Pity and Power in Ancient Athens

Pity and Power in Ancient Athens
Author: Rachel Hall Sternberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2005-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521845526

Ancient Athenians resemble modern Americans in their moral discomfort with empire. Athenians had power and used it ruthlessly, but the infliction of suffering did not mesh well with their civic-self-image. Embracing the concepts of democracy and freedom, they proudly pitted themselves against tyranny and oppression, but in practice they were capable of being tyrannical. Pity and Power in Ancient Athens argues that the exercise of power in democratic Athens, especially during its brief fifth-century empire, raised troubling questions about the alleviation and infliction of suffering, and pity emerged as a topic in Atheninan culture at this time.

Pity Transformed

Pity Transformed
Author: David Konstan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2015-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472502310

"Pity Transformed" is an examination of how pity was imagined and expressed in classical antiquity. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the pity of the Greeks and Romans differed from modern ideas. Among the topics investigated in this study are the appeal to pity in courts of law and the connection between pity and desert; the relation between pity and love or intimacy; self-pity; the role of pity in war and its relation to human rights and human dignity; divine pity from paganism to Christianity; and why pity was considered an emotion. This book will lead readers to ponder how the Greeks and Romans were both like and unlike us in this fundamental area of cultural sensibility.

Democracy and Goodness

Democracy and Goodness
Author: John R. Wallach
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2018-01-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108422578

Proposes a new democratic theory, rooted in activity not consent, and intrinsically related to historical understandings of power and ethics.

Power and Emotion in Ancient Judaism

Power and Emotion in Ancient Judaism
Author: Ari Mermelstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2021-06-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1108917062

In this book, Ari Mermelstein examines the mutually-reinforcing relationship between power and emotion in ancient Judaism. Ancient Jewish writers in both Palestine and the diaspora contended that Jewish identity entails not simply allegiance to God and performance of the commandments but also the acquisition of specific emotional norms. These rules regarding feeling were both shaped by and responses to networks of power - God, the foreign empire, and other groups of Jews - which threatened Jews' sense of agency. According to these writers, emotional communities that felt Jewish would succeed in neutralizing the power wielded over them by others and, depending on the circumstances, restore their power to acculturate, maintain their Jewish identity, and achieve redemption. An important contribution to the history of emotions, this book argues that power relations are the basis for historical changes in emotion discourse.

Democracy, Justice, and Equality in Ancient Greece

Democracy, Justice, and Equality in Ancient Greece
Author: Georgios Anagnostopoulos
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2018-11-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319963139

The original essays in this volume discuss ideas relating to democracy, political justice, equality and inequalities in the distribution of resources and public goods. These issues were as vigorously debated at the height of ancient Greek democracy as they are in many democratic societies today. Contributing authors address these issues and debates about them from both philosophical and historical perspectives. Readers will discover research on the role of Athenian democracy in moderating economic inequality and reducing poverty, on ancient debates about how to respond to inborn and social inequalities, and on Plato’s and Aristotle’s critiques of Greek participatory democracies. Early chapters examine Plato’s views on equality, justice, and the distribution of political and non-political goods, including his defense of the abolition of private property for the ruling classes and of the equality of women in his ideal constitution and polis. Other papers discuss views of Socrates or Aristotle that are particularly relevant to contemporary political and economic disputes about punishment, freedom, slavery, the status of women, and public education, to name a few. This thorough consideration of the ancient Greeks' work on democracy, justice, and equality will appeal to scholars and researchers of the history of philosophy, Greek history, classics, as well as those with an interest in political philosophy.

The Reign of the Phallus

The Reign of the Phallus
Author: Eva C. Keuls
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 530
Release: 1993-04-27
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780520079298

At once daring and authoritative, this book offers a profusely illustrated history of sexual politics in ancient Athens, where the phallus dominated almost every aspect of public life. Complementing the text are 345 reproductions of Athenian vase paintings depicting the phallus.

The Oxford Handbook of Demosthenes

The Oxford Handbook of Demosthenes
Author: Gunther Martin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198713851

As a speechwriter, orator, and politician, Demosthenes captured, embodied, and shaped his time. This Handbook explores the many facets of his life, work, and time, giving particular weight to his social and historical context and thereby illustrating the interplay and mutual influence between his rhetoric and the environment from which it emerged.

Visions and Faces of the Tragic

Visions and Faces of the Tragic
Author: Paul M. Blowers
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2020
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0198854102

This study presses beyond the pervasive early Christian aversion to pagan theatrical art in all its forms and investigates the growing critical engagement with the genre of tragedy by Christian authors, especially in the post-Constantinian era.

Drama, Oratory and Thucydides in Fifth-Century Athens

Drama, Oratory and Thucydides in Fifth-Century Athens
Author: Sophie Mills
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2020-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429632703

This study centres on the rhetoric of the Athenian empire, Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War and the notable discrepancies between his assessment of Athens and that found in tragedy, funeral orations and public art. Mills explores the contradiction between Athenian actions and their self-representation, arguing that Thucydides’ highly critical, cynical approach to the Athenian empire does not reflect how the average Athenian saw his city’s power. The popular education of the Athenians, as presented to them in funeral speeches, drama and public art told a very different story from that presented by Thucydides’ history, and it was far more palatable to ordinary Athenians since it offered them a highly flattering portrayal of their city and, by extension, each individual who made up that city. Drama, Oratory and Thucydides in Fifth-Century Athens: Teaching Imperial Lessons offers a fascinating insight into Athenian self-representation and will be of interest to anyone working on classical Athens, the Greek polis and classical historiography.

Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture

Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture
Author: Daniel King
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198810512

This volume investigates the history and nature of pain in Greek culture under the Roman Empire (50-250 CE). Traditional accounts of pain in this society have focused either on philosophical or medical theories of pain or on Christian notions of 'suffering'; fascination with the pained body has often been assumed to be a characteristic of Christian society, rather than Imperial culture in general. This book employs tools from contemporary cultural and literary theory to examine the treatment of pain in a range of central cultural discourses from the first three centuries of the Empire, including medicine, religious writing, novelistic literature, and rhetorical ekphrasis. It argues instead that pain was approached from an holistic perspective: rather than treating pain as a narrowly defined physiological perception, it was conceived as a type of embodied experience in which ideas about the body's physiology, the representation and articulation of its perceptions, as well as the emotional and cognitive impact of pain were all important facets of what it meant to be in pain. By bringing this conception to light, scholars are able to redefine our understanding of the social and emotional fabric of Imperial society and help to reposition its relationship with the emergence of Christian society in late antiquity.