This book is centered on the Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), on his two-year stay in Sicily in 1492-4 to study the ancient Greek language under one of its most distinguished contemporary teachers, the Byzantine A(c)migrA(c) Constantine Lascaris, and above all on his ascent of Mount Etna in 1493.
In the first century of the Common Era, two new belief systems entered long-established cultures with radically different outlooks and values: missionaries started to spread the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in Rome and the Buddha in China.
In the last twenty years, reception studies have significantly enhanced our understanding of the ways in which Classics has shaped modern Western culture, but very little attention has been directed toward the reception of classical architecture.
Evil Lords uses the prism of bad rule or tyranny to enhance our understanding of political discourse from the ancient world to the Renaissance, elucidating premodern notions of sovereignty as well as the relation between ethics and politics, the individual and society, power, and propaganda.
Aristophanes' engagement with tragedy is one of the most striking features of his comedies: Euripides appears repeatedly as a character in these plays, jokes about tragedy and tragic poets abound, and parodies of tragedy frequently underlie whole scenes and even the plots of these plays.
In his sixth satire, Juvenal speculates about how Roman wives busy themselves while their husbands are away, namely, by entertaining a revolving door of exotic visitors who include a eunuch of the eastern goddess Bellona, an impersonator of Egyptian Anubis, a Judean priestess, and Chaldean astrologers.
The Roman emperor Augustus gave his name to the age he dominated, from the latter half of the first century BC until the second decade of the following century.
The Roman emperor Augustus gave his name to the age he dominated, from the latter half of the first century BC until the second decade of the following century.
Across the Roman Empire, ubiquitous archaeological, art historical, and literary evidence attests to the significance of bathing for Romans' routines and relationships.
Inspiring reverence and blasphemy, combining paternal benignity with sexual violence, transcendent universality with tribal chauvinism, Jupiter represents both the best and the worst of ancient religion.
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'An absolute joy to read and an early contender for every list of History Books of the Year' Sunday Telegraph'On nearly every page a random passage takes one's breath away' The TimesHave you ever heard the march of legions on a lonely country road?
Although long considered to be a barren region on the periphery of ancient Chinese civilization, the southwest massif was once the political heartland of numerous Bronze Age polities.
In The History of the Destruction of Troy, Dares the Phrygian boldly claimed to be an eyewitness to the Trojan War, while challenging the accounts of two of the ancient world's most canonical poets, Homer and Virgil.
Aristophanes' engagement with tragedy is one of the most striking features of his comedies: Euripides appears repeatedly as a character in these plays, jokes about tragedy and tragic poets abound, and parodies of tragedy frequently underlie whole scenes and even the plots of these plays.
Rarely did ancient authors write about the lives of women; even more rarely did they write about the lives of ordinary women: not queens or heroines who influenced war or politics, not sensational examples of virtue or vice, not Christian martyrs or ascetics, but women of moderate status, who experienced everyday joys and sorrows and had everyday merits and failings.
This is a book about the ways in which various intellectuals in the post-classical Mediterranean imagined the human community as a unified, homogenous whole composed of a diversity of parts.
Two Greek cities which in their time were leading states in the Mediterranean world, Selinus in Sicily and Cyrene in Libya, set up inscriptions of the kind called sacred laws, but regulating worship on a larger scale than elsewhere - Selinus in the mid fifth century B.
Politeness and Politics in Cicero's Letters presents a fresh examination of the letters exchanged between Cicero and correspondents, such as Pompey, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony during the final turbulent decades of the Roman Republic.
A major new history of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, set in a larger global context than previous accountsPrevious accounts of the fall of the Inca empire have played up the importance of the events of one violent day in November 1532 at the highland Andean town of Cajamarca.
A major new history of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, set in a larger global context than previous accountsPrevious accounts of the fall of the Inca empire have played up the importance of the events of one violent day in November 1532 at the highland Andean town of Cajamarca.
Esteemed scholar David Leeming, who has authored more than twelve books on mythology, here offers the first comprehensive narrative study of the mythology of the Middle East, that tumultuous region that was the cradle of civilization.
This well-researched and inspiring collection of ten essays by leading American and European scholars challenges the tendency among scholars of Greek religion to ignore what have traditionally been called "e;magical"e; practices in ancient Greece.
In the first century of the Common Era, two new belief systems entered long-established cultures with radically different outlooks and values: missionaries started to spread the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in Rome and the Buddha in China.
