Download or read book Festivals of the Athenians written by Herbert William Parke and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A descriptive study of the religious festivals of the ancient Athenians, depicting and explaining the behavior associated with each, speculating on what happened at the mysteries, and elucidating the primitivism that pervaded classical Greek thought

Download or read book The Gates of Athens written by Conn Iggulden and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evoking two of the most famous battles of the Ancient World—the Battle of Marathon and the Last Stand at Thermopylae—The Gates of Athens is a bravura piece of storytelling by a well acclaimed master of the historical adventure novel. In the new epic historical novel by New York Times bestselling author Conn Iggulden, in ancient Greece an army of slaves gathers on the plains of Marathon . . . Under Darius the Great, King of Kings, the mighty Persian army—swollen by 10,000 warriors known as The Immortals—have come to subjugate the Greeks. In their path, vastly outnumbered, stands an army of freeborn Athenians. Among them is a clever, fearsome, and cunning soldier-statesman, Xanthippus. Against all odds, the Athenians emerge victorious. Yet people soon forget that freedom is bought with blood. Ten years later, Xanthippus watches helplessly as Athens succumbs to the bitter politics of factionalism. Traitors and exiles abound. Trust is at a low ebb when the Persians cross the Hellespont in ever greater numbers in their second attempt to raze Athens to the ground. Facing overwhelming forces by land and sea, the Athenians call on their Spartan allies for assistance—to delay the Persians at the treacherous pass of Thermopylae . . .

Download or read book The Rise of Athens written by Anthony Everitt and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magisterial account of how a tiny city-state in ancient Greece became history’s most influential civilization, from the bestselling author of acclaimed biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian Filled with tales of adventure and astounding reversals of fortune, The Rise of Athens celebrates the city-state that transformed the world—from the democratic revolution that marked its beginning, through the city’s political and cultural golden age, to its decline into the ancient equivalent of a modern-day university town. Anthony Everitt constructs his history with unforgettable portraits of the talented, tricky, ambitious, and unscrupulous Athenians who fueled the city’s rise: Themistocles, the brilliant naval strategist who led the Greeks to a decisive victory over their Persian enemies; Pericles, arguably the greatest Athenian statesman of them all; and the wily Alcibiades, who changed his political allegiance several times during the course of the Peloponnesian War—and died in a hail of assassins’ arrows. Here also are riveting you-are-there accounts of the milestone battles that defined the Hellenic world: Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis among them. An unparalleled storyteller, Everitt combines erudite, thoughtful historical analysis with stirring narrative set pieces that capture the colorful, dramatic, and exciting world of ancient Greece. Although the history of Athens is less well known than that of other world empires, the city-state’s allure would inspire Alexander the Great, the Romans, and even America’s own Founding Fathers. It’s fair to say that the Athenians made possible the world in which we live today. In this peerless new work, Anthony Everitt breathes vivid life into this most ancient story. Praise for The Rise of Athens “[An] invaluable history of a foundational civilization . . . combining impressive scholarship with involving narration.”—Booklist “Compelling . . . a comprehensive and entertaining account of one of the most transformative societies in Western history . . . Everitt recounts the high points of Greek history with flair and aplomb.”—Shelf Awareness “Highly readable . . . Everitt keeps the action moving.”—Kirkus Reviews Praise for Anthony Everitt’s The Rise of Rome “Rome’s history abounds with remarkable figures. . . . Everitt writes for the informed and the uninformed general reader alike, in a brisk, conversational style, with a modern attitude of skepticism and realism.”—The Dallas Morning News “[A] lively and readable account . . . Roman history has an uncanny ability to resonate with contemporary events.”—Maclean’s “Elegant, swift and faultless as an introduction to his subject.”—The Spectator “An engrossing history of a relentlessly pugnacious city’s 500-year rise to empire.”—Kirkus Reviews “Fascinating history and a great read.”—Chicago Sun-Times

Download or read book Greek Vases written by François Lissarrague and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lissargue (author and director of studies, l'Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences socials in Paris) has divided the vases by subject--dining, love, athletes, warriors, heroes, men and gods, Hercules, the Athenians' mythic identity, and Dionysus--and writes at length about each scene chosen. The plates are in color and of high quality, with many details, but the text is substantial as well, providing detailed discussion of what we see in the images and the aspects of Greek life and myth they display. c. Book News Inc.

Download or read book Athens Riviera written by Assouline and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overlooking the Aegean Sea, a charming string of coastal neighborhoods form the Athens Riviera, a serene escape from the constant activity in the city's center. A selection of high-end hotels lines the pristine stretch of beaches down to the southernmost point of the Attica Peninsula. The revamped Four Seasons Astir Palace, with a history of housing foreign dignitaries and film stars of the 1960s, is the most luxurious hotel in Athens, perhaps even in all of Greece. The night club, Island, is bringing back the glamour and excitement of the twentieth century bouzouki clubs reminiscent of names such as Melina Mercouri and Stavros Niarchos. Athens is experiencing a revival--in art, night life and design. For a metropolis constantly associated with the past, the modern strides in development and culture are sometimes overlooked in favor of the ruins and artifacts from antiquity. When in fact, the juxtaposition only enhances the beauty of both. Athens Riviera puts the old-world beside the new-world and a deeper understanding of this ancient capital emerges. With one foot in the past and one foot in the future; access to both the electricity of city life and the tranquility of a beach side resort, Athens cannot be defined in simple terms. One just has to experience it for themselves.

Download or read book Athens After Empire written by Ian Worthington and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When we think of ancient Athens, the image invariably coming to mind is of the Classical city, with monuments beautifying everywhere; the Agora swarming with people conducting business and discussing political affairs; and a flourishing intellectual, artistic, and literary life, with life anchored in the ideals of freedom, autonomy, and democracy. But in 338 that forever changed when Philip II of Macedonia defeated a Greek army at Chaeronea to impose Macedonian hegemony over Greece. The Greeks then remained under Macedonian rule until the new power of the Mediterranean world, Rome, annexed Macedonia and Greece into its empire. How did Athens fare in the Hellenistic and Roman periods? What was going on in the city, and how different was it from its Classical predecessor? There is a tendency to think of Athens remaining in decline in these eras, as its democracy was curtailed, the people were forced to suffer periods of autocratic rule, and especially under the Romans enforced building activity turned the city into a provincial one than the "School of Hellas" that Pericles had proudly proclaimed it to be, and the Athenians were forced to adopt the imperial cult and watch Athena share her home, the sacred Acropolis, with the goddess Roma. But this dreary picture of decline and fall belies reality, as my book argues. It helps us appreciate Hellenistic and Roman Athens and to show it was still a vibrant and influential city. A lot was still happening in the city, and its people were always resilient: they fought their Macedonian masters when they could, and later sided with foreign kings against Rome, always in the hope of regaining that most cherished ideal, freedom. Hellenistic Athens is far from being a postscript to its Classical predecessor, as is usually thought. It was simply different. Its rich and varied history continued, albeit in an altered political and military form, and its Classical self lived on in literature and thought. In fact, it was its status as a cultural and intellectual juggernaut that enticed Romans to the city, some to visit, others to study. The Romans might have been the ones doing the conquering, but in adapting aspects of Hellenism for their own cultural and political needs, they were the ones, as the poet Horace claimned, who ended up being captured"--

Download or read book The Divided City written by Nicole Loraux and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the roles of conflict and forgetting in ancient Athens. Athens, 403 B.C.E. The bloody oligarchic dictatorship of the Thirty is over, and the democrats have returned to the city victorious. Renouncing vengeance, in an act of willful amnesia, citizens call for---if not invent---amnesty. They agree to forget the unforgettable, the "past misfortunes," of civil strife or stasis. More precisely, what they agree to deny is that stasis---simultaneously partisanship, faction, and sedition---is at the heart of their politics. Continuing a criticism of Athenian ideology begun in her pathbreaking study The Invention of Athens, Nicole Loraux argues that this crucial moment of Athenian political history must be interpreted as constitutive of politics and political life and not as a threat to it. Divided from within, the city is formed by that which it refuses. Conflict, the calamity of civil war, is the other, dark side of the beautiful unitary city of Athens. In a brilliant analysis of the Greek word for voting, diaphora, Loraux underscores the conflictual and dynamic motion of democratic life. Voting appears as the process of dividing up, of disagreement---in short, of agreeing to divide and choose. Not only does Loraux reconceptualize the definition of ancient Greek democracy, she also allows the contemporary reader to rethink the functioning of modern democracy in its critical moments of internal stasis.

Download or read book Birds of the Athenian Agora written by Robert Lamberton and published by ASCSA. This book was released on 1985 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As well as the Little Owl or glaux, so often seen accompanying the goddess Athena, many other birds played an important role in Greek art and symbolism. This booklet describes the ways in which the Greeks viewed birds, from useful hawks and fowl to exotic parakeets and peacocks. Some of the birds most often depicted are imaginary, from the griffin to the phallos bird, whose head and neck consisted of an erect penis. The book ends with a field guide to species likely to be seen on a visit to the Agora archaeological park today.

Download or read book Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians written by Justina Gregory and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2011-02-10 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political by its very nature, Greek tragedy reflects on how life should be lived in the polis, and especially the polis that was democratic Athens. Instructional as well, drama frequently concerns itself with the audience's moral education. Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians draws on these political and didactic functions of tragedy for a close analysis of five plays: Alcestis, Hippolytus, Hecuba, Heracles, and Trojan Women. Clearly written and persuasively argued, this volume addresses itself to all who are interested in Greek tragedy. Nonspecialists and scholars alike will deepen their understanding of this complex writer and the tumultuous period in which he lived. ". . . a lucid presentation of the positive side of Euripidean tragedy, and a thoughtful reminder of the political implications of Greek tragedy." --American Journal of Philology ". . . the principal defect of [this] otherwise excellent study is that it is too short." --Erich Segal, Classical Review ". . . a most stimulating book throughout . . . ." --Greece and Rome Justina Gregory is Professor of Classics, Smith College, where she is head of the department. She has been the recipient of Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson fellowships.

Download or read book Phoenix written by David Stuttard and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid, novelistic history of the rise of Athens from relative obscurity to the edge of its golden age, told through the lives of Miltiades and Cimon, the father and son whose defiance of Persia vaulted Athens to a leading place in the Greek world. When we think of ancient Greece we think first of Athens: its power, prestige, and revolutionary impact on art, philosophy, and politics. But on the verge of the fifth century BCE, only fifty years before its zenith, Athens was just another Greek city-state in the shadow of Sparta. It would take a catastrophe, the Persian invasions, to push Athens to the fore. In Phoenix, David Stuttard traces Athens’s rise through the lives of two men who spearheaded resistance to Persia: Miltiades, hero of the Battle of Marathon, and his son Cimon, Athens’s dominant leader before Pericles. Miltiades’s career was checkered. An Athenian provincial overlord forced into Persian vassalage, he joined a rebellion against the Persians then fled Great King Darius’s retaliation. Miltiades would later die in prison. But before that, he led Athens to victory over the invading Persians at Marathon. Cimon entered history when the Persians returned; he responded by encouraging a tactical evacuation of Athens as a prelude to decisive victory at sea. Over the next decades, while Greek city-states squabbled, Athens revitalized under Cimon’s inspired leadership. The city vaulted to the head of a powerful empire and the threshold of a golden age. Cimon proved not only an able strategist and administrator but also a peacemaker, whose policies stabilized Athens’s relationship with Sparta. The period preceding Athens’s golden age is rarely described in detail. Stuttard tells the tale with narrative power and historical acumen, recreating vividly the turbulent world of the Eastern Mediterranean in one of its most decisive periods.

Download or read book A War Like No Other written by Victor Davis Hanson and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2006-09-12 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our most provocative military historians, Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other. Over the course of a generation, the Hellenic city-states of Athens and Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse of Athens and the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers throughout the ages a vivid and authoritative narrative. But Hanson offers readers something new: a complete chronological account that reflects the political background of the time, the strategic thinking of the combatants, the misery of battle in multifaceted theaters, and important insight into how these events echo in the present. Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment of the full scope of conventional and nonconventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, and thinkers including Sophocles and Plato. Hanson’s perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens and Sparta like America and Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and the current Middle East? Or was it more like America’s own Civil War, a brutal rift that rent the fabric of a glorious society, or even this century’s “red state—blue state” schism between liberals and conservatives, a cultural war that manifestly controls military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often surprising ways in which the past informs the present. Brilliantly researched, dynamically written, A War Like No Other is like no other history of this important war.

Download or read book The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians written by Xenophon and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians" presents a quick overview of Sparta and Athens, outlining their natures and political systems. The book offers excellent insights into the Athenian democracy and compares it with the political order of Sparta, which could be described as "communist" today. It is perfect for anyone taking history lessons or interested in the Antique period.

Download or read book The Athenian Revolution written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history. When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.

Download or read book The Athenians and Their Empire written by Malcolm Francis McGregor and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the Athenian Golden Age, in which naval and political advances coincided with great achievements in art, literature, philosophy and social theory. McGregor asserts this was made possible by the peace and prosperity created by the Athenian form of democratic government.

Download or read book Athens on Trial written by Jennifer T. Roberts and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-23 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Classical Athenians were the first to articulate and implement the notion that ordinary citizens of no particular affluence or education could make responsible political decisions. For this reason, reactions to Athenian democracy have long provided a prime Rorschach test for political thought. Whether praising Athens's government as the legitimizing ancestor of modern democracies or condemning it as mob rule, commentators throughout history have revealed much about their own notions of politics and society. In this book, Jennifer Roberts charts responses to Athenian democracy from Athens itself through the twentieth century, exploring a debate that touches upon historiography, ethics, political science, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, gender studies, and educational theory.

Download or read book Athenian Democracy at War written by David Pritchard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies all four branches of the Athenian armed forces to show how they helped make democratic Athens a superpower.

Download or read book Fortress Israel written by Patrick Tyler and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Once in the military system, Israelis never fully exit," writes the prizewinning journalist Patrick Tyler in the prologue to Fortress Israel. "They carry the military identity for life, not just through service in the reserves until age forty-nine . . . but through lifelong expectations of loyalty and secrecy." The military is the country to a great extent, and peace will only come, Tyler argues, when Israel's military elite adopt it as the national strategy. Fortress Israel is an epic portrayal of Israel's martial culture—of Sparta presenting itself as Athens. From Israel's founding in 1948, we see a leadership class engaged in an intense ideological struggle over whether to become the "light unto nations," as envisioned by the early Zionists, or to embrace an ideology of state militarism with the objective of expanding borders and exploiting the weaknesses of the Arabs. In his first decade as prime minister, David Ben-Gurion conceived of a militarized society, dominated by a powerful defense establishment and capable of defeating the Arabs in serial warfare over many decades. Bound by self-reliance and a stern resolve never to forget the Holocaust, Israel's military elite has prevailed in war but has also at times overpowered Israel's democracy. Tyler takes us inside the military culture of Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, introducing us to generals who make decisions that trump those of elected leaders and who disdain diplomacy as appeasement or surrender. Fortress Israel shows us how this martial culture envelops every family. Israeli youth go through three years of compulsory military service after high school, and acceptance into elite commando units or air force squadrons brings lasting prestige and a network for life. So ingrained is the martial outlook and identity, Tyler argues, that Israelis are missing opportunities to make peace even when it is possible to do so. "The Zionist movement had survived the onslaught of world wars, the Holocaust, and clashes of ideology," writes Tyler, "but in the modern era of statehood, Israel seemed incapable of fielding a generation of leaders who could adapt to the times, who were dedicated to ending . . . [Israel's] isolation, or to changing the paradigm of military preeminence." Based on a vast array of sources, declassified documents, personal archives, and interviews across the spectrum of Israel's ruling class, FortressIsrael is a remarkable story of character, rivalry, conflict, and the competing impulses for war and for peace in the Middle East.