Author: Robert ParkerPublisher:
ISBN: 9782875623980
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Cleomenes on the Acropolis and Other Studies in Greek Religion and Society
Author: Robert ParkerPublisher:
ISBN: 9782875623980
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Religious Life in Late Classical and Hellenistic Rhodes
Author: Juliane ZachhuberPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198897448
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 437
Book Description
The ancient state of Rhodes was famous for many things in the Hellenistic period; it emerged as an economic powerhouse thanks to its strategic position on maritime trade routes, its status further bolstered by its proud independence in an era of great kings, and its cultural successes and heritage celebrated by contemporaries as well as later writers. But what did this state look like on the inside, and what social and religious forces contributed to its success? This book explores the origins of the Rhodian state in the late fifth century BC, a union born out of three separate city-states, Lindos, Cameiros, and Ialysos. By digging deep into the abundant epigraphic culture that survives, narratives emerge that tell the stories of these Rhodians and their communities. Despite the political unification and the foundation of a famed and successful capital city, Rhodes-town, the three old centres continued to exhibit distinctive and seemingly lively local religious cultures. What these looked like, and the question of whether they indicate cultic vitality rather than ossification, is considered in detail by examining the local pantheons and the religious dynamics and interactions that characterised and shaped them. Pulling together the diverse threads and local customs, a diachronic religious history of Rhodes is sketched. The role religion played in the social landscape of Hellenistic Rhodes is addressed through a thorough examination of priesthoods. Finally, providing a counterbalance to the institutional side of religion, the lived experience of Rhodian religious associations is depicted. The resulting picture offers a nuanced insight into the religious life and history of a Hellenistic city-state.
Singing for the Gods
Author: Barbara KowalzigPublisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191527513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528
Book Description
Singing for the Gods develops a new approach towards an old question in the study of religion - the relationship of myth and ritual. Focusing on ancient Greek religion, Barbara Kowalzig exploits the joint occurrence of myth and ritual in archaic and classical Greek song-culture. She shows how choral performances of myth and ritual, taking place all over the ancient Greek world in the early fifth century BC, help to effect social and political change in their own time. Religious song emerges as integral to a rapidly changing society hovering between local, regional, and panhellenic identities and between aristocratic rule and democracy. Drawing on contemporary debates on myth, ritual, and performance in social anthropology, modern history, and theatre studies, this book establishes Greek religion's dynamic role and gives religious song-culture its deserved place in the study of Greek history.
Military Leaders and Sacred Space in Classical Greek Warfare
Author: Sonya NevinPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786730677
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The ancient Greeks attributed great importance to the sacred during war and campaigning, as demonstrated from their earliest texts. Among the first four lines of the Iliad, for example, is a declaration that Apollo began the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon and sent a plague upon the Greek army because its leader, Agamemnon, had mistreated Apollo's priest. In this first in-depth study of the attitude of military commanders towards holy ground, Sonya Nevin addresses the customs and conduct of these leaders in relation to sanctuaries, precincts, shrines, temples and sacral objects. Focusing on a variety of Greek kings and captains, the author shows how military leaders were expected to react to the sacred sites of their foes. She further explores how they were likely to respond, and how their responses shaped the way such generals were viewed by their communities, by their troops, by their enemies and also by those like Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon who were writing their lives. This is a groundbreaking study of the significance of the sacred in warfare and the wider culture of antiquity.
Ideology of Democratic Athens
Author: Barbato Matteo BarbatoPublisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474466451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
Investigates the construction of democratic ideology in Classical Athens through a study of the social memory of Athens' mythical pastProposes a novel approach to Athenian democratic ideology that opens new frontiers of investigation in ancient history and the social sciencesThe introduction clearly sets out the aims and methodology of the book and its place within the scholarship in ancient history and the social sciencesFour case studies illuminate the impact of Athenian democratic institutions on ideology, myth, and the use of social memoryOffers a long-awaited new interpretation of the Athenian funeral oration for the war deadOffers clear overviews of Athenian democratic institutions (e.g., Assembly, Council, lawcourts) based on the most recent scholarshipProvides up-to-date overviews of several values in Greek thought (e.g., charis, hybris, eugeneia)The debate on Athenian democratic ideology has long been polarised around two extremes. A Marxist tradition views ideology as a cover-up for Athens' internal divisions. Another tradition, sometimes referred to as culturalist, interprets it neutrally as the fixed set of ideas shared by the members of the Athenian community. Matteo Barbato addresses this dichotomy by providing a unitary approach to Athenian democratic ideology. Analysing four different myths from the perspective of the New Institutionalism, he demonstrates that Athenian democratic ideology was a fluid set of ideas, values and beliefs shared by the Athenians as a result of a constant ideological practice influenced by the institutions of the democracy. He shows that this process entailed the active participation of both the mass and the elite and enabled the Athenians to produce multiple and compatible ideas about their community and its mythical past.
Cleomenes on the Acropolis
Author: Robert ParkerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 50
Book Description
The Spartan king Cleomenes, having seized the acropolis of Athens in 507 BC with the aim of suppressing the young democracy, is ordered by the priestess of Athena to withdraw from the goddess's shrine, where no Dorian is permitted to enter. Robert Parker uses this incident to illustrate some of the multiple types of question that a Greek historian may choose to confront in the late 20th century - questions about political history, about gender relations, about ethnicity. In particular, he takes up the priestess's attempt to debar a stranger from a sanctuary on ethnic grounds, and reflects on the role of shared cults in creating group solidarity at almost every level of society in Greece.
Athenian Religion
Author: Robert ParkerPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019815240X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
Robert Parker investigates the relation between religion and political prestige, considers the introduction of new cults, and looks in detail at such key personalities and events in the religious history of Athens as Lycurgus the Eteoboutad and his religious policies, and the trial of Socrates. The period covered is roughly that from 750 to 250 BC.
The Greek World 479–323 BC
Author: Simon HornblowerPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136831266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
Book Description
This is an indispensable guide to classical Greek history since its first publication. Now Simon Hornblower has comprehensively rewritten and revised his original text, bringing it up to date for another new generation of readers.
Greeks And Barbarians
Author: Harrison Thomas HarrisonPublisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474468918
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
How did the Greeks view foreign peoples? This book considers what the Greeks thought of foreigners and their religions, cultures and politics, and what these beliefs and opinions reveal about the Greeks. The Greeks were occasionally intrigued by the customs and religions of the many different peoples with whom they came into contact; more often they were disdainful or dismissive, tending to regard non-Greeks as at best inferior, and at worst as candidates for conquest and enslavement. Facing up to this less attractive aspect of the classical tradition is vital, Thomas Harrison argues, to seeing both what the ancient world was really like and the full nature of its legacy in the modern. In this book he brings together outstanding European and American scholarship to show the difference and complexity of Greek representations of foreign peoples - or barbarians, as the Greeks called them - and how these representations changed over time.The book looks first at the main sources: the Histories of Herodotus, Greek tragedy, and Athenian art. Part II examines how the Greeks distinguished themselves from barbarians through myth, language and religion. Part III considers Greek representations of two different barbarian peoples - the allegedly decadent and effeminate Persians, and the Egyptians, proverbial for their religious wisdom. In part IV three chapters trace the development of the Greek-barbarian antithesis in later history: in nineteenth-century scholarship, in Byzantine and modern Greece, and in western intellectual history.Of the twelve chapters six are published in English for the first time. The editor has provided an extensive general introduction, as well as introductions to the parts. The book contains two maps, a guide to further reading and an intellectual chronology. All passages of ancient languages are translated, and difficult terms are explained.
Divine Talk
Author: Gunther MartinPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199560226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
The author examines the references to religion in the speeches of Demosthenes and other Athenian orators in the 4th century BC. He demonstrates the role religion plays in the rhetorical strategy of speeches in political trials and deals with speeches in private trials, in which religious references are far scarcer.