Download or read book Leonidas and the Kings of Sparta written by Alfred S. Bradford and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pivotal history of the kings of Sparta not only describes their critical leadership in war, but also documents the waxing and waning of their social, political, and religious powers in the Spartan state. The Spartans have seemingly never gone out of interest, serving as mythic icons who exemplify fearlessness and an unwillingness to give in against impossible odds. Yet most are unaware of the true nature of the Spartan leaders—the fact that the kings maintained their position of power for 600 years by their willingness to compromise, even if it meant giving up some of their power, for example. Organized in a logical and chronological order, Leonidas and the Kings of Sparta: Mightiest Warriors, Fairest Kingdom describes the legendary origins of the dual kingship in Sparta, documents the many reigning eras of the kings, and then concludes with the time when the kingship was abolished six centuries later. The book examines the kings' roles in war and battle, in religion, in the social life of the city, and in formulating Spartan policy both at home and abroad. No other book on Sparta has concentrated on describing the role of the kings—and their absolutely essential contributions to Spartan society in general.
Download or read book Battle Descriptions as Literary Texts written by Johanna Luggin and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battle descriptions are usually seen as the raw material of the military historian, who uses them to explain why generals won or lost a given battle. This volume does not aim to contribute to this discussion; it rather approaches battle descriptions as literary texts that interact with the expectations of a given audience. Therefore literary traditions in structure, vocabulary and topics of battle descriptions should be explored. The transgression of genre-borders – also literary and fictional texts are included – and a broad comparative approach, combining evidence from the third millennium BC up to the 20th century AD, makes cultural specifics and differences more easily perceivable. Contents With contributions by Marcos Such-Guttiérrez, Pavel Čech, Hilmar Klinkott, Wolfgang Oswald, Kai Ruffing, Oliver Stoll, Martin M. Bauer, Reinhold Bichler, Christian Mileta, Simon Lentzsch, Sven Günther, Dennis Pulina, Johanna Luggin, Sonjar Koroliov, Magdalena Gronau and Martin Gronau. The Editors Dr. Johanna Luggin is a post-doc researcher in the ERC-funded project “NOSCEMUS – Nova Scientia: Early Modern Science and Latin” in Innsbruck, Austria. Dr. Sebastian Fink is a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence “Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions”.
Download or read book Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta written by Paul Cartledge and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 1987 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of a critical period of Greek history, focusing on a single career.
Download or read book The Sacred Band written by James Romm and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From classicist James Romm comes a “striking…fascinating” (Booklist) deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes—and the saga of the greatest military corps of the time, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers. The story of the Sacred Band, an elite 300-man corps recruited from pairs of lovers, highlights a chaotic era of ancient Greek history, four decades marked by battles, ideological disputes, and the rise of vicious strongmen. At stake was freedom, democracy, and the fate of Thebes, at this time the leading power of the Greek world. The tale begins in 379 BC, with a group of Theban patriots sneaking into occupied Thebes. Disguised in women’s clothing, they cut down the agents of Sparta, the state that had cowed much of Greece with its military might. To counter the Spartans, this group of patriots would form the Sacred Band, a corps whose history plays out against a backdrop of Theban democracy, of desperate power struggles between leading city-states, and the new prominence of eros, sexual love, in Greek public life. After four decades without a defeat, the Sacred Band was annihilated by the forces of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander in the Battle of Chaeronea—extinguishing Greek liberty for two thousand years. Buried on the battlefield where they fell, they were rediscovered in 1880—some skeletons still in pairs, with arms linked together. From violent combat in city streets to massive clashes on open ground, from ruthless tyrants to bold women who held their era in thrall, The Sacred Band recounts “in fluent, accessible prose” (The Wall Street Journal) the twists and turns of a crucial historical moment: the end of the treasured freedom of ancient Greece.
Download or read book War Warlords and Interstate Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the final four centuries BC, many political and stateless entities of the Mediterranean headed towards anarchy and militarism, while stronger powers -Carthage, the Hellenistic kingdoms and Republican Rome- expanded towards State formation, forceful military structures and empire building. Edited by T. Ñaco del Hoyo and F. López Sánchez, this volume presents the proceedings from an ICREA Conference held in Barcelona (2013), addressing the connection between war, warlords and interstate relations from classical studies and social sciences perspectives. Some twenty scholars from European, Japanese and North American Universities consider the scope of ‘multipolarity’ and the usefulness of ‘warlord’, a modern category, in order to feature some ancient military and political leaderships.
Download or read book Agesilaus and the Failure of Spartan Hegemony written by Charles Daniel Hamilton and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ancient World written by and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Athens Transformed 404 262 BC written by Phillip Harding and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the heady, democratic days of the fifth and fourth centuries, the poorer members of Athenian society, the lower two classes of zeugitai and thetes, enjoyed an unprecedented dominance in both domestic and foreign politics. At home, the participatory nature of the constitution required their presence not only in the lawcourts and assembly, but also in most of the minor magistracies; abroad, they were the driving force of the navy, which ensured Athens’ control of the Aegean and the Black seas. Their participation at all levels was made possible by state pay (for jury duty, attendance in the assembly, public office and military service). In the fifth century state pay was financed largely through the tribute paid by members of the empire, supplemented by the liturgical contributions of the rich and, beginning during the war, a property tax (the eisphora). In the fourth century, almost the whole burden was shouldered by taxation upon the wealthy, especially those who owned property. In this book, author Phillip Harding traces the major changes that occurred in the administration of the state that eventually deprived the lower classes of their supremacy and transferred power into the hands of the wealthy land-owners. Things changed radically after Athens’ defeat in the Lamian (or Hellenic) War in 322BC. Over the next several decades, restriction of the franchise, elimination of pay for some public offices, the loss of the navy, the increased dependence upon local grain from the larger estates in Attika, the removal of the tax burden from the rich by the ending of such major liturgies as the trierarchia and the choregia and the abandoning of the eisphora all contributed to this transformation.
Download or read book Athens and Sparta written by Anton Powell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Athens and Sparta is an essential textbook for the study of Greek history. Providing a comprehensive account of the two key Greek powers in the years after 478 BC, it charts the rise of Athens from city-state to empire after the devastation of the Persian Wars, and the increasing tensions with their rivals, Sparta, culminating in the Peloponnesian Wars. As well as the political history of the period, it also offers an insight into the radically different political systems of these two superpowers, and explores aspects of social history such as Athenian democracy, life in Sparta, and the lives of Athenian women. More than this though, it encourages students to develop their critical skills, guiding them in how to think about history, demonstrating in a lucid way the techniques used in interpreting the ancient sources. In this new third edition, Anton Powell includes discussion of the latest scholarship on this crucial period in Greek history. Its bibliography has been renewed, and for the first time it includes numerous photographs of Greek sites and archaeological objects discussed in the text. Written in an accessible style and covering the key events of the period – the rise to power of Athens, the unusual Spartan state, and their rivalry and eventual clash in all out war – this is an invaluable tool for students of the history of Greece in the fifth century BC.
Download or read book A Companion to Sparta written by Anton Powell and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features in-depth coverage of Spartan history and culture
Download or read book The Armies of Classical Greece written by Everett L. Wheeler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origin of the Western military tradition in Greece 750-362 BC is fraught with controversies, such as the date and nature of the phalanx, the role of agricultural destruction and the existence of rules and ritualistic practices. This volume collects papers significant for specific points in debates or theoretical value in shaping and critiquing controversial viewpoints. An introduction offers a critical analysis of recent trends in ancient military history and provides a bibliographical essay contextualizing the papers within the framework of debates with a guide to further reading.
Download or read book Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity written by Gregory Crane and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.
Download or read book Early Greek Portraiture written by Catherine M. Keesling and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-03 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Catherine M. Keesling lends new insight into the origins of civic honorific portraits that emerged at the end of the fifth century BC in ancient Greece. Surveying the subjects, motives and display contexts of Archaic and Classical portrait sculpture, she demonstrates that the phenomenon of portrait representation in Greek culture is complex and without a single, unifying history. Bringing a multi-disciplinary approach to the topic, Keesling grounds her study in contemporary texts such as Herodotus' Histories and situates portrait representation within the context of contemporary debates about the nature of arete (excellence), the value of historical commemoration and the relationship between the human individual and the gods and heroes. She argues that often the goal of Classical portraiture was to link the individual to divine or heroic models. Offering an overview of the role of portraits in Archaic and Classical Greece, her study includes local histories of the development of Greek portraiture in sanctuaries such as Olympia, Delphi and the Athenian Acropolis.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon written by Michael A. Flower and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces Xenophon's writings and their importance for Western culture, while explaining the main scholarly controversies.
Download or read book Dissertation Abstracts International written by and published by . This book was released on 1982-10 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Boiotia and the Boiotian League 432 371 B C written by Robert J. Buck and published by University of Alberta. This book was released on 1994 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the federal state of Boiotia from the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 432 BC to the triumph of the states over its enemies in 371 BC is the focus of Professor Buck's study. It is especially interesting because the federation underwent so many changes. The interplay of political factions with external enemies and with clashing ideologies makes it useful to study.
