East and West in late antiquity : invasion, settlement, ethnogenesis and conflicts of religion /
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East and West in Late Antiquity combines published and unpublished articles by emeritus professor Wolf Liebeschuetz. The collection concerns aspects of what Gibbon called 'the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. This interpretation is now much criticized, but the author agrees with Gibbon. Topics discussed are defensive strategies, the settlement inside the Empire of invaders and immigrants, and the modification of identities with the formation of new communities. Liebeschuetz is interested in both the eastern and the western halves of the Empire. In the East he is particularly concerned with Syria, the expansion of settlement up to the edge of the desert, and Christianisation. The book ends with an examination of the role of the Christian Arab Ghassanids in the defense of the Syrian provinces in the century leading up to the conquest of the provinces by the Islamic Arabs.
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1 online resource (xxix, 477 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004289529 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Cultural contact and appropriation in the Axial-Age Mediterranean world : a periplos /
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Karl Jaspers dubbed the period, 800-400 BCE, the Axial Age. Axial it was, for out of it emerged the idea of Greek culture, with its influence on Roman and later empires. Jaspers' Axial Age was the chrysalis of culturally-meaningful modernity. Trade expands intellectual horizons. The economic and political effects permeate such social domains as technology, language and worldview. In the last category, many issues take on an emotional freight - the birth of science, monotheism, philosophy, even theory itself. Cultural Contact and Appropriation in the Axial-Age Mediterranean World: A Periplos , explores adaptation, resistance and reciprocity in Axial-Age Mediterranean exchange (ca. 800-300 BCE). Some essayists expand on an international discussion about myth, to which even the Church Fathers contributed. Others explore questions of how vocabulary is reapplied, or how the alphabet is reapplied, in a new environment. Detailed cases ground participants' capacity to illustrate both the variety of the disciplinary integuments in which we now speak, one with the other, across disciplines, and the sheer complexity of constructing a workable programme for true collaboration.
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1 online resource (ix, 315 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-297) and indexes. :
9789004194557 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.