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Author: Anton Powell
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1910589128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Nine new studies here explore, and reconstruct, determinant episodes of Greek, Hellenistic and Roman history. The authors argue that hindsight - especially in modern works - has falsified the past, by playing down or eliminating the record of ancient unfulfilled forecasts, and of trends in events which in the long term did not obviously prove predominant. The authors also highlight the efforts of the best-placed writers in Antiquity not to be misled by hindsight, but rather to give due weight to the working of hopes and fears, and of trends in events, which with remote retrospect would tend to be belittled or forgotten. The techniques demonstrated in this book open new fields of research across Ancient History: they illuminate almost every ancient episode for which there is evidence of what historical agents planned or anticipated. The authors show convincingly that, by giving due respect to trends observable, and to political predictions made, in Antiquity, historians of today are better placed to evaluate outcomes: to see how easily events might have developed differently, or even to show that concrete outcomes were different from those conventionally portrayed from hindsight.
Author: Anton Powell
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1910589128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Get Book
Book Description
Nine new studies here explore, and reconstruct, determinant episodes of Greek, Hellenistic and Roman history. The authors argue that hindsight - especially in modern works - has falsified the past, by playing down or eliminating the record of ancient unfulfilled forecasts, and of trends in events which in the long term did not obviously prove predominant. The authors also highlight the efforts of the best-placed writers in Antiquity not to be misled by hindsight, but rather to give due weight to the working of hopes and fears, and of trends in events, which with remote retrospect would tend to be belittled or forgotten. The techniques demonstrated in this book open new fields of research across Ancient History: they illuminate almost every ancient episode for which there is evidence of what historical agents planned or anticipated. The authors show convincingly that, by giving due respect to trends observable, and to political predictions made, in Antiquity, historians of today are better placed to evaluate outcomes: to see how easily events might have developed differently, or even to show that concrete outcomes were different from those conventionally portrayed from hindsight.
Author: Tim Howe
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1910589977
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
Recent scholars have analysed ways in which authors of the Roman era appropriated the figure of Alexander the Great. The essays in this collection cast a wider net, to show how Classical Greek, Hellenistic and Roman authors reinterpret and sometimes misinterpret information on ancient Macedonians to serve their own literary and political aims. Although Roman ideas pervade the historiographical tradition, this volume shows that the manipulation of ancient Macedonian history largely occurred much earlier. It reflected the complicated dynastic politics of the Argead royal house, the efforts of Alexander himself to redefine Macedonian kingship, and the competing strategies of the Successors to claim his legacy. Facing the complexity of the source tradition about the ancient Macedonians yields a richer and more balanced reflection of both the history and the historiography of this important and controversial people.
Author: Jacqueline Klooster
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350128562
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Crises resulting from war or other upheavals turn the lives of individuals upside down, and they can leave marks on a community for many years after the event. This volume aims to explore how such crises were remembered in the ancient world, and how communities reconstituted themselves after a crisis. Can crises serve as catalysts for innovation or change, and how does this work? What do crises reveal about the 'normality' against which they are defined and framed? People living in post-crisis societies have no choice but to adapt to the changes caused by crisis. Such adaptation entails the question of how the relationship between the pre-crisis situation and the new status quo is constructed, and by whom. Due to the reduced possibility of using the immediate past, which is tainted by conflict and bad memories, it may involve revisions of historical narratives about communal pasts and identities, through the selection of new 'anchors', and sometimes even a discarding of the old ones. Crises affect all areas of life, and crisis recovery likewise spans different spheres. This volume finds traces of such recovery strategies in texts as well as visual representations; in literary as well as in documentary texts; in official ideology as much as in subaltern responses. The contributors bring together the diverse testimonies for such ways of coping that have survived from antiquity.
Author: Kathryn Welch
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 191058911X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
Appian of Alexandria lived in the early-to-mid second century AD, a time when the pax Romana flourished. His Roman History traced, through a series of ethnographic histories, the growth of Roman power throughout Italy and the Mediterranean World. But Appian also told the story of the civil wars which beset Rome from the time of Tiberius Gracchus to the death of Sextus Pompeius Magnus. The standing of his work in modern times is paradoxical. Consigned to the third rank by nineteenth-century historiographers, and poorly served by translators, Appian's Roman History profoundly shapes our knowledge of Republican Rome, its empire and its internal politics. We need to know him better. This collection of 15 new papers from a distinguished international team studies both what Appian had to say and how he said it. The papers engage in a dialogue about the value of Appian's text as a source of history, the relationship between that history and his own times, and the impact on his narrative of the author's own opinions - most notably that Rome enjoyed divinely-ordained good fortune. Some authors demonstrate that Appian's text (and even his mistakes) can yield significant new information, others re-open the question of Appian's use of source material in the light of recent studies showing him to be far more than a transmitter of other people's work.
Author: Koen De Temmerman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107129125
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Explores narrative techniques in ancient biography and how they fictionalize narrative.
Author: Richard Evans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317181352
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
Syracuse possesses a unique place in the history of the ancient Mediterranean because of its contribution to Greek culture and political thought and practice. Even in the first century BC Cicero could still declare ’You have often heard that of all the Greek cities Syracuse is the greatest and most beautiful.’ Sicily’s strategic location in the Mediterranean brought the city prosperity and power, placing it in the first rank of states in the ancient world. The history and governance of the city were recorded from the fifth century BC and the volume of literary sources comes close to matching the records of Athens or Rome. Combining literary and material evidence this monograph traces the history of Syracuse, offering new arguments about the date of the city’s foundation, and continues through the fifth century when, as a democracy, Syracuse’s military strength grew to equal that of Athens or Sparta, surpassing them in the early fourth century under the tyrant Dionysius I. From ca. 350 BC, however, the city’s fortunes declined as the state was wracked with civil strife as the tyranny lost control. The result was a collapse so serious that the city faced complete and imminent destruction.
Author: Katharine Mawford
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110728796
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
Although the recent ‘memory boom’ has led to increasing interdisciplinary interest, there is a significant gap relating to the examination of this topic in Classics. In particular, there is need for a systematic exploration of ancient memory and its use as a critical and methodological tool for delving into ancient literature. The present volume provides just such an approach, theorising the use and role of memory in Graeco-Roman thought and literature, and building on the background of memory studies. The volume’s contributors apply theoretical models such as memoryscapes, civic and cultural memory, and memory loss to a range of authors, from Homeric epic to Senecan drama, and from historiography to Cicero’s recollections of performances. The chapters are divided into four sections according to the main perspective taken. These are: 1) the Mechanics of Memory, 2) Collective memory, 3) Female Memory, and 4) Oblivion. This modern approach to ancient memory will be useful for scholars working across the range of Greek and Roman literature, as well as for students, and a broader interdisciplinary audience interested in the intersection of memory studies and Classics.
Author: Paul Chrystal
Publisher: Fonthill Media
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
From Thermopylae to Marathon, discover the most important battles of the ancient Greek wars, which helped set the course of European history for centuries Examines the events leading up to each conflict and the social and political fallout Appraises military geniuses such as Sparta and AthensBeautifully illustrated with many rare and unpublished paintings, imagery and contemporary photographs One of the most popular areas of ancient history is war in the Greek world. The number of books, articles, webpages and blogs on every conceivable aspect of war in ancient Greece is endless and continues to grow. So why add to the pile? Wars and Battles of Ancient Greece is not just another arid account of conflict with endless, often exaggerated, casualty figures and repetitive tactics. It is different from other books in the field because it has context as its focus: each of the battles covered is, where sources permit, placed in its historical, political and social context: why was the battle fought, how was it fought, what was the outcome and what happened next? No war or battle has ever been fought in isolation – there is always a prelude, a ‘casus belli’ – an act or event that provokes or is used to justify war – and a series of consequences. These are revealed wherever possible for each of the wars and battles in this gripping book. In order to reinforce our focus on context, Wars and Battles of Ancient Greece includes chapters covering warfare in civilisations and cultures before Greece, the Greek war machine and Greek women and conflict. It is a detailed survey of conflict in ancient Greece from the Mycenaean Age to the end of the Peloponnesian War, based on primary sources – mainly Herodotus, Thucydides and other historians, but also poets, dramatists and inscriptional evidence.
Author: Rosie Harman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350159042
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
This book considers cultural identity and power relations in early fourth-century BCE Greece through a reading of Xenophon's historical narratives, the Hellenica, Anabasis and Cyropaedia. These texts depict conflicts between Greek states, conflicts between Greeks and non-Greeks, and relations between the elite individual and society. In all three texts, politically significant moments are imagined in visual terms. We witness spectacles of Spartan military victory, vistas of Asian landscape or displays of Persian imperial pomp, and historical protagonists are presented as spectators viewing and responding to events. Through this visual form of narration, the reader is encouraged imaginatively to place themselves in the position of the historical protagonists. In viewing events from different perspectives, and therefore occupying multiple, often conflicting political positions, the reader not only experiences the problems faced by historical actors, but becomes engaged in the political conflicts acted out in the narratives. The reader is prompted to take pleasure in the sight of Panhellenic achievement, but also to witness the divisions and conflicts between Greeks on class and ethnic lines. Similarly the reader is invited to identify with spectacular Greek and non-Greek figures of power as emblems of Greek imperial potential, but also to see through the eyes of those communities subjugated at their hands. The depiction of spectacles and spectators draws the reader into an active participation in the ideological contradictions of their time, in a period when Panhellenic aspiration co-existed with hegemonic competition between Greek states, and when Greeks could be both beneficiaries and victims of imperialism.
Author: Paul Chrystal
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473873959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Over some 1200 years, the Romans proved adept at learning from military disaster and this was key to their eventual success and hegemony. Roman Military Disasters covers the most pivotal and decisive defeats, from the Celtic invasion of 390 BC to Alaric's sack of Rome in AD 410. Paul Chrystal details the politics and strategies leading to each conflict, how and why the Romans were defeated, the tactics employed, the generals and the casualties. However, the unique and crucial element of the book is its focus on the aftermath and consequences of defeat and how the lessons learnt enabled the Romans, usually, to bounce back and win.
