Download or read book Truth and History in the Ancient World written by Lisa Hau and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays investigates histories in the ancient world and the extent to which the producers and consumers of those histories believed them to be true. Ancient Greek historiographers repeatedly stressed the importance of truth to history; yet they also purported to believe in myth, distorted facts for nationalistic or moralizing purposes, and omitted events that modern audiences might consider crucial to a truthful account of the past. Truth and History in the Ancient World explores a pluralistic concept of truth – one in which different versions of the same historical event can all be true – or different kinds of truths and modes of belief are contingent on culture. Beginning with comparisons between historiography and aspects of belief in Greek tragedy, chapters include discussions of historiography through the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Ktesias, as well as Hellenistic and later historiography, material culture in Vitruvius, and Lucian’s satire. Rather than investigate whether historiography incorporates elements of poetic, rhetorical, or narrative techniques to shape historical accounts, or whether cultural memory is flexible or manipulated, this volume examines pluralities of truth and belief within the ancient world – and consequences for our understanding of culture, ancient or otherwise.
Download or read book Torture and Truth Routledge Revivals written by Page duBois and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1991, this book — through the examination of ancient Greek literary, philosophical and legal texts — analyses how the Athenian torture of slaves emerged from and reinforced the concept of truth as something hidden in the human body. It discusses the tradition of understanding truth as something that is generally concealed and the ideas of ‘secret space’ in both the female body and the Greek temple. This philosophy and practice is related to Greek views of the ‘Other’ (women and outsiders) and considers the role of torture in distinguishing slave and free in ancient Athens. A wide range of perspectives — from Plato to Sartre — are employed to examine the subject.
Download or read book The History of the Ancient World From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome written by Susan Wise Bauer and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-03-17 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own. This is the first volume in a bold series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This old-fashioned narrative history employs the methods of “history from beneath”—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.
Download or read book In Truth written by Matthew Fraser and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-03-27 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From ancient Rome to the current Internet age, this sweeping history of ideas explores how different epochs wrestled with the issue of truth and lies. From the ancient Greeks and Romans to the modern era, how have people determined what is true? How have those with power and influence sought to control the narrative? Are we living in a post-truth era, or is that notion simply the latest attempt to control the narrative? The relationship between truth and power is the key theme. Moving through major historical periods, the author focuses on notable people and events, from well-known leaders like Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler to lesser-known individuals like Procopius and Savonarola. He notes distinct parallels in history to current events. Julius Caesar's publication of his Gallic Wars and Civil Wars was an early exercise in political spin not unlike what we see today. During the English Civil War and the Enlightenment, pamphleteering coupled with the new power of the printing press challenged the status quo, as online and social media does in our time. And "fake news" was already being used by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in nineteenth-century Europe and by the "yellow journalism" of American newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer near the turn of the twentieth century. The author concludes optimistically, noting that we are debating and discussing truth more fiercely today than in any previous era. The determination to arrive at the truth, despite the manipulations of the powerful, bodes well for the future of democracy.
Download or read book Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World written by Christopher Gill and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays explore the understanding of the boundary between fact and fiction in Ancient Greece and Rome and considers how far 'lying' was distinguished from 'fiction' in different periods and genres. Early Greek poetry, Plato, and Greek and Roman historiography and novels are covered.
Download or read book Light and Truth written by Robert Benjamin Lewis and published by . This book was released on 1844 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Truth written by Matthew Fraser and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancient Greeks and Romans to the modern era, how have people determined what is true? The complex relationship between truth and power is the key theme in this book. Moving through major historical periods. Matthew Fraser traces the tumultuous saga of truth and falsehood from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the modern era to find distinct parallels between past and present. The book examines how notable people and events-from famous leaders such as Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler to lesser-known figures like Procopius and Savonarola-exploited the enduring tension between truth and lies. Julius Caesar's publication of Gallic Wars was an early exercise in political spin, not unlike what we see in politics today. During the English Civil War and later in the Enlightenment, the printing press empowered a new culture of pamphleteering that challenged the status quo, just as social media networks are doing in our internet era today. In the late nineteenth century, "fake news" was already being manipulated by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck and in the "yellow journalism" promoted by American newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. The author concludes optimistically, contending that-despite the manipulations of the powerful-we are debating and discussing truth more fiercely today than in any previous era. While the current crisis over truth appears to be threatening liberal democracy, our determination to arrive at the truth is a sign we are committed to reaffirming its fundamental values. Truth is remarkably resilient. Book jacket.
Download or read book History A Very Short Introduction written by John Arnold and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 2000-02-24 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with an examination of how historians work, this "Very Short Introduction" aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.
Download or read book The Novel in the Ancient World written by Gareth L. Schmeling and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-28 with total page 920 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From classics and history to Jewish rabbinic narratives and the canonical and noncanonical gospels of earliest Christianity, the relevance of studying the novel of the later classical periods of Greek and Rome is widely endorsed. Ancient novels contain insights beyond literary theories and philosophical musings to new sources for understanding the popular culture of antiquity. Some scholars, in fact, refer to ancient novels as “alternative histories,” for they tell history implicitly rather than with the intentional biases of the historian. The Novel in the Ancient World surveys the new approaches and insights to the ancient novel and wrestles with issues such as the development, transformation, and christianization of the novel (Spirit-inspired versus inspired by the Muses). This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.
Download or read book Battling the Gods written by Tim Whitmarsh and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
Download or read book The Ancient Historians written by Michael Grant and published by Barnes & Noble Publishing. This book was released on 1994 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grant offers a study of the primary historians of Greece and Rome, discussing the works and methods of the founders of the historical discipline. These philosophers studied history as a moral discipline that bears meaningfully not only on the past but on future human conduct.
Download or read book The World History Workbook written by David Hertzel and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2009-03-16 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative and user-friendly workbook is designed to guide students and instructors through the ideas and methods of the growing field of world history. Useful as either a supplement or a core text, this hands-on book provides all the elements necessary to conduct a full-fledged world history course, including narrative, projects, primary sources, and a glossary of terms. Within a unifying argument that world history is the history of a single humanity, David Hertzel uses the comparative method and an array of primary sources to teach critical thinking skills using primary sources. Students become active learners, not only observers but participants in and heirs to world history.
Download or read book Truth written by Felipe Fernández-Armesto and published by Bantam Books. This book was released on 1997 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Ancient Truth written by Jennifer Klein and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two devastating crimes, committed centuries apart, are linked by a gifted, young scribe. A mysterious message carved on an ancient set of Sumerian tablets may be the key to solving them. - Ku-aya is poised to serve King Hammurabi's as the youngest scribe in his court. But after the suspicious death of the prince, her role instantly shifts. A powerful sage has secretly been plotting to dethrone her beloved king, and only Ku-aya and her family can expose him. Can their knowledge of the kingdom's hidden past help to protect its future?
Download or read book The Ancient World written by Michael Shally-Jensen and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sweeping work covers world cultures from prehistory through the year 700 C.E. With in-depth analysis of civilizations, key figures, cities, cultures and daily life. Its three volumes stretch beyond the boundaries of the ancient world of Greece, Rome and Egypt, to include Egypt, China, the Near East, Europe, Africa, the Americas and more, to provide true world coverage. The set begins with 26 overview essays, from Agriculture to Writing Systems, followed by 1,100 alphabetically arranged essays on persons, cultures, wars, battles, documents or works, traditions or cultural phenomena, structures or artifacts, places or sites, terms, and groups or civilizations. Next, over 200 entries provide in-depth overviews of historic civilizations, times and places. Lastly, the set provides detailed descriptions of "life as" an individual living in a given time and place. Coverage is broad in scope, yet easy to use, with guides for pronunciation, geography, word usage, and timelines included. Additional appendices include a Categorized List of Contents, Timeline, Geographical Guide to Ancient World, Glossary, Websites, and Bibliography, as well as a Name Index and a comprehensive Subject Index. Not only does the set provide encyclopedic coverage of the Ancient World and its civilizations, but it goes on to offer students and researchers new insight into what it meant to live in a specific time and place. No other reference tool provides this unique combination of material. -- Amazon.com.
Download or read book The Darkening Age written by Catherine Nixey and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Jerwood Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and named a Book of the Year by the Telegraph, Spectator, Observer, and BBC History Magazine, this bold new history of the rise of Christianity shows how its radical followers helped to annihilate Greek and Roman civilizations. The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to "one true faith." Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyrs' deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the first century to the sixth, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial, and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces, and their priests killed. It was an annihilation. Authoritative, vividly written, and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.
Download or read book Light and Truth written by Robert Benjamin Lewis and published by Andesite Press. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
