Download or read book Hindsight in Greek and Roman History written by Anton Powell and published by Classical Press of Wales. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nine new studies here explore, and reconstruct, determinant episodes of Greek, Hellenistic and Roman history. The authors argue that hindsight - especially in modern works - has falsified the past, by playing down or eliminating the record of ancient unfulfilled forecasts, and of trends in events which in the long term did not obviously prove predominant. The authors also highlight the efforts of the best-placed writers in Antiquity not to be misled by hindsight, but rather to give due weight to the working of hopes and fears, and of trends in events, which with remote retrospect would tend to be belittled or forgotten. The techniques demonstrated in this book open new fields of research across Ancient History: they illuminate almost every ancient episode for which there is evidence of what historical agents planned or anticipated. The authors show convincingly that, by giving due respect to trends observable, and to political predictions made, in Antiquity, historians of today are better placed to evaluate outcomes: to see how easily events might have developed differently, or even to show that concrete outcomes were different from those conventionally portrayed from hindsight.
Download or read book Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novels written by Daniel Jolowicz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin Poetry in the Ancient Greek Novels establishes and explores connections between Greek imperial literature and Latin poetry. This work challenges conventional thinking about literary and cultural interaction of the period, which assumes that imperial Greeks were not much interested in Roman cultural products (especially literature). Instead, it argues that Latin poetry is a crucially important frame of reference for Greek imperial literature. This has significant ramifications, bearing on the question of bilingual allusion and intertextuality, as well as on that of cultural interaction during the imperial period more generally. Three of these novels in particular-Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe, Achilles Tatius' Clitophon and Leucippe, and Longus' Daphnis and Chloe-are analysed for the extent to which they allude to Latin poetry, and for the effects (literary and ideological) of such allusion. After establishing the cultural context and parameters of the study, each chapter pursues the strategies of an individual novelist in connection with Latin poetry. The work offers the first book-length study of the role of Latin literature in Greek literary culture under the empire, and thus provides fresh perspectives and new approaches to the literature and culture of this period.
Download or read book Reading History in the Roman Empire written by Mario Baumann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-01-19 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the relationship of Greco-Roman historians with their readerships has attracted much scholarly attention, classicists principally focus on individual historians, while there has been no collective work on the matter. The editors of this volume aspire to fill this gap and gather papers which offer an overall view of the Greco-Roman readership and of its interaction with ancient historians. The authors of this book endeavor to define the physiognomy of the audience of history in the Roman Era both by exploring the narrative arrangement of ancient historical prose and by using sources in which Greco-Roman intellectuals address the issue of the readership of history. Ancient historians shaped their accounts taking into consideration their readers’ tastes, and this is evident on many different levels, such as the way a historian fashions his authorial image, addresses his readers, or uses certain compositional strategies to elicit the readers’ affective and cognitive responses to his messages. The papers of this volume analyze these narrative aspects and contextualize them within their socio-political environment in order to reveal the ways ancient readerships interacted with and affected Greco-Roman historical prose.
Download or read book The Authoritative Historian written by K. Scarlett Kingsley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-31 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of essays exploring tradition and innovation across the full temporal range of Greco-Roman historiography.
Download or read book Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature written by Koen De,Temmerman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the fourth volume in the series Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative. The book deals with the narratological concepts of character and characterization and explores the textual devices used for purposes of characterization by ancient Greek authors from Homer to Heliodorus.
Download or read book Three Aeginetan Odes of Pindar written by Pfeijffer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 735 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of three epinicia of Pindar, which have in common that they celebrate victories of Aeginetan athletes and that they respond to the contemporary political situation in Aegina and to circumstances of the victory. The primary objective of this book is to provide an interpretation of each of the three odes as meaningful, coherent works of the literary art. For each ode, it provides a commentary in which problems of text and interpretation are discussed in detail, a structural and metrical analysis, and an interpretative essay, in which the observations of detail are brought together in order to provide an answer to the question as to how the ode at hand could have functioned as a coherent, meaningful epinicion. The introduction addresses questions of method and provides a description of Pindar's style.
Download or read book The Historian s Craft in the Age of Herodotus written by Nino Luraghi and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins and development of Greek historiography cannot be properly understood unless early historical writings are situated in the framework of late archaic and early classical Greek culture and society. Contextualization opens up new perspectives on the subject in The Historian's Craft inthe Age of Herodotus. At the same time, such writings offer significant insights into how works of Herodotus reflect the attitude of fifth-century Greeks towards the transmission and manipulation of knowledge about the past. Essays by an international range of experts explore all aspects of thetopic and, at the same time, make a thought-provoking contribution to the ongoing debates concerning literacy and oral culture.
Download or read book A Companion to the Classical Greek World written by Konrad H. Kinzl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-01-11 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion provides scholarly yet accessible new interpretations of Greek history of the Classical period, from the aftermath of the Persian Wars in 478 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. Topics covered range from the political and institutional structures of Greek society, to literature, art, economics, society, warfare, geography and the environment Discusses the problems of interpreting the various sources for the period Guides the reader towards a broadly-based understanding of the history of the Classical Age
Download or read book Truth and History in the Ancient World written by Lisa Hau and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 299 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 Alexander the Great in Arrian s Anabasis written by Vasileios Liotsakis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arrian’s Alexandrou Anabasis constitutes the most reliable account at our disposal about Alexander the Great's campaign in Asia. However, whereas the work has been thoroughly studied as a historical source, its literary qualities have been relatively neglected, with no autonomous monograph existing on this matter. Vasileios Liotsakis fills this gap in the studies of Alexander the Great’s literary tradition, by offering the first monograph on Arrian’s compositional strategies. Liotsakis focuses on the narrative techniques and verbal choices, through which Arrian allows praise and criticism to intermingle in his portrait of the Macedonian king. His main point of argument is that Arrian systematically exploits an abundance of narrative means (military descriptions, presentation of peoples, march-narratives, anachronies, and epic elements) in order to draw the reader’s attention not only to Alexander’s intellectual skills but also to the fact that the king was gradually corrupted by his success. This book puts Arrian’s literary contrivances under the microscope, sheds new light on unexplored aspects of the Anabasis’ narrative arrangement, and contributes to the studies of Alexander’s prosopography in Classical historiography.
Download or read book The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric written by Vasiliki Zali and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric, Vasiliki Zali offers a fresh assessment of Herodotus’ rhetorical awareness. Redressing the usual view that considers Thucydides as a significant jump from earlier authors in the rhetorical tradition, Zali attempts to find a place for Herodotus. The volume explores the direct and indirect speeches in Herodotus’ fifth to ninth books, focusing in particular on the ways in which they highlight two major narrative themes: the fragility of Greek unity and the problematic Greco-Persian polarity. Through discussion of case studies and Herodotus’ literary background, Zali brings Herodotus’ sophisticated rhetorical system to life, examines the ways in which this system affects Herodotus’ authority, and demonstrates that Herodotus occupies a crucial place in the development of rhetoric.
Download or read book Ennius Annals written by Cynthia Damon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together historical and literary perspectives to begin charting a new course for research on Ennius' masterpiece.
Download or read book Cicero Philippics 3 9 written by Gesine Manuwald and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 1180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Philippics form the climax of Cicero’s rhetorical achievement and political activity. Besides, these fourteen speeches are an important testimony to the critical final phase of the Roman Republic. Yet for a long time they have received little scholarly attention. This two-volume edition now provides a comprehensive scholarly commentary on Philippics 3-9, seven central speeches of the corpus. Full annotations explain the speeches in terms of linguistic, literary and historical issues (vol. 2); they are based on a revised Latin text with a facing translation into English as well as a detailed introduction dealing with problems relevant to the whole corpus; a bibliography and indices complete the edition (vol. 1). Besides a running commentary on each speech, the study shows these orations to be rhetorical constructs in a historical conflict; hence particular emphasis is placed on an analysis of Cicero’s rhetorical techniques and political strategies. The format of the commentary is also intended to present scholarly information to a wide and diverse readership.
Download or read book Homer s Iliad written by Claude Brügger and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-05-07 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned Basler Homer-Kommentar of the Iliad, edited by Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz and originally published in German, presents the latest developments in Homeric scholarship. Through the English translation of this ground-breaking reference work, edited by S. Douglas Olson, its valuable findings are now made accessible to students and scholars worldwide.
Download or read book Beyond Greek written by Denis Feeney and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History Today Best Book of the Year A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, and other authors of ancient Rome are so firmly established in the Western canon today that the birth of Latin literature seems inevitable. Yet, Denis Feeney boldly argues, the beginnings of Latin literature were anything but inevitable. The cultural flourishing that in time produced the Aeneid, the Metamorphoses, and other Latin classics was one of the strangest events in history. “Feeney is to be congratulated on his willingness to put Roman literary history in a big comparative context...It is a powerful testimony to the importance of Denis Feeney’s work that the old chestnuts of classical literary history—how the Romans got themselves Hellenized, and whether those jack-booted thugs felt anxiously belated or smugly domineering in their appropriation of Greek culture for their own purposes—feel fresh and urgent again.” —Emily Wilson, Times Literary Supplement “[Feeney’s] bold theme and vigorous writing render Beyond Greek of interest to anyone intrigued by the history and literature of the classical world.” —The Economist
Download or read book Other Natures written by Clara Bosak-Schroeder and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Greek ethnographies—descriptions of other peoples—provide unique resources for understanding ancient environmental thought and assumptions, as well as anxieties, about how humans relate to nature as a whole. In Other Natures, Clara Bosak-Schroeder examines the works of seminal authors such as Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus to persuasively demonstrate how non-Greek communities affected and were in turn deeply affected by their local animals, plants, climate, and landscape. She shows that these authors used ethnographies of non-Greek peoples to explore, question, and challenge how Greeks ate, procreated, nurtured, collaborated, accumulated, and consumed. In recuperating this important strain of ancient thought, Bosak-Schroeder makes it newly relevant to vital questions and ideas being posed in the environmental humanities today, arguing that human life and well-being are inextricable from the life and well-being of the nonhuman world. By turning to such ancient ethnographies, we can uncover important models for confronting environmental crisis.
Download or read book States of Memory written by David C. Yates and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-29 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Persian War was one of the most significant events in ancient history. It halted Persia's westward expansion, inspired the Golden Age of Greece, and propelled Athens to the heights of power. From the end of the war almost to the end of antiquity, the Greeks and later the Romans recalled the battles and heroes of this war with unabated zeal. The resulting monuments and narratives have long been used to reconstruct the history of the war itself, but they have only recently begun to be used to explore how the conflict was remembered over time. States of Memory focuses on the initial recollection of the war in the classical period down to the Lamian War (480-322 BCE). Drawing together recent work on memory theory and a wide range of ancient evidence, Yates argues that the Greek memory of the war was deeply divided from the outset. Despite the panhellenic scope of the conflict, the Greeks very rarely recalled the war as Greeks. Instead they presented themselves as members of their respective city-states. What emerged was a tangled web of idiosyncratic stories about the Persian War that competed with each other fiercely throughout the classical period. It was not until Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the Great dealt a devastating blow to the very notion of the independent city-state at the battle of Chaeronea that anything like a unified memory of the Persian War came to dominate the tradition.