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Looks at areas of the Mediterranean world in which Greek culture flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BC
This Oxford Companion to the ancient classical world is aimed at the general reader interested in learning more about the very bedrock of Western culture, covering such topics as history, morals, mythology, medicine and social life.
The third and final volume of a commentary on the history of the first 20 years of the Peloponnesian War written by the great fifth-century BC Greek historian Thucydides. Volume III covers the years 421-411 BC (Books 5.25 to 8.109). All Greek is translated, and there is a thematic Introduction.
This will be a 3 volume commentary on Thucydides. Appendices will appear in v.3 to be published some years hence.
A collection of seventeen essays by Simon Hornblower on the great fifth-century BC Greek historian Thucydides; other ancient Greek historians, notably Herodotus, also feature. Although most of the chapters have previously appeared in print, many have been extensively rewritten for this volume and all are provided with new prefaces.
'In requital for one man's sin, all Greece/ shall mourn the empty tombs of ten thousand of its children'. These lines from a powerful but neglected Greek poem, Lykophron's Alexandra, were admiringly imitated by Virgil. Priam's beautiful daughter, prophetic Kassandra, foresees her rape in Athena's temple by the hateful Greek Ajax at Troy's fall, and warns of disastrous returns (nostoi) for all the Greek 'heroes'. But Troy will rise again as Rome, founded by Trojan refugees. The Alexandra (also known as Kassandra) narrates Mediterranean foundation myths as failed Greek nostoi, and culminates in 'prophecies-after-the-event' of Roman rule over land and sea. This pseudonymous poem, a generic mix but closest to tragedy, is an ingeniously constructed masterpiece. It is ascribed to a third-century BCE tragedian, but was probably written c.190, when Rome had defeated Carthaginian Hannibal and was poised to humble the Seleukid king Antiochos III. The Alexandra anticipates, by over two millennia, modern Trojan War novels which adopt bitterly disillusioned female perspectives.
Within the great diversity of their world, the assertion of origin was essential to the ancient Greeks in defining their sense of who they were and how they distinguished themselves from neighbours and strangers. Each person's name might carry both identity and origin - 'I am' . . . inseparable from 'I come from' . . . Names have surfaced in many guises and locations - on coins and artefacts, embedded within inscriptions and manuscripts - carrying with them evidence even from prehistoric and preliterate times. The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names has already identified more than 200,000 individuals. The contributors to this volume draw on this resource to demonstrate the breadth of scholarly uses to which name evidence can be put. These essays narrate the stories of political and social change revealed by the incidence of personal names and cast a fascinating light upon both the natural and supernatural phenomena which inspired them. This volume offers dramatic illumination of the ways in which the ancient Greeks both created and interpreted their world through the specific language of personal names.
Treats a compelling narrative of two of history's most famous battles, and assists translation and literary and historical appreciation.
The 'Alexandra' attributed to Lykophron is a notoriously difficult poem but one that sheds crucial light on Greek religion, foundation myths, and myths of colonial identity. This book asserts its importance as a strongly political and historical document, and argues that the probable decade of its composition was a turning-point in Roman history.