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Safety First
Late Roman Africa gives us plenty to ponder. Christianity there had been divided between two factions since the early fourth century. By the fifth, militants among the Donatists (or sectarians) struck at their rivals, whose leading spokesman, Augustine, is our principal source. But did he exaggerate the difficulties catholic Christianity faced or wholly fabricate to attract government attention and intervention? For the same purposes, did he invent a resurgence of paganism? Or were there dangers to the safety of his congregations from sectarians and complications caused by polytheists purveying fake news about the history and fate of the empire? Did their seductive fictions threaten the asce...
A History of Murder
This book offers a fascinating and insightful overview of seven centuries of murder in Europe. It tells the story of the changing face of violence and documents the long-term decline in the incidence of homicide. From medieval vendettas to stylised duels, from the crime passionel of the modern period right up to recent public anxieties about serial killings and underworld assassinations, the book offers a richly illustrated account of murder’s metamorphoses. In this original and compelling contribution, Spierenburg sheds new light on several important themes. He looks, for example, at the transformation of homicide from a private matter, followed by revenge or reconciliation, into a public...
Looking at Laughter
In this fresh, accessible, and beautifully illustrated book, his third to examine an aspect of Roman visual culture, John R. Clarke explores the question, "What made Romans laugh?" Looking at Laughter examines a heterogeneous corpus of visual material, from the crudely obscene to the exquisitely sophisticated and from the playful to the deadly serious—everything from street theater to erudite paintings parodying the emperor. Nine chapters, organized under the rubrics of Visual Humor, Social Humor, and Sexual Humor, analyze a wide range of visual art, including wall painting, sculpture, mosaics, and ceramics. Archaeological sites, as well as a range of ancient texts, inscriptions, and graffiti, provide the background for understanding the how and why of humorous imagery. This entertaining study offers fascinating insights into the mentality of Roman patrons and viewers who enjoyed laughing at the gods, the powers-that-be, and themselves.
At Whom Are We Laughing?
They say that laughter is a purely human phenomenon, so exclusively ours that we brook no intruders except, of course, for the laughing hyena, the laughing jackass (officially known as the kookaburra bird of Australia), laughing matters, laughing gas, or the perennial laughing stock. But what is humor, that funny thing so varied in its colors and tones, so encompassing in its themes, so different from time to time and place to place? And when we poke fun, at whom are we really laughing? At Whom Are We Laughing? Humor in Romance Language Literatures is the selective product of a multi-national gathering of scholars sponsored by Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, to explore humor acros...
Humour and Religion
Leading scholars analyze the importance and functioning of humor in different world religions.
After the Past
What was funny about ancient jokes, and why? Why did the Roman state legislate to curb the behaviour of its obscenely rich and powerful elite, if it never really expected such laws to be obeyed? Why did it oppress the poor, and lavish public child support on them? These are important questions, but ancient Greeks and Romans could never have thought of them. They never questioned the right of the rich to be rich. They could not improve their understanding of Homeric gift-giving with the experience of ritualized friendship among the Trobriand islanders. Such questions and such answers can only come from those who live after the ancient past. This volume honours the well-known Dutch epigraphist and ancient historian H.W. Pleket. Ten substantial essays reflect his wide range, from early Greece to the Roman Empire, and his taste for comparative economic and social history.
Lessons from America
Every war has refugees; every revolution has exiles. Most of the refugees of the French Revolution mourned the demise of the monarchy. Lessons from America examines an unusual group who did not. Doina Pasca Harsanyi looks at the American experience of a group of French liberal aristocrats, early participants in the French Revolution, who took shelter in Philadelphia during the Reign of Terror. The book traces their path from enlightened salons to revolutionary activism to subsequent exile in America and, finally, back to government posts in France—illuminating the ways in which the French experiment in democracy was informed by the American experience.
Antonio da Rho, Three Dialogues against Lactantius
Antonio da Rho’s Three Dialogues against Lactantius (1445) followed the lead of Jerome and Augustine yet went well beyond patristic concerns. During the Middle Ages Lactantius’ works, while largely neglected, had enjoyed moments of intense interest and study. From the death of Lactantius (325) to his broad Quattrocento recovery, many profound cultural and intellectual shifts had transpired. Consequently, Rho’s dialogues engage topics arising from scholastic and other debates in jurisprudence, cosmology, astrology, geography, philosophy, and theology. He was convinced that insights from these fields would elucidate errors of Lactantius that his readers had overlooked. This reveals much about the cultural and intellectual developments that shaped readers’ efforts to recover, comprehend, and define Lactantius as an author. Significantly, the list of Lactantius’ errors discussed in the dialogues was printed with nearly every edition of Lactantius through the sixteenth century and beyond.
Collaboration with the Nazis
This book examines the changes in representing collaboration, especially in the destruction of European Jewry, in the public discourse and the historiography of various countries In Europe. In particular it shows how representations and responses have been conditioned by national and political trends and constraints.
