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.
Blood and iron : stories and storytelling in Homer's Odyssey /
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Blood and Iron is an exploration of the role of gossip, rumor and storytelling in the society depicted in the Odyssey and in the real world in which the poem was performed. It includes extensive analysis of Homeric narrative technique, with particular attention to the way the singer creates tension in a largely traditional tale. Individual chapters treat discrete, generally very traditional literary and historical problems, including the significance of the term kleos , the presentation of Telemachos, the internal chronology of the poem, the nature of Homeric kingship, and the role of violence in the ancient Greek family. The book will be of importance for anyone interested in the literary content or storytelling technique of Homeric epic, as well for historians of the late Dark Ages.
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1 online resource (x, 260 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-252) and index. :
9789004329539 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Authorship and Greek song : authority, authenticity, and performance /
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Authorship and Greek Song is a collection of papers dealing with various aspects of authorship in the song culture of Ancient Greece. In this cultural context the idea of the poet as author of his poems is complicated by the fact that poetry in archaic Greece circulated as songs performed for a variety of audiences, both local and "global" (Panhellenic). The volume's chapters discuss questions about the importance of the singers/performers; the nature of the performance occasion; the status of the poet; the authority of the poet/author and/or that of the performer; and the issues of authenticity arising when poems are composed under a given poet's name. The volume offers discussions of major authors such as Pindar, Sappho, and Theognis.
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Selected papers presented at a conference entitled "Authorship, Authority, and Authenticity in Archaic and Classical Greek Song," which was held June 6-9, 2011 at Yale University, organized by the Network for the Study of Archaic and Classical Greek Song. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004339705 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The reception of ancient Greece and Rome in children's literature : heroes and eagles /
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Greece and Rome have long featured in books for children and teens, whether through the genres of historical fiction, fantasy, mystery stories or mythological compendiums. These depictions and adaptations of the Ancient World have varied at different times, however, in accordance with changes in societies and cultures. This book investigates the varying receptions and ideological manipulations of the classical world in children's literature. Its subtitle, Heroes and Eagles , reflects the two most common ways in which this reception appears, namely in the forms of the portrayal of the Greek heroic world of classical mythology on the one hand, and of the Roman imperial presence on the other. Both of these are ideologically loaded approaches intended to educate the young reader.
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1 online resource (xiv, 344 pages) :
Includes blbliographical references and index. :
9789004298606 :
2212-9405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The league of the Aitolians /
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The Aitolians have had a bad press, regarded as pirates and brigands, and their state as a pirate state built on terrorist tactics. This book treats them as what they really were, a normal Hellenistic state. They constructed an original and successful polity which provided peace and prosperity for its inhabitants, and played a major part in Greek history for a century and a half. The approach is chronological, beginning with the origin and formation of the league and its early expansion, and then dealing with its long duel with Macedon, and concluding with its destruction by Rome. This is the first full account of the history of the league which approaches it as an independent state rather than as the enemy of other states and peoples. It complements the standard histories of the other Hellenistic states.
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1 online resource (xvii, 585 pages) : maps. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 563-568) and index. :
9789004351219 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Philitas of Cos /
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This volume is an edition of the poetical and grammatical fragments of Philitas of Cos, the early-Hellenistic scholar and poet who served as an exemplary model for the great Alexandrian poets. His output includes frivolous Hermes and Demeter which both had fundamental impact on later metapoetic imagery, and the Ataktoi Glossai , a glossary interpreting mainly Homeric idiom in pre-Aristarchean fashion. The body of the book consists of an Introduction discussing life, literary affiliations and metre; an edition of testimonies and fragments along with a commentary elucidating matters of language and influence on the scholar-poets, Propertius and Longus. The study of Philitas is brought up to date with new testimonies and new neglected sources for the fragments. Recent papyrological findings, verse inscriptions, lexicographic sources and inscriptions from Cos are taken into consideration. Passages dubiously ascribed to Philitas are discussed. The book closes with three Appendices and comprehensive Indexes.
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Errata slip inserted. :
1 online resource (xxviii, 454 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004350939 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Corinth in contrast : studies in inequality /
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In Corinth in Contrast , archaeologists, historians, art historians, classicists, and New Testament scholars examine the stratified nature of socio-economic, political, and religious interactions in the city from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. The volume challenges standard social histories of Corinth by focusing on the unequal distribution of material, cultural, and spiritual resources. Specialists investigate specific aspects of cultural and material stratification such as commerce, slavery, religion, marriage and family, gender, and art, analyzing both the ruling elite of Corinth and the non-elite Corinthians who made up the majority of the population. This approach provides insight into the complex networks that characterized every ancient urban center and sets an agenda for future studies of Corinth and other cities rule by Rome.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004261310 :
0167-9732 ;
Valuing landscape in classical antiquity : natural environment and cultural imagination /
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'Where am I?'. Our physical orientation in place is one of the defining characteristics of our embodied existence. However, while there is no human life, culture, or action without a specific location functioning as its setting, people go much further than this bare fact in attributing meaning and value to their physical environment. 'Landscape' denotes this symbolic conception and use of terrain. It is a creation of human culture. In Valuing Landscape we explore different ways in which physical environments impacted on the cultural imagination of Greco-Roman Antiquity. In seventeen chapters with different disciplinary perspectives, we demonstrate the values attached to mountains, the underworld, sacred landscapes, and battlefields, and the evaluations of locale connected with migration, exile, and travel.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004319714 :
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.
Shifting social imaginaries in the Hellenistic period : narrations, practices, and images /
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There is a long tradition in classical scholarship of reducing the Hellenistic period to the spreading of Greek language and culture far beyond the borders of the Mediterranean. More than anything else this perception has hindered an appreciation of the manifold consequences triggered by the creation of new spaces of connectivity linking different cultures and societies in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. In adopting a new approach this volume explores the effects of the continuous adaptations of ideas and practices to new contexts of meaning on the social imaginaries of the parties participating in these intercultural encounters. The essays show that the seemingly static end-products of the interaction between Greek and non-Greek groups, such as texts, images, and objects, were embedded in long-term discourses, and thus subject to continuously shifting processes.
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1 online resource (458 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004257993 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The classical commentary : histories, practices, theory /
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This collection explores the issues raised by the writing and reading of commentaries on classical Greek and Latin texts. Written primarily by practising commentators, the papers examine philosophical, narratological, and historiographical commentaries; ancient, Byzantine, and Renaissance commentary practice and theory, with special emphasis on Galen, Tzetzes, and La Cerda; the relationship between the author of the primary text, the commentary writer, and the reader; special problems posed by fragmentary and spurious texts; the role and scope of citation, selectivity, lemmatization, and revision; the practical future of commentary-writing and publication; and the way computers are changing the shape of the classical commentary. With a genesis in discussion panels mounted in the UK in 1996 and the US in 1997, the volume continues recent international dialogue on the genre and future of commentaries.
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1 online resource (xxi, 427 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047400943 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Popular medicine in Graeco-Roman antiquity : explorations /
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The history of healthcare in the classical world suffers from notable neglect in one crucial area. While scholars have intensively studied both the rationalistic medicine that is conveyed in the canonical texts and also the 'temple medicine' of Asclepius and other gods, they have largely neglected to study popular medicine in a systematic fashion. This volume, which for the most part is the fruit of a conference held at Columbia University in 2014, aims to help correct this imbalance. Using the full range of available evidence - archaeological, epigraphical and papyrological, as well as the literary texts - the international cast of contributors hopes to show what real people in Antiquity actually did when they tried to avert illness or cure it.
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Based on a conference held at Columbia University, New York, April 18-19, 2014. :
1 online resource (xv, 319 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004326040 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Euripides' Bacchae : the play and its audience /
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The purpose of this book is to investigate what it was Euripides intended to convey to the theatre-going public of his day when he wrote his most exciting and most gruesome play, the Bacchae . The meanings which are to be attached to the action of a play are woven by an audience, both during and after the performance, into a single dramatic experience, labelled in this book as 'audience response'. After some introductory chapters dealing with the history of the interpretation of the Bacchae and with the theory of audience response, the main part of the book is devoted to a detailed analysis of the action of the play (chapters 4 and 5), and to a study of Dionysus in his various apects in Athenian life and in his appearances in earlier literature and on the tragic stage. The discussion of the choruses concentrates on the choruses' repeated utterances about cleverness and wisdom, which form the core of the Dionysian propaganda of the play. The most immediate results of this new interpretation of the Bacchae are that the widely-accepted view of Pentheus as a dark puritan, a man possessed by the Dionysian qualities of his divine opponent, proves to be untenable, and that that which in the past has been rightly called the overriding theme of the play - the god's epiphany - also contains the poet's most serious and ironical discussion of divinity and of man's treatment of it. The problems of the Greek text are given full discussion, mainly in the nots and appendices. In many cases new solutions are proposed; some new problems are however added.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Free University of Amsterdam. :
1 online resource (200 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-198) and index. :
9789004328051 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Critical notes on Plato's Politeia /
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This volume is intended to accompany the new Oxford edition of Plato's Republic , published in 2003. It is based on a series of ten articles in Mnemosyne , dating from 1988 to 2003. It contains discussions of textual problems of various kinds. Much attention is paid to Plato's use of particles, to the moods and tenses of the verb, and to pragmatics and style. Moreover, the transmission of the text receives ample attention. The book is highly recommended for users of the new edition of the Republic , for those interested in the transmission of the Platonic corpus and in Platonic Greek and for students of linguistics in general.
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1 online resource (x, 199 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-199) and index. :
9789047406693 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Feasting and polis institutions /
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Feasting and commensality formed the backbone of social life in the polis, the most characteristic and enduring form of political organization in the ancient Greek world. Exploring a wide array of commensal practices, Feasting and Polis Institutions reveals how feasts defined the religious and political institutions of the Greek citizen-state. Taking the reader from the Early Iron Age to the Imperial Period, this volume launches an essential inquiry into Greek power relations. Focusing on the myriad of patronage roles at the feast and making use of a wide variety of methodologies and primary sources, including archaeology, epigraphy and literature, Feasting and Polis Institutions argues that in ancient Greece political interaction could never be complete until it was consummated in a festive context.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004356733 :
2352-8656 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Linguistics into interpretation : speeches of war in Herodotus VII 5 and 8-18 /
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This volume is a sustained exercise in the genre of secondary literature which aims at explaining a literary work as much as possible in and through the author's own words. A crucial passage in direct speech by different speakers from the History of Herodotus, the earliest long Greek prose text, has been made the object of a systematic effort to distill and analyse the linguistic characteristics relevant to its interpretation, by confronting it with the rest of the work as well as with earlier and contemporary writings. This is done with the primary aim of placing the interpretation of a major author on the firmest ground available, the author's inches per secondissimi verba . The result, made accessible by full indexes, will prove helpful to readers of any part of Herodotus' History .
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1 online resource (xlv, 325 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004351264 :
0169-0985 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Egyptianizing figurines from Delos : a study in Hellenistic religion /
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This book investigates Hellenistic popular religion through an interdisciplinary study of terracotta figurines of Egyptian deities, mostly from domestic contexts, from the trading port of Delos. A comparison of the figurines' iconography to parallels in Egyptian religious texts, temple reliefs, and ritual objects suggests that many figurines depict deities or rituals associated with Egyptian festivals. An analysis of the objects' clay fabrics and manufacturing techniques indicates that most were made on Delos. Additionally, archival research on unpublished notes from early excavations reveals new data on many figurines' archaeological contexts, illuminating their roles in both domestic and temple cults. The results offer a new perspective on Hellenistic reinterpretations of Egyptian religion, as well as the relationship between "popular" and "official" cults.
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1 online resource (xix, 731 pages, [80] pages of plates) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004222663 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.