Ancient

'Ferrara's book is an introduction to writing as a process of revelation, but it's also a celebration of these things still undeciphered, and many other tantalising mysteries besides.' SpectatorThis book tells the story of our greatest invention. Or, it...

An ancient compendium of ancient philosophy.Placita (Tenets), generally attributed to an author named Aëtius and dating from the late first or early second century AD, was a compendium setting out in summary fashion the principal doctrines and opinions...

Written by an international team of acknowledged experts, this excellent book studies a wide range of contributions and showcases new research on the archaeology, ritual and history of Greek mystery cults.With a lack of written evidence that exists for...

In the mid 1990s, the site of the Roman city of Viroconium Cornoviorum at Wroxeter, Shropshire, was subjected to one of the most intensive campaigns of geophysical survey ever carried out on a Roman town. The result was a complete plan of the city using...

This volume provides a commentary on the six surviving speeches of the fifth-century BC Athenian orator Antiphon, all of which concern homicide, together with a fragment of Antiphon's final speech at his own trial for treason in 411 BC. The commentary...

March of the emperors.The Historia Augusta is a biographical work roughly following the model of the imperial biographer Suetonius (LCL 31, 38) and covering the lives of the Roman emperors from Hadrian (r. 117-138) to Carinus (r. 283-285), with a lacuna...

"[A] magnificently learned, deeply felt and surprisingly pellucid set of essays."-Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World"A delight to read. It is written as history ought to be, especially for nonspecialist readers."-Richard A. Kauffman, Christian...

This is a fascinating exploration of the role of the botanical in ancient Greek and Roman myth and classical literature. This engaging book focuses on the perennially fascinating topic of plants in Greek and Roman myth. The author, an authority on the...

The Nile and its People is an ambitious title, covering 7000 years of Egyptian history, from the time of the first settlers in Egypt through to the modern day, with the Nile being the constant element throughout. Changes through history of the culture...

Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World offers linked essays on uses of the past in prominent and diverse cultures in ancient civilizations across the world. The contributors are leading experts in Ancient Near Eastern...

Immortalized through their exploits at the battle of Thermopylae under the legendary Leonidas, as well as countless other victories throughout the classical period, the Spartans were some of the best-trained, -organized and most-feared warriors of the...

This handbook offers both students and teachers of ancient Greek religion a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship in the subject, from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. It not only presents key information, but also explores...

Book XXII recounts the climax of the Iliad: the fatal encounter between the main defender of Troy and the greatest warrior of the Greeks, which results in the death of Hector and Achilles' revenge for the death of his friend Patroclus. At the same time...

Ancient Egyptians held a rich and complex vision of the afterlife and codified their beliefs in books that were to be discovered more than two millennia later in royal tombs. Erik Hornung, the world's leading authority on these religious texts, surveys...

Includes 167 figures, 16 tables and 2 maps. Since 1990, the Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP) has investigated the Malloura valley on the edge of the central Mesaoria plain near the modern town of Athienou, Cyprus. Excavations have concentrated on...

What is commonly called the kingdom of Pontos flourished for over two hundred years in the coastal regions of the Black Sea. At its peak in the early first century BC, it included much of the southern, eastern, and northern littoral, becoming one of the...

Constantius is an important, but almost forgotten, figure. He came to the fore in or around 410 when he was appointed Magister Militum (Master of Troops) to Honorius, the young Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. His predecessor, Stilicho, had been...

In the conventional story of Rome's collapse, violent "barbarians" destroy "civilisation". Yet from a different point of view, those stale generalities become a history shockingly alive and relevant. Alaric grew up near the border that separated Gothic...

Everyone has heard of Ramesses the Great - but what is the truth behind the legend? Joyce Tyldesley's lively book explores the life and times of Egypt's greatest king. Ramesses II was the archetypal Egyptian pharoah: a mighty warrior, an extravagant...

In 136 BC, in Sicily (which was then a Roman province), some four hundred slaves of Syrian origin rebelled against their masters and seized the city of Henna with much bloodshed. Their leader, a fortune-teller named Eunus, was declared king (taking the...

The premier scholar-poet of the Hellenistic age.Callimachus (ca. 303-ca. 235 BC), a proud and well-born native of Cyrene in Libya, came as a young man to the court of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, where he composed poetry for the royal family; helped...

This first of two volumes presents the archaeological evidence of a long sequence of settlement and funerary activity from the Beaker period (Early Bronze Age c. 2000 BC) to the Early Iron Age (c. 500 BC) at the unusually long-occupied site of Cladh...

The Early Middle Ages (400-1000) was one of the most dynamic and crucial periods in the formation of Europe. It covers the transition from the relatively diverse world of Roman Empire in late antiquity, to the disparate world of early medieval Europe,...

This fresh and engaging book looks at each of the Roman emperors from Julius Caesar in 44BC to Romulus Augustulus in AD 476, illuminating not only the manner of their deaths but what their final days tell us about their lives. We also hear how the most...

A wall in the distant north cuts the world in two. Ruthless seaborne warriors raid the coasts from their war galleys, yearning to regain lost glories. A young nobleman and his kin are slaughtered under a banner of truce within a mighty castle. A warrior...

The ancient Greek hymnic tradition translated beautifully and accessibly. The hymn-as poetry, as craft, as a tool for worship and philosophy-was a vital art form throughout antiquity. Although the Homeric Hymns have long been popular, other equally...

Graeco-Roman religion in its classic form was polytheistic; on the other hand, monotheistic ideas enjoyed wide currency in ancient philosophy. This contradiction provides a challenge for our understanding of ancient pagan religion. Certain forms of cult...

In AD 293 the Roman world was plunged into a bold new experiment in government. Four soldiers shared the empire between them: two senior emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, and two junior emperors, Constantius and Galerius. This regime, now known as the...

This book, for use by Steiner-Waldorf teachers, includes stories of the founding of Rome, the early battles with Carthage and Hannibal, Julius Caesar and the conquests of Gaul and Britain, Antony and Cleopatra, and the decline and fall under the Huns and...

Ovid's Heroides, a collection of twenty-one epistles in elegiac verse, consists of two groups, the first comprising fourteen poems addressed by heroines of mythology to their absent lovers or husbands. In this edition, Professor Knox offers a commentary...

'Human wisdom is of little or no value', wrote Plato in his Apology. And yet the ancient Greeks, including Plato himself, more than any other people of antiquity were fascinated by the pursuit of the wisdom they called philosophia. That search for...

Classic political realism.Thucydides of Athens was born about 471 BC. He saw the rise of Athens to greatness under the inspired leadership of Pericles. In 430, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, he caught and survived the horrible plague that ...

Alexander the Great, arguably the most exciting figure from antiquity, waged war as a Homeric hero and lived as one, conquering native peoples and territories on a superhuman scale. From the time he invaded Asia in 334 to his death in 323, he expanded...

The Irish Neolithic has been dominated by the study of megalithic tombs, but the defining element of Irish settlement evidence is the rectangular timber Early Neolithic house, the numbers of which have more than quadrupled in the last ten years. The...

Engagingly written and packed with illustrations, Early Ireland offers an authoritative introduction to the riches of Irish prehistory - a span of eight thousand years from the end of the Ice Age to the first centuries of the Christian era. It provides a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780892810147Author R. A. Schwaller de LubiczFormat PaperbackPage Count 96Imprint Inner Traditions Bear and CompanyPublisher Inner Traditions Bear and...

How rhetorical training influenced deeds as well as words in the Roman EmpireThe assassins of Julius Caesar cried out that they had killed a tyrant, and days later their colleagues in the Senate proposed rewards for this act of tyrannicide. The killers...

For centuries, the Celtic peoples of Britain stood fast against invasion and oppression. Theirs is a fascinating and exciting story that includes the deeds of some of the most tenacious and heroic leaders in history – from Caratacus and Boudicca to...

Sacrifice, like death, is one of the great taboo subjects of modern society. The notion that human sacrifice, murder most horrid and even cannibalism could be considered a most holy act is almost inconceivable. Yet the evidence for human sacrifice in...

Henry VI (1422-61), a man 'more given to God and devout prayer than handling worldly and temporal things', was the third, and least successful, Lancastrian king of England; his wife Margaret of Anjou, 'a great and strong laboured woman', became a...