In a famous passage of his Metamorphoses Ovid describes the via Lactea, leading from Earth to Heaven and to the Gods of Olympus, by comparing it to the city of Rome (1.173–6). But if Heaven is like Rome, Rome too is like Heaven: in his exile poetry Ovid represents the emperor as ‘Jupiter on earth’, and it is an obvious consequence that the places inhabited by him may appear as a sort of Olympus on earth. Augustus’ house is thus described as Jupiter’s royal palace (Tr. 3.1.33–8 uideo fulgentibus armis | conspicuos postes tectaque digna deo, | et ‘Iouis haec’ dixi ‘domus est?’ quod ut esse putarem, | augurium menti querna corona dabat. | cuius ut accepi dominum, ‘non fallimur’, inquam, | ‘et magni uerum est hanc Iouis esse domum’), and this reversal of the normal spatial hierarchy becomes a standard encomiastic/panegyric trait of the Imperial age (cf. Statius’ description of Domitian’s house at Silv. 4.2.18–21, and many of Martial’s references to Domitian’s courtly world). Rome, being the seat of imperial power, thus looks like a heavenly city: a paradoxical anticipation of (or maybe a hint of?) the Christian idea that will be elaborated by Augustine.

This chapter is devoted to On Regimen, the longest and by far most complex work by a cosmological doctor to have survived from the Classical period. Topics discussed include the “self-sufficiency” (autarkeia) of fire and water, the pendular movement of various cycles, the two-way “resemblance” (apomimesis) between the body and the cosmos, and the use of both cosmological principles and “prodiagnosis” as a solution to the problem of individualization. This chapter also considers On Regimen’s theories about the soul, which is concentrated in the sun and separates off into other, smaller souls to give movement, life, intelligence, and divinity to everything it inhabits.

This book revives a contested moment in the history of aesthetic theory when Romantic-period writers exploit the growing awareness of irresolutions in Kant’s third Kritik, especially in his critique of judgements of the sublime. Read with hindsight, these openings can be seen to have generated literary opportunities for writings that explicitly embraced the philosophical significance delegated to the aesthetic by Kant, but then took advantage of the licence he had conceded. Romantic writing claimed a wider significance of its own that philosophy now had to learn to rationalise. Consequent aesthetic reorientations, in which splendours and miseries become interchangeable, reflect political instabilities already exploited by feminist and nationalist writing. Falling becomes a kind of rising, and literature’s unregulated power of metamorphosis persuasively challenges hierarchies of all kinds, including its own.

Chapter 12 applies what we have learned from prehistory to explain why religions exist and how they emerged and persisted into the present day even while their precepts are clearly contrary to all that we have learned from science. Looking at the present human challenges of warfare and terrorism from an evolutionary standpoint helps readers to better understand and deal with the problems of our modern globalized world.

There is an extraordinary moment in the history of the translation of the Bible, that opens a vista not just on to the cultural politics of translation but also on to the way that theories of time-frame scripture’s narratives of God.

Turner’s attitude towards printed books, and the uses to which they can be put by clever authors, can be seen to shift over the course of his interrelated careers as a physician, divine, and naturalist. This chapter demonstrates how Turner’s three herbals reflect a bibliographic self-consciousness in English botany that was emerging simultaneously with the efforts of English physicians to assert their influence over all elements of medicine. Anonymous bestselling English works like the little Herball as well as The Grete Herball were widely available during Turner’s undergraduate studies at Cambridge, but despite their popularity with readers, Turner claimed that those works offered little of use to professional medical practitioners. It was to remedy what he called the “unlearned cacography” of these texts that Turner was prompted in 1538 to first offer up his own botanical studies in English for the good of the commonweal despite his fellow physicians’ concerns that such an endeavor would make specialized professional knowledge widely available to laypeople.

Chapter one introduces my exploration. Here I set forth my thesis, offer some methodological reflections and assess the state of the question. I establish the conceptual framework within which I seek to understand ancient near eastern conceptions of the human self and its relationship to the divine.

Chapter six considers Greek and Roman conceptions of human nature. Greeks and Romans had wide-ranging views on humanity’s relation with the divine. However, in philosophical and scientific circles, it was common to find talk of humanity’s intrinsic share in the divine nature even in its natural condition. Certain groups thought of the self as a space comprising different material bodies, some nondivine and some divine. Others imagined it as a space comprising material and immaterial parts, the former being mortal and the latter having a latent share in the divine state. There was thus general agreement that, regardless of the nature of the different parts or aspects of the self, the human enjoyed some share in the divine nature. Many seem to have imagined some rulers to have had an exalted ontology. Unfortunately, the evidence is simply not conclusive. In any case, Greeks and Romans quite widely thought that the regular human self participated in the divine state.

In 2002, India embarked on a plan to promote itself for investment, trade, and tourism with its “Incredible India” campaign, which brought together every possible government sector to market the nation. Now, after a huge influx of multinational products and shopping malls that feature them, global capitalism has transformed India’s commercial culture. “Brandism” has arrived. The bazaar, however, is a site of resistance and mediation to this process. It is an economic and moral system, where products and people are entangled in complex networks, creating, disciplining, and sacralizing various moods and modes of behavior. This is especially the case within the bazaars of the Pakka Mahal in Banaras - a center for religion, culture, and commerce for millennia. Based on nearly two decades of research in these bazaars, my chapter examines the logic and practice of what I call “Bazaarism,” with a focus on the role of reputation and trust in creating solidarities.

The Homeric representation of divinities and divine power, often mistakenly assumed to represent some kind of universal Greek belief, blends literary and religious interests in a way that has challenged many readers.