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What was fiction in the Roman world – and how did ancient readers learn to make sense of it? This book redefines ancient fiction not as a genre but as a sociocultural practice, governed by the institutions of Greco-Roman education. Drawing on modern fiction theory, it uncovers how fables, epic, and rhetorical training cultivated “fiction competence” in readers from childhood through advanced studies. But it also reveals how the ancient novels – including Greek romance, fictional biography, and the fragmentary novels – subverted the very rules of fiction pedagogy they inherited. Through incisive close readings of a wide array of canonical and paraliterary texts, this book reframes the classical curriculum as the engine of literary imagination in antiquity. For classicists, literary theorists, and anyone interested in ancient education, it offers a provocative reassessment of fiction's place in cultural history – and of how readers learned to believe, disbelieve, and decode narrative meaning.
Hipparchus was the most important astronomer of the ancient Greek world. This volume provides a comprehensive introduction to almost everything that can be known or reasonably surmised about his life and work. Hipparchus was the first to apply an effective geometric model to the cosmos, which enabled him to predict the positions of the Sun, Moon and stars more reliably than before. He was also the first to catalogue most of the stars that were visible in the northern hemisphere, giving a detailed account of their risings, settings and culminations. His most important discovery was the long-term movement of the sky, known as precession. Crucially, this study provides a translation and analysis of Hipparchus' only surviving work, the Commentary on the Phenomena of Aratus and Eudoxus, and reconstructs his catalogue of the stars, which has not survived, using a modern precession model.
The Self in Premodern Thought reconfigures the historical study of the self, which has typically been treated in disciplinary silos. Bringing multiple disciplinary perspectives into conversation with each other, it broadens the discussion to include texts and forms of writing outside the standard philosophical/theological canon. A distinguished group of contributors, from philosophy, classics, theology, history, and comparative literature, explores a wide range of texts that greatly expand our understanding of how selfhood was conceived in the ancient, medieval, and early modern periods. The essays in this groundbreaking collection range from challenging new perspectives on well-known authors and texts, such as Plato and Augustine, to innovative explorations of forms of writing that have rarely been discussed in this context, such as drama, sermons, autobiographical writing, and liturgy.
This book, which draws on Lisa Bendall's lectures over three decades, provides an engaging and accessible survey of everything students need to know to read and understand texts in Linear B. As John Chadwick noted, the Linear B scholar must be 'not just an epigraphist, not just a linguist, not just an economic historian and archaeologist; ideally he or she…must be all these things simultaneously'. Volume 1 introduces the student to the writing system and the language, especially the phonology and morphology. It also explains the formal aspects of the documents and gives guidance on the tools available to the student and scholar. Volume 2 will provide a guide to using the documents to understand the Mycenaean world.
The western tradition of coinage began in Asia Minor around 650 BCE and from there the idea spread quite rapidly to other parts of the Mediterranean. This book describes and evaluates developments in coinage down to the period of the Persian Wars, ending in 479. Early coinage was not monolithic. The new medium of exchange proved attractive to a variety of rulers and societies – kings, dynasts, tribes, city–states with varying forms of governance. The physical characteristics of the coins produced were another source of difference. Initially there was no fixed idea of what a coin should look like, and there were several experiments before a consensus emerged around a small, circular metal object with a design, or type, on both sides. This book provides students with an authoritative introduction, with all technical terms and methodologies explained, as well as illustrations of over 200 important coins with detailed captions.
Roman law is justly famous, but what was its relationship to governing an empire? In this book, Ari Z. Bryen argues that law, as the learned practice that we know today, emerged from the challenge of governing a diverse and fractious set of imperial subjects. Through analysis of these subjects' political and legal ideologies, Bryen reveals how law became the central topic of political contest in the Roman Empire. Law offered a means of testing legitimacy and evaluating government, as well as a language for asking fundamental political questions. But these political claims did not go unchallenged. Elites resisted them, and jurists, in collaboration with emperors, reimagined law as a system that excluded the voices of the governed. The result was to separate, for the first time, 'law' from 'society' more broadly, and to define law as a primarily literate and learned practice, rather than the stuff of everyday life.
Aristotle's account of justice has inspired thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas and Martha Nussbaum. Concepts such as distributive justice, equity, the common good, and the distinction between just and unjust political organizations find articulations in his writings. But although Aristotle's account of justice remains philosophically relevant, its intellectual, social, and political origins in the Mediterranean world of the fourth century BCE have often been overlooked. This book places Aristotle's account of justice in dialogue with his fourth-century intellectual colleagues such as Plato, Xenophon, and Isocrates, and allows it to be understood within the framework of fourth-century institutions as they were experienced by citizens of ancient Greek political communities. It thus provides the modern reader with the framework which Aristotle presupposed for his original work in antiquity, including the intellectual debates which formed its context.
This book is about the power of story-telling and the place of myth in the cultural memory of ancient Mesopotamia. Rather than reducing mythology to an archaic state of the mind, this study redefines myth as a system of knowledge (episteme) and part of cognitive and cultural experience serving as an explanatory system. It demonstrates how among the multiple ways of world-making (Nelson Goodman) myth not only reflects experiences and reality but also constitutes reality in text and image alike. Drawing on cognitive semiotics, visual studies, and cognitive narratology, it explores the power of the image in showing and revealing something that is absent (deixis). Thus, it demonstrates the contribution of the image to knowledge production. The book calls for re-introducing meaning when dealing with the imagery and iconology of ancient Mesopotamia and introduces an innovative approach to the art history of the ancient Near East.
Rome's calendar often falls into the background in studies of republican political, legal, and religious practices. Its relationship to celestial phenomena is usually unexamined and modernizing assumptions are made about its regularity of operations and the advantages of Caesar's reform. In this book, Daniel Gargola clarifies its relationship to celestial phenomena and reveals the extent to which celestial references permeated public cult; he also demonstrates that the competent authorities often intervened in its operations in order to accommodate other concerns. The calendar also provided the temporal framework for the regulation of public and cultic activities and thus had a central role in Roman law. Roman writers attempted to bring clarity to the norms involving the calendar, and their efforts have often influenced modern attempts to study it. Nevertheless, the complexity of public and cultic life undermined these attempts and Romans always had to navigate between competing norms.
Pat Easterling's articles are fundamental to her status as one of the most influential Hellenists of her generation. Characterised by unostentatious astuteness and an arresting capacity for observation, they put forward tersely considered arguments that have the weight of much longer discussions. Exacting attention to language and detail combines with clear-sighted openness to new developments within and beyond the discipline to allow the texts to speak in deeply human terms. This collection gathers significant articles from all stages of Easterling's career, many of them major points of reference. Volume 1 is devoted to Greek tragedy, and represents in particular her great affinity for Sophocles. Volume 2 presents work on other Greek literature, acting, transmission, scholia, reception, history of scholarship. Reflecting Easterling's extensive academic ties, several of the articles were originally published in less well-known volumes and are here made more widely available.
Pat Easterling's articles are fundamental to her status as one of the most influential Hellenists of her generation. Characterised by unostentatious astuteness and an arresting capacity for observation, they put forward tersely considered arguments that have the weight of much longer discussions. Exacting attention to language and detail combines with clear-sighted openness to new developments within and beyond the discipline to allow the texts to speak in deeply human terms. This collection gathers significant articles from all stages of Easterling's career, many of them major points of reference. Volume 1 is devoted to Greek tragedy, and represents in particular her great affinity for Sophocles. Volume 2 presents work on other Greek literature, acting, transmission, scholia, reception, history of scholarship. Reflecting Easterling's extensive academic ties, several of the articles were originally published in less well-known volumes and are here made more widely available.
Interest in the relationship between Paul's letter openings and Koine Greek letter-writing conventions has been steady for over a century, but little new data has emerged in recent years. In this study, Gillian Asquith offers a fresh perspective on Paul's epistolary practice by adopting a multidisciplinary method that synthesises sociolinguistics and lexicography. Comparing the language of Paul's letter openings with the register of language in documentary papyri, she demonstrates that high-register language in Koine Greek epistolary formulae contributes to warm and friendly relations between correspondents. Asquith argues that Paul creatively modifies epistolary norms by using unexpected, high-register language in the remembrance motif and litotic disclosure formula. Such usage, she posits, emphatically reassures Paul's recipients of his pastoral concern for them and heightens the persuasive force of his letters. Asquith's nuanced analysis contributes valuable new data to long-running debates around Paul's practice of prayer and the structure of his letters.
This textbook offers students who have no prior background in biblical studies an understanding of the lasting contribution of Israel's scriptures. Bringing a literary approach to the topic, it strikes a balance between historical reconstructions, comparative religions, and theology. Among several distinctive features, It traces the legacy of monotheism first emerging in the pages of Israel's scriptures as an enduring contribution for twenty-first century readers. Monotheism gives the volume an immediate relevance because the so-called Abrahamic religions are rooted in this concept. Whether one is Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or secularist, students will gain a new understanding of the origins of monotheism as their common heritage. The Second Edition of this textbook includes expanded discussions within the text and in sidebars, notably on the history of biblical scholarship, modern methods of interpretation, and wisdom literature.