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This essay delves into the most intimate secret of Naples through an archaeoastronomical inquiry. It demonstrates that religious and philosophical motivations were central to the urban planning of its ancient Greek centre, Neapolis, constructed in the 6th- 5th centuries BC by Cumaeans and other Greek colonists. The design of the city's streets and its distinctive geographical-astronomical orientation evoked the cults of Apollo (the Greek Sun-god) and Parthenope (the local Numen, who reminds the mythical Sibyl of Cumae) on solstices and equinoxes. Neapolis' street grid was also inspired by Pythagorean cosmology, as it was designed with golden ratio and decagonal proportions. These elements combined to make Neapolis a perfect microcosm, or better yet, a temple-city centred on the cult of the Sun and Parthenope. Finally, the city’s religious traditions likely increased the public impact of the martyrdom of Saint Januarius, facilitating the Christianization of Naples in the 4th century AD. Naples’ ancient streets, culture, and Cathedral still preserve the legacy of Neapolis' solar traditions in their geometries, symbols, hymns, sweets, mosaics, and relics
Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language provides an introduction to the language traditionally called Serbo-Croatian, although it is also referred to as Serbian or Croatian. There are two main variants of the language: Croatian (Western) and Serbian (Eastern). Unique in its equal treatment of the two principal variants, this book presents the two alphabets used (Latin and Cyrillic), the representation of lexical items specific to each variant, and pronunciation and syntactic differences. A dictionary is also included.
In Making the New World Their Own, Qiong Zhang offers a systematic study of how Chinese scholars in the late Ming and early Qing came to understand that the earth is shaped as a globe. This notion arose from their encounters with Matteo Ricci, Giulio Aleni and other Jesuits. These encounters formed a fascinating chapter in the early modern global integration of space. It unfolded as a series of mutually constitutive and competing scholarly discourses that reverberated in fields from cosmology, cartography and world geography to classical studies. Zhang demonstrates how scholars such as Xiong Mingyu, Fang Yizhi, Jie Xuan, Gu Yanwu, and Hu Wei appropriated Jesuit ideas to rediscover China’s place in the world and reconstitute their classical tradition. Winner of the Chinese Historians in the United States (CHUS) "2015 Academic Excellence Award"
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The last dedicated book on ancient geography was published more than sixty years ago. Since then new texts have appeared (such as the Artemidoros palimpsest), and new editions of existing texts (by geographical authorities who include Agatharchides, Eratosthenes, Pseudo-Skylax and Strabo) have been produced. There has been much archaeological research, especially at the perimeters of the Greek world, and a more accurate understanding of ancient geography and geographers has emerged. The topic is therefore overdue a fresh and sustained treatment. In offering precisely that, Duane Roller explores important topics like knowledge of the world in the Bronze Age and Archaic periods; Greek expansion into the Black Sea and the West; the Pythagorean concept of the earth as a globe; the invention of geography as a discipline by Eratosthenes; Polybios the explorer; Strabo's famous Geographica; the travels of Alexander the Great; Roman geography; Ptolemy and late antiquity; and the cultural reawakening of antique geographical knowledge in the Renaissance, including Columbus' use of ancient sources.
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