Download or read book Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World written by George Kazantzidis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume offers a systematic discussion of the complex relationship between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world. For a long time, the relationship between the two has been assumed to be virtually non-existent. Paradoxography is concerned with disclosing a world full of marvels and wondrous occurrences without providing an answer as to how these phenomena can be explained. Its main aim is to astonish and leave its readers bewildered and confused. By contrast, medicine is committed to the rational explanation of human phusis, which makes it, in a number of significant ways, incompatible with thauma. This volume moves beyond the binary opposition between ‘rational’ and ‘non-rational’ modes of thinking, by focusing on instances in which the paradox is construed with direct reference to established medical sources and beliefs or, inversely, on cases in which medical discourse allows space for wonder and admiration. Its aim is to show that thauma, rather than present a barrier, functions as a concept which effectively allows for the dialogue between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world.

Download or read book Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire 96 235 written by Alice König and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores new ways of analysing interactions between different linguistic, cultural, and religious communities across the Roman Empire from the reign of Nerva to the Severans (96–235 CE). Bringing together leading scholars in classics with experts in the history of Judaism, Christianity and the Near East, it looks beyond the Greco-Roman binary that has dominated many studies of the period, and moves beyond traditional approaches to intertextuality in its study of the circulation of knowledge across languages and cultures. Its sixteen chapters explore shared ideas about aspects of imperial experience - law, patronage, architecture, the army - as well as the movement of ideas about history, exempla, documents and marvels. As the second volume in the Literary Interactions series, it offers a new and expansive vision of cross-cultural interaction in the Roman world, shedding light on connections that have gone previously unnoticed among the subcultures of a vast and evolving Empire.

Download or read book Storyworlds in Short Narratives written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-10-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary and comparative volume offers a systematic approach to the early Greek tale. Bringing similarities and differences between ancient Greek and early Byzantine tales to the fore, this volume thus creates new knowledge in the fields of classics, medieval studies, and literary studies. Its chapters discuss the theory and poetics of tales, the art of storytelling, inherent features of the tale, and the arrangement, types, and characteristics of tales in collections. The chapter authors base their approaches on a rich variety of texts and writers that are here discussed for the first time in one volume. Contributors are: Andria Andreou, Stavroula Constantinou, Julia Doroszewska, Christian Høgel, Markéta Kulhánková, Ingela Nilsson, Nicolò Sassi, and Sophia Xenophontos.

Download or read book Tacitus Wonders written by James McNamara and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume approaches the broad topic of wonder in the works of Tacitus, encompassing paradox, the marvellous and the admirable. Recent scholarship on these themes in Roman literature has tended to focus on poetic genres, with comparatively little attention paid to historiography: Tacitus, whose own judgments on what is worthy of note have often differed in interesting ways from the preoccupations of his readers, is a fascinating focal point for this complementary perspective. Scholarship on Tacitus has to date remained largely marked by a divide between the search for veracity – as validated by modern historiographical standards – and literary approaches, and as a result wonders have either been ignored as unfit for an account of history or have been deprived of their force by being interpreted as valid only within the text. While the modern ideal of historiographical objectivity tends to result in striving for consistent heuristic and methodological frameworks, works as varied as Tacitus' Histories, Annals and opera minora can hardly be prefaced with a statement of methodology broad enough to escape misrepresenting their diversity. In our age of specialization a streamlined methodological framework is a virtue, but it should not be assumed that Tacitus had similar priorities, and indeed the Histories and Annals deserve to be approached with openness towards the variety of perspectives that a tradition as rich as Latin historiographical prose can include within its scope. This collection proposes ways to reconcile the divide between history and historiography by exploring contestable moments in the text that challenge readers to judge and interpret for themselves, with individual chapters drawing on a range of interpretive approaches that mirror the wealth of authorial and reader-specific responses in play.

Download or read book Art Science and the Natural World in the Ancient Mediterranean 300 BC to AD 100 written by Joshua J. Thomas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-22 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hellenistic Period witnessed striking new developments in art, literature and science. This volume addresses a particularly vibrant area of innovation: the study of animals and the natural world. While Aristotle and his followers had revolutionized fields such as zoology and botany during the fourth century BC, these disciplines took on exciting new directions during Hellenistic times. Kings imported exotic species into their royal capitals from faraway lands. Travel writers described unusual creatures that they had never previously encountered. And buyers from a range of social levels chose works of art featuring animals and plants to decorate their palaces, houses and tombs. While textual sources shed some light on these developments, the central premise of Art, Science and the Natural World in the Ancient Mediterranean is that our surviving artistic evidence permits a fuller understanding. Accordingly, the study brings together a rich body of visual material that invites new observations on how and why knowledge of the natural world became so important during this period. It is suggested that this cultural phenomenon affected many different groups in society: from kings in Alexandria and Pergamon to provincial aristocrats in the Levant, and from the Julio-Claudian imperial family to prosperous homeowners in Pompeii. By analysing the works of art produced for these individuals, a vivid picture emerges of this remarkable aspect of ancient culture.

Download or read book Polyaenus written by Kai Brodersen and published by Verlag Antike. This book was released on 2010 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English summary: Polyaenus is the author of a Greek collection of some 900 stratagems by men and women, dedicated to the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. The seven original essays in this volume - four of them in English - the author and his work are studied and and interpreted in the context of the Second Sophistic. With contributions by Elisabetta Bianco (Torino), Kai Brodersen (Erfurt), Klaus Geus (Berlin), James Morton (Kingston ON), Maria Pretzler (Swansea), Veit Rosenberger (Erfurt), Everett L. Wheeler (Durham NC). Polyainos verfaate im 2. Jh. n.Chr. eine Sammlung von etwa 900 "Strategemen" von Mannern und Frauen in griechischer Sprache, die den romischen Kaisern Marcus Aurelius und Lucius Verus gewidmet ist. In sieben hier erstmals publizierten Studien werden der Autor und sein Werk im Kontext der Zweiten Sophistik neu erschlossen und interpretiert. Beitrage von / Contributions by Elisabetta Bianco (Torino), Kai Brodersen (Erfurt), Klaus Geus (Berlin), James Morton (Kingston ON), Maria Pretzler (Swansea), Veit Rosenberger (Erfurt), Everett L. Wheeler (Durham NC).

Download or read book Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World written by Jessica Lightfoot and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wonder and wonders constituted a central theme in ancient Greek culture. In this book, Jessica Lightfoot provides the first full-length examination of its significance from Homer to the Hellenistic period. She demonstrates that wonder was an important term of aesthetic response and occupied a central position in concepts of what philosophy and literature are and do. She also argues that it became a means of expressing the manner in which the realms of the human and the divine interrelate with one another; and that it was central to the articulation of the ways in which the relationships between self and other, near and far, and familiar and unfamiliar were conceived. The book provides a much-needed starting point for re-assessments of the impact of wonder as a literary critical and cultural concept both in antiquity and in later periods. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Download or read book Truly Beyond Wonders written by Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully illustrated study of healing pilgrimage in the Roman empire during the second century AD. The focus is upon one particular pilgrim, the famous orator Aelius Aristides, whose Sacred Tales is examined in the context of the sanctuary of Asklepios at Pergamon, where the author spent two years in search of healing.

Download or read book Historica written by F. Young and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers presented at the Fourteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2003 (see also Studia Patristica 40, 41, 42 and 43). The successive sets of Studia Patristica contain papers delivered at the International Conferences on Patristic Studies, which meet for a week once every four years in Oxford; they are held under the aegis of the Theology Faculty of the University. Members of these conferences come from all over the world and most offer papers. These range over the whole field, both East and West, from the second century to a section on the Nachleben of the Fathers. The majority are short papers dealing with some small and manageable point; they raise and sometimes resolve questions about the authenticity of documents, dates of events, and such like, and some unveil new texts. The smaller number of longer papers put such matters into context and indicate wider trends. The whole reflects the state of Patristic scholarship and demonstrates the vigour and popularity of the subject.

Download or read book Historica Biblica Ascetica Et Hagiographica written by Frances Margaret Young and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World written by Paul Keyser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 1200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a focus on science in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome, including glimpses into Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World offers an in depth synthesis of science and medicine circa 650 BCE to 650 CE. The Handbook comprises five sections, each with a specific focus on ancient science and medicine. The second section covers the early Greek era, up through Plato and the mid-fourth century bce. The third section covers the long Hellenistic era, from Aristotle through the end of the Roman Republic, acknowledging that the political shift does not mark a sharp intellectual break. The fourth section covers the Roman era from the late Republic through the transition to Late Antiquity. The final section covers the era of Late Antiquity, including the early Byzantine centuries. The Handbook provides through each of its approximately four dozen essays, a synthesis and synopsis of the concepts and models of the various ancient natural sciences, covering the early Greek era through the fall of the Roman Republic, including essays that explore topics such as music theory, ancient philosophers, astrology, and alchemy. The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World guides the reader to further exploration of the concepts and models of the ancient sciences, how they evolved and changed over time, and how they relate to one another and to their antecedents. There are a total of four dozen or so topical essays in the five sections, each of which takes as its focus the primary texts, explaining what is now known as well as indicating what future generations of scholars may come to know. Contributors suggest the ranges of scholarly disagreements and have been free to advocate their own positions. Readers are led into further literature (both primary and secondary) through the comprehensive and extensive bibliographies provided with each chapter.

Download or read book Ovid s Causes written by K. Sara Myers and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stimulating investigation of some of Ovid's source-material.

Download or read book Re Wiring The Ancient Novel 2 Volume set written by Edmund Cueva and published by Barkhuis. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fifth International Conference on the Ancient Novel, which was held in Houston, Texas, in the fall of 2015, brought together scholars and students of the ancient novel from all over the world in order to share new and significant developments about this fascinating field of study and its important place in the field of Classical Studies. The essays contained in these two volumes are clear evidence that the ancient novel has become a valuable part of the Classics canon and its scholarly attempts to understand the ancient Graeco-Roman world.

Download or read book Recognizing Miracles in Antiquity and Beyond written by Maria Gerolemou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, scholars have extensively explored the function of the miraculous and wondrous in ancient narratives, mostly pondering on how ancient authors view wondrous accounts, i.e. the treatment of the descriptions of wondrous occurrences as true events or their use. More precisely, these narratives investigate whether the wondrous pursues a display of erudition or merely provides stylistic variety; sometimes, such narratives even represent the wish of the author to grant a “rational explanation” to extraordinary actions. At present, however, two aspects of the topic have not been fully examined: a) the ability of the wondrous/miraculous to set cognitive mechanisms in motion and b) the power of the wondrous/miraculous to contribute to the construction of an authorial identity (that of kings, gods, or narrators). To this extent, the volume approaches miracles and wonders as counter intuitive phenomena, beyond cognitive grasp, which challenge the authenticity of human experience and knowledge and push forward the frontiers of intellectual and aesthetic experience. Some of the articles of the volume examine miracles on the basis of bewilderment that could lead to new factual knowledge; the supernatural is here registered as something natural (although strange); the rest of the articles treat miracles as an endpoint, where human knowledge stops and the unknown divine begins (here the supernatural is confirmed). Thence, questions like whether the experience of a miracle or wonder as a counter intuitive phenomenon could be part of long-term memory, i.e. if miracles could be transformed into solid knowledge and what mental functions are encompassed in this process, are central in the discussion.

Download or read book Landscapes of Dread in Classical Antiquity written by Debbie Felton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-27 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades, research in cultural geography and landscape studies has influenced many humanities fields, including Classics, and has increasingly drawn our attention to the importance of spaces and their contexts, both geographical and social: how spaces are described by language, what spaces are used for by individuals and communities, and how language, use, and the passage of time invest spaces with meaning. In addition to this ‘spatial’ turn in scholarship, recent years have also seen an ‘emotive’ turn – an increased interest in the study of emotion in literature. Many works on landscape in classical antiquity focus on themes such as the sacred and the pastoral and the emotions such spaces evoke, such as (respectively) feelings of awe or tranquillity in settings both urban and rural. Far less scholarship has been generated by the locus terribilis, the space associated with negative emotions because of the bad things that happen there. In short, the recent ‘emotive’ turn in humanities studies has so far largely neglected several of the more negative emotions, including anxiety, fear, terror, and dread. The papers in this volume focus on those neglected negative emotions, especially dread – and they do so while treating many types of space, including domestic, suburban, rural and virtual, and while covering many genres and authors, including the epic poems of Homer, Greek tragedy, Roman poetry and historiography, medical writing, paradoxography and the short story.

Download or read book After Wisdom written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-12-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nine essays in this volume, written by an international and interdisciplinary group of younger scholars, explore comparative dimensions of ancient Chinese and Greek literature, illuminating the development of myth, reason, wisdom literature, and scholarship during the first millennium BCE.

Download or read book Nicander of Colophon s Theriaca written by Floris Overduin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern times the Theriaca of Nicander of Colophon (2nd century BCE) has not attracted many enthusiasts. Its complicated style, abstruse diction and technical subject matter – venomous bites and their remedies – have long put off classical scholars. In the wake of renewed interest in Hellenistic poetry, however, Nicander’s dark poetry deserves new appreciation. In this book Floris Overduin provides a literary commentary on the Theriaca, focusing on Nicander’s artistic merits. Viewed against the background of Alexandrian aesthetics and the didactic epic tradition, Nicander deserves pride of place among his Hellenistic peers. This book, the first full commentary in English, may thus contribute to the reappraisal of Nicander’s Theriaca as a work of literature, not science.