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The Gallic War
Caesar
Harvard University Press

The conquest that begot the Roman Empire.

Caesar (C. Iulius, 102–44 BC), statesman and soldier, defied the dictator Sulla; served in the Mithridatic wars and in Spain; entered Roman politics as a “democrat” against the senatorial government; was the real leader of the coalition with Pompey and Crassus; conquered all Gaul for Rome; attacked Britain twice; was forced into civil war; became master of the Roman world; and achieved wide-reaching reforms until his murder. We have his books of commentarii (notes): eight on his wars in Gaul, 58–52 BC, including the two expeditions to Britain 55–54, and three on the civil war of 49–48. They are records of his own campaigns (with occasional digressions) in vigorous, direct, clear, unemotional style and in the third person, the account of the civil war being somewhat more impassioned.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Caesar is in three volumes. Volume II is his Civil War. The Alexandrian War, the African War, and the Spanish War, commonly ascribed to Caesar by our manuscripts but of uncertain authorship, are collected in Volume III.

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Garden of Egypt
Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyum
Brendan Haug
University of Michigan Press, 2024
Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm is the first environmental history of Egypt’s Fayyūm depression. The volume studies human relationships with flowing water, from the third century BCE to the thirteenth century CE. Until the arrival of modern perennial irrigation in the nineteenth century, the Fayyūm was the only region of premodern Egypt to be irrigated by a network of artificial canals. By linking large numbers of rural communities together in shared dependence on this public irrigation infrastructure, canalization introduced to Egypt a radically new way of interacting both with the water of the Nile and with fellow farmers. Drawing upon ancient Greek papyri, medieval Arabic literature, and modern comparative evidence, this book explores the ways in which the Nile’s water, local farmers, and state power together continually reshaped this irrigated landscape over more than thirteen centuries. Following human/water relationships through both space and time further helps to erode disciplinary boundaries and bring multiple periods of Egyptian history into contact with one another.
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Gardens and Neighbors
Private Water Rights in Roman Italy
Cynthia Jordan Bannon
University of Michigan Press, 2010

"Gardens and Neighbors will provide an important building block in the growing body of literature on the ways that Roman law, Roman society, and the economic concerns of the Romans jointly functioned in the real world."
---Michael Peachin, New York University

As is increasingly true today, fresh water in ancient Italy was a limited resource, made all the more precious by the Roman world's reliance on agriculture as its primary source of wealth. From estate to estate, the availability of water varied, in many cases forcing farmers in need of access to resort to the law. In Gardens and Neighbors: Private Water Rights in Roman Italy, Cynthia Bannon explores the uses of the law in controlling local water supplies. She investigates numerous issues critical to rural communities and the Roman economy. Her examination of the relationship between farmers and the land helps draw out an understanding of Roman attitudes toward the exploitation and conservation of natural resources and builds an understanding of law in daily Roman life.

An editor of the series Law and Society in the Ancient World, Cynthia Jordan Bannon is also Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her previous book was The Brothers of Romulus: Fraternal Pietas in Roman Law, Literature, and Society (1997). Visit the author's website: http://www.iub.edu/~classics/faculty/bannon.shtml.

Jacket illustration: Barren Tuscan Fields in Winter © 2009 Scott Gilchrist. Image from stock.archivision.com.
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Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World
Jussi Rantala
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
This volume approaches three key concepts in Roman history — gender, memory and identity — and demonstrates the significance of their interaction in all social levels and during all periods of Imperial Rome. When societies, as well as individuals, form their identities, remembrance and references to the past play a significant role. The aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World is to cast light on the constructing and the maintaining of both public and private identities in the Roman Empire through memory, and to highlight, in particular, the role of gender in that process. While approaching this subject, the contributors to this volume scrutinise boththe literature and material sources, pointing out how widespread the close relationship between gender, memory and identity was. A major aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World as a whole is to point out the significance of the interaction between these three concepts in both the upper and lower levels of Roman society, and how it remained an important question through the period from Augustus right into Late Antiquity.
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Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 2012

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

This is the tenth volume in the Loeb Classical Library’s ongoing edition of Hippocrates’ invaluable texts, which provide essential information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. Here, Paul Potter presents the Greek text with facing English translation of five treatises, four concerning human reproduction (Generation, Nature of the Child) and reproductive disorders (Nature of Women, Barrenness), and one (Diseases 4) that expounds a general theory of physiology and pathology.

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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Genos Dikanikon
Amateur and Professional Speech in the Courtrooms of Classical Athens
Victor Bers
Harvard University Press, 2009
Under the Athenian democracy, litigants were expected to speak for themselves, though they could memorize a speech written for them. The texts of about one hundred judicial speeches of the genos dikanikon (the forensic genre) have survived, all attributed to Demosthenes or another of the ten writers of canonical status. These professionals wrote either for themselves or members of a small elite. Victor Bers argues that men too poor to afford a professionally written speech frequently spoke before judicial bodies in procedures crucial to their status, wealth, or even their lives, and that these amateur performances often manifested an unmanly yielding to emotions of anger or fear; professional speech, Bers seeks to demonstrate, was to a large degree crafted in reaction to amateur stumbling.
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Geography, Volume I
Books 1–2
Strabo
Harvard University Press

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

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Geography, Volume II
Books 3–5
Strabo
Harvard University Press

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

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Geography, Volume III
Books 6–7
Strabo
Harvard University Press

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

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Geography, Volume IV
Books 8–9
Strabo
Harvard University Press

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

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Geography, Volume V
Books 10–12
Strabo
Harvard University Press

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

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Geography, Volume VI
Books 13–14
Strabo
Harvard University Press

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

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Geography, Volume VII
Books 15–16
Strabo
Harvard University Press

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

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Geography, Volume VIII
Book 17. General Index
Strabo
Harvard University Press

The ecumene in prose.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC to ca. AD 25), an Asiatic Greek of Amasia in Pontus, studied at Nysa and after 44 BC at Rome. He became a keen traveler who saw a large part of Italy, various near eastern regions including the Black Sea, various parts of Asia Minor, Egypt as far as Ethiopia, and parts of Greece. He was a long time in Alexandria where he no doubt studied mathematics, astronomy, and history.

Strabo’s historical work is lost, but his most important Geography in seventeen books has survived. After two introductory books, numbers 3 and 4 deal with Spain and Gaul, 5 and 6 with Italy and Sicily, 7 with north and east Europe, 8–10 with Greek lands, 11–14 with the main regions of Asia and with Asia Minor, 15 with India and Iran, 16 with Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia, 17 with Egypt and Africa. In outline he follows the great mathematical geographer Eratosthenes, but adds general descriptions of separate countries including physical, political, and historical details. A sequel to his historical memoirs, Geography is planned apparently for public servants rather than students—hence the accounts of physical features and of natural products. On the mathematical side it is an invaluable source of information about Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Posidonius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Strabo is in eight volumes.

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Gerulata
The Lamps: A Survey of Roman Lamps in Pannonia
Robert Frecer
Karolinum Press, 2015
For the ancient Romans, lamps were more than just a way to be able to see in the dark—they were mythical muses, witnesses to secrets, and instruments of the supernatural. Far more familiar to the average Roman than the high art of mosaics, statues, or frescos, lamps created the atmosphere of day-to-day life in the homes, workshops, and public houses of Roman provincial towns.
            This catalog brings together for the first time the 210 ancient lamps excavated since 1949 in Bratislava-Rusovce, a suburb of the capital of Slovakia and the site of the ancient Roman settlement of Gerulata. What may appear at first glance as a standard panoply of Roman lamps is comprehensively examined to uncover signs of wear and use, unique personal inscriptions, and exceptional forms. This book reveals the stunning wealth of knowledge that can be gained from the study of lighting devices in this liminal settlement on the tough northern frontier of the Roman Empire.
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Getting Rich in Late Antique Egypt
Ryan E. McConnell
University of Michigan Press, 2017
Papyrologists and historians have taken a lively interest in the Apion family (fifth through seventh centuries), who rose from local prominence in rural Middle Egypt to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the Eastern Roman Empire. The focus of most scholarly debate has been whether the Apion estate—and estates like it—aimed for a marketable surplus or for self-sufficiency. Getting Rich in Late Antique Egypt shifts the discussion to precisely how the Apions’ wealth was generated and what role their Egyptian estate played in that growth by engaging directly with broader questions of the relationship between public and private economic actors in Late Antiquity, rational management in ancient economies, the size of estates in Byzantine Egypt, and the role of rural estates in the Byzantine economy.
           
Ryan E. McConnell connects the family’s rise in wealth and status to its role in tax collection on behalf of the Byzantine state, rather than a reliance on productive surpluses. Close analysis of low- and high-level accounts from the Apion estate, as well as documentation from comparable Roman and Byzantine Egyptian estates, corroborate this conclusion. Additionally, McConnell offers a third way into the ongoing debate over whether the Apions’ relationship with the state was antagonistic or cooperative, concluding that the relationship was that of parties in a negotiation, with each side seeking to maximize its own benefit. The application of modern economic concepts—as well as comparisons to the economies of Athens, Rome, Ptolemaic Egypt, and Early Modern France—further illuminate the structure and function of the estate in Late Antique Egypt.

Getting Rich in Late Antique Egypt will be a valuable resource for philologists, archaeologists, papyrologists, and scholars of Late Antiquity. It will also interest scholars of agricultural, social, and economic history.


 
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The Gift of Correspondence in Classical Rome
Friendship in Cicero's Ad Familiares and Seneca's Moral Epistles
Amanda Wilcox
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012

Amanda Wilcox offers an innovative approach to two major collections of Roman letters—Cicero’s Ad Familiares and Seneca’s Moral Epistles—informed by modern cross-cultural theories of gift-giving.
    By viewing letters and the practice of correspondence as a species of gift exchange, Wilcox provides a nuanced analysis of neglected and misunderstood aspects of Roman epistolary rhetoric and the social dynamics of friendship in Cicero’s correspondence. Turning to Seneca, she shows that he both inherited and reacted against Cicero’s euphemistic rhetoric and social practices, and she analyzes how Seneca transformed the rhetoric of his own letters from an instrument of social negotiation into an idiom for ethical philosophy and self-reflection. Though Cicero and Seneca are often viewed as a study in contrasts, Wilcox extensively compares their letters, underscoring Cicero’s significant influence on Seneca as a prose stylist, philosopher, and public figure.

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Giza and the Pyramids
The Definitive History
Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass
University of Chicago Press, 2017
The pyramids of Giza have stood for more than four thousand years, fascinating generations around the world. We think of the pyramids as mysteries, but the stones, hieroglyphs, landscape, and even layers of sand and debris around them hold stories. In Giza and the Pyramids: The Definitive History, two of the world’s most eminent Egyptologists, Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, provide their unique insights based on more than four decades of excavating and studying the site.

The celebrated Great Pyramid of Khufu, or Cheops, is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing, but there is much more to Giza. Though we imagine the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure and the Sphinx rising from the desert, isolated and enigmatic, they were once surrounded by temples, noble tombs, vast cemeteries, and even harbors and teeming towns. This unparalleled account describes that past life in vibrant detail, along with the history of exploration, the religious and social function of the pyramids, how the pyramids were built, and the story of Giza before and after the Old Kingdom. Hundreds of illustrations, including vivid photographs of the monuments, excavations, and objects, as well as plans, reconstructions, and images from remote-controlled cameras and laser scans, help bring these monuments to life.

Through the ages, Giza and the pyramids have inspired extraordinary speculations and wild theories, but here, in this definitive account, is the in-depth story as told by the evidence on the ground and by the leading authorities on the site.
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Gladius
The World of the Roman Soldier
Guy de la Bédoyère
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Gladius delivers a stunning ground-level recreation of what it was like to be a soldier in the fighting force that made the Roman Empire.
Empire. 


The Roman army was the greatest fighting machine in the ancient world. More than that, it was the single largest organization in Western antiquity, taking in members from all classes, from  senators to freed slaves. The Roman Empire depended on its army not just to win its wars, defend its frontiers, and control the seas, but to act as the very engine of the state.

In Gladius, Guy de la Bédoyère takes us straight to the heart of what it meant to be a part of the Roman army. Rather than a history of the army itself, or a guide to military organization and fighting methods, this book is a ground-level recreation of what it was like to be a soldier in the army that made the empire. Surveying numerous aspects of life in the Roman army between 264 BCE and 337 CE, Gladius—the Latin word for sword—draws not only on the words of famed Roman historians, but also those of the soldiers  themselves, as recorded in their religious dedications, tombstones, and even private letters and graffiti. Gladius reveals the everyday life  of these soldiers and their families, whether stationed in a bleak frontier garrison in Britain or North Africa, tasked with guarding the emperor in Rome, fighting on foreign battlefields, mutinying over pay, marching in triumph, throwing their weight around on city streets, or enjoying esteem in honorable retirement.

By illuminating the history of one organization that reflected all corners of the Roman world, Gladius gives us a portrait of an ancient society that is unprecedented in both its broad sweep and gritty intimacy.
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Glory
The Gospel of Judas, A Novel
Giuseppe Berto
Rutgers University Press, 2024
Christ’s nemesis Judas Iscariot remains a shadowy figure in the four canonical gospels, which give contradictory reasons for why this rogue disciple betrays Christ. But how would Judas himself explain his motives? 
 
In Glory, Italian modernist Giuseppe Berto’s final novel, Judas finally tells his side of the story. From his perspective, Jesus is the betrayer, a would-be political activist and social reformer who fails to live up to his promises. And by fulfilling his predestined role in the drama of Christ’s death and resurrection, Judas himself is partly responsible for humanity’s salvation, enabling them to be redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice. As the novel probes into the psychological motivations behind his rejection of Jesus’ authority, Judas emerges as a compelling conflicted character, a man who seeks to have agency even when he knows his actions are being scripted by a higher power. Through Judas’s searing tortured monologues, this late masterpiece from one of Italy’s greatest writers investigates deep questions about the nature of faith, rebellion, fate, and free will. 

 

 
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The Gnostics
Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity
David Brakke
Harvard University Press, 2012

Who were the Gnostics? And how did the Gnostic movement influence the development of Christianity in antiquity? Is it true that the Church rejected Gnosticism? This book offers an illuminating discussion of recent scholarly debates over the concept of “Gnosticism” and the nature of early Christian diversity. Acknowledging that the category “Gnosticism” is flawed and must be reformed, David Brakke argues for a more careful approach to gathering evidence for the ancient Christian movement known as the Gnostic school of thought. He shows how Gnostic myth and ritual addressed basic human concerns about alienation and meaning, offered a message of salvation in Jesus, and provided a way for people to regain knowledge of God, the ultimate source of their being.

Rather than depicting the Gnostics as heretics or as the losers in the fight to define Christianity, Brakke argues that the Gnostics participated in an ongoing reinvention of Christianity, in which other Christians not only rejected their ideas but also adapted and transformed them. This book will challenge scholars to think in news ways, but it also provides an accessible introduction to the Gnostics and their fellow early Christians.

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Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars
Critical Explorations in the History of Religions
Bruce Lincoln
University of Chicago Press, 2012

Bruce Lincoln is one of the most prominent advocates within religious studies for an uncompromisingly critical approach to the phenomenon of religion—historians of religions, he believes, should resist the preferred narratives and self-understanding of religions themselves, especially when their stories are endowed with sacred origins and authority. In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars, Lincoln assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude.

The book begins with Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” and ends with “The (Un)discipline of Religious Studies,” in which he unsparingly considers the failings of uncritical and nonhistorical approaches to the study of religions. In between, Lincoln presents new examinations of problems in ancient religions and relates these cases to larger comparative themes. While bringing to light important features of the formation of pantheons and the constructions of demons, chaos, and the dead, Lincoln demonstrates that historians of religions should take religious things—inspired scriptures, sacred centers, salvific rites, communities graced by divine favor—as the theories of interested humans that shape perception, community, and experiences. As he shows, it is for their terrestrial influence, and not their sacred origins, that religious phenomena merit consideration by the historian.
 
Tackling many questions central to religious study, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.
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Gods and Heroes of the Greeks
The "Library" of Apollodorus
Michael Simpson
University of Massachusetts Press, 1976
We are currently updating our website and have not yet posted complete information for this title. Many of our books are in the Google preview program, which allows readers to view up to 20% of the book. If this title is active in the program, you will find the Google Preview button in the sidebar below.
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Gods in Dwellings
Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East
Michael B. Hundley
SBL Press, 2013

In this book devoted exclusively to temples and perceptions of the divine presences that inhabit them, Michael B. Hundley focuses on the official religions of the ancient Near East and explores the interface between the human and the divine within temple environs.

Hundley identifies common ancient Near Eastern temple systems and examines issues that include what temple structures communicate, how temples were understood to function, temple ideology, the installation of divine presence in a temple, the connection between presence and physical representation, and human service to the deity.

Drawing on architectural and spatial theory, ritual theory, theories of language, art history, archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, and comparative studies, Hundley offers a single interpretive lens through which to view temple worship.

Features:

  • A close examination of temples in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hittite Anatolia, and Syria-Palestine
  • An interdisciplinary treatment of architecture, language, ritual, and art
  • A dual focus on how a deity's divine presence connects to space and art and how human service to the deity maintains the deity's active presence
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The Gods of the Greeks
Erika Simon, Translated by Jakob Zeyl, Edited by Alan Shapiro
University of Wisconsin Press, 2021
Originally published in Germany fifty years ago, The Gods of the Greeks has remained an enduring work. Influential scholar Erika Simon was one of the first to emphasize the importance of analyzing visual culture alongside literature to better understand how ancient Greeks perceived their gods. Giving due consideration to cult ritual and the phenomenon of genealogical relationships between mortals and immortals, this pioneering volume remains one of the few to approach the Greek gods from an archaeological perspective. From Zeus to Hermes, each of the major deities is considered in turn, with Simon’s insights on their nature and attributes guiding the reader to a fuller understanding of how their followers perceived and worshipped them in the ancient world.

This careful and fluid translation finally makes Simon’s landmark edition accessible to English-language readers. With an abundance of beautiful illustrations, the book examines portrayals of the thirteen major gods in art over the course of two millennia. Scholars who study the lives and practices of those living in ancient Greece will value this newest contribution.
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Golden Cynthia
Essays on Propertius
Sharon L. James, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 2022

The elegiac poet Propertius responds in his verse to the complex changes that Rome underwent in his period, taking on numerous topics including poetic and sexual rivalry, visual art, violence, inability to control the elusive mistress, imperialism, colonialism, civil war, the radical new shape of the Roman state under the new monarch Augustus, and more. These essays, by well-known scholars of Roman elegy, offer new ways of reading Propertius’ topics, attitudes, and poetics.

This book begins with two distinguished essays by the late Barbara Flaschenriem, whose work on Propertius remains influential. The other contributions, offered in honor of her, are by Diane Rayor, Andrew Feldherr, Ellen Greene, Lowell Bowditch, Alison Keith, and volume editor Sharon L. James. These essays explore topics including Propertian didacticism, dream interpretation, visual art and formalism, sex and violence, Roman imperialism and its connection to the elegiac puella, and Propertius’ engagement, in Book 4, with Vergil’s poetry.

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The Golden Dream
Seekers Of El Dorado
Robert Silverberg
Ohio University Press, 1996

One of the most persistent legends in the annals of New World exploration is that of the Land of Gold. This mythical site was located over vast areas of South America (and later, North America); the search for it drove some men mad with greed and, as often as not, to their untimely deaths.

In this history of quest and adventure, Robert Silverberg traces the fate of Old World explorers lured westward by the myth of El Dorado. From the German conquistadores licensed by the Spanish king to operate out of Venezuela, to the journeys of Gonzalo Pizarro in the Amazon basin, and to the nearly miraculous voyage of Francisco Orellana to the mouth of the Amazon River, encountering the warlike women who gave the river its name, violence and bloodshed accompanied the determined adventurers. Sir Walter Raleigh and a host of other explorers spent small fortunes and many lives trying to locate Manoa, a city that was rumored to be El Dorado—City of Gold. Celebrated science fiction author Robert Silverberg recreates these legendary quests in The Golden Dream: Seekers of El Dorado.

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The Goths
Lost Civilizations
David M. Gwynn
Reaktion Books, 2017
The Goths are truly a “lost civilization.” Sweeping down from the north, ancient Gothic tribes sacked the imperial city of Rome and set in motion the decline and fall of the western Roman empire. Ostrogothic and Visigothic kings ruled over Italy and Spain, dominating early medieval Europe. Yet after the last Gothic kingdom fell more than a thousand years ago, the Goths disappeared as an independent people. Over the centuries that followed, as traces of Gothic civilization vanished, its people came to be remembered as both barbaric destroyers and heroic champions of liberty.

In this engaging history, David M. Gwynn brings together the interwoven stories of the original Goths and the diverse Gothic heritage, a heritage that continues to shape our modern world. From the ancient migrations to contemporary Goth culture, through debates over democratic freedom and European nationalism, and drawing on writers from Shakespeare to Bram Stoker, Gwynn explores the ever-widening gulf between the Goths of history and the popular imagination. Historians, students of architecture and literature, and general readers alike will learn something new about this great lost civilization.
 
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Graceful Errors
Pindar and the Performance of Praise
Hilary Mackie
University of Michigan Press, 2003
Returning home, a victor in the great Greek games of the fifth century B.C. could expect an exquisite choral performance in praise of his achievement?that is, if he had the foresight to hire Pindar. Self-conscious and tactful, yet proudly assertive, Pindar's odes delicately balanced praise against the risk of overstepping; evoked past heroes without overshadowing the present; and prayed for a future harmonizing human aspiration with divine aims.
Reading Pindar's poems with their public performance in mind, Hilary Mackie suggests that the poet was forced to tread a precarious path: weighing the interests of various groups of audience members against one another, balancing praise of the victorious athlete with praise of the deeds of mythic heroes, and catering at the same time to an uncertain future. Mackie's new approach illuminates apparent contradictions in the poet's pronouncements by bringing to the fore the variety of messages conveyed in his wishes and prayers. Her innovative examination of the moment-to-moment dynamic between Pindar and his audience shows that the poet's performance often contained one message for the victor and his family, and quite another for the gods.
Graceful Errors significantly changes our perspective on Pindar's work, providing a lucid appreciation of Pindaric poetry that takes into account the oral context of these poems' performance. It will be of interest not only to classicists but also to scholars and students interested in oral performance, the social function of poetry, and the role and status of poets in traditional cultures, whether ancient or modern.
Hilary Mackie is Associate Professor of Classics at Rice University.
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The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire
Edward N. Luttwak
Harvard University Press, 2009

In this book, the distinguished writer Edward N. Luttwak presents the grand strategy of the eastern Roman empire we know as Byzantine, which lasted more than twice as long as the more familiar western Roman empire, eight hundred years by the shortest definition. This extraordinary endurance is all the more remarkable because the Byzantine empire was favored neither by geography nor by military preponderance. Yet it was the western empire that dissolved during the fifth century.

The Byzantine empire so greatly outlasted its western counterpart because its rulers were able to adapt strategically to diminished circumstances, by devising new ways of coping with successive enemies. It relied less on military strength and more on persuasion—to recruit allies, dissuade threatening neighbors, and manipulate potential enemies into attacking one another instead. Even when the Byzantines fought—which they often did with great skill—they were less inclined to destroy their enemies than to contain them, for they were aware that today’s enemies could be tomorrow’s allies. Born in the fifth century when the formidable threat of Attila’s Huns were deflected with a minimum of force, Byzantine strategy continued to be refined over the centuries, incidentally leaving for us several fascinating guidebooks to statecraft and war.

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire is a broad, interpretive account of Byzantine strategy, intelligence, and diplomacy over the course of eight centuries that will appeal to scholars, classicists, military history buffs, and professional soldiers.

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The Great Name
Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary
Ronald J. Leprohon
SBL Press, 2013
The titulary of the ancient Egyptian king was one of the symbols of authority he assumed at his coronation. At first consisting only of the Horus name, the titulary grew to include other phrases chosen to represent the king’s special relationship with the divine world. By the Middle Kingdom (late twenty-first century B.C.E.), the full fivefold titulary was clearly established, and kings henceforth used all five names regularly. This volume includes all rulers’ names from the so-called Dynasty 0 (ca. 3200 B.C.E.) to the last Ptolemaic ruler in the late first century B.C.E., offered in transliteration and English translation with an introduction and notes.
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Greater than Emperor
Cola di Rienzo (ca. 1313-54) and the World of Fourteenth-Century Rome
Amanda Collins
University of Michigan Press, 2002

Greater than Emperor charts the remarkable process by which Rome tried to forge a new civic identity, similar in constitution to contemporary city-republics but conceptually much greater. At the forefront of the process stood the idiosyncratic and astonishing young notary Cola di Rienzo. On May 21, 1347, Cola staged a bloodless coup. Rome entered a new age that would witness both the resurrection of the ancient power of the Empire and Rome's apotheosis as God's chosen city. Yet within seven months, the theatricality and violence of Cola's regime led to exile. Cola's triumphal return some years later ended in his assassination.

Cola was eventually resurrected as a hero of nineteenth-century nationalism, leaving the realities of Trecento Rome far behind. Yet it is only in terms of the very real models and methods that Cola welded together that his revolution can be understood.

Greater than Emperor describes Cola's reliance on the past of rhetoric, pageantry, and Roman law. It then discusses the future, tracing the dynamic contemporary influences of apocalyptic fervor, prophetic literature, and radical Franciscan imagery of Cola's world. Amanda Collins assesses Cola's legal and political career within both the complex mechanics of municipal administration and the multiple hierarchies of Roman society.

Amanda Collins offers a new assessment of the dramatic events of 1347 and an analysis of Cola within his late medieval Roman context. Bringing depth and substance to Cola's backdrop, Trecento Rome and the economic and spiritual ambitions of its citizen body, Collins provides information crucial to understanding the longer-term economic and political drive to civic autonomy in Rome before 1400.

Historians and generalists alike will relish the story of a remarkable individual, set within the cultural climate of a famous and fascinating city, during an often-overlooked period. This book sheds new light on a crucial political figure that brought a dazzling civil independence to Rome.

Amanda Collins held the Junior Research Fellowship in Intellectual History at Wolfson College, Oxford from 1997-2000, and has more recently been employed at the University of Sussex.

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The Greco-Egyptian Magical Formularies
Libraries, Books, and Individual Recipes
Edited by Christopher A. Faraone and Sofía Torallas Tovar
University of Michigan Press, 2022

In Greco-Roman Egypt, recipes for magical undertaking, called magical formularies, commonly existed for love potions, curses, attempts to best business rivals—many of the same challenges that modern people might face. In The Greco-Egyptian Magical Formularies: Libraries, Books, and Individual Recipes, volume editors Christopher Faraone and Sofia Torallas Tovar present a series of essays by scholars involved in a multiyear project to reedit and translate the various magical handbooks that were inscribed in the Roman period in the Greek or Egyptian languages.  For the first time, the material remains of these papyrus rolls and codices are closely examined, revealing important information about the production of books in Egypt, the scribal culture in which they were produced, and the traffic in single recipes copied from them.  Especially important for historians of the book and the Christian Bible are new insights in the historical shift from roll to codex, complicated methods of inscribing the bilingual papyri (in which the Greek script is written left to right and the demotic script right to left), and the new realization that several of the longest extant handbooks are clearly compilations of two or more shorter handbooks, which may have come from different places.  The essays also reexamine and rethink the idea that these handbooks came from the personal libraries of practicing magicians or temple scriptoria, in one case going so far as to suggest that two of the handbooks had literary pretensions of a sort and were designed to be read for pleasure rather than for quotidian use in making magical recipes.

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Greece
Biography of a Modern Nation
Roderick Beaton
University of Chicago Press, 2019
For many, “Greece” is synonymous with “ancient Greece,” the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But, how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization—sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas.
 
Opening with the birth of the Greek nation-state, which emerged from encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Roderick Beaton carries his story into the present moment and Greece’s contentious post-recession relationship with the rest of the European Union. Through close examination of how Greeks have understood their shared identity, Beaton reveals a centuries-old tension over the Greek sense of self. How does Greece illuminate the difference between a geographically bounded state and the shared history and culture that make up a nation?

A magisterial look at the development of a national identity through history, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation is singular in its approach. By treating modern Greece as a biographical subject, a living entity in its own right, Beaton encourages us to take a fresh look at a people and culture long celebrated for their past, even as they strive to build a future as part of the modern West.
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Greece in the Bronze Age
Emily Townsend Vermeule
University of Chicago Press, 1964
From the arrival of the first men in Greece to the fall of the Mycenaean palace-town in the thirteenth century B.C., this work captures the essential qualities of each period of pre-classical civilization: the slow development of the Neolithic culture, the rich and original Early Bronze Age, the fruitful yet tragic encounter between Minoans and Mycenaean Empire. The legacy of Mycenaean religion and art is reviewed, including material found in excavated palaces and their stored wealth of frescoes, carved ivories, silver and gold jewelry, vases, and bronze weapons. The author deals with the invasions of Greece, the growth of a Greek language and some of the problems of Linear B, and the impact of Crete and the East upon the mainstream of Greek development.
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Greek and Roman Life
Ian Jenkins
Harvard University Press, 1986
Archaeologists have recovered from the Greek and Roman world a wealth of objects that were once in daily use—toilet articles, writing implements, toys, and kitchen utensils—some of which are strikingly similar to those still used today. Other objects were decorated with scenes of everyday life. In vase paintings, for example, we meet the Greeks at home: we see men enjoying a drinking party, women spinning and weaving, a mother nursing an infant, even a baby sitting on a potty. By concentrating on domestic life, Jenkins shows us a different side of classical antiquity from that presented through the more traditional forms of political and military history. Although this book places particular emphasis upon home and family, Ian Jenkins also describes some of the more public aspects of Greek and Roman times, such as the theater, chariot racing, and gladiators. This colorful volume is fully illustrated, chiefly from the collections of the British Museum.
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The Greek Anthology, Volume I
Book 1: Christian Epigrams. Book 2: Christodorus of Thebes in Egypt. Book 3: The Cyzicene Epigrams. Book 4: The Proems of the Different Anthologies. Book 5: The Amatory Epigrams. Book 6: The Dedicatory Epigrams
W. R. Paton
Harvard University Press

The Greek Anthology (“Gathering of Flowers”) is the name given to a collection of about 4500 short Greek poems (called epigrams but usually not epigrammatic) by about 300 composers. To the collection (called “Stephanus”, wreath or garland) made and contributed to by Meleager of Gadara (1st century BCE) was added another by Philippus of Thessalonica (late 1st century CE), a third by Diogenianus (2nd century), and much later a fourth, called the “Circle”, by Agathias of Myrina. These (lost) and others (also lost) were partly incorporated, arranged according to contents, by Constantinus Cephalas (early 10th century?) into fifteen books now preserved in a single manuscript of the Palatine Library at Heidelberg. The grand collection was rearranged and revised by the monk Maximus Planudes (14th century) who also added epigrams lost from Cephalas’s compilation.

The fifteen books of the Palatine Anthology are: I, Christian Epigrams; II, Descriptions of Statues; III, Inscriptions in a temple at Cyzicus; IV, Prefaces of Meleager, Philippus, and Agathias; V, Amatory Epigrams; VI, Dedicatory; VII, Sepulchral; VIII, Epigrams of St. Gregory; IX, Declamatory; X, Hortatory and Admonitory; XI, Convivial and Satirical; XII, Strato’s “Musa Puerilis”; XIII, Metrical curiosities; XIV, Problems, Riddles, and Oracles; XV, Miscellanies. Book XVI is the Planudean Appendix: Epigrams on works of art.

Outstanding among the poets are Meleager, Antipater of Sidon, Crinagoras, Palladas, Agathias, Paulus Silentiarius.

The Loeb Classical Library edition is in five volumes.

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The Greek Discovery of Politics
Christian Meier
Harvard University Press, 1990

Why the Greeks? How did it happen that these people—out of all Mediterranean societies—developed democratic systems of government? The outstanding German historian of the ancient world, Christian Meier, reconstructs the process of political thinking in Greek culture that led to democracy. He demonstrates that the civic identity of the Athenians was a direct precondition for the practical reality of this form of government.

Meier shows how the structure of Greek communal life gave individuals a civic role and discusses a crucial reform that institutionalized the idea of equality before the law. In Greek drama—specifically Aeschylus' Oresteia—he finds reflections of the ascendancy of civil law and of a politicizing of life in the city-state. He examines the role of the leader as well as citizen participation in Athenian democracy and describes an ancient equivalent of the idea of social progress. He also contrasts the fifth-century Greek political world with today's world, drawing revealing comparisons.

The Greek Discovery of Politics is important reading for ancient historians, classicists, political scientists, and anyone interested in the history of political thought or in the culture of ancient Greece.

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Greek Homosexuality
Updated and with a New Postscript
K. J. Dover
Harvard University Press, 1989
To what extent and in what ways was homosexuality approved by the ancient Greeks? An eminent classicist examines the evidence—vase paintings, archaic and classical poetry, the dialogues of Plato, speeches in the law courts, the comedies of Aristophanes—and reaches provocative conclusions. A discussion of female homosexuality is included.
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Greek Lyric, Volume I
Sappho and Alcaeus
Sappho and Alcaeus; edited and translated by David A. Campbell
Harvard University Press, 1982

Precious snippets of ancient song.

This volume contains the poetic fragments of the two illustrious singers of early sixth-century Lesbos: Sappho, the most famous woman poet of antiquity, whose main theme was love; and Alcaeus, poet of wine, war, and politics, and composer of short hymns to the gods. Also included are the principal testimonia, the ancients’ reports on the lives and work of the two poets.

The five volumes in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Greek Lyric contain the surviving fragments of solo and choral song. This poetry was not preserved in medieval manuscripts, and few complete poems remain. Later writers quoted from the poets, but only so much as suited their needs; these quotations are supplemented by papyrus texts found in Egypt, most of them badly damaged. The high quality of what remains makes us realize the enormity of our loss.

Volume I presents Sappho and Alcaeus. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and other sixth-century poets are in Volume III. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). Volume V contains the new school of poets active from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century and also collects folk songs, drinking songs, hymns, and other anonymous pieces.

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Greek Lyric, Volume II
Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman
David A. Campbell
Harvard University Press

Precious snippets of ancient song.

The five volumes in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Greek Lyric contain the surviving fragments of solo and choral song. This poetry was not preserved in medieval manuscripts, and few complete poems remain. Later writers quoted from the poets, but only so much as suited their needs; these quotations are supplemented by papyrus texts found in Egypt, most of them badly damaged. The high quality of what remains makes us realize the enormity of our loss.

Volume I presents Sappho and Alcaeus. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and other sixth-century poets are in Volume III. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). Volume V contains the new school of poets active from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century and also collects folk songs, drinking songs, hymns, and other anonymous pieces.

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Greek Lyric, Volume III
Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others
Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, et al.; edited and translated by David A. Campbell
Harvard University Press

Precious snippets of ancient song.

The most important poets writing in Greek in the sixth century BC came from Sicily and southern Italy. Stesichorus was called by ancient writers “most Homeric”—a recognition of his epic themes and noble style. He composed verses about the Trojan War and its aftermath, the Argonauts, the adventures of Heracles. He may have been a solo singer, performing these poems to his own cithara accompaniment. Ibycus probably belonged to the colony of Rhegium in southwestern Italy. Like Stesichorus he wrote lyrical narratives on mythological themes, but he also composed erotic poems. Simonides is said to have spent his later years in Sicily. He was in Athens at the time of the Persian Wars, though, and was acclaimed for his epitaph on the Athenians who died at Marathon. He was a successful poet in various genres, including victory odes, dirges, and dithyrambic poetry. The power of his pathos emerges in the fragments we have.

All the extant verse of these poets is given in this third volume of David Campbell’s edition of Greek lyric poetry, along with the ancients’ accounts of their lives and works. Ten contemporary poets are also included, among them Arion, Lasus, and Pratinas.

The LCL edition of Greek Lyric is in five volumes. Sappho and Alcaeus—the illustrious singers of sixth-century Lesbos—are in the first volume. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). The last volume includes the new school of dithyrambic poets (mid-fifth to mid-fourth century), together with the anonymous poems: drinking songs, children’s songs, cult hymns, and others.

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Greek Lyric, Volume IV
Bacchylides, Corinna, and Others
Bacchylides, Corinna, et al.; edited and translated by David A. Campbell
Harvard University Press

Precious snippets of ancient song.

Bacchylides, nephew of Simonides and rival of Pindar, wrote choral poetry of many types. We have a number of his victory odes—poems celebrating victories in athletic contests—as well as dithyrambs and other hymns. He was a master of the captivating narrative. Also represented in this volume is the Boeotian Corinna, whose work, versions of local myths, survives in greater quantity than that of any other Greek woman poet except Sappho. Ancient authorities regarded Corinna as an older contemporary and mentor of Pindar; but some modern scholars place her later, in the third century BC. Other women are here too: Myrtis, also from Boeotia; Telesilla of Argos, famous for her military leadership as well as her hymns; the shadowy Charixena; and Praxilla of Sicyon, author of choral poems and drinking songs.

David Campbell gives all the extant verse of these poets, along with the ancients’ accounts of their lives and works. This fourth volume of his much-praised edition of Greek lyric poetry also includes Timocreon of Rhodes, pentathlete and writer of invective; Diagoras of Melos, choral poet and alleged atheist; and Ion of Chios. Sophocles is represented by fragments of his paean Asclepius, Euripides by the few surviving lines of his ode for Alcibiades’ dazzling victory in the chariot race at Olympia.

This is the fourth in a five-volume edition of Greek lyric poets. Sappho and Alcaeus, the illustrious singers of sixth-century Lesbos, are in the first. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and other sixth-century poets are in Volume III. The last volume includes the new school of dithyrambic poets (mid-fifth to mid-fourth century), together with the anonymous poems: drinking songs, children’s songs, cult hymns, and others.

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Greek Lyric, Volume V
The New School of Poetry and Anonymous Songs and Hymns
David A. Campbell
Harvard University Press

Precious snippets of ancient song.

Towards the end of the fifth century BC, Aristophanes and the other writers of comedy used contemporary poets and musicians as targets for their jokes, making fun of their innovations in language and music. The dithyrambs of Melanippides, Cinesias, Phrynis, Timotheus, and Philoxenus are remarkable examples of this new style. The poets of the new school, active from the mid-fifth to the mid-fourth century, are presented in this final volume of David Campbell’s widely praised edition of Greek lyric poetry. The longest piece extant is a nome by Timotheus—the foremost of these poets—called The Persians; it is a florid account of the battle of Salamis, to be sung solo to cithara accompaniment.

This volume also collects folk songs, drinking songs, and other anonymous pieces. The folk songs come from many parts of Greece and include children’s ditties, marching songs, love songs, and snatches of cult poetry. The drinking songs are derived mainly from Athenaeus’ collection of Attic scolia, short pieces performed at drinking parties in Athens. The anonymous pieces come from papyrus, vases, and stone as well as from literary texts, and include hymns, narrative poetry, and satirical writing.

This is the fifth in a five-volume edition of Greek lyric poets. Sappho and Alcaeus—the illustrious singers of sixth-century Lesbos—are in the first. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the Anacreontea; and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and other sixth-century poets are in Volume III. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century).

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Greek Mathematical Works, Volume I
Thales to Euclid
Ivor Thomas
Harvard University Press

Elemental learning.

The splendid achievement of Greek mathematics is here illustrated in two volumes of selected mathematical works. Volume I (LCL 335) contains the divisions of mathematics; mathematics in Greek education; calculation; arithmetical notation and operations, including square root and cube root; Pythagorean arithmetic, including properties of numbers; the square root of 2; proportion and means; algebraic equations; Proclus; Thales; Pythagorean geometry; Democritus; Hippocrates of Chios; duplicating the cube and squaring the circle; trisecting angles; Theaetetus; Plato; Eudoxus of Cnidus (pyramid, cone); Aristotle (the infinite, the lever); Euclid.

Volume II (LCL 362) contains Aristarchus (distances of sun and moon); Archimedes (cylinder, sphere, cubic equations; conoids; spheroids; spiral; expression of large numbers; mechanics; hydrostatics); Eratosthenes (measurement of the earth); Apollonius (conic sections and other works); later development of geometry; trigonometry (including Ptolemy’s table of sines); mensuration: Heron of Alexandria (mensuration); Diophantus (algebra, determinate and indeterminate equations); Pappus (the revival of geometry).

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Greek Mathematical Works, Volume II
Aristarchus to Pappus
Ivor Thomas
Harvard University Press

Elemental learning.

The splendid achievement of Greek mathematics is here illustrated in two volumes of selected mathematical works. Volume I (LCL 335) contains the divisions of mathematics; mathematics in Greek education; calculation; arithmetical notation and operations, including square root and cube root; Pythagorean arithmetic, including properties of numbers; the square root of 2; proportion and means; algebraic equations; Proclus; Thales; Pythagorean geometry; Democritus; Hippocrates of Chios; duplicating the cube and squaring the circle; trisecting angles; Theaetetus; Plato; Eudoxus of Cnidus (pyramid, cone); Aristotle (the infinite, the lever); Euclid.

Volume II (LCL 362) contains Aristarchus (distances of sun and moon); Archimedes (cylinder, sphere, cubic equations; conoids; spheroids; spiral; expression of large numbers; mechanics; hydrostatics); Eratosthenes (measurement of the earth); Apollonius (conic sections and other works); later development of geometry; trigonometry (including Ptolemy’s table of sines); mensuration: Heron of Alexandria (mensuration); Diophantus (algebra, determinate and indeterminate equations); Pappus (the revival of geometry).

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Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE–200 CE
Allison Glazebrook
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE–200 CE challenges the often-romanticized view of the prostitute as an urbane and liberated courtesan by examining the social and economic realities of the sex industry in Greco-Roman culture. Departing from the conventional focus on elite society, these essays consider the Greek prostitute as displaced foreigner, slave, and member of an urban underclass.
    The contributors draw on a wide range of material and textual evidence to discuss portrayals of prostitutes on painted vases and in the literary tradition, their roles at symposia (Greek drinking parties), and their place in the everyday life of the polis. Reassessing many assumptions about the people who provided and purchased sexual services, this volume yields a new look at gender, sexuality, urbanism, and economy in the ancient Mediterranean world.

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The Greek Pursuit of Knowledge
Jacques Brunschwig
Harvard University Press, 2003
Ancient Greek thought is the essential wellspring from which the intellectual, ethical, and political civilization of the West draws and to which, even today, we repeatedly return. In this volume drawn from the reference work Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge, major scholars take up basic topics in philosophy and science, offering an account of the extraordinary explosion of desire for knowledge in the classical Greek world.
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Greek Religion
Walter Burkert
Harvard University Press, 1985

In this book Walter Burkert, the most eminent living historian of ancient Greek religion, has produced the standard work for our time on that subject. First published in German in 1977, it has now been translated into English with the assistance of the author himself. A clearly structured and readable survey for students and scholars, it will be welcomed as the best modern account of any polytheistic religious system.

Burkert draws on archaeological discoveries, insights from other disciplines, and inscriptions in Linear B to reconstruct the practices and beliefs of the Minoan–Mycenaean age. The major part of his book is devoted to the archaic and classical epochs. He describes the various rituals of sacrifice and libation and explains Greek beliefs about purification. He investigates the inspiration behind the great temples at Olympia, Delphi, Delos, and the Acropolis—discussing the priesthood, sanctuary, and oracles. Considerable attention is given to the individual gods, the position of the heroes, and beliefs about the afterlife. The different festivals are used to illuminate the place of religion in the society of the city-state. The mystery cults, at Eleusis and among the followers of Bacchus and Orpheus, are also set in that context. The book concludes with an assessment of the great classical philosophers’ attitudes to religion.

Insofar as possible, Burkert lets the evidence—from literature and legend, vase paintings and archaeology—speak for itself; he elucidates the controversies surrounding its interpretation without glossing over the enigmas that remain. Throughout, the notes (updated for the English-language edition) afford a wealth of further references as the text builds up its coherent picture of what is known of the religion of ancient Greece.

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The Greek Revolution
A Critical Dictionary
Paschalis M. Kitromilides
Harvard University Press, 2021

Winner of the 2022 London Hellenic Prize

On the bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, an essential guide to the momentous war for independence of the Greeks from the Ottoman Empire.

The Greek war for independence (1821–1830) often goes missing from discussion of the Age of Revolutions. Yet the rebellion against Ottoman rule was enormously influential in its time, and its resonances are felt across modern history. The Greeks inspired others to throw off the oppression that developed in the backlash to the French Revolution. And Europeans in general were hardly blind to the sight of Christian subjects toppling Muslim rulers. In this collection of essays, Paschalis Kitromilides and Constantinos Tsoukalas bring together scholars writing on the many facets of the Greek Revolution and placing it squarely within the revolutionary age.

An impressive roster of contributors traces the revolution as it unfolded and analyzes its regional and transnational repercussions, including the Romanian and Serbian revolts that spread the spirit of the Greek uprising through the Balkans. The essays also elucidate religious and cultural dimensions of Greek nationalism, including the power of the Orthodox church. One essay looks at the triumph of the idea of a Greek “homeland,” which bound the Greek diaspora—and its financial contributions—to the revolutionary cause. Another essay examines the Ottoman response, involving a series of reforms to the imperial military and allegiance system. Noted scholars cover major figures of the revolution; events as they were interpreted in the press, art, literature, and music; and the impact of intellectual movements such as philhellenism and the Enlightenment.

Authoritative and accessible, The Greek Revolution confirms the profound political significance and long-lasting cultural legacies of a pivotal event in world history.

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Greek Ritual Poetics
Dimitrios Yatromanolakis
Harvard University Press
Investigating ritual in Greece from cross-disciplinary and transhistorical perspectives, Greek Ritual Poetics offers novel readings of the pivotal role of ritual in Greek traditions by exploring a broad spectrum of texts, art, and social practices. This collection of essays written by an international group of leading scholars in a number of disciplines presents a variety of methodological approaches to secular and religious rituals, and to the narrative and conceptual strategies of their reenactment and manipulation in literary, pictorial, and social discourses. Addressing understudied aspects of Greek ritual and societies, this book will prove significant for classicists, anthropologists, Byzantinists, art historians, neohellenists, and comparatists interested in the interaction between ritual, aesthetics, and cultural communicative systems.
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Greek Sport and Social Status
By Mark Golden
University of Texas Press, 2008

From the ancient Olympic games to the World Series and the World Cup, athletic achievement has always conferred social status. In this collection of essays, a noted authority on ancient sport discusses how Greek sport has been used to claim and enhance social status, both in antiquity and in modern times.

Mark Golden explores a variety of ways in which sport provided a route to social status. In the first essay, he explains how elite horsemen and athletes tried to ignore the important roles that jockeys, drivers, and trainers played in their victories, as well as how female owners tried to rank their equestrian achievements above those of men and other women. In the next essay, Golden looks at the varied contributions that slaves made to sport, despite its use as a marker of free, Greek status. In the third essay, he evaluates the claims made by gladiators in the Greek east that they be regarded as high-status athletes and asserts that gladiatorial spectacle is much more like Greek sport than scholars today usually admit. In the final essay, Golden critiques the accepted accounts of ancient and modern Olympic history, arguing that attempts to raise the status of the modern games by stressing their links to the ancient ones are misleading. He concludes that the contemporary movement to call a truce in world conflicts during the Olympics is likewise based on misunderstandings of ancient Greek traditions.

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Greek Thought
A Guide to Classical Knowledge
Edited by Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey E. R. LloydTranslated under the direction of Catherine Porter
Harvard University Press, 2000

Ancient Greek thought is the essential wellspring from which the intellectual, ethical, and political civilization of the West draws and to which, even today, we repeatedly return. In more than sixty essays by an international team of scholars, this volume explores the full breadth and reach of Greek thought--investigating what the Greeks knew as well as what they thought about what they knew, and what they believed, invented, and understood about the conditions and possibilities of knowing. Calling attention to the characteristic reflexivity of Greek thought, the analysis in this book reminds us of what our own reflections owe to theirs.

In sections devoted to philosophy, politics, the pursuit of knowledge, major thinkers, and schools of thought, this work shows us the Greeks looking at themselves, establishing the terms for understanding life, language, production, and action. The authors evoke not history, but the stories the Greeks told themselves about history; not their poetry, but their poetics; not their speeches, but their rhetoric. Essays that survey political, scientific, and philosophical ideas, such as those on Utopia and the Critique of Politics, Observation and Research, and Ethics; others on specific fields from Astronomy and History to Mathematics and Medicine; new perspectives on major figures, from Anaxagoras to Zeno of Elea; studies of core traditions from the Milesians to the various versions of Platonism: together these offer a sense of the unquenchable thirst for knowledge that marked Greek civilization--and that Aristotle considered a natural and universal trait of humankind. With thirty-two pages of color illustrations, this work conveys the splendor and vitality of the Greek intellectual adventure.

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Greek Virginity
Giulia Sissa
Harvard University Press, 1990

For centuries, scholars have mused over the meaning of the bizarre physical posture of the virgin priestess at Delphi. She delivered Apollo’s oracles while seated on a raised tripod as vapors rose from the earth to her body. The image of prophecies taking shape inside a virginal body provides the starting point for this revealing exploration of the concept of the female body in Greece before the impact of Christianity.

In an analysis drawing upon Greek drama, myths, vase paintings, religious practices, the philosophers, and the Hippocratic medical writings, Giulia Sissa draws striking conclusions about the classical conceptions of sexual purity and of the female body as vehicle and vessel. She argues persuasively that virginity, for the Greeks, was unrelated to the breaking of the hymen and was not irrevocably lost after sexual relations. Since Greek doctors believed sexual activity and childbearing to be important for good health in women, virginity and abstinence had to be explained in terms of some purpose, usually sacred; it was not a virtue in itself. Sissa’s discussion of the differences between classical views and those of the Christian church fathers is illuminating. This pathbreaking essay on ancient sexuality focuses throughout on symbolism as well as on beliefs and conventions. The author’s extensive research, fresh insights, and urbane style make this a book for anyone interested in ancient thought and society and in women’s history.

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The Greeks
Edited by Jean-Pierre Vernant
University of Chicago Press, 1995
What do we mean when we speak of ancient Greeks? A person from the Archaic period? The war hero celebrated by Homer? Or the fourth century "political animal" described by Aristotle? In this book, leading scholars show what it meant to be Greek during the classical period of Greek civilization.

The Greeks offers the most complete portraits available of typical Greek personages from Athens to Sparta, Arcadia, Thessaly and Epirus to the city-states of Asia Minor, to the colonies of the Black Sea, southern Italy, and Sicily. Looking at the citizen, the religious believer, the soldier, the servant, the peasant, and others, they show what—in the Greek relationships with the divine, with nature, with others, and with the self—made him "different" in his ways of acting, thinking, and feeling.

The contributors to this volume are Jean-Pierre Vernant, Claude Mosse, Yvon Garlan, Giuseppe Cambiano, Luciano Canfora, James Redfield, Charles Segal, Oswyn Murray, Mario Vegetti, and Philippe Borgeaud.
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The Greeks
Lost Civilizations
Philip Matyszak
Reaktion Books, 2018
This book is a portrait of Ancient Greece—but not as we know it. Few people today appreciate that Greek civilization was spread across the Middle East, or that there were Greek cities in the foothills of the Himalayas. Philip Matyszak tells the lost stories of the Greeks outside Greece, compatriots of luminaries like Sappho, the poet from Lesbos; Archimedes, a native of Syracuse; and Herodotus, who was born in Asia Minor as a subject of the Persian Empire. Stretching from the earliest prehistoric Greek colonies around the Black Sea to Greek settlements in Spain and Italy, through the conquests of Alexander and the glories of the Hellenistic era, to the fall of Byzantium, The Greeks illuminates the lives of the Greek soldiers, statesmen, scientists, and philosophers who laid the foundations of what we call “Greek culture” today—though they seldom, if ever, set foot on the Greek mainland. Instead of following the well-worn path of examining the rise of Athenian democracy and Spartan militarism, this book offers a fresh look at what it meant to be Greek by instead telling the story of the Greeks abroad, from modern-day India to Spain.
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Grief and the Hero
The Futility of Longing in the Iliad
Emily P. Austin
University of Michigan Press, 2021

Grief and the Hero examines Achilles’ experience of the futility of grief in the context of the Iliad’s study of anger. No action can undo his friend Patroklos’ death, but the experience of death drives him to behave as though he can achieve something restorative. Rather than assuming that grief gives rise to anger, as most scholars have done, Grief and the Hero pays close attention to the poem’s representation of the origin of these emotions. In the Iliad, only Achilles’ grief for Patroklos is joined with the word pothê, “longing”; no other grief in the poem is described with this term. The Iliad depicts Achilles’ grief as the rupture of shared life—an insight that generates a new way of reading the epic. Achilles’ anguish drives him to extremes, oscillating between self-isolation and seeking communal expressions of grief; between weeping abundantly and relentlessly pursuing battle; between varied threats of mutilation, deeds of vengeance, and other vows. Yet his yearning for life shared with Patroklos is the common denominator. Here lies the profound insight of the Iliad. All of Achilles’ grief-driven deeds arise from his longing for life with Patroklos, and thus all of these deeds are, in a deep sense, futile. He yearns for something unattainable—undoing the reality of death. Grief and the Hero will appeal not only to scholars and students of Homer but to all humanists. Loss, longing, and even revenge touch many human lives, and the insights of the Iliad have broad resonance.

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A Guide to Greek Thought
Major Figures and Trends
Jacques Brunschwig
Harvard University Press, 2003
The philosophers, historians, and scientists of ancient Greece inaugurated and nourished the tradition of Western thought. This volume, drawn from the reference work Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge, gives fresh insight into the originality of major figures and the legacy of important currents of thought.
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A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases
John H. Oakley
University of Wisconsin Press, 2020
Painted vases are the richest and most complex images that remain from ancient Greece. Over the past decades, a great deal has been written on ancient art that portrays myths and rituals. Less has been written on scenes of daily life, and what has been written has been tucked away in hard-to-find books and journals. A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases synthesizes this material and expands it: it is the first comprehensive volume to present visual representations of everything from pets and children's games to drunken revelry and funerary rituals.
John H. Oakley's clear, accessible writing provides sound information with just the right amount of detail. Specialists of Greek art will welcome this book for its text and illustrations. This guide is an essential and much-needed reference for scholars and an ideal sourcebook for classics and art history.
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