Classical Studies

The ancient world existed before the modern conceptual and linguistic apparatus of rights, and any attempts to understand its place in history must be undertaken with care. This volume covers not only Greco-Roman antiquity, but ranges from the ancient Near East to early Confucian China; Deuteronomic Judaism to Ptolemaic Egypt; and rabbinic Judaism to Sasanian law. It describes ancient normative conceptions of personhood and practices of law in a way that respects their historical and linguistic particularity, appreciating the distinctiveness of the cultures under study whilst clarifying their salience for comparative study. Through thirteen expertly researched essays, volume one of The Cambridge History of Rights is a comprehensive and authoritative reference for the history of rights in the global ancient world and highlights societies that the field has long neglected.

The narrative art of Herodotus' Histories has always been greatly admired, but it has never received an in-depth and systematic analysis. This commentary lays bare the role of the narrator and his effective handling of time, focalization, and speech in all the famous and much-loved episodes, from Croesus, via the Ionian Revolt, to the climax of Xerxes' expedition against Greece. In paying close attention to the various ways in which Herodotus structures his story, it offers crucial help to get a grip on the at first sight bewildering structure of this long text. The detailed analysis of Herodotus' narration shows how his masterful adoption and expansion of the epic toolbox endowed the new genre of historiography with the same authority as its illustrious predecessor. The commentary is suitable for all readers of Herodotus' Greek text: students, teachers, and scholars.

The decipherment of Linear B, an early form of Greek used by the Myceneans, by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick has long been celebrated. But five other scripts from the Bronze-Age Aegean remain undeciphered. In this book, Brent Davis provides a thorough introduction to these scripts and uses statistical techniques drawn from linguistics to provide insights into the languages lying behind them. He deals most extensively with the script of the Minoan civilization on Crete (“Linear A”), whose decipherment remains one of the Holy Grails of archaeology. He discusses linguistic topics in clear language and explains linguistic terms in a comprehensive glossary. The book also includes all data on which the various analyses of the scripts are based. It will therefore be of great interest and use not just to experts in the undeciphered Aegean scripts, but to novices and aficionados of decipherment as well.

Tracing the development of Rome over a span of 1200 years, The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome offers an overview of the changing appearance of the city and the social, political, and military factors that shaped it. C. Brian Rose places Rome's architecture, coinage, inscriptions and monuments in historical context and offers a nuanced analysis regarding the evolution of the city and its monuments over time. He brings an interdisciplinary approach to his study, merging insights gained from cutting-edge techniques in archaeological research, such as remote sensing, core-sampling, palaeobotany, neutron-activation analysis, and isotopic analysis, with literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence. Rose also includes reconstructions of the ancient city that reflect the rapid developments in digital technology and mapping in the last three decades. Aimed at scholars and students alike, Rose's study demonstrates how evidence can be drawn from a variety of approaches. It serves as a model for studying and viewing the growth and structure of ancient cities.

This book provides a reassessment of Ptolemaic state intervention in industry and trade, an issue central to the economic and political history of Hellenistic Egypt. Based on a full survey of Greek and Demotic Egyptian sources, and drawing on theoretical perspectives, it challenges the prevailing interpretation of 'state monopolies'. While the Ptolemies displayed an impressive capacity to intervene in economic processes, their aims were purely fiscal, and the extent of their reach was limited. Every sector was characterised by significant market activity, either recognised and supported by the state, or illicit where the Ptolemies did make attempts to establish exclusive control. Nico Dogaer provides a full account of several key industries and presents new conclusions about the impact of Ptolemaic rule, including on economic performance. The book also makes an important contribution to broader debates about the relation between states and markets in historical societies.

Reading Biblical Greek is aimed at students who are studying New Testament Greek for the first time, or refreshing what they once learned. Designed to supplement and reinforce The Elements of New Testament Greek, by Jeremy Duff, each chapter of this textbook provides lengthy, plot-driven texts that will be accessible as students study each chapter of The Elements. Each text is accompanied by detailed questions, which test comprehension of content from recent lessons and review challenging topics from previous chapters. The graded nature of the texts, together with the copious notes and comprehension questions, makes this an ideal resource for learning, reviewing or re-entering Greek. The focus of this resource is on reading with understanding, and the exercises highlight how Greek texts convey meaning. Finally, this book moves on from first-year Greek, with sections that cover the most important advanced topics thoroughly.

Political violence, which the ancient Greeks called stasis, was a fundamental aspect of Greek society. In this book, Scott Arcenas reshapes our understanding of this important phenomenon. He argues that it differed fundamentally from its analogues in both ancient and modern societies and that in most poleis it occurred with high frequency but very low levels of violence. Stasis therefore promoted economic growth, institutional innovation, and cultural creativity in a variety of important and surprising ways. In order to undertake this study, Dr Arcenas introduces new methods and tools to confront some of the greatest methodological challenges that face scholars of the ancient world: evidentiary scarcity, evidentiary bias, epistemic uncertainty, and lack of clarity regarding the explanatory value of our sources' silence. The book is therefore required reading for a wide range of scholars and students of ancient history.

Pauline scholars have misconstrued key features of Paul's portrayal of love by arguing that Paul idealises self-sacrifice and 'altruism'. In antiquity, ideal loving behaviour was intended to construct a relationship of shared selves with shared interests; by contrast, modern ethics has rejected this notion of love and selfhood. In this study, Logan Williams explores Paul's Christology and ethics beyond the egoism-altruism dichotomy. He provides a fresh evaluation of self-giving language in Greek literature and shows that 'gave himself' is not a fixed phrase for self-sacrifice. In Galatians, for example, self-giving languages depict Jesus' love as an act of self-gifting. By re-evaluating the apostle's description of Christ's loving action, Williams demonstrates that Paul portrays Jesus' loving action as his positive participation in the condition of others. He also interrogates the ethics in Galatians and shows that Paul's love-ethics encourage the Galatians not to sacrifice themselves for others but to share themselves with others.

This Element offers a new historical account of Aristippus the Elder's views on pleasure and the present. Instead of treating Aristippus as merely proto-Cyrenaic or anachronistically modern, it uncovers in the ancient sources a neglected form of hedonism that endorses a present-focused therapeutic policy, while exploring its underlying motivations. Aristippan hedonism promotes a moment-to-moment disposition to pleasure rather than its maximization through future calculation, supporting a euthymic model of well-being that prioritizes the present. After distinguishing Aristippus from the later Cyrenaics regarding hedonic calculations to maximize pleasure, the Element yet supports continuity with his followers in the cognitive elements of the concept and the experience of pleasure, challenging his alleged sensualism in this way. Once the historical groundwork is in place, the Element introduces the hypothesis of the plasticity of the present, which moves beyond historical interpretation to offer an ethical-psychological account of a sustained focus on present time.

How do we define plagiarism in literature? In this wide-ranging and innovative study, Muhsin J. al-Musawi examines debates surrounding literary authenticity across Arabic and Islamic culture over seven centuries. Al-Musawi argues that intertextual borrowing was driven by personal desire alongside the competitive economy of the Abbasid Islamic Empire. Here, accusations of plagiarism had wide-ranging consequences, as competition among poets and writers grew fierce, while philologists and critics served as public arbiters over controversies of alleged poetic thefts. Taking in an extensive remit of Arabic sources, from Persian writers to the poets of Andalusia and Morocco, al-Musawi extends his argument all the way to Ibrāhīm ᶜAbd al-Qādir al-Māzinī's writing in Egypt and the Iraqi poet Nāzik al-Malā՚ikah's work in the twentieth century to present 'theft' as a necessary condition of creative production in Arabic literature. As a result, this study sheds light on a vast yet understudied aspect of the Arabic literary tradition, while raising important questions surrounding the rising challenge of artificial intelligence in matters of academic integrity.

To Galen, Plato was the great authority in philosophy but also had important things to say on health, disease, and the human body. The Timaeus was of enormous significance to Galen's thought on the body's structure and functioning as well as being a key source of inspiration for his teleological world view, in which the idea of cosmic design by a personified creative Nature, the Craftsman, plays a fundamental role. This volume provides critical English translations of key readings of the Timaeus by Galen that were previously accessible only in fragmentary Greek and Arabic and Arabo-Latin versions. The introductions highlight Galen's creative interpretations of the dialogue, especially compared to other imperial explanations, and show how his works informed medieval Islamicate writers' understanding of it. The book should provoke fresh attention to texts that have been unjustly marginalized in the history of Platonism in both the west and Middle East.

Histories of Latin literature have often treated the period from the second to the seventh centuries as an epilogue to the main action – and yet the period includes such towering figures as Apuleius, Claudian, Prudentius, Augustine, Jerome, Boethius, and Isidore. The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature, with fifty chapters by forty-one scholars, is the first book to treat the immensely diverse literature of these six centuries together in such generous detail. The book shows authors responding to momentous changes, and sometimes shaping or resisting them: the rise of Christianity, the introduction of the codex book, and the end of the western Roman Empire. The contributors' accounts of late antique Latin literature do not shy away from controversy, but are always clear, succinct, and authoritative. Students and scholars wanting to explore unfamiliar areas of Late Antiquity will find their starting point here.

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

Late Antiquity (ca. 250–600 CE) was a world at war: barbarian migrations, civil wars, raids, and increasingly porous frontiers affected millions of its inhabitants. While military and political historians have long grappled with this history, scholars of late antique society and culture rarely interrogate the consequences of near constant warfare on civilian populations, fighting forces, and the built environment. War and Community in Late Antiquity responds to this oversight by assembling archeologists, art historians, social historians, and scholars of religion to examine the impact of war on communities (households, cities, religious groups, elites and non-elites) and their reactions to ongoing stressors. Topics include the violence of everyday life as backdrop to that of war; the rhetoric of warfare and its significance for Christian authors; the effects of captivity and billeting on households; communal agency and the fortification of civilian spaces; and the challenges of articulating Christian imperial power in wartime.

This Element is about the relationship between the political thought of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) and a tradition of political thinking known as republicanism that traces its roots at least to 15th century Florence and perhaps further back to Aristotle. Throughout, we will be investigating this relationship along two dimensions. First, we will be asking whether it advances our understanding of Hegel's thought to consider him to be a republican, and if so, in what way and to what extent. The point here is not to assimilate Hegel to a cause or a label, but to see whether the individual outlines of Hegel's thought might be brought into focus by adopting the lens of republicanism. Second, we will be considering whether Hegel's thought offers criticism of various other forms of republicanism and how we might evaluate that criticism.

This Element concerns Hegel's engagement with Spinoza's metaphysics, and divides into three main parts. The first enlists help from Hegel's interpretation to introduce and defend philosophical strengths in Spinoza's defense of metaphysical monism. The second defends Hegel's criticism of Spinoza, concluding that Spinoza's philosophy must eliminate all finitude and determinacy, leaving only a shapeless abyss. The third employs these defenses to open up an approach to the philosophical interpretation of Hegel's Logic, the core of his philosophical system, understanding the meaning of Hegel's ambitious claims in terms of reasons that make them more than the mere unpacking of assumptions.

Aristotle's Parts of Animals is a foundational text in both the history of philosophy and the history and philosophy of biology. Critically important for understanding his mature philosophical programme, the Parts of Animals has two chief aims. PA Book I is an introduction to the study of animals and plants and provides preliminary considerations for how to investigate all aspects of their nature. PA Books II-IV is the most comprehensive example of the application of Aristotle's philosophical methodology to real world examples of substances, that is, to animals. In this book, a team of international experts cover topics such as Aristotle's exhortation to study biology, his methodology in the study of natural entities and kinds, the study of mind as part of nature, his analysis and use of concepts such as essence, substance, definition, matter, form, species, analogy and teleology, and the influence and legacy of the text.

Augustine's Confessions, written between AD 394 and 400, is an autobiographical work which outlines his youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is one of the great texts of Late Antiquity, the first Western Christian autobiography ever written, and it retains its fascination for philosophers, theologians, historians, and scholars of religious studies today. This Critical Guide engages with Augustine's creative appropriation of the work of his predecessors in theology generally, in metaphysics, and in philosophy as therapy for the soul, and reframes a much discussed - but still poorly understood - passage from the Confessions with respect to recent philosophy. The volume represents the best of contemporary scholarship on Augustine's Confessions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and builds on existing scholarship to develop new insights, explore underappreciated themes, and situate Augustine in the thought of his own day as well as ours.

This book traces the changing political and social roles of classical education in late antique Gaul. It argues that the collapse of Roman political power in Gaul changed the way education was practiced and perceived by Gallo-Romans. Neither the barbarian kingdoms nor the Church directly caused the decline of classical schools, but these new structures of power did not encourage or support a cultural and political climate in which classical education mattered; while Latin remained the language of the Church, and literacy and knowledge of law were valued by barbarian courts, training in classical grammar and rhetoric was no longer seen as a prerequisite for political power and cultural prestige. This study demonstrates that these fundamental shifts in what education meant to individuals and power brokers resulted in the eventual end of the classical schools of grammar and rhetoric that had once defined Roman aristocratic public and private life.

Classical Studies

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149391 results in Classical Studies

The Cambridge History of Rights

A Narratological Commentary on Herodotus' Histories

The Undeciphered Aegean Scripts

The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome

Industry, Trade and the State in Ptolemaic Egypt

Reading Biblical Greek

Political Violence in Ancient Greece

Christology and Ethics in Galatians

Aristippus of Cyrene, Pleasure and the Present

Poetic Desire and Literary Thievery

Galen: Writings on Plato's Timaeus

The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature

The Cambridge Urban History of Europe

The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature

War and Community in Late Antiquity

Hegel and Republicanism

Hegel and Spinoza

Aristotle's Parts of Animals

Augustine's ‘Confessions'

Learning and Power in Late Antique Gaul

Classical Studies

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

Save Search

149391 results in Classical Studies

The Cambridge History of Rights

A Narratological Commentary on Herodotus' Histories

The Undeciphered Aegean Scripts

The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome

Industry, Trade and the State in Ptolemaic Egypt

Reading Biblical Greek

Political Violence in Ancient Greece

Christology and Ethics in Galatians

Aristippus of Cyrene, Pleasure and the Present

Poetic Desire and Literary Thievery

Galen: Writings on Plato's Timaeus

The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature

The Cambridge Urban History of Europe

The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature

War and Community in Late Antiquity

Hegel and Republicanism

Hegel and Spinoza

Aristotle's Parts of Animals

Augustine's ‘Confessions'

Learning and Power in Late Antique Gaul