Download or read book Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome written by George Jennison and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1937 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome" is a complete and comprehensive investigation of the rise, function, and pageantry of wild and domesticated animals as household pets and as fodder for entertainment in the Roman world.
Download or read book Animals in the Ancient World from A to Z written by Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Greeks and Romans lived in a world teeming with animals. Animals were integral to ancient commerce, war, love, literature and art. Inside the city they were found as pets, pests, and parasites. They could be sacred, sacrificed, liminal, workers, or intruders from the wild. Beyond the city domesticated animals were herded and bred for profit and wild animals were hunted for pleasure and gain alike. Specialists like Aristotle, Aelian, Pliny and Seneca studied their anatomy and behavior. Geographers and travelers described new lands in terms of their animals. Animals are to be seen on every possible artistic medium, woven into cloth and inlaid into furniture. They are the subject of proverbs, oaths and dreams. Magicians, physicians and lovers turned to animals and their parts for their crafts. They paraded before kings, inhabited palaces, and entertained the poor in the arena. Quite literally, animals pervaded the ancient world from A-Z. In entries ranging from short to long, Kenneth Kitchell offers insight into this commonly overlooked world, covering representative and intriguing examples of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. Familiar animals such as the cow, dog, fox and donkey are treated along with more exotic animals such as the babirussa, pangolin, and dugong. The evidence adduced ranges from Minoan times to the Late Roman Empire and is taken from archaeology, ancient authors, inscriptions, papyri, coins, mosaics and all other artistic media. Whenever possible reasoned identifications are given for ancient animal names and the realities behind animal lore are brought forth. Why did the ancients think hippopotamuses practiced blood letting on themselves? How do you catch a monkey? Why were hyenas thought to be hermaphroditic? Was there really a vampire moth? Entries are accompanied by full citations to ancient authors and an extensive bibliography. Of use to Classics students and scholars, but written in a style designed to engage anyone interested in Greco-Roman antiquity, Animals in the Ancient World from A to Z reveals the extent and importance of the animal world to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It answers many questions, asks several more, and seeks to stimulate further research in this important field.
Download or read book Animals in Roman Life and Art written by Jocelyn Mary Catherine Toynbee and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life written by Gordon Lindsay Campbell and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-08-28 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life is the first comprehensive guide to animals in the ancient world, encompassing all aspects of the topic by featuring authoritative chapters on 33 topics by leading scholars in their fields. As well as an introduction to, and a survey of, each topic, it provides guidance on further reading for those who wish to study a particular area in greater depth. Both the realities and the more theoretical aspects of the treatment of animals in ancient times are covered in chapters which explore the domestication of animals, animal husbandry, animals as pets, Aesop's Fables, and animals in classical art and comedy, all of which closely examine the nature of human-animal interaction. More abstract and philosophical topics are also addressed, including animal communication, early ideas on the origin of species, and philosophical vegetarianism and the notion of animal rights.
Download or read book Women and Weasels written by Maurizio Bettini and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-08-26 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles’s birth—and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments that highlight the weasel’s many attributes. We learn of its legendary sexual and childbearing habits and symbolic association with witchcraft and midwifery, its role as a domestic pet favored by women, and its ability to slip in and out of tight spaces. The weasel, Bettini reveals, is present at many unexpected moments in human history, assisting women in labor and thwarting enemies who might plot their ruin. With a parade of symbolic associations between weasels and women—witches, prostitutes, midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers, and heroes—Bettini brings to life one of the most venerable and enduring myths of Western culture.
Download or read book The Roman Games written by Alison Futrell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sourcebook presents a wealth of material relating to everyaspect of Roman spectacles, especially gladiatorial combat andchariot racing. Draws on the words of eye-witnesses and participants, as wellas depictions of the games in mosaics and other works of art. Offers snapshots of “a day at the games” and“the life of a gladiator”. Includes numerous illustrations. Covers chariot-races, water pageants, naval battles and wildanimal fights, as well as gladiatorial combat. Combines political, social, religious and archaeologicalperspectives. Facilitates an in-depth understanding of this important featureof ancient life.
Download or read book The First Fossil Hunters written by Adrienne Mayor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-11 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular creatures of classical mythology Griffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants—these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact—in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans. As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground. Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.
Download or read book The Day Commodus Killed a Rhino written by J. P. Toner and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Roman Emperor Commodus wanted to kill a rhinoceros with a bow and arrow, and he wanted to do it in the Colosseum. For fourteen days near the end of AD 192, the emperor mounted one of the most lavish gladiatorial games Rome had ever seen. People rushed from all over Italy to witness the spectacle. Why did Roman rulers spend vast resources on such over-the-top displays? Why did the Roman rabble enjoy watching the slaughter of animals and the sight of men fighting to the death? In this book, Jerry Toner set out to answer these questions by describing what it would have been like to attend Commodus' fantastic shows.
Download or read book The Culture of Animals in Antiquity written by Sian Lewis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Culture of Animals in Antiquity provides students and researchers with well-chosen and clearly presented ancient sources in translation, some well-known, others undoubtedly unfamiliar, but all central to a key area of study in ancient history: the part played by animals in the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. It brings new ideas to bear on the wealth of evidence – literary, historical and archaeological – which we possess for the experiences and roles of animals in the ancient world. Offering a broad picture of ancient cultures in the Mediterranean as part of a wider ecosystem, the volume is on an ambitious scale. It covers a broad span of time, from the sacred animals of dynastic Egypt to the imagery of the lamb in early Christianity, and of region, from the fallow deer introduced and bred in Roman Britain to the Asiatic lioness and her cubs brought as a gift by the Elamites to the Great King of Persia. This sourcebook is essential for anyone wishing to understand the role of animals in the ancient world and support learning for one of the fastest growing disciplines in Classics.
Download or read book Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud written by Beth A. Berkowitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud selects key themes in animal studies - animal intelligence, morality, sexuality, suffering, danger, personhood - and explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud. Beth A. Berkowitz demonstrates that distinctive features of the Talmud - the new literary genre, the convergence of Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian cultures, the Talmud's remove from Temple-centered biblical Israel - led to unprecedented possibilities within Jewish culture for conceptualizing animals and animality. She explores their development in the Babylonian Talmud, showing how it is ripe for reading with a critical animal studies perspective. When we do, we find waiting for us a multi-layered, surprisingly self-aware discourse about animals as well as about the anthropocentrism that infuses human relationships with them. For readers of religion, Judaism, and animal studies, her book offers new perspectives on animals from the vantage point of the ancient rabbis.
Download or read book Circus Maximus written by A.D. O'Neill and published by Black & White Publishing. This book was released on 2024-05-09 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The charioteer in his purest form. The supreme master of destiny and the elements. A man who made a circus out of life, and life out of a circus. 'A.D. O'Neill peels back the veil of time and shines a light on the intrigue and excitement of chariot racing in ancient Rome. With exquisite attention to detail and an authentic and engaging voice, Circus Maximus is endlessly and effortlessly entertaining.' MATTHEW HARFFY, author of The Bernicia Chronicles series THE CHAOTIC A.D. 69 When the tyrannical Aulus Vitellius seizes the reins of power in Rome, the empire is already in the grip of a fierce civil war. But the new emperor's first priority is both personal and deeply symbolic: he plans to crush the Green chariot racing faction - the mortal enemies of his beloved Blues - at the Plebeian Games in the Circus Maximus. To save the Greens from certain extinction, two former charioteers - the stoical and determined Corax and the flamboyant and cocksure Alector (once the firmest of friends, now the bitterest of rivals) - have just twenty-six days to transport four champion chariot horses across the breadth of Europe to Rome. Braving blizzards, bandits, floods and wild storms at sea, theirs is an unforgettable odyssey and race-against-time adventure. A.D. O'Neill steers a thundering epic around historical events and real-life characters to a breathtaking climax in the greatest sporting arena of all time - the Circus Maximus.
Download or read book Images of Empire written by Loveday Alexander and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the Images of Empire colloquium held in Sheffield in 1990, an international team of scholars met to explore some of the conflicting images generated by the Roman Empire. The articles reflect interests as diverse as those of the scholars themselves: Roman history and archaeology, Jewish Studies, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament and Patristics are all represented. All are focused on a single theme, the importance of which is increasingly recognized, not only for the historian, but for everyone interested in the political complexities of our post-imperial world.
Download or read book Shameless written by Cristiana Franco and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-09-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The figure of the dog is a paradox. As in so many cultures, past and present, the dog in ancient Greece was seen as the animal closest to humans, even as it elicited from them the most negative representations. Still a loaded term today, the word bitch not only signified shamelessness and a lack of self-control but was also exclusively figured as female. Woman and dogs in the Greek imagination were intimately intertwined, and in this careful, engaging analysis, Cristiana Franco explores the ancients' complex relationship with both. By analyzing the relationship between humans and dogs as depicted in a vast array of myths, proverbs, spontaneous metaphors, and comic jokes, Franco in particular shows how the symbolic overlap between dog and woman provided the conceptual tools to maintain feminine subordination. Intended for general readers as well as scholars, Shameless extends the boundaries of classics and anthropology, forming a model of the sensitive work that can be done to illuminate how deeply animals are imbricated in human history. The English translation has been revised and expanded from the original Italian edition, and it includes a new methodological appendix by the author that points the way toward future work in the emerging field of human-animal studies.
Download or read book The Illegal Wildlife Trade written by Daan P. van Uhm and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author examines the illegal wildlife trade from multiple perspectives: the historical context, the impact on the environment, the scope of the problem internationally, the sociocultural demand for illegal products, the legal efforts to combat it, and several case studies from inside the trade. The illegal wildlife trade has become a global criminal enterprise, following in the footsteps of drugs and weapons. Beyond the environmental impact, financial profits from the illegal wildlife trade often fund organized crime groups and violent gangs that threaten public safety and security in myriad ways. This innovative volume covers several key questions surrounding the wildlife trade: why is there a demand for illegal wildlife products, which actors are involved in the trade, how is the business organized, and what are the harmful consequences. The author performed ethnographic fieldwork in three key markets: Russia, Morocco, and China, and has constructed a detailed picture of how the wildlife trade operates in these areas. Conversations with informants directly involved in the illegal business ensure unique insights into this lively black market. In the course of his journey the author follows the route of the illegal wildlife trade from poor poaching areas to rich business districts where corrupt officials, legally registered companies, wildlife farms and sophisticated criminal organizations all have a share. A fascinating look inside the world of poachers, smugglers and traders.
Download or read book Greek and Roman Technology written by Andrew N. Sherwood and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new edition of Greek and Roman Technology, the authors translate and annotate key passages from ancient texts to provide a history and analysis of the origins and development of technology in the classical world. Sherwood and Nikolic, with Humphrey and Oleson, provide a comprehensive and accessible collection of rich and varied sources to illustrate and elucidate the beginnings of technology. Among the topics covered are energy, basic mechanical devices, hydraulic engineering, household industry, medicine and health, transport and trade, and military technology. This fully revised Sourcebook collects more than 1,300 passages from over 200 ancient sources and a diverse range of literary genres, such as the encyclopaedic Natural History of Pliny the Elder, the poetry of Homer and Hesiod, the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Lucretius, the agricultural treatises of Varro, Columella, and Cato, the military texts of Philo of Byzantium and Aeneas Tacticus, as well as the medical texts of Galen, Celsus, and the Hippocratic Corpus. Almost 100 line drawings, indexes of authors and subjects, introductions outlining the general significance of the evidence, notes to explain the specific details, and current bibliographies are included. This new and revised edition of Greek and Roman Technology will remain an important and vital resource for students of technology in the ancient world, as well as those studying the impact of technological change on classical society.
Download or read book New Worlds New Animals written by R. J. Hoage and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1996-05-07 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrated with nearly 100 photographs, New Worlds, New Animals gives readers a new respect for and understanding of the role of zoos in social and cultural history.
Download or read book Zoos and Animal Rights written by Stephen St C. Bostock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
