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90 results in Classical Studies

Page 1 of 5

Glazed Ceramics of the Islamic World 700–1600 CE

Glazed Ceramics of the Islamic World 700–1600 CE
  • Moujan Matin, Michael Tite
  • Published online:
    17 April 2025
    Print publication:
    08 May 2025
    • Element
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  • Of all the material culture of the Islamic World prior to the sixteenth century, only ceramics survive in a way which forms a continuous representative visual history. As such, ceramics provide a unique collection of material from which to study the history of technology. The main technological developments associated with glazed Islamic ceramics were the introduction of tin-opacified glazes, stonepaste bodies, and an extended range of colorants. For each of these developments, consideration is given to the reasons why new technologies were introduced, from where the ideas for the new technologies originated, and why particular technological choices were made. In addition, brief consideration is given both to the very different glaze technologies employed in contemporary China, and to the subsequent spread of the glazed Islamic technology into Western Europe.

Rome in the Tenth Century
  • A History in Art
  • John Osborne
  • Published online:
    01 April 2025
    Print publication:
    24 April 2025
  • This is the third and final volume in a series examining the history of Rome in the early Middle Ages (700–1000 CE) through the primary lens of the city's material culture. The previous volumes examined the eighth and the ninth centuries respectively. John Osborne uses buildings (both religious and domestic), their decorations, other works of painting and sculpture, inscriptions, manuscripts, ceramics, metalwork, and coins as 'documents' to supplement what can be gleaned from more traditional written sources such as the Liber pontificalis. The overall approach is particularly appropriate for tenth-century Rome, which has traditionally been considered a 'dark age', given recent research on standing monuments and the large amount of new material brought to light in archaeological excavations undertaken over the last four decades. This magnificent and beautifully illustrated volume provides a triumphant conclusion to a series which will be indispensable for all those interested in early medieval Rome.

Homer: Odyssey Book IX
  • Edited with Introduction and Notes by Egbert J. Bakker
  • Published online:
    01 April 2025
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025
  • Book IX of the Odyssey is one of the most often read and discussed sections of Homeric poetry. It contains Odysseus' narrative of his encounter with Polyphemus the Cyclops, which not only typifies him as the trickster-hero that he is, but also resonates thematically with later parts of the narrative. This edition provides solid support in reading, understanding, and enjoying this essential episode. The Commentary is designed to be helpful to undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars, providing assistance in understanding Homeric language from elementary to advanced levels. The constant attention to narratological details contributes to the literary appreciation of the episode. The Introduction offers a particularly full guide to Homeric meter, language and dialect as well as discussing in detail the place which the Cyclops episode occupies both in the Odyssey as a whole and in Greek mythology and culture as an expression of the colonial imagination.
The Shang Economy

The Shang Economy
  • Roderick Campbell
  • Published online:
    27 March 2025
    Print publication:
    10 April 2025
  • This Element constitutes a systematic attempt to preliminarily reconstruct the Shang economy based on contemporary archaeological and textual evidence. At the same time, the rapid pace of Chinese archaeological discovery and the increasing deployment of archaeological science means that there is a wealth of new information making a new synthesis both challenging and necessary. This synthesis was written from the perspective that the study of ancient economy necessarily proceeds from the construction of models and the systematic exploration of principal economic components, including their articulation and change over time. Setting the Shang in comparative context with other ancient economies in this series, those principal components are the domestic and institutional economy, specialization, forms of exchange, and diachronic developments. It is hoped that with this organization, comparison with other ancient economies can be more easily made and the significance of the Shang case more clearly seen.

Amazons
  • The History Behind the Legend
  • David Braund
  • Published online:
    26 March 2025
    Print publication:
    24 April 2025
  • The idea of the Amazons is one of the most romantic and resonant in all antiquity. Greeks were fascinated by images and tales of these fierce female fighters. At Troy, Achilles' duel with Penthesilea was a clash of superman and superwoman. Achilles won the fight, but the queen's dying beauty had torn into his soul. This vibrant new book offers the first complete picture of the reality behind the legends. It shows there was much more to the Amazons than a race of implacable warrior women. David Braund casts the Amazons in a new light: as figures of potent agency, founders of cities, guileful and clever as well as physically impressive and sexually alluring to men. Black Sea mythologies become key to unlocking the Amazons' mystery. Investigating legend through history, literature, and archaeology, the author uncovers a truth as surprising and evocative as any fiction told through story or myth.

The artes and the Emergence of a Scientific Culture in the Early Roman Empire
  • James L. Zainaldin
  • Published online:
    22 March 2025
    Print publication:
    13 February 2025
  • This book offers the first full-scale, synthetic account of the Latin technical treatises called artes, arguing that their flourishing in the early Roman Empire represents the emergence and development of a uniquely Roman scientific culture. It introduces the Roman artes on architecture, agriculture, land-surveying, medicine, and the art of war to those without specialist knowledge of the disciplines and advances a new argument for their significance vis-à-vis a common intellectual culture. It unpacks the socio-political, literary, and especially philosophical and scientific dimensions of these writings. It characterizes the scientific culture which the artes constitute and traces significant themes in their construction of disciplinary expertise, examining the effects of the tension between theory and practice as well as their systematic, explanatory, and interdisciplinary presentation of specialized knowledge. In presenting a novel interpretation of the artes, this book aims to add a new chapter to the history of science in Greco-Roman antiquity.

The Performance Reception of Greek Tragedy in Ancient Theatres
  • Sebastiana Nervegna
  • Published online:
    20 March 2025
    Print publication:
    03 April 2025
  • Greek tragedy enjoyed a rich afterlife on ancient stages. This book reconstructs that history across the entire Mediterranean area, from the fourth century BC to the early third century AD. It is based on an extensive collection of primary sources ranging from inscriptions and festival catalogues to literary records, tragedy-related vases from fourth-century Sicily and South Italy, and the Greek models of Roman Republican tragedies, with each one placed in its historical context. Sebastiana Nervegna identifies the Greek tragedies that formed the ancient theatrical repertoire, assesses how actors contributed to their survival and considers how public audiences continued to enjoy the theatrical masterpieces of Classical Athens. This is the first work entirely dedicated to the circulation of Greek tragedies among the larger public throughout antiquity.
Kierkegaard, Socrates, and the Meaning of Life

Kierkegaard, Socrates, and the Meaning of Life
  • Rick Anthony Furtak
  • Published online:
    20 March 2025
    Print publication:
    17 April 2025
  • Kierkegaard's lifelong fascination with the figure of Socrates has many aspects, but prominent among them is his admiration for the way Socrates was devoted to his divinely ordained mission as a philosopher. To have such a destiny, revealed through what one loves and is passionate about as well as through a feeling of vocation, is a necessary condition of leading a meaningful life, according to Kierkegaard. Examining what Kierkegaard has to say about the meaning of life requires looking at his conception of 'subjective truth,' as well as how he understands the ancient ideal of 'amor fati,' a notion that Nietzsche would subsequently take up, but that Kierkegaard understands in a manner that is distinctly his own, and that he sought to put into practice in his own existence. Our life is a work of art, but we are not the artist.
Against Moab

Against Moab
  • Interrogating the Archaeology of Iron Age Jordan
  • Benjamin W. Porter
  • Published online:
    14 March 2025
    Print publication:
    10 April 2025
    • Element
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  • Known as a place, a people, and a kingdom at various points in the second and first millennia BCE, Moab has long sustained the attention of archaeologists, philologists, and historians, in part because of its adjacent location to ancient Israel. The past 150 years of research in what is today west-central Jordan has proffered a significant corpus of evidence from the region's archaeological sites. However, a critical analysis of this evidence reveals significant gaps in knowledge that challenge attempts to narrate Moab's political, economic, and social history. This Element examines the evidence as well as the debates surrounding Moab's development and decline. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

A History of Greek Philosophy
  • Volume 1, The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans
  • W. K. C. Guthrie
  • Published online:
    13 March 2025
    Print publication:
    02 January 1962
  • All volumes of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek philosophy have won their due acclaim. The most striking merits of Guthrie's work are his mastery of a tremendous range of ancient literature and modern scholarship, his fairness and balance of judgement and the lucidity and precision of his English prose. He has achieved clarity and comprehensiveness.

Religious Architecture and Roman Expansion
  • Temples, Terracottas, and the Shaping of Identity, 3rd-1st c. BCE
  • Sophie Crawford-Brown
  • Published online:
    06 March 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • Religious Architecture and Roman Expansion uses architectural terracottas as a lens for examining the changing landscape of central Italy during the period of Roman military expansion, and for asking how local communities reacted to this new political reality. It emphasizes the role of local networks and exchange in the creation of communal identity, as well as the power of visual expression in the formulation and promotion of local history. Through detailed analyses of temple terracottas, Sophie Crawford-Brown sheds new light on 'Romanization' and colonization processes between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE.  She investigates the interactions between colonies and indigenous communities, asking why conquerors might visually emulate the conquered, and what this can mean for power relations in colonial situations. Finally, Crawford-Brown explores the role of objects in creating cultural memory and the intensity of our need for collective history-even when that 'history' has been largely invented.

Christian Beginnings
  • A Study in Ancient Mediterranean Religion
  • Stanley Stowers
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    04 March 2025
    Print publication:
    31 January 2024
  • Instead of treating Christianity as continuing a utterly unique Judaism alien to Mediterranean religion, the book argues for a pervasive religious dynamic based on three modes; the religion of everyday social exchange, civic religion and the religion of freelance literate experts. These modes that cut across ethnically defined cultures such as Judean, Greek and Roman open a window onto a new way of reading the earliest Christian literature and of explaining its religiosity. The chapters lay out the theory and then illustrate it in various ways with essays on the letters of Paul, the Gospel of Matthew and issues surrounding the study of Christian beginnings. This approach provides a different way to understand Judaism and Christianity within Mediterranean religion and its intellectual cultures by drawing on powerful new tools for theorizing religion more broadly.

Athens, 403 BC
  • A Democracy in Crisis?
  • Vincent Azoulay, Paulin Ismard
  • Translated by Lorna Coing
  • Preface by Robin Osborne
  • Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025
  • At the end of the fifth century BC, the Peloponnesian War resulted in Athens' shattering defeat by Sparta. Taking advantage of the debacle, a commission of thirty Athenians abolished the democratic institutions that for a century had governed the political life of the city and precipitated a year-long civil war. By autumn 403 BC, democracy was restored. Inspired by the model of the ancient chorus, this strikingly innovative book interprets a crucial moment in classical history through the prism of ten remarkable individuals and the shifting groups which formed around them. The former include more familiar names like the multifaceted Sokrates, the oligarch Kritias and the rhetorician Lysias, but also lesser-known figures like the scribe Nikomachos, the former slave Gerys and the priestess Lysimakhe. What leads a community to tear itself apart, even disintegrate, then rebuild itself? This question, explored through profound reflection on the past, echoes our tormented present.

The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome
  • 2nd edition
  • Catharine Edwards
  • Foreword by Caroline Vout
  • Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • The question this book addresses is not how immoral the ancient Romans were, but why the literature they produced is so preoccupied with immorality. The modern image of immoral Rome derives from ancient accounts which are largely critical rather than celebratory. Far from being empty commonplaces, these accusations constituted a powerful discourse through which Romans negotiated conflicts and tensions in their social and political order. This study proceeds by a detailed examination of a wide range of translated ancient texts, exploring the dynamics of their rhetoric, as well as the ends to which they were deployed. Roman moralising discourse, Edwards suggests, may be seen as especially concerned with the articulation of anxieties about gender, social status and political power. This revised edition contains a substantial new Introduction which engages with critical and scholarly developments in the study of Roman culture since the original publication.

Aristophanes: Knights
  • Edited with Introduction and Notes by Zachary P. Biles, S. Douglas Olson
  • Published online:
    21 February 2025
    Print publication:
    13 March 2025
  • Aristophanes' Knights was a sensation in its time, famous for its assault on the Athenian politician and demagogue Cleon in the first comic drama devoted to a sustained, open satire of an individual political figure. It is also the first play Aristophanes produced in his own name, and the one that solidified his reputation as a leading comic dramatist. This is the first full-scale commentary on Knights in over a century. The Greek text is based on a fresh analysis of the manuscripts, papyri and other ancient sources. The extensive commentary situates the play in its linguistic, literary and intellectual context and allows full appreciation of its original performance context. Particular attention is paid to the poet's language and to the social and literary traditions of his time, and abundant citations and quotations of parallel passages ranging far beyond the comic poets are offered, with all Greek translated.
Hegel and Heidegger on Time

Hegel and Heidegger on Time
  • Ioannis Trisokkas
  • Published online:
    20 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • This Element discusses Heidegger's early (1924–1931) reading and critique of Hegel, which revolve around the topic of time. The standard view is that Heidegger distances himself from Hegel by arguing that whereas he takes time to be 'originarily' Dasein's 'temporality,' Hegel has a 'vulgar' conception of time as 'now-time' (the succession of formal nows). The Element defends the thesis that while this difference concerning the nature of time is certainly a part of Heidegger's 'confrontation' with Hegel, it is not its kernel. What Heidegger aspired to convey with his Hegel-critique is that they have a divergent conception of man's understanding of being (ontology). Whereas Heidegger takes ontology to be grounded in temporality, Hegel thinks it is grounded in 'the concept,' which has a dimension ('logos') manifesting eternity or timelessness. It is argued, contra Kojève, that Heidegger's reading (but not necessarily his critique) of Hegel is, in an important respect, correct.

‘Anonymus Iamblichi’
  • Edited and translated by Anders Dahl Sørensen
  • Published online:
    14 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • This is a new edition of the fragments of 'Anonymus Iamblichi', the mysterious Greek author excerpted by Iamblichus in chapter 20 of Protrepticus. The fragments are an important but overlooked source for early Greek ethical and political thought. Among other things, they criticize traditional forms of social benefaction, and they offer a strikingly modern approach to the analysis of society and economy revolving around the concept of pistis ('trust'). The text and translation are supplemented by a lengthy introduction, which analyses the language and style of the fragments and explores them in the literary and philosophical context of early Socratic literature. The detailed commentary discusses issues pertaining to text and interpretation.

Roman Identity and Lived Religion
  • Baptismal Art in Late Antiquity
  • Stefanie Lenk
  • Published online:
    08 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 February 2025
  • Christianity is often considered prevalent when it comes to defining the key values of late antique society, whereas 'feeling connected to the Roman past' is commonly regarded as an add-on for cultivated elites. This book demonstrates the significant impact of popular Roman culture on the religious identity of common Christians from the fifth to the seventh century in the Mediterranean world. Baptism is central to the formation of Christian identity. The decoration of baptisteries reveals that traditional Roman culture persisted as an integral component of Christian identity in various communities. In their baptisteries, Christians visually and spatially evoked their links to Roman and, at times, even pagan traditions. A close examination of visual and material sources in North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy shows that baptisteries served roles beyond mere conduits to Christian orthodoxy.

Why the Ancient Greeks Matter
  • The Problematic Miracle that was Greece
  • Reviel Netz
  • Published online:
    06 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • The ancient Greeks were exceptional and they were consequential. This innovative, engrossingly written book addresses head-on the problematic question of the Greek Miracle. It will appeal to anyone interested in the ancient world and its modern meaning. Reviel Netz boldly argues that the traditional understanding of the Greek legacy as a store of timeless values is false to the Greek literary canon itself. The latter is in fact made up of contradictory texts, sharing no common core of beliefs. This is precisely, for the author, the canon's significance: by presenting a system of works-in-polemic, it created a template for a culture of open debate, leading all the way down to modern civil society. The most lasting result of this practice of open discourse was in science, where Greek disputations paved the way for an autonomous scientific culture and opened the door both to the scientific revolution and the modern world.

Interaction in Poetic Imagery
  • With Special Reference to Early Greek Poetry
  • 2nd edition
  • M. S. Silk
  • Foreword by Tim Whitmarsh
  • Published online:
    31 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • This path-breaking book has made an unusual and original contribution to literary theory by means of a study of the literature of ancient Greece. It investigates an aspect of poetic imagery in the practical context of Greek lyric and drama up to and including Aeschylus and Pindar. Several hundred passages are systematically examined, with many passages from English verse introduced to provide illustration. Using these, Michael Silk formulates a new critical concept, 'interaction', which characterises certain features of metaphor and other imagery and explores in detail their nature and significance. He then proceeds to discuss related issues in the fields of stylistics and literary theory, give fresh insights into several features of ancient literature, and – above all – make important contributions to the theory and practice of 'literary lexicography' in a dead language. This reissue contains a substantial new Introduction engaging with critical and scholarly developments since first publication.

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