Revealing Antiquity

Bracht Branham expounds with sophistication and subtlety the essential ingredients of Lucian’s satirical humor. He makes frequent reference to its importance for comic theory and literary history.

In an analysis drawing upon Greek drama, myths, vase paintings, religious practices, the philosophers, and the Hippocratic medical writings, Sissa draws striking conclusions about the classical conceptions of sexual purity and of the female body as vehicle and vessel.

A Chronicle of the Last Pagans is a history of the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire as told from the perspective of the defeated: the adherents of the mysteries, cults, and philosophies that dominated Greco-Roman culture.

Ancient Greek culture is often described as a miracle, owing little to its neighbors. Walter Burkert argues against a distorted view, toward a more balanced picture. “Under the influence of the Semitic East—from writers, craftsmen, merchants, healers—Greek culture began its unique flowering, soon to assume cultural hegemony in the Mediterranean.”

This is a book about language, theatricality, and empire—about how the Roman emperor dramatized his rule and how his subordinates in turn staged their response. Informed by theories of dramaturgy, sociology, new historicism, and cultural criticism, this close reading of literary and historical texts gives us a new perspective on the politics of the Roman empire—and on the languages and representation of power.

In Prophets and Emperors, David Potter shows us how prophecy worked, how it could empower, and how the diverse inhabitants of the Roman Empire used it to make sense of their world.

Hypatia—brilliant mathematician, eloquent Neoplatonist, and a woman renowned for her beauty—was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians in Alexandria in 415 and has been a legend ever since. In this engrossing book, Dzielska searches behind the legend to bring us the real story of Hypatia’s life and death, and new insight into her colorful world.

In this dazzling commentary on Greek and Roman myth and society, weaving emerges as a metaphor rich with possibility. From rituals symbolizing the cohesion of society to the erotic and marital significance of weaving, this lively book defines the logic of one of the central concepts in Greek and Roman thought.

Ancient Greeks and Romans often turned to magic to achieve personal goals. Magical rites were seen as a route for direct access to the gods, for material gain and for spiritual satisfaction. In this fascinating survey of magical beliefs and practices from the sixth century BCE through late antiquity, Fritz Graf sheds new light on ancient religion.

Paul Zanker, a noted authority on Roman art and architecture, shows us the images that marked Pompeii’s development from country town to Roman imperial city. At home or in public, at work or at ease, Pompeians and their world come alive in Zanker’s masterly rendering.

From the Homeric age to Byzantium, peoples and nations sharing the same fictive ancestry appealed to their kinship when forging military alliances, settling disputes, or negotiating trade connections. In this intriguing study of the political uses of perceived kinship, Christopher P. Jones gives us an unparalleled view of mythic belief in action and addresses fundamental questions about communal and national identity.

Western history is split into two discontinuous eras, Aldo Schiavone tells us: the ancient world was fundamentally different from the modern one. He locates the essential difference in a series of economic factors: a slave-based economy, relative lack of mechanization and technology, the dominance of agriculture over urban industry.

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928) is the most famous female Classicist in history, the author of books that revolutionized our understanding of Greek culture and religion. This lively and innovative portrayal of a fascinating woman raises the question of who wins (and how) in the competition for academic fame.

In this highly original work, Kelly paints a remarkable picture of running a superstate. He portrays a complex system of government openly regulated by networks of personal influence and the payment of money. Focusing on the Roman Empire after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, Kelly illuminates a period of increasingly centralized rule through an ever more extensive and intrusive bureaucracy.

In the past century, exploration and serendipity have uncovered mosaic after mosaic in the Near East—maps, historical images and religious scenes constituting a treasure of new testimony from antiquity. In them, Bowersock finds historical evidence, illustrations of literary and mythological tradition, religious icons, and monuments to civic pride.

Heroes and heroines in antiquity inhabited a space somewhere between gods and humans. In this detailed, yet brilliantly wide-ranging analysis, Christopher Jones starts from literary heroes such as Achilles and moves to the historical record of those exceptional men and women who were worshiped after death. This book, wholly new and beautifully written, rescues the hero from literary metaphor and vividly restores heroism to the reality of ancient life.

The slave and gladiator Spartacus has been the subject of myth-making in his own time and of movie-making in ours. Aldo Schiavone brings him squarely into the arena of serious history. Spartacus emerges here as the commander of an army, whose aim was to incite Italy to revolt against Rome and to strike at the very heart of the imperial system.

The transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian is one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center was sex. Kyle Harper examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution.

Wishing to ingratiate himself with Rome, Herod the Great built theaters, amphitheaters, and hippodromes to bring pagan entertainments of all sorts to Palestine. Zeev Weiss explores how the indigenous Jewish and Christian populations responded, as both spectators and performers, to these cultural imports, which left a lasting imprint on the region.

A. A. Long’s study of Greek notions of mind and human selfhood is anchored in questions of universal interest. What happens to us when we die? How is the mind or soul related to the body? Are we responsible for our own happiness? Can we achieve autonomy? Long shows that Greek thinkers’ modeling of the mind gave us metaphors that we still live by.