Search results for ""Author Anton Powell""

Crucial to the understanding of Athenian literature and the political history of numerous Greek states, the history of Sparta is, at last, receiving due attention.

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One of the most fertile and fast-developing themes of recent historiography is treated by the 10 new papers in this volume. The history of the ancient world has traditionally been studied with a view to tracing the origins of those grand developments which eventually occurred. The writing of history is often simplified, by modern scholars as by some ancient sources, so as to read almost teleologically. 'Who', it may have been asked, 'wants to understand what did not happen?' But the most respected of our ancient sources, Herodotos, Thucydides, Tacitus and others, frequently describe the actors in their narratives as guided by fears and hopes concerning developments which did not happen, or by reflection on events which had happened but which subsequently did not play out as anticipated. As Tacitus wrote of Boudicca's revolt, the Britons were motivated by past Roman offences 'and the fear of worse'. Such - superficially - sterile, even vague, expectations tend to be neglected in scholarly discourse. But not only were unfulfilled expectations facts in themselves; they generated real actions. Further, even real and quite grand events - such as a battle won in a campaign eventually unsuccessful - are likely to be neglected if they do not seem to have led to larger developments still: in short, if they are inconvenient for a grand narrative or a syllabus. Yet, history cannot be understood without such things. Restoring them to their due prominence offers scope for a wide-ranging scholarly activity which is not only legitimate but necessary.

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Since its first appearance in 2008, this book has changed the landscape of Virgilian studies. Analysing closely the logic and the literary genres of Virgil's three poems, it politely confronts the modern orthodoxy that Virgil signalled distaste for the methods of his ruler, Octavian-Augustus. It refreshes the study of Virgil's poetry by comparing it with the detail (normally neglected by scholars) of Rome's civil wars after Julius Caesar's death, when Octavian's survival looked highly unlikely. And it argues that Virgil wrote as a passionate - and brave - partisan of Octavian, who - like a good lawyer - confronted his patron's undeniable failings in order to defend. Awarded in 2011 the prize of the Vergilian Society for 'the book that makes the greatest contribution toward our understanding and appreciation of Virgil'.

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Since its first appearance in 2008, this book has changed the landscape of Virgilian studies. Analysing closely the logic and the literary genres of Virgil's three poems, it politely confronts the modern orthodoxy that Virgil signalled distaste for the methods of his ruler, Octavian-Augustus.

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The study of the Spartans is now pursued more widely and intensively than ever. Indeed, no longer is Sparta the 'second city' of ancient Greece. This volume, the fourth in the established series on which Powell and Hodkinson have collaborated, breaks fresh ground, not least in the range of its contributors. The authors of the fourteen new papers represent nine different countries and demonstrate many of the fertile modern approaches to the history, the archaeology - and the still-influential image - of the city on the Eurotas.

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Thucydides is widely seen as the most dispassionate and reliable contemporary source for the history of classical Sparta. But, compared with partisan authors such as Xenophon and Plutarch, his information on the subject is more scattered and implicit. Scholars in recent decades have made progress in teasing out the sense of Thucydides' often lapidary remarks on Sparta. This book takes the process further. Its eight new studies by international specialists aim to reveal coherent structures both in Thucydidean thought and in Spartan reality. This volume is the second of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales applies to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome's revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods.

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Coins of the best-known Roman revolutionary era allow rival pretenders to speak to us directly. After the deaths of Caesar and Cicero (in 44 and 43BC) hardly one word has been reliably transmitted to us from even the two most powerful opponents of Octavian: Mark Antony and Sextus Pompeius - except through coinage and the occasional inscription. The coins are an antidote to a widespread fault in modern approaches: the idea, from hindsight, that the Roman Republic was doomed, that the rise of Octavian-Augustus to monarchy was inevitable, and that contemporaries might have sensed as much. In this book eleven new essays explore the coinage of Rome's competing dynasts. Julius Caesar's coins, and those of his 'son' Octavian-Augustus, are studied. But similar and respectful attention is given to the issues of their opponents: Cato the Younger and Q. Metellus Scipio, Mark Antony and Sextus Pompeius, Q. Cornificius and others. A shared aim is to understand mentalities, the forecasts current, in an age of rare insecurity as the superpower of the Mediterranean faced, and slowly recovered from, division and ruin.

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Greeks – in later times – saw Athens as 'the Hellas of Hellas', but in the classical period many Athenians thought otherwise. Athens might be a school of Hellas, but the school of Hellas was Sparta. Militarily and morally, Sparta was supreme. This book explores how Athenians – ordinary citizens as well as writers and politicians – thought about Sparta's superiority. Nine new studies from an international cast examine how Athenians might revere Sparta even as they fought her. This respect led to Plato's literary creation of fantasy cities (in the Republic and Laws) to imitate Spartan methods. And, after its military surrender in 404 BC, ruling Athenian politicians claimed that their city was to be remodelled as itself a New Sparta.

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Our ideas about ancient Athens are constructed very largely from the writings of Athenian authors. Relatively rare are our sources for how others - whether Greeks, Asiatics or Romans - saw Athens from the outside. Yet we can see that not only did many across the Mediterranean world resist the political power of Athens in countless wars over several centuries, but that there existed an intriguing variety of anti-Athenian ideologies. This volume traces negative thinking about Athens from the late archaic period to Roman times. It challenges the easy modern supposition that Athens was generally seen as the cultural emblem of Greece, and casts light on the thinking of ancient peoples who - nowadays - tend to exist in Athens' shadow.

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Xenophon has long been identified as a chief contemporary source, if not the chief source, for the history of classical Sparta. But his information has commonly been treated in restricted ways. Scholars who have studied Xenophon's oeuvre have tended to apply a knowledge of Athenian history and of general Greek literature rather than a specialist knowledge of Sparta. And specialist students of Sparta have commonly `mined' elements of Xenophon's work without sufficient regard either for the author's general characteristics and biases or for the variety of his literary genres. In this volume, 12 internationally-recognised experts on Sparta examine the quality of Xenophon's information on central topics of Laconian history, in the light of the author's political, literary and intellectual characteristics. This book is the first of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales will apply to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome's revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods. This book is the first of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales will apply to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome's revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods.

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