Dally, Ortwin and Christopher Ratté, editors, 2011. Archaeology and the Cities of Asia in Late Antiquity. Kelsey Museum Publications.
The city was the fundamental social institution of Greek and Roman culture. More than the sack of Rome, the abandonment of provincial towns throughout the Mediterranean world in late antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries A.D.) marks the beginning of the Middle Ages. This volume examines archaeological evidence for this last phase of urban life in Asia Minor, one of the Roman empire¹s most prosperous regions. Based on the proceedings of a symposium co-sponsored by the University of Michigan and the German Archaeological Institute, it brings together studies by an international group of scholars on topics ranging from the public sculpture of Constantinople to the depopulation of the Anatolian countryside in early Byzantine times.
Pedley, John Griffiths, 2011. The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey: Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Arts. University of Michigan Press.
President of the Archaeological Institute of America, professor at the University of Michigan from 1889 to 1927, and president of the American Philological Association, Francis Kelsey was crucially involved in the founding or growth of major educational institutions. He came to maturity in a period of great technological change in communications, transportation, and manufacturing. Kelsey took full advantage of such innovations in his ceaseless drive to promote education for all, to further the expansion of knowledge, and to champion the benefits of the study of antiquity.
A vigorous traveler around the United States, Europe, and the Mediterranean, Kelsey strongly believed in the value of personally viewing sites ancient and modern and collecting artifacts that could be used by the new museums and universities that were springing up in the United States. This collecting habit put him in touch with major financiers of the day, including Charles Freer, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan, as he sought their help for important projects.
Drawing heavily on Kelsey's daily diaries now held at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, John Griffiths Pedley gives us a biography that records the wide-ranging activities of a gifted and energetic scholar whose achievements mirrored the creative and contributive innovations of his contemporary Americans.
Terrenato, Nicola and Donald Haggies, editors, 2011. State Formation in Italy and Greece: Questioning the Neoevolutionist Paradigm. Oxbow Books.
This volume collects 14 papers on the process of state formation in the Aegean and in Italy. Based on a conference held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003, this collection of essays offers an up-to-date and comprehensive sampler of the current discourse concerning state formation in the central Mediterranean. While comparative approaches to the emergence of political complexity have been applied since the 1950s to Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Peru, Egypt and many other contexts, Classical Archaeology has not played a very active role in this debate. Here for the first time, state formation processes in the Bronze Age Aegean and in Iron Age Greece and Italy are explicitly juxtaposed, revealing a complex interplay between similar dynamics and differing local factors. Most of the papers in the volume build upon recent theoretical developments in the origins and functioning of early states. Dual process theory, heterarchy, agency theory and weak state theory figure very prominently in the book and offer a new, context-sensitive kind of comparative framework to deal with different cases. Contributors include eminent experts in Etruscan and early Roman archaeology and history (Stoddart, Smith, Ammerman), Aegean archaeology (Pullen, Haggis) and in the emergence of the Greek polis (van der Vliet, Small). A full analytical index further facilitates the cross-referencing of common themes across the geographic scope of the book.
Potter, David, 2011. The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium. Quercus Publishing.
What is Sport and why do we love it? These two questions drive David Potter’s analysis of the western tradition of competitive athletics from eighth century BC to the sixth century AD. The story of ancient sport offers a paradigm for the tale of sport in our own time.
Incorporating the latest research, The Victor’s Crown opens with an analysis of the way competitive sport emerged in Greece during the eighth century BC, and then how the great festival cycle of Classical Greece came into being during the sixth century BC. Special attention is paid to the experience of spectators and athletes, especially in the violent sports of boxing, wrestling and pancration. We meet the great athletes of the past and discover what it was that made them so great.
The rise of the Roman Empire transformed the sporting world by popularizing new forms of entertainment (chiefly a specialized form of chariot racing, gladiatorial combat and beast hunts). Potter shows us what it was like to be a fan and a competitor, and how to fight like a gladiator. The Victor’s Crown looks at the physiology of conditioning, ancient training techniques and the role of sport in education. The Roman government promoted and organized sport as a central feature of the Roman Empire, as sports provided common cultural currency to the diverse inhabitants of this vast empire.
The Victor’s Crown is not just a history of ancient sport, but also an examination of role sport has played throughout history.
Asso, Paolo, editor 2011. Brill's Companion to Lucan. Brill.
Although it was labeled an anti-epic for trumping the celebratory scope of the Roman national epos, Lucan’s Bellum Civile is a hymn to lost republican liberty composed under Nero’s tyrannical empire. Lucan lost his life in a foiled conspiracy to replace the emperor, but his poem survived the wreckage of antiquity and enjoyed uninterrupted readership. The present collection samples the most current approaches to Lucan’s poem, its themes, its dialogue with other texts, its reception in medieval and early modern literature, and its relevance to audiences of all times.
Nevett, Lisa, 2010. Domestic Space in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge University Press.
Housing is shaped by culturally-specific expectations about the kinds of architecture and decoration that are appropriate; about how and where different activities should be carried out; and by and with whom. It is those expectations, and the wider social and cultural systems of which they are a part, that are explored in this volume. At the same time, the book as a whole argues two larger points: first, that while houses, households and families have in recent years become increasingly important as objects of inquiry in Greek and Roman contexts, their potential as objects of inquiry has yet to be fully realised; second, that greater weight and independence should be given to material culture as a source for studying ancient history.
Scodel, Ruth, 2010. An Introduction to Greek Tragedy, Cambridge University Press.
This book provides a brief and accessible introduction to Greek tragedy for students and general readers alike. Whether readers are studying Greek culture, performing a Greek tragedy, or simply interested in reading a Greek play, this book will help them to understand and enjoy this challenging and rewarding genre. An Introduction to Greek Tragedy provides background information; helps readers appreciate, enjoy, and engage with the plays themselves; and gives them an idea of the important questions in current scholarship on tragedy. Ruth Scodel seeks to dispel misleading assumptions about tragedy, stressing how open the plays are to different interpretations and reactions. In addition to general background, the book also includes chapters on specific plays, both the most familiar titles and some lesser-known plays – Persians, Helen, and Orestes – in order to convey the variety that the tragedies offer readers.
Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, 2010. Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles (Aar Religions in Translation), Oxford University Press, Inc.
Damascius was head of the Neoplatonist academy in Athens when the Emperor Justinian shut its doors forever in 529. His work, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, is the last surviving independent philosophical treatise from the Late Academy. Its survey of Neoplatonist metaphysics, discussion of transcendence, and compendium of late antique theologies, make it unique among all extant works of late antique philosophy. It has never before been translated into English.
The Problems and Solutions exhibits a thorough going critique of Proclean metaphysics, starting with the principle that all that exists proceeds from a single cause, proceeding to critique the Proclean triadic view of procession and reversion, and severely undermining the status of intellectual reversion in establishing being as the intelligible object. Damascius investigates the internal contradictions lurking within the theory of descent as a whole, showing that similarity of cause and effect is vitiated in the case of processions where one order (e.g. intellect) gives rise to an entirely different order (e.g. soul).
Neoplatonism as a speculative metaphysics posits the One as the exotic or extopic explanans for plurality, conceived as immediate, present to hand, and therefore requiring explanation. Damascius shifts the perspective of his metaphysics: he struggles to create a metaphysical discourse that accommodates, insofar as language is sufficient, the ultimate principle of reality. After all, how coherent is a metaphysical system that bases itself on the Ineffable as a first principle? Instead of creating an objective ontology, Damascius writes ever mindful of the limitations of dialectic, and of the pitfalls and snares inherent in the very structure of metaphysical discourse.
