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The ancient period of Greek history, to which this volume is devoted, began in late Bronze Age in the second millennium and lasted almost to the end of the first century BCE, when the last remnant of the Hellenistic empire created by Alexander the Great was conquered by the Romans. Extant texts of law of actual laws are few and often found embedded in other sources, such as the works of orators and historians. Greek literature, from the epics of Homer to the classical dramas, provides a valuable source of information. However, since literary sources are fictional portrayals and often reflect the times and biases of the authors, other more concrete evidence from archaeology has been used thro...
The large collection of letters by Pliny the Younger includes a number of women among its addressees, and Pliny also gives us plentiful information about many women of his acquaintance. This book brings together this material to build up a portrait of a peer-group of women in their social setting.
New approaches to the study of the family in antiquity.
Written by a distinguished group of feminist archaeologists, In Pursuit of Gender examines the role of gender in archaeology, an area that has long been neglected. The chapters in this volume represent sites and cultures that have been interpreted or reinterpreted from the perspective of gender, exploding old assumptions about women and the roles they held. Greatly illuminating the subject of gender from the perspective of their own regional traditions, the authors take the reader through an authoritative and comprehensive discussion of gender archaeology in Asia, Africa, North and South America. Societies represented include hunter-gatherers, early horticulturalists, incipient and well-developed states, historic communities, as well as ethnoarchaeological explorations. The chapters are characterised by a greater specificity in methods, and the emergence of a social archaeology that considers the agency of both men and women. In Pursuit of Gender advances the study of gender in archaeology with detailed data, a world-wide scope and carefully reasoned conclusions that move into new territory, paving the way towards further research in gender-based theory.
In Moral Education for Women in the Pastoral and Pythagorean Letters: Philosophers of the Household, Annette Bourland Huizenga examines the Greco-Roman moral-philosophical “curriculum” for women by comparing these two pseudepigraphic epistolary collections. The analysis is organized around four elements: textual resources, teachers and learners, instructional strategies, and subject matter. Huizenga shows that the author of the Pastorals has adopted nearly all of the “pagan” aspects of this curriculum, but has supplemented these with theological justifications drawn from Pauline literature and traditions. The letters attributed to female Pythagoreans have long been suggested as comparanda for the Pastorals, but are not well-known as sources. This volume provides a Greek edition, a new English translation, and a text history of these letters.
This study examines third- and fourth-century portraits of married Christians and associated images, reading them as visual rhetoric in early Christian conversations about marriage and celibacy, and recovering lay perspectives underrepresented or missing in literary sources. Historians of early Christianity have grown increasingly aware that written sources display an enthusiasm for asceticism and sexual renunciation that was far from representative of the lives of most early Christians. Often called a “silent majority,” the married laity in fact left behind a significant body of work in the material record. Particularly in and around Rome, they commissioned and used such objects as sarc...
This is a substantially expanded and completely revised edition of a book originally published in 1988 as Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics. The book is a collection of translations of primary texts relevant to women's religion in Western antiquity, from the fourth century BCE to the fifth century CE. The selections are taken from the plethora of ancient religions, including Judaism and Christianity, and are translated from the six major languages of the Greco-Roman world: Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Coptic. The texts are grouped thematically in six sections: Observances, Rituals, and Festivals; Researching Real Women: Documents to, from and by Women; Religious Office; New Religious Affiliation and Conversion; Holy, Pious, and Exemplary Women; and The Feminine Divine. Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World provides a unique and invaluable resource for scholars of classical antiquity, early Christianity and Judaism, and women's religion more generally.
A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World presents a comprehensive overview of a wide range of topics relating to the practices, expressions, and interactions of religion in antiquity, primarily in the Greco-Roman world. • Features readings that focus on religious experience and expression in the ancient world rather than solely on religious belief • Places a strong emphasis on domestic and individual religious practice • Represents the first time that the concept of “lived religion” is applied to the ancient history of religion and archaeology of religion • Includes cutting-edge data taken from top contemporary researchers and theorists in the field • Examines a large variety of themes and religious traditions across a wide geographical area and chronological span • Written to appeal equally to archaeologists and historians of religion
The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry offers a study of the construction and use of gold dental appliances in ancient Etruscan culture, and their place within the framework of a general history of dentistry, with special emphasis on appliances, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt to modern Europe and the Americas. Included are many of the ancient literary sources that refer to dentistry - or the lack thereof - in Greece and Rome, as well as the archaeological evidence of ancient dental health. The book challenges many past works in exposing modern scholars’ fallacies about ancient dentistry, while presenting the incontrovertible evidence of the Etruscans’ seemingly modern attitudes to cosmetic dentistry.
Kimberly B. Stratton investigates the cultural and ideological motivations behind early imaginings of the magician, the sorceress, and the witch in the ancient world. Accusations of magic could carry the death penalty or, at the very least, marginalize the person or group they targeted. But Stratton moves beyond the popular view of these accusations as mere slander. In her view, representations and accusations of sorcery mirror the complex struggle of ancient societies to define authority, legitimacy, and Otherness. Stratton argues that the concept "magic" first emerged as a discourse in ancient Athens where it operated part and parcel of the struggle to define Greek identity in opposition t...