Title: Hellenistic history and culture 
Author: Green, Peter 1924-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Classics | Classical Philosophy | Ancient History | History
Publisher's Description: In a 1988 conference, American and British scholars unexpectedly discovered that their ideas were converging in ways that formed a new picture of the variegated Hellenistic mosaic. That picture emerges in these essays and eloquently displays the breadth of modern interest in the Hellenistic Age.A distrust of all ideologies has altered old views of ancient political structures, and feminism has also changed earlier assessments. The current emphasis on multiculturalism has consciously deemphasized the Western, Greco-Roman tradition, and Nubians, Bactrians, and other subject peoples of the time are receiving attention in their own right, not just as recipients of Greco-Roman culture.History, like Herakleitos' river, never stands still. These essays share a collective sense of discovery and a sparking of new ideas - they are a welcome beginning to the reexploration of a fascinatingly complex age.   [brief]
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Title: Senecan drama and stoic cosmology 
Author: Rosenmeyer, Thomas G
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Classical Philosophy | Theatre
Publisher's Description: Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Nero's tutor and advisor, wrote philosophical essays, some of them in the form of letters, and dramas on Greek mythological topics, which since the early Renaissance have exercised a powerful influence on the European theater. Because in his essays Seneca, in his own eclectic way, subscribes to the philosophy of the Stoic school, scholars and critics have long been asking the question whether the plays, also, could be regarded as transmitters of Stoic thought. Various answers, ranging from a categorical no to an uneasy yes, have been given.With few exceptions, the students who have concerned themselves with this question have looked for their enlightenment in Stoic psychology and Stoic ethics. In this book, Thomas G. Rosenmeyer proposes instead to look at the Stoic science of nature, of the world and human beings in the world, as a more plausible grounding for the difference between Senecan drama and its Greek predecessors. In the process of looking at what the Stoics, especially the early Stoics, had to say about the forces determining natural phenomena, the author uncovers a deeply pessimistic strain in Stoic cosmology, and an interest in physicality and environmental tension, that he finds replicated in the theater, not only of Seneca, but also of the later European tradition indebted to him.   [brief]
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Title: Epic traditions in the contemporary world: the poetics of community 
Author: Beissinger, Margaret H
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Literature | Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Comparative Literature
Publisher's Description: The epic tradition has been part of many different cultures throughout human history. This noteworthy collection of essays provides a comparative reassessment of epic and its role in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds, as it explores the variety of contemporary approaches to the epic genre. Employing theoretical perspectives drawn from anthropology, literary studies, and gender studies, the authors examine familiar and less well known oral and literary traditions - ancient Greek and Latin, Arabic, South Slavic, Indian, Native American, Italian, English, and Caribbean - demonstrating the continuing vitality of the epic tradition.Juxtaposing work on the traditional canon of western epics with scholarship on contemporary epics from various parts of the world, these essays cross the divide between oral and literary forms that has long marked the approach to the genre. With its focus on the links among narrative, politics, and performance, the collection creates a new dialogue illustrating the sociopolitical significance of the epic tradition. Taken together, the essays raise compelling new issues for the study of epic, as they examine concerns such as national identity, gender, pedagogy, and the creation of the canon.   [brief]
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Title: The beginnings of Jewishness: boundaries, varieties, uncertainties
Author: Cohen, Shaye J. D
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Religion | Judaism | Classical Religions | Classics | Jewish Studies
Publisher's Description: In modern times, various Jewish groups have argued whether Jewishness is a function of ethnicity, of nationality, of religion, or of all three. These fundamental conceptions were already in place in antiquity. The peculiar combination of ethnicity, nationality, and religion that would characterize Jewishness through the centuries first took shape in the second century B.C.E. This brilliantly argued, accessible book unravels one of the most complex issues of late antiquity by showing how these elements were understood and applied in the construction of Jewish identity - by Jews, by gentiles, and by the state.Beginning with the intriguing case of Herod the Great's Jewishness, Cohen moves on to discuss what made or did not make Jewish identity during the period, the question of conversion, the prohibition of intermarriage, matrilineal descent, and the place of the convert in the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. His superb study is unique in that it draws on a wide range of sources: Jewish literature written in Greek, classical sources, and rabbinic texts, both ancient and medieval. It also features a detailed discussion of many of the central rabbinic texts dealing with conversion to Judaism.   [brief]
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Title: Seeing double: intercultural poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria
Author: Stephens, Susan A
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Poetry | Classical Politics
Publisher's Description: When, in the third century B.C.E., the Ptolemies became rulers in Egypt, they found themselves not only kings of a Greek population but also pharaohs for the Egyptian people. Offering a new and expanded understanding of Alexandrian poetry, Susan Stephens argues that poets such as Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius proved instrumental in bridging the distance between the two distinct and at times diametrically opposed cultures under Ptolemaic rule. Her work successfully positions Alexandrian poetry as part of the dynamic in which Greek and Egyptian worlds were bound to interact socially, politically, and imaginatively. The Alexandrian poets were image-makers for the Ptolemaic court, Seeing Double suggests; their poems were political in the broadest sense, serving neither to support nor to subvert the status quo, but to open up a space in which social and political values could be imaginatively re-created, examined, and critiqued. Seeing Double depicts Alexandrian poetry in its proper context - within the writing of foundation stories and within the imaginative redefinition of Egypt as "Two Lands" - no longer the lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, but of a shared Greek and Egyptian culture.   [brief]
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Title: Thucydides and the ancient simplicity: the limits of political realism 
Author: Crane, Gregory 1957-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Politics | Political Theory | History | Intellectual History
Publisher's Description: Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.   [brief]
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Title: Imagining karma: ethical transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek rebirth
Author: Obeyesekere, Gananath
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Religion | Anthropology | Buddhism | Classics | Indigenous Religions | Asian Studies
Publisher's Description: With Imagining Karma, Gananath Obeyesekere embarks on the very first comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, Obeyesekere compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. His groundbreaking and authoritative discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As Obeyesekere compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, he challenges readers to reexamine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. Obeyesekere's comprehensive inquiry shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. The author brings together into a coherent methodological framework the thought of such diverse thinkers as Weber, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical understanding of "family resemblances" and differences across great cultural divides.   [brief]
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Title: Basil of Caesarea
Author: Rousseau, Philip
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: History | Religion | Classics | Ancient History | Christianity | Classical Religions
Publisher's Description: Basil of Caesarea is thought of most often as an opponent of heresy and a pioneer of monastic life in the eastern church. In this new biographical study, however, controversy is no longer seen as the central preoccupation of his life nor are his ascetic initiatives viewed as separable from his pastoral concern for all Christians. Basil's letters, sermons, and theological treatises, together with the testimonies of his relatives and friends, reveal a man beset by doubt. He demanded loyalty, but gave it also, and made it a central feature of his church. In Rousseau's portrait, Basil's understanding of human nature emerges as his major legacy.   [brief]
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Title: Religion in Hellenistic Athens 
Author: Mikalson, Jon D 1943-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Classical Religions | Religion | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: Until now, there has been no comprehensive study of religion in Athens from the end of the classical period to the time of Rome's domination of the city. Jon D. Mikalson provides a chronological approach to religion in Hellenistic Athens, disproving the widely held belief that Hellenistic religion during this period represented a decline from the classical era. Drawing from epigraphical, historical, literary, and archaeological sources, Mikalson traces the religious cults and beliefs of Athenians from the battle of Chaeroneia in 338 B.C. to the devastation of Athens by Sulla in 86 B.C., demonstrating that traditional religion played a central and vital role in Athenian private, social, and political life. Mikalson describes the private and public religious practices of Athenians during this period, emphasizing the role these practices played in the life of the citizens and providing a careful scruntiny of individual cults. He concludes his study by using his findings from Athens to call into question several commonly held assumptions about the general development of religion in Hellenistic Greece.   [brief]
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Title: Theocritus's urban mimes: mobility, gender, and patronage 
Author: Burton, Joan B 1951-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Women's Studies
Publisher's Description: Drawing on current literary, cultural, and historical approaches, Joan Burton presents sophisticated new readings of Theocritus's urban mimes, which are among the most frequently cited evidence of Hellenistic cultural life, religion, magic, and aesthetics. Unlike Theocritus's bucolic poems, which focus on the male experience, all of his urban mimes represent women in more central and powerful roles, reflecting the growing visibility of Greek women at the time. A work of both innovation and wide-ranging scholarship, this book will be welcomed not only by students of the Hellenistic age but also by readers interested in issues of gender, sexuality, and culture in the ancient world.   [brief]
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Title: Form and good in Plato's Eleatic dialogues: the Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman 
Author: Dorter, Kenneth 1940-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | Philosophy | Classical Literature and Language
Publisher's Description: In this innovative analysis, Plato's four eleatic dialogues are treated as a continuous argument. In Kenneth Dorter's view, Plato reconsiders the theory of forms propounded in his earlier dialogues and through an examination of the theory's limitations reaffirms and proves it essential. Contradicted are both those philosophers who argue that Plato espoused his theory of forms uncritically and those who argue that Plato in some sense rejected the theory and moved toward the categorical analysis developed byAristotle. Dorter's reexamination of Plato's insights implies an important new direction for modern philosophical inquiry.   [brief]
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Title: Thundering Zeus: the making of Hellenistic Bactria
Author: Holt, Frank Lee
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Archaeology | Ancient History | History
Publisher's Description: Thundering Zeus uses an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to resolve one of the greatest puzzles in all of Hellenistic history. This book explores the remarkable rise of a Greek-ruled kingdom in ancient Bactria (modern Afghanistan) during the third century B.C. Diodotus I and II, whose dynasty emblazoned its coins with the dynamic image of Thundering Zeus, led this historic movement by breaking free of the Seleucid Empire and building a strong independent state in Central Asia. The chronology and crises that defined their reigns have been established here for the first time, and Frank Holt sets this new history into the larger context of Hellenistic studies.The best sources for understanding Hellenistic Bactria are archaeological, and they include a magnificent trove of coins. In addition to giving a history of Bactria, Thundering Zeus provides a catalog of these coins, as well as an introduction to the study of numismatics itself. Holt presents this fascinating material with the precision and acuity of a specialist and with the delight of an admirer, providing an up-to-date full catalog of known Diodotid coinage, and illustrating twenty-three coins.This succinct, energetic narrative thunders across the history of Hellenistic Bactria, exhuming coins, kingdoms, and customs as it goes. The result is a book that is both a history and a history of discovery, with much to offer those interested in ancient texts, archaeology, and coins.   [brief]
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Title: Money, expense, and naval power in Thucydides' History 1-5.24 
Author: Kallet-Marx, Lisa
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Classics | Economics and Business | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: Thucydides has been found guilty of indifference toward financial matters without a consideration of all the evidence. Now Lisa Kallet-Marx examines Thucydides' treatment of financial resources by studying his comments on finance in the context of the whole work and scrutinizes other, chiefly epigraphic, evidence as well. Her comprehensive inspection of the Archaeology, Pentekontaetia, and history of the Archidamian War demonstrates that the role of financial resources is central to Thucydides' ideas about naval power and figures prominently in his speeches and narrative.Kallet-Marx's research reveals an important stage in the historical development of thought about state power, wealth, and imperialism. Her book will greatly interest scholars of ancient economics and classicists alike.   [brief]
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Title: The returns of Odysseus: colonization and ethnicity
Author: Malkin, Irad
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Anthropology | Classical Literature and Language
Publisher's Description: This remarkably rich and multifaceted study of early Greek exploration makes an original contribution to current discussions of the encounters between Greeks and non-Greeks. Focusing in particular on myths about Odysseus and other heroes who visited foreign lands on their mythical voyages homeward after the Trojan War, Irad Malkin shows how these stories functioned to mediate encounters and conceptualize ethnicity and identity during the Archaic and Classical periods. Synthesizing a wide range of archaeological, mythological, and literary sources, this exceptionally learned book strengthens our understanding of early Greek exploration and city-founding along the coasts of the Western Mediterranean, reconceptualizes the role of myth in ancient societies, and revitalizes our understanding of ethnicity in antiquity.Malkin shows how the figure of Odysseus became a proto-colonial hero whose influence transcended the Greek-speaking world. The return-myths constituted a generative mythology, giving rise to oral poems, stories, iconographic imagery, rituals, historiographical interpretation, and the articulation of ethnic identities. Reassessing the role of Homer and alternative return-myths, the book argues for the active historical function of myth and collective representations and traces their changing roles through a spectrum of colonial perceptions - from the proto-colonial, through justifications of expansion and annexation, and up to decolonization.   [brief]
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Title: Images and ideologies: self-definition in the Hellenistic world 
Author: Bulloch, A. W
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | Philosophy | Classical Philosophy | Ancient History | Art History
Publisher's Description: This volume captures the individuality, the national and personal identity, the cultural exchange, and the self-consciousness that have long been sensed as peculiarly potent in the Hellenistic world. The fields of history, literature, art, philosophy, and religion are each presented using the format of two essays followed by a response.Conveying the direction and focus of Hellenistic learning, eighteen leading scholars discuss issues of liberty versus domination, appropriation versus accommodation, the increasing diversity of citizen roles and the dress and gesture appropriate to them, and the accompanying religious and philosophical ferment. The result is an arresting view of the incredible and unprecedented diversity of the Hellenistic world.   [brief]
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Title: The school of history: Athens in the age of Socrates
Author: Munn, Mark Henderson
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Ancient History | Classical Politics
Publisher's Description: History, political philosophy, and constitutional law were born in Athens in the space of a single generation--the generation that lived through the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.e.). This remarkable age produced such luminaries as Socrates, Herodotus, Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and the sophists, and set the stage for the education and early careers of Plato and Xenophon, among others. The School of History provides the fullest and most detailed intellectual and political history available of Athens during the late fifth century b.c.e., as it examines the background, the context, and the decisive events shaping this society in the throes of war. This expansive, readable narrative ultimately leads to a new understanding of Athenian democratic culture, showing why and how it yielded such extraordinary intellectual productivity. As both a source and a subject, Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War is the central text around which the narrative and thematic issues of the book revolve. Munn re-evaluates the formation of the Greek historiographical tradition itself as he identifies the conditions that prompted Thucydides to write--specifically the historian's desire to guide the Athenian democracy as it struggled to comprehend its future. The School of History fully encompasses recent scholarship in history, literature, and archaeology. Munn's impressive mastery of the huge number of sources and publications informs his substantial contributions to our understanding of this democracy transformed by war. Immersing us fully in the intellectual foment of Athenian society, The School of History traces the history of Athens at the peak of its influence, both as a political and military power in its own time and as a source of intellectual inspiration for the centuries to come.   [brief]
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Title: Polyeideia: the Iambi of Callimachus and the archaic Iambic tradition
Author: Acosta-Hughes, Benjamin 1960-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Poetry
Publisher's Description: This book provides a new literary treatment of an often-overlooked collection of fragmentary poems from the third century B.C.E. Alexandrian poet Callimachus. Callimachus' Iambi form a collection of thirteen poems, which rework archaic Greek iambography and look forward to Roman satire and other genres, especially to such collections as Horace's Epodes. The poems are especially significant as examples of cultural memory since they are composed both as an act of commemorating earlier poetry and as a manipulation of traditional features of iambic poetry to refashion the iambic genre. This book fills a significant gap by providing the first complete translation of several of these fragmentary poems in English, along with line-by-line commentary, notes, and literary analysis. The structure of the book is thematic, with chapters focusing on such topics as poetic voice, fable, ethical criticism, and statuary. Each chapter consists of an introduction, text and selected critical apparatus, translation, and comprehensive thematic discussion. Acosta-Hughes focuses especially on Callimachus' manipulation of traditional features of archaic iambic poetry such as persona loquens, ethical and critical message, and eristic dialogue. He also includes a detailed analysis of the Alexandrian poet's artistic relationship with the earlier iambic poets Archilochus and Hipponax. Polyeideia will interest not only readers of Greek and Hellenistic poetry but also readers of Roman satire and invective verse, as well as those intrigued by the processes of memorializing and fashioning poetic culture.   [brief]
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Title: The defense of Attica: the Dema wall and the Boiotian War of 378-375 B.C 
Author: Munn, Mark Henderson
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Classics | Art and Architecture | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: The enigmatic three-mile-long Dema wall in the countryside outside ancient Athens has perplexed archaeologists and historians for decades. When was it built and what role did it play in Greek military history? In a tour de force of archaeological and historical argument, Mark H. Munn establishes the place of the Dema wall in the defense of Athens and offers a completely new perspective on the Boiotian War.Since no ancient reference to the wall survives, scholars have contested the date and purpose of the wall's construction, placing it anywhere between the Geometric Age and Hellenistic eras. While directing the excavation of a watchtower above the wall, Munn's chance discovery of a datable sherd in the wall's remains fixed the date of the wall's construction at 378 B.C., the onset of the three-year Boiotian War. Munn offers an absorbing narrative account of the war, and his descriptions and effective use of literary extracts render a vivid portrayal of the opposing generals, military tactics, and battle scenes.   [brief]
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Title: The reign of the phallus: sexual politics in ancient Athens
Author: Keuls, Eva C
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Classics | History | Art and Architecture | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: At once daring and authoritative, this book offers a profusely illustrated history of sexual politics in ancient Athens.The phallus was pictured everywhere in ancient Athens: painted on vases, sculpted in marble, held aloft in gigantic form in public processions, and shown in stage comedies. This obsession with the phallus dominated almost every aspect of public life, influencing law, myth, and customs, affecting family life, the status of women, even foreign policy.This is the first book to draw together all the elements that made up the "reign of the phallus" - men's blatant claim to general dominance, the myths of rape and conquest of women, and the reduction of sex to a game of dominance and submission, both of women by men and of men by men.In her elegant and lucid text Eva Keuls not only examines the ideology and practices that underlay the reign of the phallus, but also uncovers an intense counter-movement - the earliest expressions of feminism and antimilitarism.Complementing the text are 345 reproductions of Athenian vase paintings. Some have been reproduced in a larger format and gathered in an appendix for easy reference and closer study. These revealing illustrations are a vivid demonstration that classical Athens was more sexually polarized and repressive of women than any other culture in Western history.   [brief]
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Title: Poetic garlands: Hellenistic epigrams in context
Author: Gutzwiller, Kathryn J
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Comparative Literature | Literature
Publisher's Description: Epigrams, the briefest of Greek poetic forms, had a strong appeal for readers of the Hellenistic period (323-31 B.C.). One of the most characteristic literary forms of the era, the epigram, unlike any other ancient or classical form of poetry, was not only composed for public recitation but was also collected in books intended for private reading. Brief and concise, concerned with the personal and the particular, the epigram emerged in the Hellenistic period as a sophisticated literary form that evinces the period's aesthetic preference for the miniature, the intricate, and the fragmented.Kathryn Gutzwiller offers the first full-length literary study of these important poems by studying the epigrams within the context of the poetry books in which they were originally collected. Drawing upon ancient sources as well as recent papyrological discoveries, Gutzwiller reconstructs the nature of Hellenistic epigram books and interprets individual poems as if they remained part of their original collections. This approach results in illuminating and original readings of many major poets, and demonstrates that individual epigrammatists were differentiated by gender, ethnicity, class status, and philosophical views. In an important final chapter, Gutzwiller reconstructs much of the poetic structure of Meleager's Garland , an ancient anthology of Hellenistic epigrams.   [brief]
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