Download or read book Ethnicity and Foreigners in Ancient Greece and China written by Hyunjin Kim and published by Bristol Classical Press. This book was released on 2009-05-21 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that Greece was an integral part of the wider Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilization and that this had a major impact on the ways in which the Greeks chose to represent foreigners in their literature.
Download or read book Rulers and Ruled in Ancient Greece Rome and China written by Hans Beck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated on opposite flanks of Eurasia, ancient Mediterranean and Han-Chinese societies had a hazy understanding of each other's existence. But they had no grounded knowledge about one another, nor was there any form of direct interaction. In other words, their historical trajectories were independent. In recent years, however, many similarities between both cultures have been detected, which has energized the field of comparative history. The present volume adds to the debate a creative method of juxtaposing historical societies. Each contribution covers both ancient China and the Mediterranean in an accessible manner. Embarking from the observation that Greek, Roman, and Han-Chinese societies were governed by comparable features, the contributors to this volume explain the dynamic interplay between political rulers and the ruled masses in their culture specific manifestation as demos (Greece), populus (Rome) and min (China).
Download or read book Ancient Greece and China Compared written by G. E. R. Lloyd and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering, methodologically sophisticated set of studies describing and analysing key features of ancient Greek and Chinese civilisations, including issues in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in mathematics and the life sciences, in agriculture, city planning and institutions. Provides a model for collaborative, comparative work on ancient civilisations.
Download or read book Rome China and the Barbarians written by Randolph B. Ford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-23 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of ethnological thought in Greece, Rome, and China and its articulation during 'barbarian' invasion and conquest.
Download or read book Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World written by and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-15 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By offering fluent, accurate translations of extracts and fragments from a wide assortment of ancient texts, this volume allows a comprehensive overview of ancient Greek and Roman concepts of otherness, as well as Greek and Roman views of non-Greeks and non-Romans. A general introduction, thorough annotation, maps, a select bibliography, and an index are also included.
Download or read book Rulers and Ruled in Ancient Greece Rome and China written by Hans Beck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative study of the ancient Mediterranean and Han China, seen through the lens of political culture.
Download or read book Ancient Greece and China Compared written by G. E. R. Lloyd and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Greece and China Compared is a pioneering, methodologically sophisticated set of studies, bringing together scholars who all share the conviction that the sustained critical comparison and contrast between ancient societies can bring to light significant aspects of each that would be missed by focusing on just one of them. The topics tackled include key issues in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in mathematics and the life sciences (including gender studies), in agriculture, city planning and institutions. The volume also analyses how to go about the task of comparing, including finding viable comparanda and avoiding the trap of interpreting one culture in terms appropriate only to another. The book is set to provide a model for future collaborative and interdisciplinary work exploring what is common between ancient civilisations, what is distinctive of particular ones, and what may help to account for the latter.
Download or read book Mourning Rituals in Archaic Classical Greece and Pre Qin China written by Xiaoqun Wu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-27 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pivot compares mourning rituals in Archaic & Classical Greece and Pre-Qin China to illustrate some of the principles and methods used in comparative studies. It focuses on three main aspects of mourning of the dead before burial — lamentation, mourners’ gestures and behaviors, and mourning apparel — to demonstrate the cultural function, purpose, and social influence of mourning. A key comparative study of rituals at the heart of both Western and Chinese culture, this text highlights the cultural function and social influence of rituals of two ancient peoples and will be of interest to all scholars of comparative religion, sociology and anthropology.
Download or read book Overlapping Cosmologies In Asia written by Bill M. Mak and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-02-28 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new, transnational, and interdisciplinary understanding of cosmology in Asian history. Cosmologies were not coherent systems belonging to separate cultures but rather complex bodies of knowledge and practice that regularly coexisted and co-mingled in extraordinarily diverse ways.
Download or read book Rome and China written by Walter Scheidel and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acknowledgments. List of maps, figures, and tables. Notes on contributors. Chronology. Maps. Introduction, Walter Scheidel. 1. From the "Great Convergence" to the "First Great Divergence:" Roman and Qin Han State Formation and its Aftermath, Walter Scheidel. 2. War, State Formation, and the Evolution of Military Institutions in Ancient China and Rome, Nathan Rosenstein. 3. Law and Punishment in the Formation of Empire, Karen Turner. 4. Eunuchs, Women, and Imperial Courts, Maria Dettenhofer. 5. Commanding and Consuming the World: Empire, Tribute, and Trade in Roman and Chine.
Download or read book The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity written by Benjamin Isaac and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-31 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. Magisterial in scope and scholarship, and engagingly written, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity further suggests that an understanding of ancient attitudes toward other peoples sheds light not only on Greco-Roman imperialism and the ideology of enslavement (and the concomitant integration or non-integration) of foreigners in those societies, but also on the disintegration of the Roman Empire and on more recent imperialism as well. The first part considers general themes in the history of discrimination; the second provides a detailed analysis of proto-racism and prejudices toward particular groups of foreigners in the Greco-Roman world. The last chapter concerns Jews in the ancient world, thus placing anti-Semitism in a broader context.
Download or read book Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece written by Sara Forsdyke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recovers the voices, experiences and agency of enslaved people in ancient Greece.
Download or read book Ancient Worlds written by Michael Scott and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As panoramic as it is learned, this is ancient history for our globalized world." Tom Holland, author of Dynasty and Rubicon Twenty-five-hundred years ago, civilizations around the world entered a revolutionary new era that overturned old order and laid the foundation for our world today. In the face of massive social changes across three continents, radical new forms of government emerged; mighty wars were fought over trade, religion, and ideology; and new faiths were ruthlessly employed to unify vast empires. The histories of Rome and China, Greece and India-the stories of Constantine and Confucius, Qin Shi Huangdi and Hannibal-are here revealed to be interconnected incidents in the midst of a greater drama. In Ancient Worlds, historian Michael Scott presents a gripping narrative of this unique age in human civilization, showing how diverse societies responded to similar pressures and how they influenced one another: through conquest and conversion, through trade in people, goods, and ideas. An ambitious reinvention of our grandest histories, Ancient Worlds reveals new truths about our common human heritage. "A bold and imaginative page-turner that challenges ideas about the world of antiquity." Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads
Download or read book Race written by Denise Eileen McCoskey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do different cultures think about race? In the modern era, racial distinctiveness has been assessed primarily in terms of a person's physical appearance. But it was not always so. As Denise McCoskey shows, the ancient Greeks and Romans did not use skin colour as the basis for categorising ethnic disparity. The colour of one's skin lies at the foundation of racial variability today because it was used during the heyday of European exploration and colonialism to construct a hierarchy of civilizations and then justify slavery and other forms of economic exploitation. Assumptions about race thus have to take into account factors other than mere physiognomy. This is particularly true in relation to the classical world. In fifth century Athens, racial theory during the Persian Wars produced the categories 'Greek' and 'Barbarian', and set them in brutal opposition to one another: a process that could be as intense and destructive as 'black and 'white' in our own age. Ideas about race in antiquity were therefore completely distinct but as closely bound to political and historical contexts as those that came later. This provocative book boldly explores the complex matrices of race - and the differing interpretations of ancient and modern - across epic, tragedy and the novel. Ranging from Theocritus to Toni Morrison, and from Tacitus and Pliny to Bernal's seminal study Black Athena, this is a powerful and original new assessment.
Download or read book Ancient China and the Yue written by Erica Fox Brindley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this innovative study, Erica Fox Brindley examines how, during the period 400 BCE–50 CE, Chinese states and an embryonic Chinese empire interacted with peoples referred to as the Yue/Viet along its southern frontier. Brindley provides an overview of current theories in archaeology and linguistics concerning the peoples of the ancient southern frontier of China, the closest relations on the mainland to certain later Southeast Asian and Polynesian peoples. Through analysis of warring states and early Han textual sources, she shows how representations of Chinese and Yue identity invariably fed upon, and often grew out of, a two-way process of centering the self while de-centering the other. Examining rebellions, pivotal ruling figures from various Yue states, and key moments of Yue agency, Brindley demonstrates the complexities involved in identity formation and cultural hybridization in the ancient world, and highlights the ancestry of cultures now associated with southern China and Vietnam.
Download or read book Imperial Cults written by Robinson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imperial Cults is a comparative study of the transformation of imperial religion and imperial authority in the early Han and Roman empires. During the reigns of the Emperor Wu of Han and Octavian Augustus of Rome, the rulers undertook substantial reforms to their respective systems of cult, at a time when they were re-shaping the idea of imperial authority and consolidating their own power. The changes made to religious institutions during their reigns show how these reforms were a fundamental part of the imperial consolidation. Employing a comparative methodology the author discusses some of the common strategies employed by the two rulers in order to centre religious and political authority around themselves. Both rulers incorporated new men from outside of the established court elite to serve in their religious institutions and as advisors, thus weakening the authority of those who had traditionally held it. They both expanded the reach of their imperially-sponsored cult, and refashioned important ceremonies to demonstrate and communicate the unprecedented achievements of each ruler. Emperor Wu recruited experts in mantic knowledge from far reaches of the empire, while Augustus co-opted loyal followers into the newly revived priestly colleges. Robinson shows how the rulers used their respective religious institutions to consolidate their authority, secure support, and communicate their authority to the elite and commoners alike. By using the comparative approach, the author not only reveals similar trends in the formation of ancient empires, but also shows how new perspectives on familiar material can be found when engaging with other societies.
Download or read book Heaven Is Empty written by Filippo Marsili and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a new perspective on the relationship between religion and the creation of the first Chinese empires. Heaven Is Empty offers a new comparative perspective on the role of the sacred in the formation of China’s early empires (221 BCE–9 CE) and shows how the unification of the Central States was possible without a unitary and universalistic conception of religion. The cohesive function of the ancient Mediterranean cult of the divinized ruler was crucial for the legitimization of Rome’s empire across geographical and social boundaries. Eventually reelaborated in Christian terms, it came to embody the timelessness and universality of Western conceptions of legitimate authority, while representing an analytical template for studying other ancient empires. Filippo Marsili challenges such approaches in his examination of the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han (141–87 BCE). Wu purposely drew from regional traditions and tried to gain the support of local communities through his patronage of local cults. He was interested in rituals that envisioned the monarch as a military leader, who directly controlled the land and its resources, as a means for legitimizing radical administrative and economic centralization. In reconstructing this imperial model, Marsili reinterprets fragmentary official accounts in light of material evidence and noncanonical and recently excavated texts. In bringing to life the courts, battlefields, markets, shrines, and pleasure quarters of early imperial China, Heaven Is Empty provides a postmodern and postcolonial reassessment of “religion” before the arrival of Buddhism and challenges the application of Greco-Roman and Abrahamic systemic, identitary, and exclusionary notions of the “sacred” to the analysis of pre-Christian and non-Western realities. Filippo Marsili is Associate Professor of History at Saint Louis University.
