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An exploration of how the Greeks reacted to and interacted with India from the third to first centuries BCE. When the Greeks and Macedonians in Alexander's army reached India in 326 BCE, they entered a new and strange world. They knew a few legends and travelers' tales, but their categories of thought were inadequate to encompass what they witnessed. The plants were unrecognizable, their properties unknown. The customs of the people were various and puzzling. While Alexander's conquest was brief, ending with his death in 323 BCE, the Greeks would settle in the Indian region for the next two centuries, forging an era of productive interactions between the two cultures. The Greek Experience of...
Xerxes, Great King of the Persian Empire from 486–465 B.C., has gone down in history as an angry tyrant full of insane ambition. The stand of Leonidas and the 300 against his army at Thermopylae is a byword for courage, while the failure of Xerxes’ expedition has overshadowed all the other achievements of his twenty-two-year reign. In this lively and comprehensive new biography, Richard Stoneman shows how Xerxes, despite sympathetic treatment by the contemporary Greek writers Aeschylus and Herodotus, had his reputation destroyed by later Greek writers and by the propaganda of Alexander the Great. Stoneman draws on the latest research in Achaemenid studies and archaeology to present the ruler from the Persian perspective. This illuminating volume does not whitewash Xerxes’ failings but sets against them such triumphs as the architectural splendor of Persepolis and a consideration of Xerxes’ religious commitments. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of a man who ruled a vast and multicultural empire which the Greek communities of the West saw as the antithesis of their own values.
Alexander the Great by Richard Stoneman is an introduction to the career and impact of the great Macedonian conqueror and the main themes of his reign. As well as tackling problems of interpretation, the author includes: an examination of the written and other sources and the problems of working with them discussion of archaeological and numismatic evidence an outline of the Macedonian background insight into Alexander's education and ideas exploration of Alexander's claim to divinity assessment of Alexander's short and long-term achievements a study of his influence in antiquity.
Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) precipitated immense historical change in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. But the resonance his legend achieved over the next two millennia stretched even farther across foreign cultures, religious traditions, and distant nations. This engaging and handsomely illustrated book for the first time gathers together hundreds of the colorful Alexander legends that have been told and retold around the globe. Richard Stoneman, a foremost expert on the Alexander myths, introduces us first to the historical Alexander and then to the Alexander of legend, an unparalleled mythic icon who came to represent the heroic ideal in cultures from Egypt to Iceland, fr...
Mystery surrounds the parentage of Alexander, the prince born to Queen Olympias. Is his father Philip, King of Macedonia, or Nectanebo, the mysterious sorcerer who seduced the queen by trickery? One thing is certain: the boy is destined to conquer the known world. He grows up to fulfil this prophecy, building a mighty empire that spans from Greece and Italy to Africa and Asia. Begun soon after the real Alexander’s death and expanded in the centuries that followed, The Greek Alexander Myth depicts the life and adventures of one of history’s greatest heroes - taming the horse Bucephalus, meeting the Amazons and his quest to defeat the King of Persia. Including such elements of fantasy as Alexander’s ascent to heaven borne by eagles, this literary masterpiece brilliantly evokes a lost age of heroism.
First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
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The 6th/5th century BCE Greek melic (or songwriting) poet Pindar was one of the most celebrated lyricists of antiquity. His famous victory odes offer a paean to the heroic athlete, and collectively are an attempt to encapsulate, through choral songs of exaltation, the glory of the sportsman's moment of victory - whether in athletics or horse-racing - at a variety of Panhellenic festivals and Olympian games. Yet Pindar, though still respected, is now considered a difficult poet, and is sometimes dismissed as a reactionary, celebrating an aristocratic world that was passing and that deserved to pass. In this first work on the subject for many years, Richard Stoneman shows that Pindar's works, while at first seeming obscure and fragmentary, reward further study. An unmatched craftsman with words, and witness to a profoundly religious sensibility, he is a poet who takes modern readers to the heart of Greek ideas about the gods, fleeting human achievement and fallibility. The author examines questions of performance and genre; patronage; imagery; and reception, beginning with Horace.
The rebellion of the dazzling Arab queen Zenobia against the fist of Roman domination
Explores how Alexander the Great has influenced literature, art and culture in Europe and the Middle East over two millennia.