Inscriptions and the Epigraphic Habit

Inscriptions and the Epigraphic Habit
Author: Rebecca Ruth Benefiel
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2023-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004683127

This volume illustrates how the epigraphic habit is ubiquitous but variously expressed. Inscriptions become part of the fabric of Greek and Roman culture.

The Attalids of Pergamon and Anatolia

The Attalids of Pergamon and Anatolia
Author: Noah Kaye
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2023-02-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009279556

Historians have long wondered at the improbable rise of the Attalids of Pergamon after 188 BCE. The Roman-brokered Settlement of Apameia offered a new map – a brittle framework for sovereignty in Anatolia and the eastern Aegean. What allowed the Attalids to make this map a reality? This uniquely comprehensive study of the political economy of the kingdom rethinks the impact of Attalid imperialism on the Greek polis and the multicultural character of the dynasty's notorious propaganda. By synthesizing new findings in epigraphy, archaeology, and numismatics, it shows the kingdom for the first time from the inside. The Pergamene way of ruling was a distinctively non-coercive and efficient means of taxing and winning loyalty. Royal tax collectors collaborated with city and village officials on budgets and minting, while the kings utterly transformed the civic space of the gymnasium. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Lives of Ancient Villages

The Lives of Ancient Villages
Author: Peter Thonemann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2022-10-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009123211

A ground-breaking historical ethnography of kinship, religion, and village society in a remote rural backwater of the Roman world.

Ancient Philosophy

Ancient Philosophy
Author: Lorenzo Perilli
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 906
Release: 2017-12-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351716034

‘We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece’, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote. It is in Greek that the questions which shaped the destiny of Western culture were asked, and so were the first attempts at an answer, and the search for a method of investigation. This book tries to rediscover the propulsive force that for over two millennia spread, and still lives in our system of thought. By systematically quoting the very words of the leading actors and by tracing their sources, it leads the reader along a path where they will be able to observe the establishment of philosophical ideas and language, in an updated and balanced picture of archaic lore, of the thought of the classical and hellenistic ages, and of the philosophy of late antiquity. The book looks closely at the progress of scientific thought and at its increasing autonomy, while following the evolution of the fruitful yet problematic relationship between the Greek world and the Near East.

Epigraphic Evidence

Epigraphic Evidence
Author: John Bodel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2012-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134819242

Epigraphic Evidence is an accessible guide to the responsible use of Greek and Latin inscriptions as sources for ancient history. It introduces the types of historical information supplied by inscriptional texts and the methods with which they can be used. It outlines the limitations as well as the advantages of the different types of evidence covered. Epigraphic Evidence includes a general introduction, a guide to the arrangement of the standard corpora inscriptions and individual chapters on local languages and native cultures, epitaphs and the ancient economy amongst others.

Sinop Landscapes

Sinop Landscapes
Author: Owen P. Doonan
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 193453627X

The Black Sea coast is different from the rest of Turkey. For more than 5,000 years Sinop, the central point on the Turkish coast, has seemed more remote from the rest of the Anatolian land mass than from Greece, Italy, Africa, the Crimea, Istanbul, and Rome. How was Sinop connected to them? The Black Sea Trade Project explores the perception of connectedness: how connected did people feel to those in other upland villages, coastal villages, ports, the big port of Sinop, and to distant shores? How did economic, infrastructural, and political institutions bind local populations to larger systems, and how were various institutional processes situated in landscapes? In this first volume from the Sinop Regional Archaeological Project, Owen P. Doonan rigorously explores connection through Sinop and its hinterland, from precolonial Greek settlements through ages of empires, Roman, Russian, and Ottoman conquests to the present day.

Bodies of Evidence

Bodies of Evidence
Author: Jane Draycott
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351573373

Dedicating objects to the divine was a central component of both Greek and Roman religion. Some of the most conspicuous offerings were shaped like parts of the internal or external human body: so-calledanatomical votives. These archaeological artefacts capture the modern imagination, recalling vividly the physical and fragile bodies of the past whilst posing interpretative challenges in the present. This volume scrutinises this distinctive dedicatory phenomenon, bringing together for the first time a range of methodologically diverse approaches which challenge traditional assumptions and simple categorisations. The chapters presented here ask new questions about what constitutes an anatomical votive, how they were used and manipulated in cultural, cultic and curative contexts and the complex role of anatomical votives in negotiations between humans and gods, the body and its disparate parts, divine and medical healing, ancient assemblages and modern collections and collectors. In seeking to re-contextualise and re-conceptualise anatomical votives this volume uniquely juxtaposes the medical with the religious, the social with the conceptual, the idea of the body in fragments with the body whole and the museum with the sanctuary, crossing the boundaries between studies of ancient religion, medicine, the body and the reception of antiquity.

Human Transgression – Divine Retribution: A Study of Religious Transgressions and Punishments in Greek Cultic Regulation and Lydian-Phrygian Propitiatory Inscriptions (‘Confession Inscriptions’)

Human Transgression – Divine Retribution: A Study of Religious Transgressions and Punishments in Greek Cultic Regulation and Lydian-Phrygian Propitiatory Inscriptions (‘Confession Inscriptions’)
Author: Aslak Rostad
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2020-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1789695260

This book analyses pagan concepts of religious transgressions as expressed in Greek cultic regulations from the 5th century BC-3rd century AD. Also considered are so-called propitiatory inscriptions from the 1st-3rd century AD Lydia and Phrygia, in light of ‘cultic morality’, intended to make places, occasions, and worshippers suitable for ritual.

Coping with Versnel: A Roundtable on Religion and Magic

Coping with Versnel: A Roundtable on Religion and Magic
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2023-05-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004538453

Henk Versnel’s work on ancient religion has been seminal. For his 80th birthday, a group of scholars assembled to celebrate and analyze his oeuvre. What have been his most important insights? What will he bequeath to the 21st century? Specialists hold up to the light the main strands of Versnel’s scholarship, and he reacts to their praise and critique. An introduction that seeks to contextualize this oeuvre, and a bibliography of Versnel’s publications, round out the picture of a scholar who has put his stamp on the study of ancient religions and magical practices, and who has promoted the field in many ways, especially as the driving force behind Brill’s flagship series Religion in the Graeco-Roman World, of which this fittingly is the 200th volume.