Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind PDF Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393244121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind PDF Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393244121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book

Book Description
"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

Introducing the Ancient Greeks

Introducing the Ancient Greeks PDF Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1847922589
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Who were the ancient Greeks? They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. But what was it that enabled them to achieve so much? The ancient Greeks were a geographically disparate people whose civilization lasted over twenty centuries - and that made us who we are today. And here Edith Hall gives us a revelatory way of viewing this scattered people, identifying ten unique personality traits that she shows to be unique and central to the widespread ancient Greeks. Hall introduces a people who are inquisitive, articulate and open-minded but also rebellious, individualistic, competitive and hedonistic. They prize excellence above all things but love to laugh. And, central to their identity, they are seafarers whose relationship with the sea underpins every aspect of their society. Expertly researched and elegantly told, this indispensable introduction unveils a civilization of incomparable richness and a people of astounding complexity.

Introducing the Ancient Greeks

Introducing the Ancient Greeks PDF Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448161622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. They wrote the timeless myths of Odysseus and Oedipus, and the histories of Leonidas’s three hundred Spartans and Alexander the Great. But who were the ancient Greeks? And what was it that enabled them to achieve so much? Here, Edith Hall gives us a revelatory way of viewing this geographically scattered people, visiting different communities at various key moments during twenty centuries of ancient history. Identifying ten unique traits central to the widespread ancient Greeks, Hall unveils a civilization of incomparable richness and a people of astounding complexity – and explains how they made us who we are today. ‘A thoroughly readable and illuminating account of this fascinating people... This excellent book makes us admire and like the ancient Greeks equally’ Independent ‘A worthy and lively introduction to one of the two groups of ancient peoples who really formed the western world’ Sunday Times ‘Throughout, Hall exemplifies her subjects’ spirit of inquiry, their originality and their open-mindedness’ Daily Telegraph ‘A book that is both erudite and splendidly entertaining’ Financial Times

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece PDF Author: Sarah B. Pomeroy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199846047
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A Political, Social, and Cultural History is a comprehensive and balanced history, covering the political, military, social, cultural, and economic history of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Era.

Aristotle's Way

Aristotle's Way PDF Author: Edith Hall
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735220816
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
From renowned classicist Edith Hall, ARISTOTLE'S WAY is an examination of one of history's greatest philosophers, showing us how to lead happy, fulfilled, and meaningful lives Aristotle was the first philosopher to inquire into subjective happiness, and he understood its essence better and more clearly than anyone since. According to Aristotle, happiness is not about well-being, but instead a lasting state of contentment, which should be the ultimate goal of human life. We become happy through finding a purpose, realizing our potential, and modifying our behavior to become the best version of ourselves. With these objectives in mind, Aristotle developed a humane program for becoming a happy person, which has stood the test of time, comprising much of what today we associate with the good life: meaning, creativity, and positivity. Most importantly, Aristotle understood happiness as available to the vast majority us, but only, crucially, if we decide to apply ourselves to its creation--and he led by example. As Hall writes, "If you believe that the goal of human life is to maximize happiness, then you are a budding Aristotelian." In expert yet vibrant modern language, Hall lays out the crux of Aristotle's thinking, mixing affecting autobiographical anecdotes with a deep wealth of classical learning. For Hall, whose own life has been greatly improved by her understanding of Aristotle, this is an intensely personal subject. She distills his ancient wisdom into ten practical and universal lessons to help us confront life's difficult and crucial moments, summarizing a lifetime of the most rarefied and brilliant scholarship.

Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel

Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel PDF Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500589
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The Greek romance was for the Roman period what epic was for the Archaic period or drama for the Classical: the central literary vehicle for articulating ideas about the relationship between self and community. This book offers a reading of the romance both as a distinctive narrative form (using a range of narrative theories) and as a paradigmatic expression of identity (social, sexual and cultural). At the same time it emphasises the elasticity of romance narrative and its ability to accommodate both conservative and transformative models of identity. This elasticity manifests itself partly in the variation in practice between different romancers, some of whom are traditionally Hellenocentric while others are more challenging. Ultimately, however, it is argued that it reflects a tension in all romance narrative, which characteristically balances centrifugal against centripetal dynamics. This book will interest classicists, historians of the novel and students of narrative theory.

Gymnastics of the Mind

Gymnastics of the Mind PDF Author: Raffaella Cribiore
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140084441X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book is at once a thorough study of the educational system for the Greeks of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and a window to the vast panorama of educational practices in the Greco-Roman world. It describes how people learned, taught, and practiced literate skills, how schools functioned, and what the curriculum comprised. Raffaella Cribiore draws on over 400 papyri, ostraca (sherds of pottery or slices of limestone), and tablets that feature everything from exercises involving letters of the alphabet through rhetorical compositions that represented the work of advanced students. The exceptional wealth of surviving source material renders Egypt an ideal space of reference. The book makes excursions beyond Egypt as well, particularly in the Greek East, by examining the letters of the Antiochene Libanius that are concerned with education. The first part explores the conditions for teaching and learning, and the roles of teachers, parents, and students in education; the second vividly describes the progression from elementary to advanced education. Cribiore examines not only school exercises but also books and commentaries employed in education--an uncharted area of research. This allows the most comprehensive evaluation thus far of the three main stages of a liberal education, from the elementary teacher to the grammarian to the rhetorician. Also addressed, in unprecedented detail, are female education and the role of families in education. Gymnastics of the Mind will be an indispensable resource to students and scholars of the ancient world and of the history of education.

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece PDF Author: Rowena Loverance
Publisher: Heinemann Library
ISBN: 9780600573876
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
See Through History is a series of information books for 8-12 year olds. Each book is packed with information, quotations and captions providing a thorough description of the times. This book explores Ancient Greece. Each book in the series features acetate-based cutaway illustrations.

Cleisthenes

Cleisthenes PDF Author: Sarah Parton
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 9780823938261
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Biography of the Athenian politician whose reforms provided ordinary citizens with more equal say in the state formerly run only by the upper class.

The Parthenon Enigma

The Parthenon Enigma PDF Author: Joan Breton Connelly
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385350503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.