrangement Augustus carved out for himself. His building and restoration programs gave the city an “Augustan” appearance that remained relatively unchanged throughout subsequent reigns. And, among literary luminaries of his age, figures such as Horace and Ovid left an indelible mark on the poetic practices of future generations while Virgil insinuated himself still more deeply into the Roman psyche. But it was after the reigns of Augustus’ own descendants, oddly enough, that we witness the most spirited and thoroughgoing engagement with the Augustan past; during the reign of the emperor Domitian, the third and last ruler of the subsequent Flavian dynasty (81–96 CE), there was a veritable Augustan renaissance.

This volume represents the first book-length treatment of the reception of Augustus and his age during the reign of Domitian. Its thirteen chapters, authored by an international group of scholars, offer readers a glimpse into the fascinating history and culture of Domitian’s Rome and its multifaceted engagement with the Augustan past. Combining material and literary cultural approaches and covering a diverse range of topics—art, architecture, literature, history, law—the studies in this volume capture the rich complexity of the Augustan legacy in Domitian’s Rome while also revising our understanding of Domitian’s own legacy. Far from being the cruel tyrant history has made him out to be, Domitian emerges as a studious, thoughtful cultivator of the Augustan past who helped shape an age that not only took inspiration from that past, but managed to rival it.

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The Dramaturgy of Senecan Tragedy
Thomas D. Kohn
University of Michigan Press, 2013

The first-century Roman tragedies of Seneca, like all ancient drama, do not contain the sort of external stage directions that we are accustomed to today; nevertheless, a careful reading of the plays reveals such stage business as entrances, exits, setting, sound effects, emotions of the characters, etc. The Dramaturgy of Senecan Tragedy teases out these dramaturgical elements in Seneca's work and uses them both to aid in the interpretation of the plays and to show the playwright's artistry.

Thomas D. Kohn provides a detailed overview of the corpus, laying the groundwork for appreciating Seneca's techniques in the individual dramas. Each of the chapters explores an individual tragedy in detail, discussing the dramatis personae and examining how the roles would be distributed among a limited number of actors, as well as the identity of the Chorus. The Dramaturgy of Senecan Tragedy makes a compelling argument for Seneca as an artist and a dramaturg in the true sense of the word: "a maker of drama." Regardless of whether Seneca composed his plays for full-blown theatrical staging, a fictive theater of the mind, or something in between, Kohn demonstrates that he displays a consistency and a careful attentiveness to details of performance. While other scholars have applied this type of performance criticism to individual tragedies or scenes, this is the first comprehensive study of all the plays in twenty-five years, and the first ever to consider not just stagecraft, but also metatheatrical issues such as the significant distribution of roles among a limited number of actors, in addition to the emotional states of the characters. Scholars of classics and theater, along with those looking to stage the plays, will find much of interest in this study.

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Dream, Fantasy, and Visual Art in Roman Elegy
Emma Scioli
University of Wisconsin Press, 2015
The elegists, ancient Rome’s most introspective poets, filled their works with vivid, first-person accounts of dreams. Dream, Fantasy, and Visual Art in Roman Elegy examines these varied and visually striking textual dreamscapes, arguing that the poets exploited dynamics of visual representation to allow readers to share in the intensely personal experience of dreaming.
            By treating dreams as a mode for viewing, an analogy suggested by diverse ancient authors, Emma Scioli extracts new information from the poetry of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid about the Roman concept of “seeing” dreams. Through comparison with other visual modes of description, such as ekphrasis and simile, as well as with related types of visual experience, such as fantasy and voyeurism, Scioli demonstrates similarities between artist, dreamer, and poet as creators, identifying the dreamer as a particular type of both viewer and narrator.
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Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece
Charles Stewart
University of Chicago Press, 2017
On publication in 2012, Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece quickly met wide acclaim as a gripping work that, according to the Times Literary Supplement, “offers a wholly new way of thinking about dreams in their social contexts.” It tells an extraordinary story of spiritual fervor, prophecy, and the ghosts of the distant past coming alive in the present. This new affordable paperback brings it to the wider audience that it deserves.
           
Charles Stewart tells the story of the inhabitants of Kóronos, on the Greek island of Naxos, who, in the 1830s, began experiencing dreams in which the Virgin Mary instructed them to search for buried Christian icons nearby and build a church to house the ones they found. Miraculously, they dug and found several icons and human remains, and at night the ancient owners of them would speak to them in dreams. The inhabitants built the church and in the years since have experienced further waves of dreams and startling prophesies that shaped their understanding of the past and future and often put them at odds with state authorities. Today, Kóronos is the site of one of the largest annual pilgrimages in the Mediterranean. Telling this fascinating story, Stewart draws on his long-term fieldwork and original historical sources to explore dreaming as a mediator of historical change, while widening the understanding of historical consciousness and history itself.
 
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Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity
William V. Harris
Harvard University Press, 2009

From the Iliad to Aristophanes, from the gospel of Matthew to Augustine, Greek and Latin texts are constellated with descriptive images of dreams. Some are formulaic, others intensely vivid. The best ancient minds—Plato, Aristotle, the physician Galen, and others—struggled to understand the meaning of dreams.

With Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity the renowned ancient historian William Harris turns his attention to oneiric matters. This cultural history of dreams in antiquity draws on both contemporary post-Freudian science and careful critiques of the ancient texts. Harris traces the history of characteristic forms of dream-­description and relates them both to the ancient experience of dreaming and to literary and religious imperatives. He analyzes the nuances of Greek and Roman belief in the truth-telling potential of dreams, and in a final chapter offers an assessment of ancient attempts to understand dreams naturalistically.

How did dreaming culture evolve from Homer’s time to late antiquity? What did these dreams signify? And how do we read and understand ancient dreams through modern eyes? Harris takes an elusive subject and writes about it with rigor and precision, reminding us of specificities, contexts, and changing attitudes through history.

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Drifting among Rivers and Lakes
Southern Song Dynasty Poetry and the Problem of Literary History
Michael A. Fuller
Harvard University Press, 2013

What drives literary change? Does literature merely follow shifts in a culture, or does it play a distinctive role in shaping emergent trends? Michael Fuller explores these questions while examining the changes in Chinese shi poetry from the late Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) to the end of the Southern Song (1127–1279), a period of profound social and cultural transformation.

Shi poetry written in response to events was the dominant literary genre in Song dynasty China, serving as a central form through which literati explored meaning in their encounters with the world. By the late Northern Song, however, old models for meaning were proving inadequate, and Daoxue (Neo-Confucianism) provided an increasingly attractive new ground for understanding the self and the world. Drifting among Rivers and Lakes traces the intertwining of the practice of poetry, writings on poetics, and the debates about Daoxue that led to the cultural synthesis of the final years of the Southern Song and set the pattern for Chinese society for the next six centuries. Examining the writings of major poets and Confucian thinkers of the period, Fuller discovers the slow evolution of a complementarity between poetry and Daoxue in which neither discourse was self-sufficient.

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Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters
The Development of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Shipping Network in Asia 1595-1660
Robert Parthesius
Amsterdam University Press, 2010

During the closing years of the sixteenth century, the Dutch East India Company fast became a political and economic force in Asia, en route to becoming the leading private company in the world by 1660. This definitive volume explores perhaps the most important tool in the company’s trade: its ships. Robert Parthesius here reconstructs the complete shipping activities of the Company through a unique database that charts the movements of even previously ignored smaller vessels. Demonstrating that the wide range of types and sizes of vessels were indeed what gave the Company the ability to sail—and to continue its profitable trade—year after year, Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters combines the best of maritime history and archaeological research in order to change our understanding of the logistical dynamics behind one of the most important and successful businesses of this period.

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