- The Classical Tradition
- The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome has been imitated, resisted, misunderstood, and reworked by every culture that followed. In this volume, some five hundred articles by a wide range of scholars investigate the afterlife of this rich heritage in the fields of literature, philosophy, art, architecture, history, politics, religion, and science. Arranged alphabetically from Academy to Zoology, the essays—designed and written to serve scholars, students, and the general reader alike—show how the Classical tradition has shaped human endeavors from art to government, mathematics to medicine, drama to urban planning, legal theory to popular culture.
- Hardcover January 2010
- Out of Athens
- The iconoclast of Classics, Page duBois refuses to act as border patrol for a sometimes fiercely protected traditional discipline. Instead, she incorporates insights from postcolonial, psychoanalytic, and postmodern theories into her nuanced close readings of ancient Greek texts. Out of Athens establishes a daring agenda for the next generation of Classicists and, for both the intimate friend of Greek texts and the freshly arrived reader, makes ancient Greeks new.
- Hardcover January 2010
- Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests
- Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests examines evidence for cultural interchange among the intellectual powerbrokers in Postclassic Mesoamerica, specifically those centered in the northern Maya lowlands and the central Mexican highlands. The volume includes a wealth of new data and interpretive frameworks in this comprehensive discussion of a critical time period in the Mesoamerican past.
- Hardcover December 2009
- Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century
- This fourth and final installment in Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century resumes the previous volume’s discussion of the Ghassanids by examining their economic, social, and cultural history. Throughout the volume, the author reveals the history of a fully developed and unique Christian-Arab culture. Shahîd exhaustively describes the society of the Ghassanids, and their contributions to the cultural environment that persisted in Oriens during the sixth century and continued into the period of the Umayyad caliphate.
- Hardcover December 2009
- The Roman Forum
- One of the most visited sites in Italy, the Roman Forum is also one of the best-known wonders of the Roman world. David Watkin sheds completely new light on the Forum, examining the roles of the ancient remains while revealing what exactly the standing structures embody—including the rarely studied medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque churches, as well as the nearby monuments that have important histories of their own.
- Hardcover December 2009
- Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World
- Slavery may no longer exist as a legal institution, but we still find many forms of non-freedom in contemporary societies. Arguing against the use of the term “slavery” for any extreme form of social dependency, Rotman shows instead that slavery and freedom are unrelated concepts. His work offers a radical new understanding of the geopolitical and religious dynamics that have defined and redefined slavery and freedom, in the past and in our own time.
- Hardcover November 2009
- Cicero, XVa, Orations
- Hardcover November 2009
- The Murder of Regilla
- Born to an illustrious Roman family in 125 BCE, Regilla was married at the age of fifteen to Herodes, a wealthy Greek. Twenty years later--and eight months pregnant with her sixth child--Regilla died under mysterious circumstances, after a blow to the abdomen delivered by Herodes's freedman. Though Herodes was charged, he was acquitted. Pomeroy's investigation suggests that despite Herodes's erection of numerous monuments to his deceased wife, he was in fact guilty of the crime.
- Paperback October 2009
- Becoming Byzantine
- Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium presents detailed information about children’s lives, and provides a basis for further study. This collection of eight articles drawn from a May 2006 Dumbarton Oaks symposium covers matters relevant to daily life such as the definition of children in Byzantine law, procreation, death, breastfeeding patterns, and material culture.
- Hardcover September 2009
- Paradise Earned
- This is a study of the twelve small gold lamellae from Crete that were tokens for entrance into a golden afterlife. The lamellae are placed within the context of a small corpus of similar texts, and published with extensive commentary on their topography, lettering and engraving, dialect and orthography, meter, chronology, and usage. This work adduces parallels to the texts on the lamellae from the Byzantine period and modern Greece to illuminate the everlasting and persistent human quest for "earning Paradise."
- Paperback July 2009
- Genos Dikanikon
- Under the Athenian democracy, litigants were expected to speak for themselves, though they could memorize a speech written for them. These amateur performances often manifested an unmanly yielding to emotions of anger or fear; professional speech, Bers seeks to demonstrate, was to a large degree crafted in reaction to amateur stumbling.
- Paperback July 2009
- The Politics of Ethnicity and the Crisis of the Peloponnesian League
- The crisis of Spartan power in the first half of the fourth century has been connected to Spartan inability to manage the hegemony built on the ruins of the Athenian Empire. The present book offers a new perspective, suggesting that the crisis that finally brought down Sparta was in important ways a result of centrifugal impulses within the Peloponnesian League.
- Paperback July 2009
- The Lost Capital of Byzantium
Clinging to a rugged hillside in the lush valley of Sparta lies Mistra, one of the most dramatically beautiful Byzantine cities in Greece, a place steeped in history, myth, and romance. Sir Steven Runciman, one of the most distinguished historians of the Byzantine period, traveled to Mistra on numerous occasions and became enchanted with the place. Now published in paperback for the first time, Lost Capital of Byzantium tells the story of this once-great city—its rise and fall and its place in the history of the Peloponnese and the Byzantine empire.
- Paperback June 2009
- Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity
From the Iliad to Aristophanes, from the gospel of Matthew to Augustine, Greek and Latin texts are constellated with descriptive images of dreams. This cultural history of dreams in antiquity draws on both contemporary post-Freudian science and careful critiques of the ancient texts. Harris takes an elusive subject and writes about it with rigor and precision, reminding us of specificities, contexts, and changing attitudes through history.
- Hardcover June 2009
- Cleopatra and Rome
- In this beautifully illustrated book, we experience the synthesis of Cleopatra's and Rome's defining moments through surviving works of art and other remnants of what was once an opulent material culture. This culture best chronicles Cleopatra's legend and suggests her subtle but indelible mark on the art of imperial Rome at the critical moment of its inception.
- Paperback May 2009
- The Learned Banqueters, V, Books 10.420e-11
- In The Learned Banqueters, Athenaeus describes a series of dinner parties at which the guests quote extensively from Greek literature, preserving a wide range of information about different cuisines and foodstuffs; the music and entertainments that ornamented banquets; and the intellectual talk that was the heart of Greek conviviality.
- Hardcover May 2009
- The Roman Triumph
- A radical reexamination of the most extraordinary of ancient ceremonies, this book explores the magnificence of the Roman Triumph--but also its darker side, as it prompted the Romans to question as well as celebrate military glory. This richly illustrated work is a testament to the profound importance of the triumph in Roman culture--and for monarchs and generals ever since.
- Paperback May 2009
- Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, Volume 6
The combined Dumbarton Oaks and Fogg collection of Byzantine seals is one of the largest in the world, containing 17,000 specimens. Volume 6 in the catalogue presents the seals of emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople. More than 250 seals are illustrated and accompanied—where appropriate—by a full commentary regarding each specimen’s date, biographical information on its owner, peculiarities of orthography, and iconographic features.
- Hardcover April 2009
- Byzantine Magic
- The authors reveal the scope, the forms, and the functioning of magic in Byzantine society, throwing light on a hitherto relatively little-known aspect of Byzantine culture, and, at the same time, expanding upon the contemporary debates concerning magic and its roles in pre-modern societies.
- Paperback March 2009
- East & West
The papers in this volume are based on a 2006 Princeton University symposium in honor of Glen W. Bowersock on the occasion of his retirement from the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study. The topics offered in East and West range throughout the ancient world from the second century bce to late antiquity, from Hellenistic Greece and Republican Rome to Egypt and Arabia, from the Second Sophistic to Roman imperial discourse, from Sulla’s self-presentation in his memoirs to charitable giving among the Manichaeans in Egypt.
- Hardcover March 2009
- Greetings in the Lord
- This is the first book-length study on Christians in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the site where some of the most important and oldest fragments of early Christian books were unearthed. Bringing the people in these dry papyrus letters and documents back to life, the book reveals how diverse Christians lived in this city of diverse situations.
- Paperback March 2009
- Lighting in Early Byzantium
- This book is the first general survey of lighting in Byzantium. The first part of the book discusses the technology and types of lighting devices and explains their decorative symbolism and social function. The second half illustrates this narrative by drawing on a Dumbarton Oaks exhibition.
- Paperback March 2009
- Love for Lydia
- This generously illustrated volume, presents new studies by scholars closely involved with Professor Greenewalt’s excavations during the Sardis Expedition in western Turkey.
- Hardcover February 2009
- Xenophon's Retreat
- In The Expedition of Cyrus, Xenophon told how, in 401 b.c., a band of unruly Greek mercenaries traveled east to fight for the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to wrest the throne from his brother. With this first masterpiece of Western history forming the backbone of his book, Robin Waterfield explores what remains unsaid and assumed in Xenophon's account. The result is a nuanced and dramatic perspective on a critical moment in history that may tell us as much about our present-day adventures in the Middle East.
- Paperback February 2009
- Italy and Its Invaders
- From the earliest times, successive waves of foreign invaders have left their mark on Italy. Beginning with Germanic invasions that undermined the Roman Empire and culminating with the establishment of the modern nation, Girolamo Arnaldi explores the dynamic exchange between outsider and “native.”
- Paperback February 2009
- Euripides, VIII, Fragments
- The extant plays and the fragments together make Euripides by far the best known of the classic Greek tragedians. This edition of the fragments, concluded in this second volume, offers the first complete English translation together with a selection of testimonia bearing on the content of the plays. The texts are based on the recent comprehensive edition of R. Kannicht.
- Hardcover January 2009
- Histoires Grecques
- Sartre spans the grand narrative of Greek culture over a thousand years and a vast expanse of land and sea. Ranging from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean world, these excursions amount to a panoramic vision of one of the most important civilizations of all time.
- Hardcover January 2009
- Demons and Dancers
- Compared to the wealth of information available to us about classical tragedy and comedy, not much is known about the culture of pantomime, mime, and dance in late antiquity. Webb fills this gap in our knowledge of the ancient world and provides us with a detailed look at social life in the late antique period through an investigation of its performance culture.
- Hardcover January 2009
- Commentaries on Plato, Volume 1, Phaedrus and Ion
- Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus, was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. This volume contains Ficino’s extended analysis and commentary on the Phaedrus.
- Hardcover December 2008
- The Fires of Vesuvius
- Although Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem, Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, she offers us the big picture of the inhabitants of the lost city.
- Hardcover December 2008
See also: All Books in HISTORY.