This lively and engaging book is the only popular work to explore the profound impact of Ancient Greece and Rome on the Founding Fathers. The classical... education they imbibed as young students inspired them to undertake the American Revolution and influenced their approach to a host of constitutional and practical issues crucial to the shaping of the new American republic. Recounting the stirring stories the founders encountered in their favorite histories of Greece and Rome, renowned scholar Carl J. Richard explores what they learned from these vivid tales and how they applied these lessons to their own heroic quest to win American independence and establish a durable republic. Richard explains how the founders learned the importance of individual rights from the absence of those rights in Sparta, the superiority of republican government to monarchy from the Greek victory over the Persians, the perils of democracy from the instability of Athens, the need for a strong central government from the fall of Greece to Macedon and Rome, the importance of virtue to the success of a republic from early Rome, the need for eternal vigilance against ambitious individuals from the fall of the Roman republic, and the preciousness of liberty from its destruction by the Roman emperors. Crucial to the decisions that shaped the United States, these lessons remain invaluable today for every citizen concerned with America's future course.

Greek Sanctuaries: New Approaches examines some of the major and less well known Greek sanctuaries from a new perspective. The traditional approach to... Greek sanctuaries and especially temples has been descriptive. Much emphasis is commonly placed on architectural features but only rarely is there an attempt to look at the totality of functions that a Greek sanctuary might encompass. This collection of articles addresses the critical questions which related to the diverse purposes of the sanctuaries: what was their social function? Who were their clients? And how does the history of sanctuaries reflect the development of Archaic and Classical Greek culture and civilization? Regional links and variations are stressed, while some sanctuaries are shown to have had particular uses such as dining and initiation. Among the cults discussed are the Eleusinian mysteries for which a new reconstruction is proposed.

Although there is no exact equivalent to our term "science" in Greek, Western science may still be said to originate with the Greeks.In this volume,... the author discusses the fundamental Greek contributions to science, drawing on the rich literary and archaeological sources for the period after Aristotle. Particular attention is paid to the Greeks' conceptions of the inquiries they were engaged on, and to the interrelations of science and philosophy, science and religion, and science and technology. In the first part of the book the author considers the two hundred years after the death of Aristotle, devoting separate chapters to mathematics, astronomy, and biology. He goes on to deal with Ptolemy and Galen and concludes with a discussion of later writers and of the problems raised by the question of the decline of ancient science.

"Authoritative and brilliantly illustrated. . . . The book recommends itself not only for its synthesis of existing knowledge, but also for its original... ideas." —The Daily TelegraphFor most people there is no more satisfying expression of Greek art than its sculpture. It was the first, the only ancient art to break free from conceptual conventions for representing men and animals, and to explore consciously how art might imitate or even improve upon it. The first stages of this discovery, from the semi-abstract beginnings in the eighth century BC to the more representational art of the early fifth century, are explored and illustrated in this handbook.

For most people there is no more satisfying expression of Greek art than its sculpture. It was the first, the only ancient art to break free from... conceptual conventions for representing men and animals, and to explore consciously how art might imitate or even improve upon it. The first stages of this discovery, from the semi-abstract beginnings in the eighth century BC to the more representational art of the early fifth century, are explored and illustrated in this handbook. 481 illus.

This is the last in the series of Sir John Boardman's acclaimed handbooks on Greek sculpture; a sequel to similar volumes on the Archaic and Classical... periods. Here, the story continues through the fourth century B.C. to the days of Alexander the Great. The innovations of the period are discussed, such as the female nude and portraiture, along with many important monuments including the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and several of the great names such as Praxiteles and Lysippus who were lionized by later generations. The volume also presents Greek sculpture made in the colonies of Italy and Sicily from the Archaic period onwards, as well as that made for eastern, non-Greek rulers. A final section considers the role of Greek sculpture in moulding western taste to the present day.

The conquests of Alexander the Great were followed by a flood of Greek migration into the lands previously ruled by Persia. In Egypt, thanks to the... survival of collections of related documents written on papyrus, it is possible to study the fortunes of some of these immigrants and their families, and of some of their Egyptian neighbors, with an immediacy provided by no other ancient source. In this book we see the engineer Kleon battling with problems of irrigation and silting, while the district officer Diophanes deals with disputes arising from the mutual hostility between two populations. Some Egyptians, such as Menkhes the village clerk and Panebkhounis the soldier, gain through their services some of the privileges enjoyed by the Greeks; the Greek cavalry officer Dryton, on the other hand, marries an Egyptian, and in the next generation his family begins to lose its Greek identity. These and other case studies compose a vivid picture of life in a country in which the native Egyptian population is dominated by a privileged and exclusive Greek minority.

This chronological narrative covers the Bronze Age to the end of the Roman Empire, with a useful epilogue that traces the Greek experience in medieval... and modern times. Frost presents a level of detail that requires no prior background in Greek history. Fascinating anecdotes on the lives of ordinary Greek people help bring the past to life.

An exciting series that provides students with direct access to the ancient world by offering new translations of extracts from its key texts. This... book offers a valuable guide to Greek theatre. It presents a broad selection of key ancient sources, both visual and literary, about all aspects of performance - including actors, masks, stage props and choral dancing - as well as scenes from the plays themselves that offer insights into their staging, plots, and reception. The dramatic brilliance of playwrights such as Sophocles, Aristophanes and Menander is brought to the fore by helpful commentary that provides a framework for the interpretation of Greek drama, fleshes out its cultural contexts, and invites students to consider a range of provocative questions.

In this book, David Wiles introduces ancient Greek theater to students and enthusiasts interested in knowing how the plays were performed. Theater was a... ceremony bound up with fundamental activities in ancient Athenian life and Wiles explores those elements that created the theater of the time. Actors rather than writers are the book's main concern and Wiles examines how the actor used the resources of story-telling, dance, mask, song and visual action to create a large-scale event that would shape the life of the citizen community.

From the middle of the eighth century to the tenth century, almost all non-literary and non-historical secular Greek books, including such diverse... topics as astrology, alchemy, physics, botany and medicine, that were not available throughout the eastern Byzantine Empire and the Near East, were translated into Arabic.Greek Thought, Arabic Culture explores the major social, political and ideological factors that occasioned the unprecedented translation movement from Greek into Arabic in Baghdad, the newly founded capital of the Arab dynasty of the 'Abbasids', during the first two centuries of their rule. Dimitri Gutas draws upon the preceding historical and philological scholarship in Greco-Arabic studies and the study of medieval translations of secular Greek works into Arabic and analyses the social and historical reasons for this phenomenon.Dimitri Gutas provides a stimulating, erudite and well-documented survey of this key movement in the transmission of ancient Greek culture to the Middle Ages.