Search results for ""Classical Press of Wales""
Classical Press of Wales The Hellenistic Court: Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra
Hellenistic courts were centres of monarchic power, social prestige and high culture in the kingdoms that emerged after the death of Alexander. They were places of refinement, learning and luxury, and also of corruption, rivalry and murder. Surrounded by courtiers of varying loyalty, Hellenistic royal families played roles in a theatre of spectacle and ceremony. Architecture, art, ritual and scholarship were deployed to defend the existence of their dynasties. The present volume, from a team of international experts, examines royal methods and ideologies. It treats the courts of the Ptolemies, Seleucids, Attalids, Antigonids and of lesser dynasties. It also explores the influence, on Greek-speaking courts, of non-Greek culture, of Achaemenid and other Near Eastern royal institutions. It studies the careers of courtesans, concubines and 'friends' of royalty, and the intellectual, ceremonial, and artistic world of the Greek monarchies. The work demonstrates the complexity and motivations of Hellenistic royal civilisation, of courts which governed the transmission of Greek culture to the wider Mediterranean world - and to later ages.
£95.00
Classical Press of Wales Poetry Underpinning Power: Vergil's Aeneid: The Epic for Emperor Augustus
In recent decades, international research on Virgil has been marked, if not dominated, by the ideas of the 'Harvard school' and similar trends, according to which the poet was engaged in an elaborate work of subtle subversion, directed against the new ruler of the Roman world, Octavian-Augustus. Much of Virgil's oeuvre consists prima facie of eulogy of the ruler, and of emphatic prediction of his enduring success: this is explained by numerous modern critics as generic convention, or as studied ambiguity, or as irony.This paradoxical position, which runs against ancient - as well as much modern - interpretation of the poet, continues to create widespread unease. Stahl's new monograph is the most thorough study so far to question modern Virgilian criticism on philological grounds. He bases himself on the internal logic and rhetoric of the Aeneid, and considers also political, historical, archaeological and philosophical subjects addressed by the poem. He finds that the poet has so presented the morality of his central figure, Augustus' supposed ancestor Aeneas, and of those who (eventually) clash with him, Turnus and Dido, as to make it certain that Roman readers and hearers of the poem were meant to conclude in Aeneas' favour. Virgil's intention emerges from Stahl's thorough, ingenious and original argumentation as decisively pro-Augustan. Stahl's work, in short, will not only enliven debate on current critical hypotheses but for many will enduringly affect their credibility.
£80.00
Classical Press of Wales Appian's Roman History: Empire and Civil War
Appian of Alexandria lived in the early-to-mid second century AD, a time when the pax Romana flourished. His Roman History traced, through a series of ethnographic histories, the growth of Roman power throughout Italy and the Mediterranean World. But Appian also told the story of the civil wars which beset Rome from the time of Tiberius Gracchus to the death of Sextus Pompeius Magnus. The standing of his work in modern times is paradoxical. Consigned to the third rank by nineteenth-century historiographers, and poorly served by translators, Appian's Roman History profoundly shapes our knowledge of Republican Rome, its empire and its internal politics. We need to know him better. This book studies both what Appian had to say and how he said it; and engages in a dialogue about the value of Appian's text as a source of history, the relationship between that history and his own times, and the impact on his narrative of the author's own opinions - most notably that Rome enjoyed divinely-ordained good fortune. Some authors demonstrate that Appian's text (and even his mistakes) can yield significant new information; others re-open the question of Appian's use of source material in the light of recent studies showing him to be far more than a transmitter of other people's work.
£75.00
Classical Press of Wales King and Court in Ancient Macedonia: Rivalry, Treason and Conspiracy
The Hellenistic courts and monarchies have in recent years become one of the most intensively studied areas of ancient history. Among the most influential pioneers in this process has been the American historian Elizabeth Carney. The present book collects for the first time in a single volume her most influential articles. Previously published in a range of learned journals, the articles are here re-edited, each with a substantive Afterword by the author bringing the discussion up to date and adding new bibliography. The main themes of this volume include Macedonian monarchy in practice and as an image; the role of conspiracies and violence at court; royal women; aspects of court life and institutions.
£80.00
Classical Press of Wales The Eyesore of Aigina: Anti-Athenian Attitudes Across the Greek, Hellenistic and Roman Worlds
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.
£70.00
Classical Press of Wales Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World
First launched at the time of the Athens Olympics, "Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World" has become a classic study in its field. The 15 illustrated chapters of this collection not only explore many aspects of the ancient Olympics and the rich programme of competitive festivals in democratic Athens but also the broader religious, social and political contexts in which sport and festival flourished in ancient Greece. The book shows how the values of sport pervaded Greek society and helped to create fundamental practices of ancient Greek democracy.
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Competition in the Ancient World
Features the papers that form a case for viewing competition for superiority as a major force in ancient history, including the earliest human societies and the Assyrian and Aztec empires.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales Epic Facework
Reveals that at the beginnings of Greek literature Homer's audience is expected to appreciate psychology and self-control of a very high order. This book is suitable for literary analysts, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. It can help them learn about the general level of sophistication of the historic and prehistoric societies.
£60.00
Classical Press of Wales Persian Responses
A generation ago the Achaemenid Empire was a minor sideshow within long-established disciplines. For Greek historians the Persians were the defeated national enemy, a catalyst of change in the aftermath of the fall of Athens or the victim of Alexander.
£68.00
Classical Press of Wales Herakles and Hercules
Herakles and Hercules: two names for a figure of pervasive appeal in Antiquity. He was a hero of myth and a god with cult associations. He was ancestor of Macedonian kings, patron of Carthaginian generals and of Roman emperors, and a role model for Stoic philosophers.
£60.00
Classical Press of Wales Spartan Education
Sparta was admitted by Greeks generally, even by its Athenian enemies, to be the School of Hellas. This title collects, translates and evaluates the sources for Spartan education.
£75.00
Classical Press of Wales Law, Rhetoric and Comedy in Classical Athens
A substantial collection of original work from an authoritative international cast. Main themes are: the detail and development of Athenian law; the life and work of the Attic orators in their political contexts; the implications of recent papyrus discoveries for the texts of major authors; the intersection of Attic Old Comedy with Athenian law, politics and society.
£62.00
Classical Press of Wales Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt
This volume offers new research on an essential but often controversial aspect of life in Dynastic Egypt. Its originality lies in combining research which uses Egyptologys traditional strengths, philological and iconographic, with reflections on material culture and on the discipline of Egyptology itself.
£58.00
Classical Press of Wales Through a Glass Darkly: Magic, Dreams and Prophecy in Ancient Egypt
Magic, dreams, and prophecy played important roles in ancient Egypt, as recent scholarship has increasingly made clear. In this volume, eminent international Egyptologists come together to explore such divination across a wide period.
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Xenophon and Sparta
£85.54
Classical Press of Wales Creating a Hellenistic World
Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire had far-reaching impact, in space and time. But Macedonian power also brought with it Greeks and Greek culture. This book explores the creation of this Hellenistic world, its cultural, political and economic transformations, and how far these were a consequence of Alexander's conquests.
£90.18
Classical Press of Wales Sparta
Both in antiquity and in modern scholarship, classical Sparta has typically been viewed as an exceptional society, different in many respects from other Greek city-states. This view has come under challenge from revisionist historians, led by Stephen Hodkinson. This book focuses on this historical controversy.
£91.10
Classical Press of Wales Foreigners at Rome: Citizens and Strangers
'The Tiber has been joined by the Orontes'. So wrote the Roman satirist Juvenal, in a complaint about immigration to the Empire's capital. Rome was constantly sustained by immigrants. Some were voluntary: craftworkers, soldiers, teachers and intellectuals. Countless others came as slaves. What happened to them after their arrival? Did they try to keep contact with their homelands? Did they form distinctive communities within Rome? This book is a systematic study of Rome's foreign-born element. The author uses inscriptions and literature to explore the experiences of newcomers to the capital. The results are compared with the colourful Roman stereotypes of different immigrant groups.
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Hegemonic Finances: Funding Athenian Domination in the 5th Centuries BC
Research into the mechanisms and the morality of Athenian hegemony is now perhaps livelier than ever. Of particular importance are the methods by which Athens drew money from the Aegean world with which to fund a vast fleet, to facilitate her own demokratia and to create ambitious public buildings still visible today. This collection of new studies, inspired and guided by an internationally acknowledged authority on ancient finance, Thomas Figueira, by focusing on how Athens raised finance, sheds light on more familiar questions: How oppressive, or otherwise, was Athens to fellow-Greeks and how did her demands vary over time? Contributors here suggest that Athens may have exercised hegemonic ambitions for longer than usually thought, applying greater experience, and more sensitivity to individual communities.
£70.00
Classical Press of Wales The Seleukid Empire 281-222 Bc: War Within the Family
The Seleukids, the easternmost of the Greekspeaking dynasties which succeeded Alexander the Great, were long portrayed as weak, doomed to decline after the death of their first king, Seleukos. Yet they succeeded in ruling much of the Near and Middle East for over two centuries. In this book international scholars argue that in the decades after Seleukos the empire developed flexible structures that successfully bound it together in the face of a series of catastrophes. The strength of the Seleukid realm lay not simply in its vast swathes of territory, but rather in knowing how to tie the new, frequently non-Greek, nobility to the king through mutual recognition of sovereignty.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales The Hellenistic Peloponnese: Interstate Relations: A Narrative and Analytic History, 371-146 BC
Existing treatments of Peloponnesian history are fragmented by poleis and period. This book offers a comprehensive narrative of the political history of the entire Peloponnese from 371 to 146 BC, using both literary and epigraphic evidence. In the Hellenistic Peloponnese a long shadow was cast by the geo-political changes of the 4th century. Many continuities trace back to the forty years after Leuktra (371-330). Internal divisions and alliances are interwoven with the interventions of external powers: Thebans, Macedonian rulers, and finally the Romans. The author's findings reveal remarkable consistencies in the history of the Peloponnese. After Sparta's long-invincible army was defeated at the battle of Leuktra, there was much in Sparta's influence which was far from crushed. Not only did Sparta's confidence persist, as she agitated for centuries to renew her power; other states of the Peloponnese conducted their own foreign policies in reaction either to Sparta's decline or, especially, to her resurgence - and to the prospect of further resurgence still. The book reveals continuity as regards Sparta in the foreign policies of Elis, most of Arkadia, Messenia, and the Achaian Confederacy. These definite patterns formed Peloponnesian history far beyond the narrow relation of each community to Sparta: they also shaped the relation of most major Peloponnesian powers to each other.
£80.00
Classical Press of Wales The Ancient Lives of Virgil: Literary and Historical Studies
The Ancient Lives of the poet Virgil, written in prose (and sometimes in verse), have long enjoyed great, though controversial, influence. Modern critics have often been scornful of these Lives, for trying to construct biography of the poet from allegorical reading of his verse. Yet some elements of the Lives are trusted, and quietly adopted as canonical, most notably the dating of Virgil's death. Some vignettes in the Lives have been cherished for their image of an emotive poet, as when Virgil, by evoking in verse the premature death of Augustus' nephew Marcellus, caused the young man's bereaved mother to faint. Less romantic detail from the Lives, as of Virgil's privileged material circumstances at the heart of the Augustan regime, has been less regarded. The present volume, from a distinguished international team, aims to revalue the Ancient Lives of Virgil from a variety of angles and in a variety of scholarly genres. The allegory within the Lives is here studied for its own sake, and shown to be part of a developed Graeco-Roman school of interpretation. The literary character of the verse Life attributed to Phocas is respectfully analysed. Certain political references within the best-known prose Life, the Suetonian-Donatan', are shown to be apparently independent of allegory, and to be worth prospecting for new information on the poet's personal history. And ideas of Virgil received and developed with brio in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are here traced back to the Ancient Lives of the poet composed in Antiquity.
£70.00
Classical Press of Wales Sparta's German Children: The Ideal of Ancient Sparta in the Royal Prussian Cadet-Corps, 1818-1920, and in National-socialist Elite Schools (the Napolas), 1933-1945
The use by the Nazi regime of idealised images of ancient Sparta is increasingly recognised as an important element of the Third Reich. This work explores the historical roots and the personal effects of these ideals. The author uses new archival research and freshly-elicited eyewitness testimony, to study the Royal Prussian Cadet-Schools, which trained boys from the age of ten to become army officers, and the Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten (Napolas), which aimed to educate the future elite of the Third Reich. She shows that, for over a century, the Spartan paradigm was considered a crucial element in the formation and socialisation of Prusso-German military commanders, and that cadets regarded Spartan youths as their ultimate role-model. During the Third Reich, these ideas were transmuted in accordance with Nazi racial ideology, which presented the Spartans as the most Germanic and racially pure of all Greeks. Pupils at the Napolas were taught the importance of the Spartan example, particularly in terms of heroism and self-sacrifice. A feature of this book is the revealing information its author has collected by interviewing survivors who, as children in the dying years of the Third Reich, were exposed as pupils to Nazi educational methods and ideals.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales Praise and Blame in Roman Republican Rhetoric
Addresses strategies of vituperation and eulogy within the Republic, and examines the mechanisms and effects of praise and blame.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales War and Violence in Ancient Greece
Warfare was only one form of the violence that had a profound impact on Archaic and Classical Greek society, literature and government. This important series of thirteen papers, from a seminar held in London in 1998, places private and public conflict within its wider context.
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Thucydides
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Words and Ideas
Investigating the terms such as 'Form' or 'idea', 'essence' or 'being', 'participation', 'presence' and 'community', this book aims to determine the precise historical and philosophical contexts on which Plato drew in the formulation of his thoughts.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales Reason and Necessity: Essays on Plato's "Timaeus"
Plato's "Timaeus" contains a powerful and influential myth, of the construction of the universe by a divine craftsman. A god imposed reason on necessity, to bring order from a primeval 'receptacle' of disordered matter. There results the 'child' that is the cosmos - a copy of an externally-existing perfect model. Here eight new essays, from an international cast of scholars, explore aspects of this challenging work: the principles of the mythical narrative, how the world soul and human body are formed, implications for illness - mental and physical - and the importance of music and harmonious proportion. Later developments are also treated: Aristotles' theory of generation, the commentary of Proclus and elements of modern evolutionary theory.
£25.99
Classical Press of Wales Sparta: Beyond the Mirage
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.
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World
£63.32
Classical Press of Wales Luxury and Wealth in Sparta and the Peloponnese
A Spartan lifestyle proverbially describes austerity; ancient Greek luxury was associated with Ionia and the oriental world. The contributions to this book, first presented at a conference held by the University of Nottingham's Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies, reverse the stereotype and explore the role of luxury and wealth at Sparta and among its Peloponnesian neighbours from the Iron Age to the Hellenistic period. Using literary, archaeological, epigraphic and numismatic evidence, an international team of specialists investigates the definition and changing meanings of the term luxury and its nearest ancient Greek equivalents, providing new insights into Sparta's supposed abstention from luxury, and the way that this was portrayed by ancient writers. They analyse wealth production and private and public spending, emphasising features that were distinctive to Sparta and the Peloponnese compared with other parts of ancient Greece. Other chapters investigate issues still familiar in the contemporary world: economic crisis and debt, austerity measures, and relief provisions for the poor.
£80.00
Classical Press of Wales Greek and Roman Consolations: Eight Studies of a Tradition and Its Afterlife
Ancient consolatory writings offer us a window onto alien forms of loss and grief, as experienced in a world where death happened, in most cases, much earlier and with less reliable warning than in developed countries today. Here, eight original studies explore the topic of bereavement in consolatory writings from ancient Greece, Rome, early medieval and Arabic society. David Scourfield examines consolation as a genre; James Chong-Gossard treats consolation in Greek tragedy, and the rejection of comfort; Han Baltussen studies the purpose and impact of Cicero's curious 'Consolation to Himself ' on the loss of his daughter. Marcus Wilson proposes a new interpretation of Seneca's consolatory writings; George Boys-Stones studies the Consolatio ad Apollonium as 'therapy for the dead'; David Konstan reflects on Lucian's Of Mourning and the consolation tradition. For later Antiquity and reception, Josef Lossl treats continuity and transformation of ancient Consolatio in Augustine of Hippo, while Peter Adamson addresses Arabic ethics and the limits of philosophical consolation. The collection offers unexpected results: consolation itself is on occasion rejected, philosophy deliberately marginalised, while much emerges which is unique and personal to the ancient individuals involved.
£60.00
Classical Press of Wales Sparta in Modern Thought
Images of ancient Sparta have had a major impact on Western thought. From the Renaissance to the French Revolution she was invoked by radical thinkers as a model for the creation of a republican political and social order.
£68.00
Classical Press of Wales Roman Perspectives: Studies in Political and Cultural History, from the First to the Fifth Century
The fifteen papers in this volume discuss issues of Roman social, cultural and political history from the foundation of the Principate to the age of barbarian settlements of the west. Working imaginatively from within the diverse evidence, they show the institutional continuity of the Roman empire between its early and later periods, and reveal the roots of political behaviour in social practice. Five of the papers, including three of the most substantial, are previously unpublished; others have appeared in collections which are now difficult to find. The author has edited the whole to bring out thematic connections as well as for consistency of presentation.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales George Buchanan
Educated in Scotland and France, George Buchanan became one of the most influential writers of 16th century Europe. Writing in the lingua franca of his time - Classical Latin - he was to be hailed internationally as 'easily the prince of poets'.
£75.00
Classical Press of Wales What is a God
Contains eleven papers on aspects of Greek religion from Minoans to the classical world. This book reveals striking similarities between religious ideas in Greece and non-Greek Asia.
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Greek History and Epigraphy
A collection of essays on topics in Greek history and epigraphy. It includes papers on Athenian politics and political institutions, the language and significance of honorific decrees, the role of inscriptions in the Athenian democratic state and elsewhere, as well as analyses of the methods for interpreting them.
£62.00
Classical Press of Wales Virgil the Partisan
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.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales In Search of the Sorcerer's Apprentice: The Traditional Tales of Lucian's "Lover of Lies"
In "Search of the Sorcerer's Apprentice" is the first book in English to be devoted to Lucian's "Philopseudes or Lover of Lies" (ca. 170s AD). It comprises an extensive discussion, with full translation, on this engaging and satirical Greek text with its ten tales of magic and ghosts. One of these is the famous story of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", and this conveys the flavour of the rest. In other tales a plague of snakes is blasted with a miraculous scorching breath, a woman is drawn to her admirer by an animated cupid doll, and a haunted house is cleansed of its monstrous ghost. The Philopseudes stands at the intersection of three of the liveliest fields in the study of antiquity: magic, traditional narratives, and the Lucianic oeuvre itself. Ogden's cross-fertilising expertise in all three of these fields enables him to build sophisticated analyses for each of the tales and to place them sensitively in their historical, cultural and literary contexts. Among the themes of the work are Lucian's methods of adapting motifs from traditional narratives, and the text's overlooked Cynic voice.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales Texts and Culture in Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity has increasingly been viewed as a period of transformation and dynamic change. This volume focuses on the intellectual and literary culture of the time, investigating complex relationships between late-Antique authors and the texts which they had inherited through the classical (pagan) and Christian traditions.
£62.00
Classical Press of Wales Catullus
The poems of Catullus have notoriously been subjected to numerous accidental corruptions. This work represents a reappraisal of his text. It recommends some 600 changes to the Oxford Text of R A B Mynors. It suggests that Catullus' text was also subjected to significant deliberate change, much of it probably dating back to classical antiquity.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales Satyr Drama
The esteem in which satyr drama was held in antiquity arouses curiosity and controversy. This title explores questions central to the genre, including how did satyr drama relate to comedy and tragedy; how closely was it tied to its tragic trilogy; and, how did the Athenians react to pro-satyric drama, such as the Alcestis.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales Patterns in the Economy of Asia Minor
Asia Minor under Rome was one of the wealthiest and most developed parts of the Empire, but there have been few modern studies of its economics. The twelve papers in this book, by an international team of scholars, work from literary texts, inscriptions, coinage and archaeology. They study the direct impact of Roman rule; the organisation of large agricultural estates; changing patterns of olive production; threats to rural prosperity from pests and the animal world; inter-regional trade in the Black Sea; the significance of civic market buildings; the economic role of temples and sanctuaries; the contribution of private benefactors to civic finances; and, monetization in the third century AD, and the effect of transitory populations on local economic activity.
£65.00
Classical Press of Wales Dialectic in Action An Examination of Platos Crito
Plato's Crito examines a single moral decision, whether Socrates ought to escape from his death-cell. Stokes's book discusses Socrates' arguments against Crito's offer of escape. It construes Socrates' questions as genuine questions, which clarify and undermine Critos positions.
£60.00
Classical Press of Wales Women's Dress in the Ancient Greek World
The clothing and ornament of Greek women signalled much about the status and the morality assigned to them. Yet this revealing aspect of women's history has been little studied. In this collection of new studies by an international team, ancient visual evidence from vase-painting and sculpture is used extensively alongside Greek literature to reconstruct how women of the Greek world were perceived, and also, in important ways, how they lived.
£25.00
Classical Press of Wales Greek and Roman Colonisation
The term colonization encompasses much diversity, from the settlement of the western Mediterranean and the Black Sea by Greeks in the archaic period to the foundation of Roman colonies in mainland Italy during the Republic.
£60.00
The Classical Press of Wales (UK) Whats in a Name The Significance of Proper Names in Classical Latin Literature
Joan Booth is Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Leiden University in The Netherlands. She was formerly Reader in Classics at the University of Wales, Swansea, and is author of A Commentary on Ovid, Amores II.Robert Maltby is Professor of Latin Philology at the University of Leeds. He graduated from Cambridge and worked on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich and at the Department of Classics in Sheffield before moving to Leeds in 1989. His main publications are A Selection of Latin Love Elegy (1980), A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (1991) and Tibullus: Elegies, Text, Introduction and Commentary (2002). His research interests include Roman Comedy and Elegy and ancient etymological and linguistic theory.
£58.00
