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An unparalleled exploration of magic in the Greco-Roman world What did magic mean to the people of ancient Greece and Rome? How did Greeks and Romans not only imagine what magic could do, but also use it to try to influence the world around them? In Drawing Down the Moon, Radcliffe Edmonds, one of the foremost experts on magic, religion, and the occult in the ancient world, provides the most comprehensive account of the varieties of phenomena labeled as magic in classical antiquity. Exploring why certain practices, images, and ideas were labeled as “magic” and set apart from “normal” kinds of practices, Edmonds gives insight into the shifting ideas of religion and the divine in the a...
This book collects twelve papers which make original contributions to the historical interpretation of inscribed Athenian laws and decrees, with a core focus on significant historical shapes and patterns implicit in the corpus of the age of Demosthenes. Following a synthetic Introduction, two chapters analyse locations and selectivity of inscribing, four explore the implications of the inscriptions for Athenian policy and for developing attitudes to the past, three for aspects of Athenian democracy. The volume concludes with two studies of specific inscriptions. Some of the papers have appeared elsewhere in conference proceedings and Festschriften, some are published here for the first time. The volume complements the author’s previous collection, Inscribed Athenian Laws and Decrees 352/1-322/1 BC: Epigraphical Essays.
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.
The aim of this book is to explore the definition(s) of ‘theatre’ and ‘metatheatre’ that scholars use when studying the ancient Greek world. Although in modern languages their meaning is mostly straightforward, both concepts become problematical when applied to ancient reality. In fact, ‘theatre’ as well as ‘metatheatre’ are used in many different, sometimes even contradictory, ways by modern scholars. Through a series of papers examining questions related to ancient Greek theatre and dramatic performances of various genres the use of those two terms is problematized and put into question. Must ancient Greek theatre be reduced to what was performed in proper theatre-buildings...
The role of migration for Christianity as a world religion during the last two centuries has drawn considerable attention from scholars in different fields. The main issue this book seeks to address is the question whether and to what extent migration and diaspora formation should be considered as elements of a new historiography of global Christianity, including the reflection upon earlier epochs. By focusing on migration and diaspora, the emerging map of Christianity will include the dimension of movement and interaction between actors in different regions, providing a more comprehensive ‘map of agency’ of individuals and groups previously regarded as passive. Furthermore, local histories will become parts of a broader picture and historiography might correlate both local and transregional perspectives in a balanced manner. Behind this approach lies the desire to broaden the perspective of Ecclesiastical History – and religious history in general – in a more systematic manner by questioning the traditional criteria of selection. This might help us to recover previously lost actors and forgotten dynamics.
From about 2000 BCE onward, Egypt served as an important nexus for cultural exchange in the eastern Mediterranean, importing and exporting not just wares but also new artistic techniques and styles. Egyptian, Greek, and Roman craftsmen imitated one another’s work, creating cultural and artistic hybrids that transcended a single tradition. Yet in spite of the remarkable artistic production that resulted from these interchanges, the complex vicissitudes of exchange between Egypt and the Classical world over the course of nearly 2500 years have not been comprehensively explored in a major exhibition or publication in the United States. It is precisely this aspect of Egypt’s history, however...
A COMPANION TO CITIES IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World offers in-depth coverage of the most important topics in the study of Greek and Roman urbanism. Bringing together contributions by an international panel of experts, this comprehensive resource addresses traditional topics in the study of ancient cities, including civic society, politics, and the ancient urban landscape, as well as less-frequently explored themes such as ecology, war, and representations of cities in literature, art, and political philosophy. Detailed chapters present critical discussions of research on Greco-Roman urban societies, city economies, key political events, significant c...
An inexplicably understudied field of classical scholarship, tragic reperformance, has been surveyed in its true dimension only in the very recent years. Building on the latest discussions on tragic restagings, this book provides a thorough survey of reperformance of Greek tragedy in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, also addressing its theatrical, political, and cultural context. In the fifth and fourth centuries, tragic restagings were strongly tied to cultural mobility and exchange. Poets, actors, texts, vases, and vase-painters were traveling, bridging the boundaries between mainland Greece and Magna Graecia, boosting the spread of theater, facilitating theatrical literacy, and setting a new theatrical status quo, according to which popular tragic plays were restaged, by mobile actors, in numerous dramatic festivals, in and out of Attica, with or without the supervision of their composers. This book offers a holistic examination of ancient reperformances of tragedy, enhancing our perception of them as a vital theatrical practice that played a major part in the development of the tragic genre in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.
In From Document to History: Epigraphic Insights into the Greco-Roman World, editors Carlos Noreña and Nikolaos Papazarkadas gather together an exciting set of original studies on Greek and Roman epigraphy, first presented at the Second North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (Berkeley 2016). Chapters range chronologically from the sixth century BCE to the fifth century CE, and geographically from Egypt and Asia Minor to the west European continent and British isles. Key themes include Greek and Roman epigraphies of time, space, and public display, with texts featuring individuals and social groups ranging from Roman emperors, imperial elites, and artists to gladiators, immigrants, laborers, and slaves. Several papers highlight the new technologies that are transforming our understanding of ancient inscriptions, and a number of major new texts are published here for the first time.