Performance in Greek and Roman theatre /
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In recent years, classicists have begun aggressively to explore the impact of performance on the ways in which Greek and Roman plays are constructed and appreciated, both in their original performance context and in reperformances down to the present day. While never losing sight of the playscripts, it is necessary to adopt a more inclusive point of view, one integrating insights from archaeology, art, history, performance theory, theatre semiotics, theatrical praxis, and modern performance reception. This volume contributes to the restoration of a much-needed balance between performance and text: it is devoted to exploring how performance-related considerations (including stage business, masks, costumes, props, performance space, and stage-sets) help us attain an enhanced appreciation of ancient theatre.
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1 online resource (ix, 591 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004245457 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Law and Economic Performance in the Roman World /
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Were legal systems in the Roman empire conducive to economic growth and development? Were legal rules and procedure changed in response to economic needs? This book offers detailed studies to provide some answers to these basic questions.
This book offers critical analyses of the dynamic relation between legal regulations, institutions and economic performance in the Roman world. It studies how law and legal thought affected economic development, and vice versa. Inspired by New Institutional Economics scholars the past decades used ancient law to explain economic growth. There was, however, no natural selection process directing legal changes towards macro-economic efficiency. Ancient rulers and jurists modified institutions to serve or safeguard particular interests-political, social, or economic. Nevertheless both economic performance and legal scholarship peaked at unprecedented levels. These were momentous historical developments. How were they related?
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004525139
9789004525122
Speaking volumes : orality and literacy in the Greek and Roman world /
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This volume examines orality and literacy in the ancient Greek and Roman world through a range of perspectives and in various genres. Four essays on the Homeric epics present recent research into performative aspects of language, cognitive theory and oral composition, a re-evaluation of Parry's oral-formulaic theory, and a new perspective on the poem's transmission. These are complemented by studies of the oral nature of Greek proverbial expressions, and of poetic authority within a fluid oral tradition. Two essays consider the significance of the written word in a predominantly oral culture, in relation to star calendars and to Panathenaic inscriptions. Finally, two chapters consider the ongoing influence of oral tradition in the ancient novel and in Roman declamation. These essays illustrate the importance of considering ancient texts in the context of fluctuating oral and literate influences.
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1 online resource (xvi, 235 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-228) and index. :
9789004351028 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Society, medicine, and religion in the sacred tales of Aelius Aristides /
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Aelius Aristides' Sacred Tales offer a unique opportunity to examine how an educated man of the Second Century CE came to terms with illness. The experiences portrayed in the Tales disclose an understanding of illness in both religious and medical terms. Aristides was a devout worshipper of Asclepius while at the same time being a patient of some of the most distinguished physicians of his day. This monograph offers a textual analysis of the Sacred Tales in the context of the so-called Second Sophistic; medicine and the medical use of dream interpretation; and religion, with particular emphasis on the cult of Asclepius and the visual means used to convey religious content.
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1 online resource (viii, 206 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004229440 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Heroic measures : Hippocratic medicine in the making of Euripidean tragedy /
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This book demonstrates the importance of Greek medical thought in the work of Euripides. The first part of the book argues for the significance of the healing figure in Euripidean drama, while the second part analyzes the role of traditional and rationalist healing strategies in the construction of Euripidean plots and arguments. The work will be of interest to those pursuing studies in Greek drama, Greek intellectual history and Greek medicine.
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1 online resource (x, 229 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-209) and indexes. :
9789047405955 :
0925-1421 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Free speech in classical antiquity /
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This book contains a collection of essays on the notion of "Free Speech" in classical antiquity. The essays examine such concepts as "freedom of speech," "self-expression," and "censorship," in ancient Greek and Roman culture from historical, philosophical, and literary perspectives. Among the many questions addressed are: what was the precise lexicographical valence of the ancient terms we routinely translate as \'Freedom of Speech,\' e.g., Parrhesia in Greece, Licentia in Rome? What relationship do such terms have with concepts such as isêgoria , dêmokratia and eleutheria ; or libertas , res publica and imperium ? What does ancient theorizing about free speech tell us about contemporary relationships between power and speech? What are the philosophical foundations and ideological underpinnings of free speech in specific historical contexts?
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Consists of a collection of papers presented at the second Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values, held in June 2002 at the University of Pennsylvania. :
1 online resource (xii, 450 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047405689 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Clio and the poets : Augustan poetry and the traditions of ancient historiography /
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The Augustan age was one in which writers were constantly reworking the Roman past, and which was marked by a profound engagement of poets with the historians and historical techniques which were the main vehicle for the transmission of the image of the past to their day. In this book seventeen leading scholars from Europe and America examine the fascinating interaction between such apparently diverse genres: how the Augustan poets drew on - or reacted against - the historians' presentation of the world, and how, conversely, historians picked up and transformed poetic themes for their own ends. With essays on poems from Horace's Odes to Ovid's Metamorphoses , on authors from Virgil to Valerius Maximus, it forms the most important topic so central to such a particulary relevant period of literary history.
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Selected papers given at a conference at the University of Durham in 1999. :
1 online resource (xv, 396 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 363-379) and index. :
9789047400493 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Inscriptional records for the dramatic festivals in Athens : IG II2 2318-2325 and related texts /
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IG II2 2318-2325 represent the most substantial surviving body of evidence for the institutional history of the Athenian dramatic festivals from their establishment at the end of the 6th century BCE to their disappearance sometime in the mid- to late 100s. Millis and Olson offer a completely updated text of the inscriptions, based on a close study of the stones themselves; detailed explanations of the restorations of the dimensions and organization of the original records, with numerous redatings and the like; and new - and in some cases radically different - reconstructions of the monuments on which they were inscribed. The volume also includes substantial interpretative essays on each set of records, a full epigraphic and prosopographic commentary, and several indices.
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1 online resource (xii, 238 pages) :
9789004232013 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Brill's companion to Cicero : oratory and rhetoric /
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This volume is intended as a companion to the study of Cicero's oratory and rhetoric for both students and experts in the field: for the neophyte, it provides a starting point; for the veteran Ciceronian scholar, a place for renewing the dialogue about issues concerning Ciceronian oratory and rhetoric; for all, a site of engagement at various levels with Ciceronian scholarship and bibliography. The book is arranged along roughly chronological lines and covers most aspects of Cicero's oratory and rhetoric. The particular strength of this companion resides in the individual, often very original approach to sundry topics by an array of impressive contributors, all of whom have spent large portions of their careers concentrating upon the oratorical and rhetorical oeuvre of Cicero. A bibliography of relevant items from the past 25 years, keyed to specific Ciceronian works, completes the volume. Brill's Companion to Cicero will become the standard reference work on Cicero for many years.
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1 online resource (xiii, 632 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 533-599) and indexes. :
9789047400936 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The letter of Mara bar Sarapion in context : proceedings of the symposium held at Utrecht University, 10-12 December 2009 /
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The Letter of Mara bar Sarapion to his son - preserved in a single Syriac manuscript (7th. century CE) - still speaks to its readers, evocatively depicting the dramatic situation of a nobleman imprisoned after the Roman capture of Samosata, capital of Commagene. The letter is best known today for a passage on the "wise king of the Jews," which may be one of the earliest pagan testimonies concerning Jesus Christ. Ongoing controversy over the letter's date, nature, and purpose has, however, led to the widespread neglect of this intriguing document. In the present volume, Merz and Tieleman have brought together cutting-edge research from an interdisciplinary team of leading experts that significantly advances our appreciation of the letter and its historical context.
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1 online resource (xiv, 245 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004233010 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
New chapters in the history of rhetoric /
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This volume gathers over forty papers by leading scholars in the field of the history of rhetoric. It illustrates the current trends in this new area of research and offers a great richness of insights. The contributors are from fourteen different countries in Europe, America and Asia ; the majority of the papers are in English and French, some others in German, Italian, and Spanish. The texts and subjects covered include the Bible, Classical Antiquity, Medieval and Modern Europe, Chinese and Korean civilization, and the contemporary world. Word, speech, language and institutions are addressed from several points of view. One major topic, among many others, is Rhetoric and Religion.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047428473 :
1875-1148 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Tragic props and cognitive function : aspects of the function of images in thinking /
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By applying aspects of cognitive psychology to a study of three key tragic props, this book examines the importance of visual imagery in ancient Greek tragedy. The shield, the urn and the mask are props which serve as controls for investigating the connection between visual imagery and the spectators' intellectual experience of tragic drama. As vehicles for conceptual change the props point to a function of imagery in problem solving. Connections between the visual and the cognitive in tragedy, particularly through image shape and its potential for various meanings, add a new perspective to scholarship on the role of the visual in ancient performance. These connections also add weight to the importance of imagery in contemporary problem solving and creative thought.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [245]-259) and indexes. :
9789047430827 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Hesiod, the other poet : ancient reception of a cultural icon /
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Hesiod: The Other Poet is a study dealing with the role of Hesiod in the imagination and the collective memory of the ancient Greeks. Its main hypothesis is that Hesiod's image was to a large degree formed by the picture of Homer: Hesiod is decidedly different when presented as allied with, opposed to or simply without Homer. Following this approach, Hesiod is investigated as a moral and philosophical authority, a locus informed with values and qualities, a concept in literary-critical discourse, and more generally as a cultural and panhellenic icon constructed and reconstructed by later Greek authors who employed and so re-created him in their own texts.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004189812 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Caesar's Civil War : historical reality and fabrication /
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In Caesar's Civil War: Historical Reality and Fabrication , Westall combines literary analysis of Caesar's Bellum Civile with a concern for the socio-economic history of the Roman empire. The Bellum Gallicum and the Shakespearean play are better known, but Caesar's partisan account of the Roman civil war culminating in the battle of Pharsalus offers a historical text of perennial interest and relevance. Two introductory chapters contextualize this book and offer a traditional narrative of political and military history for 49-48 BCE. There follow seven chapters that are dedicated to each of the geographical theatres of civil war. These chapters show how Caesar's testimony sheds important light upon the nature of Roman rule in the Mediterranean, but also explore the problems to be encountered in using potentially tendentious testimony.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004356153 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Novel Perspectives on Communication Practices in Antiquity : Towards a Historical Social-Semiotic Approach /
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Documentary texts are vital to our understanding of many aspects of the ancient world, such as its administration, education, and economy. The value of these texts goes even further however: being autographs, they directly testify to ancient communication practices, a field of study which so far has remained underexplored. In this volume, specialists in the field engage with a broad range of documentary sources. They discuss not only how various modes of communication, such as language, handwriting, and lay-out, are employed in specific contexts of writing, but also how these different modes are interrelated. Building on insights from contemporary social-semiotic theory, the volume makes a case for the establishment of historical social semiotics as a discipline.
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1 online resource :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004526518
9789004526525
Philological and historical commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXVIII /
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In Book 28 Ammianus describes the military activity of Valentinian on the Rhine. The historian speaks with admiration about his efforts to strengthen the northwestern border of the empire. He shows a similar esteem for the general Theodosius, who re-established order in Britain. However, in the greater part of Book 28 there is an air of gloom. Ammianus writes reluctantly about the judicial terror inflicted on the Roman aristocracy by powerful magistrates. In his digression about Roman manners he speaks with contempt about the senatorial elite and the Roman plebs, because they fail to live up to the standards of their ancestors. The final chapter illustrates the disastrous effects of the mismanagement of the province of Tripolis by corrupt officials.
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1 online resource (xxxiv, 364 pages) : mappages. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [303]-327) and indexes. :
9789004224025 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A cultural history of Aramaic : from the beginnings to the advent of Islam /
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Aramaic is a constant thread running through the various civilizations of the Near East, ancient and modern, from 1000 BCE to the present, and has been the language of small principalities, world empires, and a fair share of the Jewish-Christian tradition. Holger Gzella describes its cultural and linguistic history as a continuous evolution from its beginnings to the advent of Islam. For the first time the individual phases of the language, their socio-historical underpinnings, and the textual sources are discussed comprehensively in light of the latest linguistic and historical research and with ample attention to scribal traditions, multilingualism, and language as a marker of cultural self-awareness. Many new observations on Aramaic are thereby integrated into a coherent historical framework.
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1 online resource (466 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004285101 :
0169-9423 ;
0169-9423 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.