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The Iliad is a poem whose events revolve around the “anger” of Achilles, and his personal fierceness and pursuit of glory remain, despite different and more complex nuances, the prevailing features of his characterization. This book proposes to investigate how different literary authors and visual artists at different periods responded to Achilles' “erotic life”, an aspect about which the Iliadwas almost completely silent. Achilles' loves expose a crack in the usually self-assured attitude of the hero, demonstrating the limits of epic heroism and the epic vision of the world. As such, these moments of erotic “weakness” became perfect manifestos for reuse in other genres, such as tragedy and the various forms of love poetry, in which themes of love and passion were more customary than in heroic epic.

This book is concerned with the relationship between a modern philosophical idea and an ancient historical moment. It explores how the notion of pluralism, made famous by Isaiah Berlin, may be seen to feature in the Classical Greek world and, more specifically, in the thought of three of its most prominent figures: Protagoras, Herodotus, and Sophocles. The book falls into three parts, each of which considers one of these authors in detail and investigates how the core aspects of pluralism — diversity, conflict, and incommensurability — manifest themselves in a particular literary arena. Part One illustrates, through an analysis of two of his fragments and the portrait of him from Plato's Protagoras, that the sophist Protagoras held that perspectives on truth and value could be plural, while retaining a degree of objectivity that distinguishes his position from relativism. Part Two turns attention towards the ways in which historical writing can be understood in pluralist terms. It portrays Thucydides as an exemplar of a monistic historical style in deliberate contrast to Herodotus. It then examines how ideas of diversity and conflict figure in Herodotus' Histories in a variety of methodological and moral contexts. Part Three focuses on conflict in Sophocles. It argues that pluralist messages emerge from four of his tragedies, in which a certain kind of hero and a certain kind of ethical disagreement are present. These features of Ajax, Antigone, Electra, and Philoctetes are related to the Homeric moral patterns from which their meaning in large part derives. The overall aim of the book is to identify a pluralist temper of thought in the age of Sophocles and, in doing so, to offer an enriched understanding of this crucial intellectual period.

This monograph is a cultural history of the performance, reception and influence of the ancient Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. First produced in the late 5^th century BCE in Athens, this play was one of the most influential of all the canonical classical dramas in antiquity until the fourth century CE and in the period between the Renaissance and the early 20^th century. It dramatises the escape of the Greek siblings Iphigenia and Orestes, with Orestes' friend Pylades, from the barbarian community of the Taurians on the north coast of the Black Sea, bringing with them an ancient statue of Artemis. The book explores the extent and diversity of the play's cultural impact diachronically. Its first half documents and analyses the reasons for the popularity of the play in antiquity, appearing in Greek and Roman poetry, fiction, philosophy, vase-painting, murals, sarcophagus art, and on coins. The second half discusses the influence of the play since the Renaissance, with particular attention to Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, Frazer's The Golden Bough, Gilbert Murray's Edwardian translation and more recent feminist and postcolonial adaptations.

This book addresses the history of interaction in the Aegean world during the third century BC. The main focus is the island of Delos and its important regional sanctuary. Through a thorough investigation of the Delian epigraphic and material evidence, it explores how and to which degree the islands of the southern Aegean formed active networks of political, religious, and cultural interaction. The book aims to show that this kind of regional interaction in the southern Aegean resulted in the creation of a regional identity, which was expressed, among other things, in the existence of a federal union of the islands, the so-called Islanders’ League. It is structured along the lines of four case studies which explore different types of networks around Delos: the federal organization of islands (Islanders’ League), the participation of Delian and other agents in the processes of monumentalization of the Delian landscape, the network of honours, and the social dynamics of dedication through the record of dedicants in the Delian inventories.

Situated in the centre of the Saronic Gulf, the island of Aegina has long been recognized as a powerful force in the cultural, political, economic, and strategic history of fifth-century Greece. The island is well known as the original home of the magnificent Doric architecture and sculpture of the Temple of Aphaia and of many of the patrons of the epinician poets Pindar and Bacchylides; with a thriving maritime economy and an effective navy, Aegina was powerful enough to challenge the security and ambitions of its neighbour Athens, by whom it was reduced to a kleruchy at the start of the Peloponnesian War. Many of the fascinating aspects of the island within the history and culture of fifth-century Greece have, however, been studied separately, rendering a rounded view of the significance of the island, and the significance of the island's choral lyric poetry, difficult. This volume aims to redress the balance by suggesting ways in which the different aspects of the island's make-up can fruitfully be explored together. Eleven chapters by established and younger scholars examine different aspects of the island's nature, and factors which link them: mythological genealogies, economics, cult song, religion, athletics, epinician poetry, inter-state networking, aristocratic politics and culture, art history, and the views of the island offered by classical historiography. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume aims to provide new insights into the diversity and significance of classical Greek history and culture, as well as being suggestive for future research on the cultural and political diversity of classical Greece.

The appearance of Martin Bernal's Black Athena: The Afro-Asian Roots of Classical Civilization in 1987 sparked intense debate and controversy in Africa, Europe, and North America. His detailed genealogy of the ‘fabrication of Greece’ and his claims for the influence of ancient African and Near Eastern cultures on the making of classical Greece, questioned many intellectuals' assumptions about the nature of ancient history. The transportation of enslaved African persons into Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean, brought African and diasporic African people into contact in significant numbers with the Greek and Latin classics for the first time in modern history. In this book chapters explore the impact of the modern African diaspora from the sixteenth century onwards on Western notions of history and culture, examining the role Bernal's claim has played in European and American understandings of history, and in classical, European, American, and Caribbean literary production. This book examines the history of intellectuals and literary writers who contested the white, dominant Euro-American constructions of the classical past and its influence on the present.

Afro‐Greeks explores dialogues between anglophone Caribbean literature and the complex legacies of ancient Greece and Rome, from the 1920s to the beginning of the twenty‐first century. Classics still bears the negative associations of the colonial educational curriculum that was thrust upon the British West Indies with the Victorian triad of the three Cs (Cricket, Classics, and Christianity). In a study that embraces Kamau Brathwaite, Austin Clarke, John Figueroa, C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, and Eric Williams, the author traces a distinctive regional tradition of engaging with Classics in the English‐speaking Caribbean. She argues that, following on from C. L. R. James's revisionist approach to the history of ancient Greece, there has been a practice of reading the Classics for oneself in anglophone Caribbean literature, a practice that has contributed to the larger project of the articulation of the Caribbean self. The writers examined offered a strenuous critique of an exclusive, Western conception of Graeco‐Roman antiquity, often conducting this critique through literary subterfuge, playing on the colonial prejudice that Classics did not belong to them. Afro‐Greeks examines both the terms of this critique, and the way in which these writers have made Classics theirs.

Thanks to Olympias, a full-scale working model of an Athenian trieres (trireme or “three”) built by the Hellenic Navy during the 1980s, we better understand the physical properties of the trireme navies that defeated Xerxes at Salamis and helped build the Athenian Empire of the High Classical Age. The Age of Titans picks up the story of naval warfare and naval power after the Peloponnesian War, following it through the 4th and 3rd centuries BC when Alexander’s successors built huge oared galleys in what has been described as an ancient naval arms race. This book represents the fruits of more than thirty years of research into warships “of larger form” (as Livy calls them) that weighed hundreds of tons and were crewed by 600 to 1000 men and more. The book argues that concrete strategic objectives, more than simple displays of power, explain the naval arms race that developed among Alexander’s successors and drove the development of a new model of naval power we might call “Macedonian.” The model’s immense price tag was unsustainable, however, and during the third century the big ship phenomenon faded in importance, only to be revived unsuccessfully by Antony and Cleopatra in the 1st century BC.

The Alamanni were a Germanic people that figure prominently in the history of the later Empire. Despite their high profile, there has been surprisingly little written on them in English. This study aims to fill the gap. Drawing on the latest literary, historical, and archaeological research, it seeks to establish the origins of the Alamanni, the pattern and character of their settlement, the main features of their society, and the nature and significance of their relationship with Rome. It centres on the mid-4th century, recorded in detail by a variety of sources including Ammianus Marcellinus and the emperor Julian. It argues that, like the other western Germani encountered by Rome from the 1st century BC, the Alamanni were economically, socially, and politically far too weak to endanger the Empire. However, Roman rulers conjured up a ‘Germanic threat’, and exploited it for their own political ends. Rather than constantly imperilling the Empire's existence, the Alamanni became too closely linked to its fortunes. It was for this reason, in particular Roman restriction of their ability to unite under strong leaders, that unlike their long-standing neighbours the Burgundians and Franks, the Alamanni failed to establish a post-Roman successor kingdom in the 5th century.

No figure has had a more global impact than Alexander the Great, whose legends have encircled the globe and been translated into a dizzying multitude of languages, from Indo-European and Semitic to Turkic and Austronesian. This book examines parallel traditions of the Alexander Romance in Britain and Southeast Asia, demonstrating how rival Alexanders—one Christian, the other Islamic—became central figures in their respective literatures. In the early modern age of exploration, both Britain and Southeast Asia turned to literary imitations of Alexander to imagine their own empires and international relations, defining themselves as peripheries against the Ottoman Empire’s imperial center: this shared classical inheritance became part of an intensifying cross-cultural engagement in the encounter between the two, allowing a revealing examination of their cultural convergences and imperial rivalries and a remapping of the global literary networks of the early modern world. Rather than absolute alterity or strangeness, the narrative of these parallel traditions is one of contact—familiarity and proximity, unexpected affinity and intimate strangers.

This book collects together ten contributions by leading scholars in the field of Alexander studies that represent the most advanced scholarship in this area. They span the gamut between historical reconstruction and historiographical research and, viewed as a whole, represent a wide spectrum of methodology. This first English collection of essays on Alexander the Great of Macedon includes a comparison of the Spanish conquest of Mexico with the Macedonians in the east that examines the attitudes towards the subject peoples and the justification of conquest, an analysis of the attested conspiracies at the Macedonian and Persian courts, and studies of panhellenic ideology and the concept of kingship. There is a radical new interpretation of the hunting fresco from Tomb II at Vergina, and a new date for the pamphlet on Alexander's last days that ends the Alexander Romance, and a re-interpretation of the bizarre portents of his death. Three chapters on historiography address the problem of interpreting Alexander's attested behaviour, the indirect source tradition used by Polybius, and the resonances of contemporary politics in the extant histories.

The obscurity of Lycophron’s Alexandra was already notorious in antiquity and has long hampered a holistic approach to the poem. Through a series of distinct but closely integrated literary studies of major aspects of the work, including its style, its engagement with the traditions of epic and tragedy, and its treatment of heroism and of the gods, the book explores the way the Alexandra reconfigures Greek mythology, particularly as presented in Homeric epic and Athenian tragedy, in order to cast the Romans and their restoration of Trojan glory as the ultimate telos of history. In this sense, the poem emerges as an important intermediary between Homeric epic and Latin poetry, particularly Vergil’s Aeneid. By rewriting specific features of the epic and tragic traditions, the Alexandra denies to Greek heroes the glory that was the traditional compensation for their suffering, while at the same time attributing to Cassandra’s Trojan family honors framed in the traditional language of Greek heroism. In this sense, the figure of Cassandra, a prophetess traditionally gifted with the power of foresight but denied credibility, self-reflexively serves as a vehicle for exploring the potentials and limitations of poetry.

Proclus (AD 412–85) was one of the last official ‘successors’ of Plato at the head of the Academy in Athens at the end of antiquity, before the school was finally closed down in 529. As a prolific author of systematic works on a wide range of topics and one of the most influential commentators on Plato of all times, the legacy of Proclus in the cultural history of the west can hardly be overestimated. This book introduces the reader to Proclus’ life and works, his place in the Platonic tradition of antiquity, and the influence his work exerted in later ages. Various chapters are devoted to Proclus’ metaphysical system, including his doctrines about the first principle of all reality, the One, and about the Forms and the soul. The broad range of Proclus’ thought is further illustrated by highlighting his contribution to philosophy of nature, scientific theory, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of language. Finally, also his most original doctrines on evil and providence, his Neoplatonic virtue ethics, his complex views on theology and religious practice, and his metaphysical aesthetics receive separate treatments.

The book examines the various sources, distinctive forms, privileged recipients, and likely extent of almsgiving in the churches of the later empire. Almsgiving was crucial in the construction of the bishop's authority, but was also a cooperative task involving clerics and laity in which honour was shared and which exposed the bishop to criticism. Almsgiving by monks belongs in the context of self-dispossession and attracted further alms for distribution to the destitute, but proved controversial not least because of the potential for competition with bishops. Lay people were encouraged to give, at set times and in particular places, both through the Church's agency and directly to the poor. These practices gained meaning from the promotion of almsgiving in many forms, of which preaching was the most important. It involved redescription of the poor and the incorporation of almsgiving within the virtues of generosity and justice. So cast, Christian almsgiving differed from pagan almsgiving as an honourable benefaction typical of leadership. This distinctive pattern of thought and conduct existed alongside an older classical pattern of benefaction, and the interaction between them generated controversy over the conduct of bishops and consecrated virgins. The co-inherence of co-operation and competition in Christian almsgiving, together with the continued existence of traditional euergetism, meant, however, that Christian alms did not, as is sometimes thought, turn bishops into the megapatrons of their cities.

The princeps Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE), recognized as the first of the Roman emperors, looms large in the teaching and writing of Roman history. Major political, literary, and artistic developments alike are attributed to him. This book deliberately and provocatively shifts the focus off Augustus while still looking at events of his time. Contributors uncover the perspectives and contributions of a range of individuals other than the princeps. Not all thought they were living in the “Augustan Age.” Not all took their cues from Augustus. In their self-display or ideas for reform, some anticipated Augustus. Others found ways to oppose him that also helped to shape the future of their community. The volume challenges the very idea of an “Augustan Age” by breaking down traditional turning points and showing the continuous experimentation and development of these years to be in continuity with earlier Roman culture. In showcasing absences of Augustus and giving other figures their due, the chapters of this volume make a seemingly familiar period startlingly new.

American Arcadia: California and the Classical Tradition examines the mythologizing of California as a Mediterranean haven recalling ancient Greece or Rome. It explores how Californians shaped their world using the rhetoric of classical antiquity, from the first Anglo settlers in the nineteenth century to the present. It looks at how Americans sought to establish an American Arcadia to contrast with the harsh winters, despoiled landscape, and dark industrial cities they left in the East and Midwest. Indeed, the classical metaphor proved so alluring that some individuals shaped their very physical and spiritual selves according to classical types. American Arcadia examines the evidence of material culture—painting, sculpture, photography, and especially architecture and landscape design—to explore these themes. More important, the book emphasizes the stories and people behind the works to understand how they came into being, what they meant to their makers, and how they affected contemporary and later observers. Although its primary focus is on Los Angeles, early promoters defined the Southland loosely, so it also covers a broad geographical scope. Furthermore, there are no other sustained examinations of the deployment and reception of classical metaphors in shaping California’s identity. The book provides a new appreciation for a way of seeing our history and ourselves, and for a mode that was once familiar—for a time even central—in America and that not only helps explain artworks from our past but also how our contemporary world developed.

This book presents a re-examination of Ammianus Marcellinus’ agenda and methods in narrating the reign of the emperor Julian (355–63). Ammianus’ Res Gestae provides the fullest extant narrative of Julian, and holds a prominent position in modern studies of the last ‘pagan’ emperor. This book suggests that the Res Gestae presents a Latin-speaking, western audience with an idiosyncratic and ‘Romanized’ depiction of the philhellene emperor. Consciously exploiting his position as a Greek writing in Latin, and as a contemporary of Julian, Ammianus wished the Res Gestae to be considered a culminating and definitive account of Julian. The volume examines several key episodes from Books 14–25—Gallus and Silvanus, Julian’s appointment as Caesar, the battle of Strasbourg, his acclamation as Augustus, and the Persian campaign of 363. Building on recent advances in literary approaches to historical texts, it evaluates Ammianus’ presentation of Julian in each episode by considering the Res Gestae within three interrelated contexts: as a work of Latin historiography, which sets itself within a classical and classicizing tradition; in a more immediate literary and political context, as the final contribution by a member of an ‘eyewitness’ generation to a quarter century of intense debate over Julian’s legacy by several authors who had lived through the reign and had been in varying degrees of proximity to Julian; and as a narrative text, in which narratorial authority is closely associated with the persona of the narrator, both as an external narrating agent and an occasional participant in the text.

This book makes an original contribution to the newly thriving field of ancient Greek and Roman performance and dance studies. It offers a better grasp of ancient perceptions and conceptualizations of dance through the lens of literary texts. It gives attention not only to the highly encoded genre of pantomime, which dominates the stages in the Roman Empire, but also to acrobatic, non-representational dances. It is distinctive in its juxtaposition of ancient theorizations of dance with literary depictions of dance scenes. Part I explores the contact zones of ancient dance discourse with other areas of cultural expression, especially language and poetry, rhetoric and art, and philosophy and religion. Part II discusses ekphraseis of dance performances in prose and poetry. The main bulk of the book focuses roughly on the second century CE (discussing Plutarch, Lucian of Samosata, Athenaeus, the apocryphal Acts of John, Longus, and Apuleius), with excursions to Xenophon and Nonnus. Dance is performative and dynamic, and its way to cognition and action is physical experience. This book argues that dance was understood as a practice in which human beings, whether as dancers or spectators, are confronted with the irreducible reality of their own physical existence, which is constantly changing.

This book is a comprehensive study of the methods of interpreting myths developed by the Greeks, adopted by the Romans, and passed on to Jewish and Christian interpreters of the Bible. Methods of interpretation are closely related to developments in Greek philosophy from the Presocratics to the Neoplatonists. Most Greeks viewed myths as the creation of poets, especially Homer and Hesiod, or else as an ancient revelation corrupted by them. In the first instance, critics sought in the intention of the authors some deeper truth, whether physical or spiritual; in the second, they deemed it necessary to clear away poetic falsehoods in order to recapture an ancient revelation. Early Greek historians attempted to explain myths as exaggerated history; myths could be purified by logos (reason) and rendered believable. Practically all of these early methods could be lumped under the term “allegory”—to intend something different from what one expressed. Occasionally, philosophers veered from a concern for the literal truth of myths. A few thinkers, while acknowledging myths as fictions, defended their value for the examples of good and bad human behavior they offered. These early efforts were invaluable for the development of critical thinking, enabling public criticism of even the most authoritative texts. The Church Fathers took the interpretative methods of their pagan contemporaries and applied them to their reading of the scriptures. Greek methods of myth interpretation passed into the Middle Ages and beyond, serving as a perennial defense against the damaging effects of scriptural literalism and fundamentalism.