Download or read book The Folds of Parnassos written by Jeremy McInerney and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Independent city-states (poleis) such as Athens have been viewed traditionally as the most advanced stage of state formation in ancient Greece. By contrast, this pioneering book argues that for some Greeks the ethnos, a regionally based ethnic group, and the koinon, or regional confederation, were equally valid units of social and political life and that these ethnic identities were astonishingly durable. Jeremy McInerney sets his study in Phokis, a region in central Greece dominated by Mount Parnassos that shared a border with the panhellenic sanctuary at Delphi. He explores how ecological conditions, land use, and external factors such as invasion contributed to the formation of a Phokian territory. Then, drawing on numerous interdisciplinary sources, he traces the history of the region from the Archaic age down to the Roman period. McInerney shows how shared myths, hero cults, and military alliances created an ethnic identity that held the region together over centuries, despite repeated invasions. He concludes that the Phokian koinon survived because it was founded ultimately on the tenacity of the smaller communities of Greece.
Download or read book Beneath the Folds of Parnassos written by Jeremy James McInerney and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Folds of Olympus written by Jason König and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cultural and literary history of mountains in classical antiquity The mountainous character of the Mediterranean was a crucial factor in the history of the ancient Greek and Roman world. The Folds of Olympus is a cultural and literary history that explores the important role mountains played in Greek and Roman religious, military, and economic life, as well as in the identity of communities over a millennium—from Homer to the early Christian saints. Aimed at readers of ancient history and literature as well as those interested in mountains and the environment, the book offers a powerful account of the landscape at the heart of much Greek and Roman culture. Jason König charts the importance of mountains in religion and pilgrimage, the aesthetic vision of mountains in art and literature, the place of mountains in conquest and warfare, and representations of mountain life. He shows how mountains were central to the way in which the inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean understood the boundaries between the divine and the human, and the limits of human knowledge and control. He also argues that there is more continuity than normally assumed between ancient descriptions of mountains and modern accounts of the picturesque and the sublime. Offering a unique perspective on the history of classical culture, The Folds of Olympus is also a resoundingly original contribution to the literature on mountains.
Download or read book Greek Poems to the Gods written by Barry B. Powell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Greek hymnic tradition translated beautifully and accessibly. The hymn—as poetry, as craft, as a tool for worship and philosophy—was a vital art form throughout antiquity. Although the Homeric Hymns have long been popular, other equally important collections have not been readily accessible to students eager to learn about ancient poetry. In reading hymns, we also gain valuable insight into life in the classical world. In this collection, early Homeric Hymns of uncertain authorship appear along with the carefully wrought hymns of the great Hellenistic poet and courtier Callimachus; the mystical writings attributed to the legendary poet Orpheus, written as Christianity was taking over the ancient world; and finally, the hymns of Proclus, the last great pagan philosopher of antiquity, from the fifth century AD, whose intellectual influence throughout western culture has been profound. Greek Poems to the Gods distills over a thousand years of the ancient Greek hymnic tradition into a single volume. Acclaimed translator Barry B. Powell brings these fabulous texts to life in English, hewing closely to the poetic beauty of the original Greek. His superb introductions and notes give readers essential context, making the hymns as accessible to a beginner approaching them for the first time as to an advanced student continuing to explore their secrets. Brilliant illustrations from ancient art enliven and enrichen the experience of reading these poems.
Download or read book The Seer and the City written by Margaret Foster and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seers featured prominently in ancient Greek culture, but they rarely appear in archaic and classical colonial discourse. Margaret Foster exposes the ideological motivations behind this discrepancy and reveals how colonial discourse privileged the city’s founder and his dependence on Delphi, the colonial oracle par excellence, at the expense of the independent seer. Investigating a sequence of literary texts, Foster explores the tactics the Greeks devised both to leverage and suppress the extraordinary cultural capital of seers. The first cultural history of the seer, The Seer and the City illuminates the contests between religious and political powers in archaic and classical Greece.
Download or read book Thermopylae written by Chris Carey and published by Great Battles. This book was released on 2019 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Thermopylae, the famous last stand of the Greco-Persian Wars: how it was fought, how it has been remembered, and what it has come to mean.
Download or read book Creating a Common Polity written by Emily Mackil and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the ancient Greece of Pericles and Plato, the polis, or city-state, reigned supreme, but by the time of Alexander, nearly half of the mainland Greek city-states had surrendered part of their autonomy to join the larger political entities called koina. In the first book in fifty years to tackle the rise of these so-called Greek federal states, Emily Mackil charts a complex, fascinating map of how shared religious practices and long-standing economic interactions faciliated political cooperation and the emergence of a new kind of state. Mackil provides a detailed historical narrative spanning five centuries to contextualize her analyses, which focus on the three best-attested areas of mainland Greece—Boiotia, Achaia, and Aitolia. The analysis is supported by a dossier of Greek inscriptions, each text accompanied by an English translation and commentary.
Download or read book The Transformation of Foreign Policy written by Gunther Hellmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of foreign policy is usually concerned with the interaction of states, and thus with governance structures which emerged either with the so-called 'Westphalian system' or in the course of the 18th century: diplomacy and international law. As a result, examining foreign policy in earlier periods involves conceptual and terminological difficulties, which echo current debates on 'post-national' foreign policy actors like the European Union or global cities. This volume argues that a novel understanding of what constitutes foreign policy may offer a way out of this problem. It considers foreign policy as the outcome of processes that make some boundaries different from others, and set those that separate communities in an internal space apart from those that mark foreignness. The creation of such boundaries, which can be observed at all times, designates specific actors - which can be, but do not have to be, 'states' - as capable of engaging in foreign policy. As such boundaries are likely to be contested, they are unlikely to provide either a single or a simple distinction between 'insides' and 'outsides'. In this view, multiple layers of foreign-policy actors with different characteristics appear less as a modern development and more as a perennial aspect of foreign policy. In a broad perspective stretching from early Greek polities to present-day global cities, the volume offers a theoretical and empirical presentation of this concept by political scientists, jurists, and historians.
Download or read book A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean written by Jeremy McInerney and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-06-13 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean presents a comprehensive collection of essays contributed by Classical Studies scholars that explore questions relating to ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world. Covers topics of ethnicity in civilizations ranging from ancient Egypt and Israel, to Greece and Rome, and into Late Antiquity Features cutting-edge research on ethnicity relating to Philistine, Etruscan, and Phoenician identities Reveals the explicit relationships between ancient and modern ethnicities Introduces an interpretation of ethnicity as an active component of social identity Represents a fundamental questioning of formally accepted and fixed categories in the field
Download or read book Orpheus in Macedonia written by Tomasz Mojsik and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mythological hero Orpheus occupied a central role in ancient Greek culture, but 'the son of Oeagrus' and 'Thracian musician' venerated by the Greeks has also become a prominent figure in a long tradition of classical reception of Greek myth. This book challenges our entrenched idea of Orpheus and demonstrates that in the Classical and Hellenistic periods depictions of his identity and image were not as unequivocal as we tend to believe today. Concentrating on Orpheus' ethnicity and geographical references in ancient sources, Tomasz Mojsik traces the development of, and changes in, the mythological image of the hero in antiquity and sheds new light on contemporary constructions of cultural identity by locating the various versions of the mythical story within their socio-political contexts. Examination of the early literary sources prompts a reconsideration of the tradition which locates the tomb of the hero in Macedonian Pieria, and the volume argues for the emergence of this tradition as a reaction to the allegation of the barbarity and civilizational backwardness of the Macedonians throughout the wider Greek world. These assertions have important implications for Archelaus' Hellenizing policy and his commonly acknowledged sponsorship of the arts, which included his incorporating of the Muses into the cult of Zeus at the Olympia in Dium.
Download or read book Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus written by Thomas Figueira and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herodotus is the epochal authority who inaugurated the European and Western consciousness of collective identity, whether in an awareness of other societies and of the nature of cultural variation itself or in the fashioning of Greek self-awareness – and necessarily that of later civilizations influenced by the ancient Greeks – which was perpetually in dialogue and tension with other ways of living in groups. In this book, 14 contributors explore ethnicity – the very self-understanding of belonging to a separate body of human beings – and how it evolves and consolidates (or ethnogenesis). This inquiry is focussed through the lens of Herodotus as our earliest master of ethnography, in this instance not only as the stylized portrayal of other societies, but also as an exegesis on how ethnocultural differentiation may affect the lives, and even the very existence, of one’s own people. Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus is one facet of a project that intends to bring Portuguese and English-speaking scholars of antiquity into closer cooperation. It has united a cross-section of North American classicists with a distinguished cohort of Portuguese and Brazilian experts on Greek literature and history writing in English.
Download or read book Conflict in Ancient Greece and Rome 3 volumes written by Sara Elise Phang and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-06-27 with total page 2571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complex role warfare played in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations is examined through coverage of key wars and battles; important leaders, armies, organizations, and weapons; and other noteworthy aspects of conflict. Conflict in Ancient Greece and Rome: The Definitive Political, Social, and Military Encyclopedia is an outstandingly comprehensive reference work on its subject. Covering wars, battles, places, individuals, and themes, this thoroughly cross-referenced three-volume set provides essential support to any student or general reader investigating ancient Greek history and conflicts as well as the social and political institutions of the Roman Republic and Empire. The set covers ancient Greek history from archaic times to the Roman conquest and ancient Roman history from early Rome to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE. It features a general foreword, prefaces to both sections on Greek history and Roman history, and maps and chronologies of events that precede each entry section. Each section contains alphabetically ordered articles—including ones addressing topics not traditionally considered part of military history, such as "noncombatants" and "war and gender"—followed by cross-references to related articles and suggested further reading. Also included are glossaries of Greek and Latin terms, topically organized bibliographies, and selected primary documents in translation.
Download or read book Theory and Practice in Mediterranean Archaeology written by Richard M. Leventhal and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2003-12-31 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theory and Practice in Mediterranean Archaeology: Old World and New World Perspectives brings together leading scholars from the Old World and the Americas to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing archaeology today. These topics include archaeology and text, the future of large-scale archaeological fieldwork at individual sites, interpretation and preservation of archaeological sites and landscapes, past trajectories and new approaches to regional survey, and debates surrounding landscape and settlement archaeology. Essays by Old World archaeologists provide an overview of these themes, as well as a history of research over the last hundred years. These scholars review the major successes and shortcomings of that work, identifying critical issues that determine and define the field. These essays serve as a springboard for discussion and response by archaeologists working in the Americas and in other parts of the world. The combination of an Old World focus with responses from New World archaeologists provides a uniquely broad assessment of contemporary archaeological theory, methods, and practice throughout the world.
Download or read book Citizenship in Classical Athens written by Josine Blok and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-10 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that citizenship in Athens was primarily a religious identity, shared by male and female citizens alike.
Download or read book Blessed Thessaly written by Emma Aston and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-15 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thessaly was a region of great importance in the ancient Greek world, possessing both agricultural abundance and a strategic position between north and south. It presents historians with the challenge of seeing beyond traditional stereotypes (wealth and witches, horses and hospitality) that have coloured perceptions of its people from antiquity to the present day. It also presents a complex and illuminating interaction between polis and ethnos identity. In daily life, most Thessalians primarily operated within, and identified with, their specific polis; at the same time, the regional dimension – being Thessalian – was rarely out of sight for long. It manifested itself in stories told, in deities worshipped, in modes of political co-operation, in language, rituals, sites and objects. Chapter by chapter, this book follows the emergence, development and adaptation of Thessalian regional identity from the Archaic period to the early second century BC. In so doing, rather than rejecting ancient stereotypes as a mere inconvenience for the historian, it considers the constant dialogue between Thessalian self-presentation and depictions of the Thessalian character by other Greeks. It also confronts some of the prejudices and assumptions still influencing modern approaches to studying the region. All in all, the reader is invited to see Thessaly not as a region of marginal significance in Greek history, but as occupying a central role in many aspects of ancient cultural and political discourse.
Download or read book The World of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene written by Duane W Roller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-02-24 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised and educated in Rome, Juba II (48 BC- AD 23) was sent to uphold Roman interests in northwest Africa as ruler of the cliet kingdom of Mauretania. Together with his wife K'eopatra Selene, daughter of Marcus Anthonius and Kleopatra VII, he established a rich, multicultural environment at their capital, renamed Caesarea, where Egyptian, Hellenistic Greek and indigenous elements came together. Juba combined a reign of more than half a century with a career as a distinguished scholar and writer, producing an extensive collection of works and shaping Roman knowledge of the southern half of the known world, from the Atlantic coast of northwest Africa to India. This book explores the complex culture and legacy of the kingdom, with emphasis on Juba's scholarship and the world created by these two remarkable monarchs. This detailed and comprehensive study is not only the first examination in English of Juba's life and career, but the first critical analysis of the king both as an implementer of the Augustan political, artistic and intellectual programme and as a notable scholar.
Download or read book Military Leaders and Sacred Space in Classical Greek Warfare written by Sonya Nevin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Greeks attributed great importance to the sacred during war and campaigning, as demonstrated from their earliest texts. Among the first four lines of the Iliad, for example, is a declaration that Apollo began the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon and sent a plague upon the Greek army because its leader, Agamemnon, had mistreated Apollo's priest. In this first in-depth study of the attitude of military commanders towards holy ground, Sonya Nevin addresses the customs and conduct of these leaders in relation to sanctuaries, precincts, shrines, temples and sacral objects. Focusing on a variety of Greek kings and captains, the author shows how military leaders were expected to react to the sacred sites of their foes. She further explores how they were likely to respond, and how their responses shaped the way such generals were viewed by their communities, by their troops, by their enemies and also by those like Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon who were writing their lives. This is a groundbreaking study of the significance of the sacred in warfare and the wider culture of antiquity.
