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: 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: Dynasty and empire in the age of Augustus: the case of the of the Boscoreale Cups 
Author: Kuttner, Ann L
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Art | Art History | Classical History | Ancient  History
Publisher's Description: The two silver skyphoi commonly known as the Boscoreale Cups of Augustus and Tiberius are indispensable for providing the documentation of one of the only two cycles of Roman imperial state reliefs to survive from the Julio-Claudian period. Ann Kuttner offers the first comprehensive examination of these historical treasures.Kuttner studies the Cups not only from the standpoint of art history but also as they relate to Augustan ideology and politics. When she began work on this book, the whereabouts of the Cups was unknown, and she had to rely on the illustrations in Monuments et Memoires (Fondation Eugen Pinot, 1901). The rediscovery of the Cups at the Louvre in late 1990 has allowed Kuttner to examine them directly.   [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: Hesiod's Works and days
Author: Hesiod
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Economics and Business | Classics | Sociology | Ancient  History
Publisher's Description: This new, annotated translation of Hesiod's Works and Days is a collaboration between David W. Tandy, a classicist, and Walter Neale, an economist and economic historian. Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet whose Works and Days discusses agricultural practices and society in general. Classicists and ancient historians have turned to Works and Days for its insights on Greek mythology and religion. The poem also sheds light on economic history and ancient agriculture, and is a good resource for social scientists interested in these areas. This translation emphasizes the activities and problems of a practicing agriculturist as well as the larger, changing political and economic institutions of the early archaic period.The authors provide a clear, accurate translation along with notes aimed at a broad audience. The introductory essay discusses the changing economic, political and trading world of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., while the notes present the range and possible meanings of important Greek terms and references in the poem and highlight areas of ambiguity in our understanding of Works and Days .   [brief]
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Title: Imperial ideology and provincial loyalty in the Roman Empire
Author: Ando, Clifford 1969-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Ancient  History | Social Theory
Publisher's Description: The Roman empire remains unique. Although Rome claimed to rule the world, it did not. Rather, its uniqueness stems from the culture it created and the loyalty it inspired across an area that stretched from the Tyne to the Euphrates. Moreover, the empire created this culture with a bureaucracy smaller than that of a typical late-twentieth-century research university. In approaching this problem, Clifford Ando does not ask the ever-fashionable question, Why did the Roman empire fall? Rather, he asks, Why did the empire last so long? Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire argues that the longevity of the empire rested not on Roman military power but on a gradually realized consensus that Roman rule was justified. This consensus was itself the product of a complex conversation between the central government and its far-flung peripheries. Ando investigates the mechanisms that sustained this conversation, explores its contribution to the legitimation of Roman power, and reveals as its product the provincial absorption of the forms and content of Roman political and legal discourse. Throughout, his sophisticated and subtle reading is informed by current thinking on social formation by theorists such as Max Weber, Jürgen Habermas, and Pierre Bourdieu.   [brief]
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Title: Athens and Macedon: Attic letter-cutters of 300 to 229 B.C
Author: Tracy, Stephen V 1941-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Archaeology | Ancient  History
Publisher's Description: Little of the historiography of third-century Athens survives, and much of what we know - or might know - about the period has come down to us in inscriptions carved by Attic stonemasons of the time. In this book Stephen Tracy, the world's preeminent expert in this area, provides new insight into an . . . [more]
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Title: Moral vision in the Histories of Polybius
Author: Eckstein, Arthur M
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Classics | History | Classical Politics | Political Theory | Ancient  History
Publisher's Description: Arthur Eckstein's fresh and stimulating interpretation challenges the way Polybius' Histories have long been viewed. He argues that Polybius evaluates people and events as much from a moral viewpoint as from a pragmatic, utilitarian, or even "Machiavellian" one. Polybius particularly asks for "improvement" in his audience, hoping that those who study his writings will emerge with a firm determination to live their lives nobly. Teaching by the use of moral exemplars, Polybius also tries to prove that success is not the sole standard by which human action should be judged.   [brief]
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Title: Arete: Greek sports from ancient sources
Author: Miller, Stephen G
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | History | Ancient  History | Sports
Publisher's Description: From the informal games of Homer's time to the highly organized contests of the Roman world, Miller has compiled a trove of ancient sources - Plutarch on boxing, Aristotle on the pentathlon, Philostratos on clay dust as an anti-perspirant and on the buying and selling of victories, Vitruvius on literary competitions, Xenophon on female body building. With fully twice as many texts as the highly successful first edition, this new version of Arete offers readers an absorbing lesson in the culture of Greek athletics from the greatest of teachers - the ancients themselves.These sources, which Miller himself has translated, provide unparalleled insights into ancient athletic practices and competitive festivals. They emphasize the fundamental role of athletics in education and shed light on such issues as the role of women in athletics and the politics and economics of the games. Ultimately they demonstrate that the concepts of virtue, skill, pride, valor, and nobility embedded in the word arete and so closely associated in the modern mind with Greek athletics are only part of the story from antiquity.   [brief]
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Title: Regionalism and change in the economy of independent Delos, 314-167 B.C 
Author: Reger, Gary
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | History | Archaeology | Economics and Business | Ancient  History
Publisher's Description: Gary Reger's highly original book applies modern statistical analysis to the detailed inscriptions at the Temple of Apollo on Delos. These inscriptions, discovered during excavations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, provide a wealth of information about the business and economic enterprises of the island from 314 to167 B.C.Reger examines the abundant data from the inscriptions and seeks patterns in the production and use of commodities (olive oil, pigs, firewood, barley, wheat) and in fluctuations in rents for real estate. Linking the island's economic history to the larger political scene, he offers a trenchant and overdue argument for an analysis of the Delian economy as a regional phenomenon, not - as others have seen it - as a center of international exchange.   [brief]
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Title: The shadows of poetry: Vergil in the mind of Augustine
Author: MacCormack, Sabine
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Ancient  History | Christianity | Poetry
Publisher's Description: Imperial ceremony was a vital form of self-expression for late antique society. Sabine MacCormack examines the ceremonies of imperial arrivals, funerals, and coronations from the late third to the late sixth centuries A.D., as manifest in the official literature and art of the time. Her study offers . . . [more]
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Title: Luminous debris: reflecting on vestige in Provence and Languedoc 
Author: Sobin, Gustaf
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Literature | Cultural Anthropology | European Studies | Ancient  History | Philosophy | French Studies
Publisher's Description: Interpreting vestige with the eloquence of a poet and the knowledge of a field archaeologist, Gustaf Sobin explores his elected terrain: the landscapes of Provence and Languedoc. Drawing on prehistory, protohistory, and Gallo-Roman antiquity, the twenty-six essays in this book focus on a particular place or artifact for the relevance inherent in each. A Bronze Age earring or the rippling wave pattern in Massiolite ceramic are more than archival curiosities for Sobin. Instead they invite inquiry and speculation on existence itself: Artifacts are read as realia, and history as an uninterrupted sequence of object lessons.As much travel writing as meditative discourse, Luminous Debris is enhanced by a prose that tracks, questions, and reflects on the materials invoked. Sobin engages the reader with precise descriptions of those very materials and the messages to be gleaned from their examination, be they existential, ethical, or political.An American expatriate living in Provence for the past thirty-five years, Gustaf Sobin shares his enthusiasm for his adopted landscape and for a vertical interpretation of its strata. In Luminous Debris he creates meaning out of matter and celebrates instances of reality, past and present.   [brief]
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Title: Merovingian mortuary archaeology and the making of the early Middle Ages
Author: Effros, Bonnie 1965-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Classics | European Studies | Archaeology | Ancient  History | Medieval History | Archaeology
Publisher's Description: Clothing, jewelry, animal remains, ceramics, coins, and weaponry are among the artifacts that have been discovered in graves in Gaul dating from the fifth to eighth century. Those who have unearthed them, from the middle ages to the present, have speculated widely on their meaning. This authoritative book makes a major contribution to the study of death and burial in late antique and early medieval society with its long overdue systematic discussion of this mortuary evidence. Tracing the history of Merovingian archaeology within its cultural and intellectual context for the first time, Effros exposes biases and prejudices that have colored previous interpretations of these burial sites and assesses what contemporary archaeology can tell us about the Frankish kingdoms. Working at the intersection of history and archaeology, and drawing from anthropology and art history, Effros emphasizes in particular the effects of historical events and intellectual movements on French and German antiquarian and archaeological studies of these grave goods. Her discussion traces the evolution of concepts of nationhood, race, and culture and shows how these concepts helped shape an understanding of the past. Effros then turns to contemporary multidisciplinary methodologies and finds that we are still limited by the types of information that can be readily gleaned from physical and written sources of Merovingian graves. For example, since material evidence found in the graves of elite families and particularly elite men is more plentiful and noteworthy, mortuary goods do not speak as directly to the conditions in which women and the poor lived. The clarity and sophistication with which Effros discusses the methods and results of European archaeology is a compelling demonstration of the impact of nationalist ideologies on a single discipline and of the struggle toward the more pluralistic vision that has developed in the post-war years.   [brief]
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Title: The mask of Socrates: the image of the intellectual in antiquity 
Author: Zanker, Paul
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Classics | Art History | Art and Architecture | Ancient  History
Publisher's Description: This richly illustrated work provides a new and deeper perspective on the interaction of visual representation and classical culture from the fifth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. Drawing on a variety of source materials such as Graeco-Roman literature, historiography, and philosophy, in addition to artistic renderings, Paul Zanker forges the first comprehensive history of the visual representation of Greek and Roman intellectuals. He takes the reader from the earliest visual images of Socrates and Plato to the figures of Christ, the Apostles, and contemporaneous pagan and civic dignitaries.Through his interpretations of postures, gestures, facial expressions, and stylistic changes of particular set pieces, we come to know these great poets and philosophers through all of their various personas - the prophetic wise man, the virtuous democratic citizen, or the self-absorbed bon vivant. Zanker's analysis of how the iconography of influential thinkers and writers changed demonstrates the rise and fall of trends and the movement of schools of thought and belief, each successively embodying the most valued characteristics of the period and culture.   [brief]
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Title: Fiction as history: Nero to Julian 
Author: Bowersock, G. W. (Glen Warren) 1936-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Classics | Literature | European History | Classical Religions | Christianity | Ancient  History
Publisher's Description: Using pagan fiction produced in Greek and Latin during the early Christian era, G. W. Bowersock investigates the complex relationship between "historical" and "fictional" truths. This relationship preoccupied writers of the second century, a time when apparent fictions about both past and present were proliferating at an astonishing rate and history was being invented all over again. With force and eloquence, Bowersock illuminates social attitudes of this period and persuasively argues that its fiction was influenced by the emerging Christian Gospel narratives.Enthralling in its breadth and enhanced by two erudite appendices, this is a book that will be warmly welcomed by historians and interpreters of literature.   [brief]
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Title: Heritage and hellenism: the reinvention of Jewish tradition
Author: Gruen, Erich S
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Classical History | Classical Religions | Judaism | Ancient  History | Jewish Studies
Publisher's Description: The interaction of Jew and Greek in antiquity intrigues the imagination. Both civilizations boasted great traditions, their roots stretching back to legendary ancestors and divine sanction. In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Hellenic culture, the culture of the ascendant classes in many of the cities of the Near East, held widespread attraction and appeal. Jews were certainly not immune. In this thoroughly researched, lucidly written work, Erich Gruen draws on a wide variety of literary and historical texts of the period to explore a central question: How did the Jews accommodate themselves to the larger cultural world of the Mediterranean while at the same time reasserting the character of their own heritage within it? Erich Gruen's work highlights Jewish creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness, as the Jews engaged actively with the traditions of Hellas, adapting genres and transforming legends to articulate their own legacy in modes congenial to a Hellenistic setting. Drawing on a diverse array of texts composed in Greek by Jews over a broad period of time, Gruen explores works by Jewish historians, epic poets, tragic dramatists, writers of romance and novels, exegetes, philosophers, apocalyptic visionaries, and composers of fanciful fables - not to mention pseudonymous forgers and fabricators. In these works, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us the best insights into Jewish self-perception in that era.   [brief]
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Title: Wandering, begging monks: spiritual authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity
Author: Caner, Daniel
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Classics | Religion | Classical Religions | Christianity | Classical History | Ancient  History
Publisher's Description: An apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Such monks often served as spiritual advisors to urban aristocrats whose patronage gave them considerable authority and independence from episcopal control. This book is the first comprehensive study of this type of Christian poverty and the challenge it posed for episcopal authority and the promotion of monasticism in late antiquity. Focusing on devotional practices, Daniel Caner draws together diverse testimony from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and elsewhere - including the Pseudo-Clementine Letters to Virgins, Augustine's On the Work of Monks, John Chrysostom's homilies, legal codes - to reveal gospel-inspired patterns of ascetic dependency and teaching from the third to the fifth centuries. Throughout, his point of departure is social and cultural history, especially the urban social history of the late Roman empire. He also introduces many charismatic individuals whose struggle to persist against church suppression of their chosen way of imitating Christ was fought with defiant conviction, and the book includes the first annotated English translation of the biography of Alexander Akoimetos (Alexander the Sleepless). Wandering, Begging Monks allows us to understand these fascinating figures of early Christianity in the full context of late Roman society.   [brief]
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Title: Christianity and the rhetoric of empire: the development of Christian discourse
Author: Cameron, Averil
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Classics | Classical Religions | Classical History | History | Christianity | Ancient  History | Rhetoric
Publisher's Description: Many reasons can be given for the rise of Christianity in late antiquity and its flourishing in the medieval world. In asking how Christianity succeeded in becoming the dominant ideology in the unpromising circumstances of the Roman Empire, Averil Cameron turns to the development of Christian discourse over the first to sixth centuries A.D., investigating the discourse's essential characteristics, its effects on existing forms of communication, and its eventual preeminence. Scholars of late antiquity and general readers interested in this crucial historical period will be intrigued by her exploration of these influential changes in modes of communication.The emphasis that Christians placed on language - writing, talking, and preaching - made possible the formation of a powerful and indeed a totalizing discourse, argues the author. Christian discourse was sufficiently flexible to be used as a public and political instrument, yet at the same time to be used to express private feelings and emotion. Embracing the two opposing poles of logic and mystery, it contributed powerfully to the gradual acceptance of Christianity and the faith's transformation from the enthusiasm of a small sect to an institutionalized world religion.   [brief]
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