Download or read book Myth Literature and the Creation of the Topography of Thebes written by Daniel W. Berman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a city's legendary past affect its present? Thebes remains a city with one of the richest traditions of myth in all of Greece - it was the home of Cadmus, Oedipus, and Hercules, and the traditional birthplace of Dionysus. The city's topography, both natural and built, very often plays a significant role in its myths. By focusing on Greek literature ranging from the oral epics to the travel writing of the Roman Empire, this book explores the relationship between the city's spaces as they were represented in the Greek literary tradition and the physical realities of a developing city that had been continuously inhabited since at least the second millennium BC. Spurred on especially by the city's catastrophic sack by Alexander the Great in 335 BC, the urban topography of Thebes came more and more to reflect the literary, even fictional, constructions of its mythic past.
Download or read book Myth Literature and the Creation of the Topography of Thebes written by Daniel W. Berman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how the legendary past of Greek Thebes influenced the development of the city's landscape from the time of the oral epics to the Roman period. It will appeal to readers with interests in the relationships between Greek myth, ancient topography and archaeology, and the development of urban space.
Download or read book Myths on the Map written by Greta Hawes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polybius boldly declared that 'now that all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is no longer appropriate to use poets and writers of myth as witnesses of the unknown' (4.40.2). And yet, in reality, the significance of myth did not diminish as the borders of the known world expanded. Storytelling was always an inextricable part of how the ancient Greeks understood their environment; mythic maps existed alongside new, more concrete, methods of charting the contours of the earth. Specific landscape features acted as repositories of myth and spurred their retelling; myths, in turn, shaped and gave sense to natural and built environments, and were crucial to the conceptual resonances of places both unknown and known. This volume brings together contributions from leading scholars of Greek myth, literature, history, and archaeology to examine the myriad intricate ways in which ancient Greek myth interacted with the physical and conceptual landscapes of antiquity. The diverse range of approaches and topics highlights in particular the plurality and pervasiveness of such interactions. The collection as a whole sheds new light on the central importance of storytelling in Greek conceptions of space.
Download or read book Agenorid Myth in the Bibliotheca of Pseudo Apollodorus written by Johanna Astrid Michels and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-11-21 with total page 1130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, perhaps the best-known mythographic text, stands out for its comprehensive aim and state of preservation. The handbook has regularly been disregarded as a repository of 'standard' myths or as a primary witness to archaic stories, a reductive view at once underestimating and romanticizing the merits of the Bibliotheca. This monograph unlocks the Bibliotheca as a literary work in its own right by offering the first systematic commentary on an essential selection, the Cretan and Theban myths in Bibl. III.1-56, and by presenting an in-depth analysis of the text. In so doing, this volume closes a gap in current research, from which a philological commentary is entirely missing. The main part of the study focuses on various aspects of composition and organization by addressing structuring principles, narratorial interventions, and the author's method and sources. It lays to rest persistent misconceptions about the representative character of the Bibliotheca's myths, the author's merits, and his source use, all of which have divided the scholarship to this date. In addition, it provides an update on the author, date, purpose and readership, text history, and book division of the Bibliotheca.
Download or read book Thebes written by Nicholas Rockwell and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thebes offers a scholarly survey of the history and archaeology of the city, from 1600 BCE – 476 CE. Discussions of major developments in politics, war, society and culture form the basis of a chronological examination of one of Greece’s most powerful and dynamic cities. By taking a broad view, the book’s account speaks to larger trends in the ancient Mediterranean world while also demonstrating how Thebes was unique in its ancient context. It provides an up-to-date examination of all available information: topographic, demographic, numismatic, epigraphic, archaeological and textual discussions provide the most complete, current picture of ancient Thebes and illustrate the value of an interdisciplinary approach.
Download or read book Valuing Landscape in Classical Antiquity written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-05-18 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Valuing Landscape explores how physical environments affected the cultural imagination of Greco-Roman Antiquity. It demonstrates the values attached to mountains, the underworld, sacred landscapes, and battlefields, and the evaluations of locale connected with migration, exile, and travel.
Download or read book Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth written by Greta Hawes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author uses Pausanias's Periegesis to illuminate the spatial dynamics of Greek myth, showing how apparently conflicting local versions belonged to a unifying cultural expression.
Download or read book The Sacred Band written by James Romm and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-06-21 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 The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography written by R. Scott Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of mythography has grown substantially in the past thirty years, an acknowledgment of the importance of how ancient writers "wrote down the myths" as they systematized, organized and interpreted the vast and contested mythical storyworld. With the understanding that mythography remains a contested category, that its borders are not always clear, and that it shifted with changes in the socio-cultural and political landscapes, The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography offers a range of scholarly voices that attempt to establish how and to what extent ancient writers followed the "mythographical mindset" that prompted works ranging from Apollodorus' Library to the rationalizing and allegorical approaches of Cornutus and Palaephatus. Editors R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma provide the first comprehensive survey of mythography from the earliest attempts to organize and comment on myths in the archaic period (in poetry and prose) to late antiquity. The essays also provide an overview of those writers we call mythographers and other major sources of mythographic material (e.g., papyri and scholia), followed by a series of essays that seek to explore the ways in which mythographical impulses were interconnected with other intellectual activities (e.g., geography and history, catasteristic writings, politics). In addition, another section of essays presents the first sustained analysis between mythography and the visual arts, while a final section takes mythography from late antiquity up into the Renaissance. While also taking stock of recent advances and providing bibliographical guidance, this Handbook offers new approaches to texts that were once seen only as derivative sources of mythical data and presents innovative ideas for further research. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography is an essential resource for teachers, scholars, and students alike.
Download or read book The Local Horizon of Ancient Greek Religion written by Hans Beck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the many ways in which ancient Greek religious beliefs and practices operated in their various local contexts.
Download or read book Myth Locality and Identity in Pindar s Sicilian Odes written by Virginia M. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-09-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myth, Locality, and Identity argues that Pindar engages in a striking, innovative style of mythmaking that represents and shapes Sicilian identities in his epinician odes for Sicilian victors in the fifth century BCE. While Sicily has been thought to be lacking in local traditions for Pindar to celebrate, Lewis argues that the Sicilian odes offer examples of the formation of local traditions: the monster Typho whom Zeus defeated to become king of the gods, for example, now lives beneath Mt. Aitna; Persephone receives the island of Sicily as a gift from Zeus; and the Peloponnesian river Alpheos travels to Syracuse in pursuit of the local spring nymph Arethusa. By weaving regional and Panhellenic myth into the local landscape, as the book shows, Pindar infuses physical places with meaning and thereby contextualizes people, cities, and their rulers within a wider Greek framework. During this time period, Greek Sicily experienced a unique set of political circumstances: the inhabitants were continuously being displaced, cities were founded and resettled, and political leaders rose and fell from power in rapid succession. This book offers the first sustained analysis of myth in Pindar's odes for Sicilian victors across the island that accounts for their shared context. The nodes of myth and place that Pindar fuses in this poetry reinforce and develop a sense of place and community for citizens locally; at the same time, they raise the profile of physical sites and the cities attached to them for larger audiences across the Greek world. In addition to providing new readings of Pindaric odes and offering a model for the formation of Sicilian identities in the first half of the fifth century, the book contributes new insights into current debates on the relationship between myth and place in classical literature.
Download or read book Structures of Epic Poetry written by Christiane Reitz and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 2756 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compendium (4 vols.) studies the continuity, flexibility, and variation of structural elements in epic narratives. It provides an overview of the structural patterns of epic poetry by means of a standardized, stringent terminology. Both diachronic developments and changes within individual epics are scrutinized in order to provide a comprehensive structural approach and a key to intra- and intertextual characteristics of ancient epic poetry.
Download or read book The Topography of Thebes from the Bronze Age to Modern Times written by Sarantis Symeonoglou and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive treatment of the development of Thebes as documented by archaeological and historical evidence and the literary tradition. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Lexicon of Argead Makedonia written by Waldemar Heckel and published by Frank & Timme GmbH. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first lexicon focusing exclusively on Argead Makedonia. Spanning from the mythical foundation of the realm to the death of the last Argead ruler, Alexander IV, 247 entries written by 44 international scholars provide information on central aspects of the politics, culture, society, and economy of Argead Makedonia, on the ancient evidence, and on scholarly issues. Argead Makedonia emerged in the 7th century BC. From the late 6th century to its rise to hegemony under Philip II in the 4th century BC, it formed part of Mediterranean history and crossed the paths of the Greek poleis, the Persian Empire, and neighbouring regions such as Thessaly, Illyria, and Thrace.
Download or read book A Quest for Remembrance written by Madeleine Scherer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Quest for Remembrance: The Underworld in Classical and Modern literature brings together a range of arguments exploring connections between the descent into the underworld, also known as katabasis, and various forms of memory. Its chapters investigate the uses of the descent topos both in antiquity and in the reception of classical literature in the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. In the process, the volume explores how the hero’s quest into the underworld engages with the theme of recovering memories from the past. At the same time, we aim to foreground how the narrative format itself is concerned with forms of commemoration ranging from trans-cultural memory, remembering the literary and intellectual canon, to commemorating important historical events that might otherwise be forgotten. Through highlighting this duality this collection aims to introduce the descent narrative as its own literary genre, a ‘memorious genre’ related to but distinct from the quest narrative.
Download or read book Nomads of the Mediterranean Trade and Contact in the Bronze and Iron Ages written by Ayelet Gilboa and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three millennia of cross-Mediterranean bonds are revealed by 18 expert summaries in this book, shedding light on environmental factors; the formation of harbors; gateways; commodities; cultural impact; and the way to interpret the agents such as Canaanites, "Sea Peoples," Phoenicians and pirates.
Download or read book Theatrical Reenactment in Pindar and Aeschylus written by Anna Uhlig and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the songs of Pindar and Aeschylus share a "theatrical" spirit that illuminates choral performance in Classical Greece.
