Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity PDF Author: Gregory Crane
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520918746
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity PDF Author: Gregory Crane
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520918746
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 461

Get Book Here

Book Description
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.

Medieval Islamic Medicine

Medieval Islamic Medicine PDF Author: Peter E. Pormann
Publisher: New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys
ISBN: 9780748620678
Category : Islam
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An up-to-date survey of medieval Islamic medicine offering new insights to the role of medicine and physicians in medieval Islamic culture.

Hippocratic Recipes

Hippocratic Recipes PDF Author: Laurence M. V. Totelin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004171541
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Drawing on philological studies, social history and anthropology, this book offers the first extended study of the recipes included in the Hippocratic Corpus. It examines the links between oral and written traditions in the transmission of ancient pharmacological knowledge.

Priests, Tongues, and Rites

Priests, Tongues, and Rites PDF Author: Jacco Dieleman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047406745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This book is an investigation into the sphere of production and use of two related bilingual magical handbooks found as part of a larger collection of magical and alchemical manuscripts around 1828 in the hills surrounding Luxor, Egypt. Both handbooks, dating to the Roman period, contain an assortment of recipes for magical rites in the Demotic and Greek language. The library which comprises these two handbooks is nowadays better known as the Theban Magical Library. The book traces the social and cultural milieu of the composers, compilers and users of the extant spells through a combination of philology, sociolinguistics and cultural analysis. To anybody working on Greco-Roman Egypt, ancient magic, and bilingualism this study is of significant importance.

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture PDF Author: Clemente Marconi
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199783306
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 729

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Book Description
This handbook explores key aspects of art and architecture in ancient Greece and Rome. Drawing on the perspectives of scholars of various generations, nationalities, and backgrounds, it discusses Greek and Roman ideas about art and architecture, as expressed in both texts and images, along with the production of art and architecture in the Greek and Roman world.

Melania

Melania PDF Author: Catherine Michael Chin
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520379217
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Melania the Elder and her granddaughter Melania the Younger were major figures in early Christian history, using their wealth, status, and forceful personalities to shape the development of nearly every aspect of the religion we now know as Christianity. This volume examines their influence on late antique Christianity and provides an insightful portrait of their legacies in the modern world. Departing from the traditionally patriarchal view, Melania gives a poignant and sometimes surprising account of how the rise of Christian institutions in the Roman Empire shaped our understanding of women’s roles in the larger world.

Examined Lives

Examined Lives PDF Author: James Miller
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429957166
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 We all want to know how to live. But before the good life was reduced to ten easy steps or a prescription from the doctor, philosophers offered arresting answers to the most fundamental questions about who we are and what makes for a life worth living. In Examined Lives, James Miller returns to this vibrant tradition with short, lively biographies of twelve famous philosophers. Socrates spent his life examining himself and the assumptions of others. His most famous student, Plato, risked his reputation to tutor a tyrant. Diogenes carried a bright lamp in broad daylight and announced he was "looking for a man." Aristotle's alliance with Alexander the Great presaged Seneca's complex role in the court of the Roman Emperor Nero. Augustine discovered God within himself. Montaigne and Descartes struggled to explore their deepest convictions in eras of murderous religious warfare. Rousseau aspired to a life of perfect virtue. Kant elaborated a new ideal of autonomy. Emerson successfully preached a gospel of self-reliance for the new American nation. And Nietzsche tried "to compose into one and bring together what is fragment and riddle and dreadful chance in man," before he lapsed into catatonic madness. With a flair for paradox and rich anecdote, Examined Lives is a book that confirms the continuing relevance of philosophy today—and explores the most urgent questions about what it means to live a good life.

Individuals and Materials in the Greco-Roman Cults of Isis (SET)

Individuals and Materials in the Greco-Roman Cults of Isis (SET) PDF Author: Valentino Gasparini
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004381341
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1191

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Book Description
In Individuals and Materials in the Greco-Roman Cults of Isis Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers present a collection of reflections on the individuals and groups which animated one of Antiquity’s most dynamic, significant and popular religious phenomena: the reception of the cults of Isis and other Egyptian gods throughout the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. These communities, whose members seem to share the same religious identity, for a long time have been studied in a monolithic way through the prism of the Cumontian category of the “Oriental religions”. The 26 contributions of this book, divided into three sections devoted to the “agents”, their “images” and their “practices”, shed new light on this religious movement that appears much more heterogeneous and colorful than previously recognized.

Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca 680–850): The Sources

Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca 680–850): The Sources PDF Author: Leslie Brubaker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351953656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
Iconoclasm, the debate about the legitimacy of religious art that began in Byzantium around 730 and continued for nearly 120 years, has long held a firm grip on the historical imagination. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era is the first book in English to survey the original sources crucial for a modern understanding of this most elusive and fascinating period in medieval history. It is also the first book in any language to cover both the written and the visual evidence from this period, a combination of particular importance to the iconoclasm debate. The authors, an art historian and a historian who both specialise in the period, have worked together to provide a comprehensive overview of the visual and the written materials that together help clarify the complex issues of iconoclasm in Byzantium.

Art and the Early Greek State

Art and the Early Greek State PDF Author: Michael Shanks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521602853
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
A contribution to recent debates on emerging Greek city states in the first millennium BC.