Bøger i Greek Culture in the Roman World serien

"A Greek declamation was an 'imaginary speech': a fictitious speech composed for a rhetorical scenario set in classical Greece. Although such speeches began as rhetorical exercises, under the high Roman empire they developed into a full-blown prestigious genre in their own right. This first monograph on Greek declamation for nearly forty years re-evaluates a genre that was central to Greek imperial literature and to ancient and modern notions of the 'Second Sophistic'. Rejecting traditional conceptions of the genre as 'nostalgic', this book considers the significance of Greek declamation's reenactment of classical history for its own times and integrates the genre into the wider history of the period. It shows through extended readings how the genre came to constitute a powerful and subtle instrument of identity formation and social interaction, and a site for free thinking on issues of major contemporary importance such as imperialism and inter-polis relations"--

The first literary and cultural reading of Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica, a major Greek epic from the height of the Roman Empire which tells the story 'in between' Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and reveals the aesthetic and identity politics of the era. Important for understanding Homer and epic in Greco-Roman culture.

Argues for the need to rethink the place of late Hellenistic literature within the wider landscape of Greek and Roman literary history. Explores a wide range of texts and genres, in prose and verse, showing how they engaged with their social, cultural and political contexts and with each other.

This book will appeal to those interested in the power of funerary art to shape views of life and death; in how ancient peoples used mythology to make sense of their world and their final departure from it; and in the relationship between late Roman and early Christian imagery.

Explores how literary form changes when Christianity and rabbinic Judaism take shape. By reading little-known but hugely influential texts, this book opens a new and exciting vision of how the literature of the first millennium shaped culture.

With trademark versatility and brilliance, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill explores how Christianity transformed humanity's relationship with time in late antiquity. New ways of conceptualizing and experiencing time were developed, and even today we live in the shadow of this revolution.

This is a book for readers who are fascinated by the Moon and the earliest speculations about life on other worlds. It takes the reader on a journey from the earliest Greek poetry, philosophy and science, through Plutarch's mystical doctrines to the thrilling lunar adventures of Lucian of Samosata.

Sexy, scintillating, and sometimes scandalous, Greek epigrams from the age of the Emperor Justinian commemorate the survival of the sensual in a world transformed by Christianity. This book will appeal to literary scholars and historians interested in Greek poetry, Late Antiquity, Byzantine studies, early Christianity, gender, and sexuality.

Explores the critical engagement of Porphyry of Tyre with the processes of Hellenism in late antiquity. Based on a careful treatment of all the relevant remains of Porphyry's work, the book argues for a complex unity of thought in the philosopher's work in terms of philosophical translation.

Vitruvius' De architectura is a central but mysterious text for students and scholars of classics, art history, architecture, and Renaissance studies. This volume analyses his authorial persona and his architectural descriptions, revealing a nuanced response to the literary, cultural, social, and intellectual climate of the Augustan Age.

This book provides a new interpretation of Nemrud Dag, a key Hellenistic monument with both Greek and Persian elements. It develops a novel approach to understanding relations between visual style and constructing identity in antiquity, and will be important for those interested in cultural dynamics, dynastic propaganda and ancient globalisation.

This book explores how Roman religious festivals were celebrated in the Greek East, how they changed in the centuries between Augustus and the Middle Byzantine Era, and how this influenced the Christian liturgical calendar. Of interest to scholars of the religions of Rome, Greece, and the Near East, including Judaism and Christianity.

Explores how Greek authors reacted to Roman political change, and how the unprecedented upheavals of the later empire were reflected in literary culture. For specialists in ancient historiography, it applies innovative literary theories of narrative to authors who have generated increased interest in recent years.

In the first two centuries AD, the eastern Roman provinces experienced a proliferation of elite public generosity (gifts of buildings, festivals, distributions in exchange for public honours) unmatched in their previous or later history. This is a study of the motivations behind those public benefactions.

Explores how social networks shaped the identity of sophists, philosophers, and Christians in the early Roman Empire. Taking a sociological focus, this book redresses a bias toward intellectual concerns, enriches understanding of the Second Sophistic and reframes the formation of Christian 'orthodoxy'.

From the first century BC onwards religion was embraced as a source of philosophical knowledge. This book shows how that approach increased the authority of religion and how it further developed in Christianity, thus contributing to current debates about the origins of modern ideas about religion.

The first volume of its kind to be devoted to the works of Philostratus, the great essayist, biographer and historian of Greek culture in the Roman world. The papers contained cover his remarkable range, from hagiographic fiction to historical dialogue, and from prescriptions for gymnastics to the lives of the Sophists.

This exciting 2010 collection of essays offers a reappraisal of current ideas about Greek identity under the Roman empire. Drawing on extensive discussions of sources and modern theories of the tension between global and local identities, the authors argue that regional identities were both produced and challenged by Roman imperialism.

This multidisciplinary collection of essays transforms our understanding of ancient inner Anatolia, one of the most fascinating and understudied regions of the Roman empire. With essays on law, religion, architecture and art history, this book will be essential reading for all social and cultural historians of the Roman world.

This book explores the representations of Greek myths in Roman art, including public, domestic and funerary contexts. It shows the crucial role Greek culture played in forming Roman identity, and how this changed over time. The book is aimed at scholars and students of Roman art and of Roman social and cultural history.

The demise of the ancient Olympics has commonly been blamed on a ban imposed by the Christian emperor Theodosius I. Sofie Remijsen challenges this conventional view, and traces instead the collapse of the entire professional circuit of Greek athletics under the pressure of changing institutions and perceptions in late antiquity.

This book argues that Aelian's important work on animals, the De natura animalium, represents a sophisticated literary critique of Severan Rome. His fascination with animals reflects the cultural issues of his day: philosophy, religion, the exoticism of Egypt and India, sex, gender, and imperial politics.

The Tabulae Iliacae are stone plaques created for Imperial Rome that retell Homer's Iliad and the Troy saga through carved images and text. New photographs and translations of key texts will make this study accessible to all readers interested in Greek epic and how it is adapted to new contexts.

Vision was a powerful sense in the ancient world. How did the rabbis living in Roman Palestine and Persian Mesopotamia understand and seek to discipline and cultivate it? This book offers a new perspective on the significance of sight for the rabbis, of interest to a wide range of scholars.

Drawing upon the issues raised by postcolonial and performance theory, this book evaluates how Syrians redefined Greekness and negotiated the pressures of Greek colonialism and Roman imperialism. Of interest to ancient historians, archaeologists and classicists generally and for those studying the Near East in particular.

This book examines the impact of the Roman cultural revolution under Augustus on the Roman province of Greece and argues that the transformation of Roman Greece into a classicising 'museum' was a specific response of the provincial Greek elites to the cultural politics of the Roman imperial monarchy.

Romance was the dominant Greek literary genre of the Roman Empire. This book explores its distinctive qualities and the reasons for its popularity. Using cultural and narrative theory, it argues that the romance was simultaneously primal and malleable enough to capture the tensions in Greek identity during this era.