Philological and historical commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus.
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This is the final volume in the series of commentaries on Ammianus' Res Gestae . The last book of Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae is the most important source for a momentous event in European history: the invasion of the Goths across the Danube border into the Roman Empire and the ensuing battle of Adrianople (378 CE), in which a Roman army was annihilated and the emperor Valens lost his life. Many contemporaries were of the opinion that this defeat heralded the decline of the Empire. Ammianus is sharply critical of the way Valens and his generals handled the military situation, but holds on to his belief in the permanence of Roma Aeterna , reminding his readers of earlier crises from which the Empire had recovered and pointing to the incompetence of the barbarians in siege craft.
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Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed January 3, 2018). :
1 online resource (362 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004353824 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Omnium annalium monumenta : historical writing and historical evidence in Republican Rome /
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This edited volume brings a variety of approaches to the problem of how the Romans conceived of their history, what were the mechanisms for their preservation of the past, and how did the Romans come to write about their past. Building on important recent work in historiography, and the recent memory turn, the authors consider the practicalities of transmission, literary and generic influences, and the role of the city of Rome in preserving and transmitting memories of the past. The result is a major contribution to our understanding of the role history played in Roman life, and the kinds of evidence which could be deployed in constructing Roman history.
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1 online resource (XVIII, 535 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004355552 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Philological and historical commentary on Ammianus Marcellinus XXX /
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The first part of Book 30 of Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae is devoted to the military and diplomatic struggle for Armenia between Valens, emperor of the East, and king Sapor II of Persia. The Romans successfully defend their position, until they are forced to deal with the Goths who threaten to cross the Danube border. The second half of Book 30 is dominated by Valentinian I, emperor of the West. Ammianus presents a kaleidoscopic picture of this emperor alternating between admiration for his military qualities and devotion to his duty and bitter criticism of his avarice and cruelty. The account of his death forms the conclusion of Ammianus' treatment of the history of the western half of the Empire.
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1 online resource (257 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004300927 :
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.
Hellenic religion and Christianization. c. 370-529 /
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This work discusses the decline of Greek religion and the christianization of town and countryside in the eastern Roman Empire between the death of Julian the Apostate and the laws of Justinian the Great against paganism, c. 370-529. It examines such questions as the effect of the laws against sacrifice and sorcery, temple conversions, the degradation of pagan gods into daimones , the christianization of rite, and the social, political and economic background of conversion to Christianity. Several local contexts are examined in great detail: Gaza, Athens, Alexandria, Aphrodisias, central Asia Minor, northern Syria, the Nile basin, and the province of Arabia. It lays particular emphasis on the criticism of epigraphy, legal evidence, and hagiographic texts, and traces the demographic growth of Christianity and the chronology of this process in select local contexts. It also seeks to understand the behavioral patterns of conversion.
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1 online resource (xvi, 344 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004276772 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ancient stepmothers : myth, misogyny, and reality /
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Ancient Stepmothers is the first full-length study of the stepmother in Graeco-Roman antiquity. Several perspectives are covered: literary, historical and sociological, the last-mentioned making use of comparative material from modern studies of stepfamilies. The portrayal of the stepmother in myth and literature is thoroughly explored. The historical background in Athens and Rome is examined with a view to determining the relationship between fiction and real life. The book makes an important contribution to the study of both literary history and family relationships: in particular, it sheds light on attitudes to women, the portrayal of the stepmother being an outstanding illustration of misogynistic prejudice. It will also interest sociologists wishing to place studies of the contemporary stepfamily in a wider historical context: for this reason, all Greek and Latin is translated into English.
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1 online resource (xii, 288 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 272-277) and indexes. :
9789004329485 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Signs of orality : the oral tradition and its influence in the Greek and Roman world /
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The essays in this volume present new insights into the far-reaching influence of an early oral culture on subsequent development after the spread of literacy. At the outset, revisionist essays on the Homeric epics examine such questions as historical memory, Homer's audience(s), descriptive strategies, ring-composition, and the status of orality as a constitutive feature of the epics. These are followed by virtually unprecedented studies of the orality of later (written) literature, including Greek oratory, Virgilian epic, Pliny's Panegyricus and story-telling in late Greek writers. Included as well are two discussions of Athenian vase-painting: annular scene-composition in the black-figure tradition, and the implications of kalos -inscriptions. An introduction by leading oral theorist John Miles Foley situates all the essays at the leading edge of oral theoretical development.
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1 online resource (x, 261 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004351424 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Brill's companion to Lucan /
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Although it was labeled an anti-epic for trumping the celebratory scope of the Roman national epos, Lucan's Bellum Civile is a hymn to lost republican liberty composed under Nero's tyrannical empire. Lucan lost his life in a foiled conspiracy to replace the emperor, but his poem survived the wreckage of antiquity and enjoyed uninterrupted readership. The present collection samples the most current approaches to Lucan's poem, its themes, its dialogue with other texts, its reception in medieval and early modern literature, and its relevance to audiences of all times.
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1 online resource (xxi, 625 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004217096 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Chaonian dove : studies in the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid of Virgil /
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This is the first book-length critical study of the three Virgilian works to be published in English for twenty years. It examines in detail the thematic design and intent of the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid , and documents the development of their political, moral and poetic pessimism. It presents the interrelationship of the three texts, their intertextuality, as integral to their meaning. The book is in three main parts - 'Pastoral Meditation', 'Didactic Paradox', 'Epic Vision' - corresponding to the three Virgilian works. A brief introductory chapter is concerned with questions of method and the problem of Virgil misread. A chief focus of the book is Virgil's preoccupation with the relationship between poetry, art - art's values, perceptions, visions - and the political/historical world, and the changing nature of Virgil's attitude to the socio-moral responsibilities of Rome. The evolution of Vergil's presentation both of Roman imperium and of man's place in nature and history is carefully delineated. With close scrutiny of the language, imagery, structures and design of the three texts and of their verbal and thematic interrelationship, the book offers a substantial reassessment of the major political, psychological and moral ideas of Virgil's poetic oeuvre . An intricate and persuasive picture emerges of Virgil's intellectual and poetic development and a radically new conception of Virgil's image of himself as poet. The provision of translations makes the book accessible to the Latinless reader.
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Includes indexes. :
1 online resource (x, 196 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-183). :
9789004328297 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Lucans poetische Technik : Studien zum historischen Epos /
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The present volume on Lucan's poetical technique focusses on the main artistic principles of the Pharsalia, studying both the underlying history of the Civil War and its poetical reworking by the author. A chapter on Lucan's historical source (Livy) is followed by a chapter on Lucan's poetical technique and the general outline of his work. The material basis for these chapters is provided by a detailed analysis of every single book of the Pharsalia, which takes the form of a \'historical-poetical\' commentary. The study closes with a chapter on the narrator and the author.
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1 online resource (xiii, 586 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 521-538) and indexes. :
9789047413035 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Jews in late ancient Rome : evidence of cultural interaction in the Roman diaspora /
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The Jews in Late Ancient Rome focusses on the Jewish community in third and fourth century Rome, and in particular on how this community related to the larger non-Jewish world that surrounded it. The book's point of departure is a refutation of the disputable thesis that Roman Jews lived in complete isolation. The book examines Jewish archaeological remains and Jewish funerary inscriptions from Rome from various angles, and compares them with Pagan and early Christian material and epigraphical remains. In the last part the author concentrates on an enigmatic legal treatise entitled the Collatio , identifying its author and exploring the implications of this identification. This study proposes a new way in which the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in late antiquity can be studied.
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1 online resource (xx, 283 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 273-280) and index. :
9789004283473 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Divine images and human imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome /
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The polytheistic religious systems of ancient Greece and Rome reveal an imaginative attitude towards the construction of the divine. One of the most important instruments in this process was certainly the visualisation. Images of the gods transformed the divine world into a visually experienceable entity, comprehensible even without a theoretical or theological superstructure. For the illiterates, images were together with oral traditions and rituals the only possibility to approach the idea of the divine; for the intellectuals, images of the gods could be allegorically transcended symbols to reflect upon. Based on the art historical and textual evidence, this volume offers a fresh view on the historical, literary, and artistic significance of divine images as powerful visual media of religious and intellectual communication.
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Paperback version published 2015. :
1 online resource (xvi, 437 pages) : illustrations, map, plans. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-359) and indexes. :
9789047441656 :
0927-7633 ; :
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.
Debating Roman demography /
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In conjection with an extensive critical survey of recent advances and controversies in Roman demography, the four case-studies in this volume illustrate a variety of different approaches to the study of ancient population history. The contributions address a number of crucial issues in Roman demography from the evolution of the academic field to seasonal patterns of fertility, the number of Roman citizens, population pressure in the early Roman empire, and the end of classical urbanism in late antiquity. This is the first collaborative volume of its kind. It is designed to introduce ancient historians and classicists to demographic, comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, and to situate and contextualize Roman population studies in the wider ambit of historical demography.
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1 online resource (x, 242 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-235) and index. :
9789004351097 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman religion.
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This is the second of a two-volume collection of studies on inconsistencies in Greek and Roman religion. Their common aim is to argue for the historical relevance of various types of ambiguity and dissonance. While the first volume focused on the central paradoxes in ancient henotheism, the present one discusses the ambiguities in myth and ritual of transition and reversal. After an introduction to the history of the myth and ritual debate (with a focus on New Year festivals and initiation) in the first chapter, the second and third chapters discuss myth and ritual of reversal-Kronos and the Kronia, and Saturnus and the Saturnalia respectively; the fourth treats two women's festivals-that of Bona Dea and the Thesmophoria; the fifth investigates the initiatory aspects of Apollo and Mars. In the background is the basic conviction that the three approaches to religion known as 'substantivistic', functionalist and cultural-symbolic respectively, need not be mutually exclusive.
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1 online resource (xv, 354 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004296732 :
0169-9512 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ovid, Fasti 1 : a commentary /
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This commentary provides a detailed analysis of the first book of Ovid's Fasti , a complex poem which takes as its central framework the Roman calendar in the late Augustan/early Tiberian period and purports to deal with its religious festivals and their origins. Book 1 covers the month of January, and has proven to be particularly challenging to readers in light of the apparent revision/reworking of the text undertaken by the poet whilst in exile. This commentary - the most extensive yet on any single book of the poem - locates the text of Book 1 firmly in its literary, historical and socio-political contexts and seeks both to incorporate and build on the recent scholarship on the poem. In light of the special nature of Book 1, the commentary is prefaced by two introductory sections, the second of which tackles head-on the problems (and dynamics) of post-exilic reworking of the text.
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Enlargement of author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Manchester, 1999. :
1 online resource (xii, 365 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [329]-337) and index. :
9789047414179 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Mythical and legendary narrative in Ovid's Fasti /
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This book analyses the mythical and legendary narratives in Ovid's Fasti as narrative and concentrates on the neglected literary aspects of these stories. It combines traditional tools of literary criticism with more modern techniques (taken especially from narratology and intertextuality). From a narratological viewpoint it covers important features such as aperture, closure, characterization, internal narrators, description, space, time and cinematic technique. On the intertextual level it examines the narratives' complex relationship with Virgil, Livy and Ovid's own earlier works. Recent criticism on the Fasti has addressed various elements (religious, historical, political, astronomical et cetera), but detailed narrative study has been wanting. This book fills that gap, to provide a more informed and balanced appreciation of this multifaceted poem aimed at classicists and literary critics in general (for whom all the Latin is translated).
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1 online resource (xiii, 299 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-294) and indexes. :
9789047407225 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The rhetoric of gender terms : 'man', 'woman', and the portrayal of character in Latin prose /
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The aim of this work is to recover classical Roman assumptions about women on the basis of the surviving linguistic data. The author provides a control to her study of the connotations of the major Latin words for women in the form of a corresponding examination of how Roman authors use the various words for men. The resulting analysis throws light not only on Roman gender vocabulary but also on Roman cultural perceptions of class, moral worth and nationality. Furthermore, the author's detailed discussions of strictly linguistic evidence enable her to offer several original and persuasive insights about the traditional Latin literary representation of women. Understanding the connotative range of gender terms such as homo , vir , femina , mulier also reveals the value judgments made by ancient authors on male and female behaviour and can even be applied as a tool of historical analysis.
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1 online resource (x, 216 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-208) and index. :
9789004329164 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Imagining Emperors in the Later Roman Empire /
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Imagining Emperors in the Later Roman Empire offers new analysis of the textual depictions of a series of emperors in the fourth century within overlapping historical, religious, and literary contexts. Drawing on the recent Representational Turn in the study of imperial power, these essays examine how literary authors working in various genres, both Latin and Greek, and of differing religious affiliations construct and manipulate the depiction of a series of emperors from the late third to the late fourth centuries CE. In a move away from traditional source criticism, this volume opens up new methodological approaches to chart intellectual and literary history during a critical century for the ancient Mediterranean world.
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1 online resource (356 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004370920 :
2405-4771 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.