Who's who in the Classical World

Who's who in the Classical World
Author: Antony Spawforth
Publisher:
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2000
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

While books about the gods of antiquity abound, there are few works that give us entrance to the classical world as it existed in the personalities and deeds of its most important citizens. With the arrival of Who's Who in the Classical World, all this is changed. This volume holds biographical entries on nearly 500 individuals of central importance from the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome, including writers, thinkers, artists, scientists, statesmen, kings, queens, and other historical figures. Furthermore, these entries offer far more than simple biographical information: many are short essays covering major historical and cultural themes centered around individuals as varied as Herodotus, Socrates, Plato, Alexander the Great, and Augustus. Drawing on the latest edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, this book offers authoritative and accessible scholarship from over 190 world experts on their subjects, providing an invaluable guide to the names and achievements of the leaders of the classical world.

Who's Who in the Roman World

Who's Who in the Roman World
Author: John Hazel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2002-09-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134592515

Who's Who in the Roman World is a wide-ranging biographical survey of one of the greatest civilizations in history. Covering a period from the 5th century BC to AD 364, this is an authoritative and hugely enjoyable guide to an era which continues to fascinate today. The figures included come from all walks of Roman life and include some of history's most famous - not to mention infamous - figures as well as hitherto little-known, but no less fascinating, characters. These include : * the notorious emperors - Caligula; Nero; Elagabalus; Commodus * the great poets, philosophers and historians - Virgil; Tacitus; Seneca; Ovid * the brilliant politicians and soldiers - Hannibal; Scipio; Caesar; Mark Antony; Constantine * noteworthy citizens - Acte, mistress of Nero; Catiline, the revolutionary; Spartacus, champion of the slaves; Gaius Verres, the corrupt governor of Sicily. The inclusion of cross-referencing, a glossary of terms, select bibliographies, maps, genealogies and an author's preface complete what is at once a superb reference resource and an enormously entertaining read.

Who's Who in Non-Classical Mythology

Who's Who in Non-Classical Mythology
Author: Edgerton Skyes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1136414444

First published in 2001. Part of the Routledge Who's Who series, this is an accessible, authorative and enlightening definitive biographical guides to a range of subjects. Focusing on mythology, this book provides a uniquely comprehensive guide to world mythology beyond Greece and Rome with over 2,500 accessible and detailed entries. A complete historical and cultural context of each entry covering a wide geographical scope, from the Near East and Europe to Asia, the Americas, Australasia and Africa. Presented in an easy to use A-Z format this is the ideal reference resource for anyone interested in mythology.

Blacks in Antiquity

Blacks in Antiquity
Author: Frank M. Snowden
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 1970
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674076266

Investigates the participation of black Africans, usually referred to as "Ethiopians," by the Greek and Romans, in classical civilization, concluding that they were accepted by pagans and Christians without prejudice.

The Roman World

The Roman World
Author: John Boardman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 484
Release: 1988
Genre: History
ISBN:

This collection tells the story of the rise of Rome from its origins as a cluster of villages to the foundation of the Roman Empire by Augustus. Chapters deal with subjects such as philosophy, arts, the conquests of Rome, Roman Emperors, Roman literature, Roman historians, and much more.

The Geography of Thought

The Geography of Thought
Author: Richard Nisbett
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2011-01-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1857884191

When Richard Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment...and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought people actually think - and even see - the world differently, because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China, and that have survived into the modern world. As a result, East Asian thought is "holistic" - drawn to the perceptual field as a whole, and to relations among objects and events within that field. By comparison to Western modes of reasoning, East Asian thought relies far less on categories, or on formal logic; it is fundamentally dialectic, seeking a "middle way" between opposing thoughts. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behaviour.

Disability Studies and the Classical Body

Disability Studies and the Classical Body
Author: Ellen Adams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-05-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000381382

By triangulating the Greco-Roman world, classical reception, and disability studies, this book presents a range of approaches that reassess and reimagine traditional themes, from the narrative voice to sensory studies. It argues that disability and disabled people are the ‘forgotten other’ of not just Classics, but also the Humanities more widely. Beyond the moral merits of rectifying this neglect, this book also provides a series of approaches and case studies that demonstrate the intellectual value of engaging with disability studies as classicists and exploring the classical legacy in the medical humanities. The book is presented in four parts: ‘Communicating and controlling impairment, illness and pain’; ‘Using, creating and showcasing disability supports and services’; ‘Real bodies and retrieving senses: disability in the ritual record’; and ‘Classical reception as the gateway between Classics and disability studies’. Chapters by scholars from different academic backgrounds are carefully paired in these sections in order to draw out further contrasts and nuances and produce a sum that is more than the parts. The volume also explores how the ancient world and its reception have influenced medical and disability literature, and how engagements with disabled people might lead to reinterpretations of familiar case studies, such as the Parthenon. This book is primarily intended for classicists interested in disabled people in the Greco-Roman past and in how modern disability studies may offer insights into and reinterpretations of historic case studies. It will also be of interest to those working in medical humanities, sensory studies, and museum studies, and those exploring the wider tension between representation and reality in ancient contexts. As such, it will appeal to people in the wider Humanities who, notwithstanding any interest in how disabled people are represented in literature, art, and cinema, have had less engagement with disability studies and the lived experience of people with impairments. FREE CHAPTER AVAILABLE! Please go to https://bit.ly/3pzpO7n to access the Introduction, which we have made freely available.

Papyrus

Papyrus
Author: Irene Vallejo
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2022-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0593318897

A rich exploration of the importance of books and libraries in the ancient world that highlights how humanity’s obsession with the printed word has echoed throughout the ages • “Accessible and entertaining.” —The Wall Street Journal Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and Pharaohs were so determined to possess them that they dispatched emissaries to the edges of earth to bring them back. When Mark Antony wanted to impress Cleopatra, he knew that gold and priceless jewels would mean nothing to her. So, what did her give her? Books for her library—two hundred thousand, in fact. The long and eventful history of the written word shows that books have always been and will always be a precious—and precarious—vehicle for civilization. Papyrus is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Award-winning author Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world from Greece’s itinerant bards to Rome’s multimillionaire philosophers, from opportunistic forgers to cruel teachers, erudite librarians to defiant women, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today. Crucially, Vallejo also draws connections to our own time, from the library in war-torn Sarajevo to Oxford’s underground labyrinth, underscoring how words have persisted as our most valuable creations. Through nimble interpretations of the classics, playful and moving anecdotes about her own encounters with the written word, and fascinating stories from history, Vallejo weaves a marvelous tapestry of Western culture’s foundations and identifies the humanist values that helped make us who we are today. At its heart a spirited love letter to language itself, Papyrus takes readers on a journey across the centuries to discover how a simple reed grown along the banks of the Nile would give birth to a rich and cherished culture.

The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity

The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity
Author: Benjamin Isaac
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 140084956X

There was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored "ethnic and cultural," but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac's systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism--or proto-racism--which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society. Magisterial in scope and scholarship, and engagingly written, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity further suggests that an understanding of ancient attitudes toward other peoples sheds light not only on Greco-Roman imperialism and the ideology of enslavement (and the concomitant integration or non-integration) of foreigners in those societies, but also on the disintegration of the Roman Empire and on more recent imperialism as well. The first part considers general themes in the history of discrimination; the second provides a detailed analysis of proto-racism and prejudices toward particular groups of foreigners in the Greco-Roman world. The last chapter concerns Jews in the ancient world, thus placing anti-Semitism in a broader context.