The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization PDF Download

Author: Simon Hornblower
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198706774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 907

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Book Description
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.

Author: Stephen P. Kershaw
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1849018006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
A general introduction to the classical world from its origins to the fall of the Roman Empire. The book focuses on questions of how we know about Classical civilization from archaeology and history; deals with the Mycenaean era and the world of Myth and Epic in Homer's Iliad & Odyssey; gives an outline of Greek history in the 5th & 4th Centuries BC; looks at Greek social life and the alternative model of Sparta, and considers the achievements of the Greeks in their art and architecture, tragedy and comedy. Turning to Rome, it engages with Roman history, the Roman Epic tradition, the fascinating features of Roman social life, analyses Roman satire, explores the urban environment in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and concludes with the End of Rome.

Author: Fiona McHardy
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415309585
Category : Civilization, Ancient
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This book explores how women in antiquity influenced cultural spheres normailly thought of as male.

Author: Richard Alston
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317976428
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
This new edition of Aspects of Roman History 31 BC- AD 117 provides an easily accessible guide to the history of the early Roman Empire. Taking the reader through the major political events of the crucial first 150 years of Roman imperial history, from the Empire’s foundation under Augustus to the height of its power under Trajan, the book examines the emperors and key events that shaped Rome’s institutions and political form. Blending social and economic history with political history, Richard Alston’s revised edition leads students through important issues, introducing sources, exploring techniques by which those sources might be read, and encouraging students to develop their historical judgement. The book includes: chapters on each of the emperors in this period, exploring the successes and failures of each reign, and how these shaped the empire, sections on social and economic history, including the core issues of slavery, social mobility, economic development and change, gender relations, the rise of new religions, and cultural change in the Empire, an expanded timeframe, providing more information on the foundation of the imperial system under Augustus and the issues relating to Augustan Rome, a glossary and further reading section, broken down by chapter. This expanded and revised edition of Aspects of Roman History, covering an additional 45 years of history from Actium to the death of Augustus, provides an invaluable introduction to Roman Imperial history, surveying the way in which the Roman Empire changed the world and offering critical perspectives on how we might understand that transformation. It is an important resource for any student of this crucial and formative period in Roman history.

Author: Martin Bernal
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978807139
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
Winner of the 1990 American Book Award What is classical about Classical civilization? In one of the most audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the foundation of our thinking about this question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. But these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied or suppressed since the eighteenth century—chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers—Aryans—from the North. But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this “Aryan model.” They did not see their institutions as original, but as derived from the East and from Egypt in particular. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal links a wide range of areas and disciplines—drama, poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of “modern scholarship.”

Author: Colin McEvedy
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141967633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
From Alexandria to York, this unique illustrated guide allows us to see the great centres of classical civilization afresh. The key feature of Cities of the Classical World is 120 specially drawn maps tracing each city's thoroughfares and defences, monuments and places of worship. Every map is to the same scale, allowing readers for the first time to appreciate visually the relative sizes of Babylon and Paris, London and Constantinople. There is also a clear, incisive commentary on each city's development, strategic importance, rulers and ordinary inhabitants. This compelling and elegant atlas opens a new window on to the ancient world, and will transform the way we see it.

Author: Stephen Mennell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351227009
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
In recent times, especially under the influence of postmodernism, culture has often been construed as a critique of modernity. This wide-ranging and comprehensive collection of readings shows that such issues have always been at the centre of thought about the relationship between culture and civilization The readings are divided into three sections, linking the civilization debate to political theory, to the cultural debate and to the sociology and anthropology. The substantial extracts included give students a rare chance to engage at length with classic texts to appreciate the nature of the battle between the Enlightenment and its critics which has shaped current thought. Classical Readings on Culture and Civilisation presents essays from Immanuel Kant, Adam Ferguson, Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Friedrich von Schiller, Friedrich Nietzche, Georg Simmel, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Lucien Febvre, Alfred Weber, Robert E. Park and Norbert Elias.

Author: Nigel Spivey
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681771918
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
A masterly investigation into the Classical roots of Western civilization, taking the reader on an illuminating journey from Troy, Athens, and Sparta to Utopia, Alexandria, and Rome. An authoritative and accessible study of the foundations, development, and enduring legacy of the cultures of Greece and Rome, centered on ten locations of seminal importance in the development of Classical civilization. Starting with Troy, where history, myth and cosmology fuse to form the origins of Classical civilization, Nigel Spivey explores the contrasting politics of Athens and Sparta, the diffusion of classical ideals across the Mediterranean world, Classical science and philosophy, the eastward export of Greek culture with the conquests of Alexander the Great, the power and spread of the Roman imperium, and the long Byzantine twilight of Antiquity.

Author: Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500237267
Category : Civilization, Western
Languages : en
Pages : 799

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Book Description
This publication celebrates a major exhibition shown at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice in 1996 - a detailed study of Greek civilisation in the Western world. From the 8th century BC, Greece enjoyed an era of exceptional development and colonial expansion. New settlements sprang up along the west coast of Italy, from the Bay of Naples and the Gulf of Tarentum southwards to Sicily. Prosperity came quickly to these Western colonies: art, architecture, politics, religion, literature and science flourished as a result of a dynamic fusion of cultures, marking the beginning of an age of intense creativity. This book contains visual and textual documentation of this formative period of Greek history. Based on the collection of artefacts in the Palazzo Grassi exhibition, it contains photographs and 60 essays to survey the subject in broad detail. Following a chronological path, the book traces the diffusion of Greek influence in the West, exploring every aspect of the new societies from town planning and economy to the evolution of the Greek alphabet; from the maritime adventures of the first Achaen navigators to the revolutionary thought of the first philosophers.

Author: Simon Hornblower
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191016756
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 907

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Book Description
What did the ancient Greeks eat and drink? What role did migration play? Why was emperor Nero popular with the ordinary people but less so with the upper classes? Why (according to ancient authors) was Oedipus ('with swollen foot') so called? For over 2,000 years the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome have captivated our collective imagination and provided inspiration for so many aspects of our lives, from culture, literature, drama, cinema, and television to society, education, and politics. Many of the roots of the way life is lived in the West today can be traced to the ancient civilizations, not only in politics, law, technology, philosophy, and science, but also in social and family life, language, and art. Beautiful illustrations, clear and authoritative entries, and a useful chronology and bibliography make this Companion the perfect guide for readers interested in learning more about the Graeco-Roman world. As well as providing sound information on all aspects of classical civilization such as history, politics, ethics, morals, law, society, religion, mythology, science and technology, language, literature, art, and scholarship, the entries in the Companion reflect the changing interdisciplinary aspects of classical studies, covering broad thematic subjects, such as race, nationalism, gender, ethics, and ecology, confirming the impact classical civilizations have had on the modern world.