The Egyptians mesmerized the ancient Greeks for scores of years. The Greek literature and art of the classical period are especially thick with representations of Egypt and Egyptians. Yet despite numerous firsthand contacts with Egypt, Greek writers constructed their own Egypt, one that differed in significant ways from actual Egyptian history, society, and culture. Informed by recent work on orientalism and colonialism, this book unravels the significance of these misrepresentations of Egypt in the Greek cultural imagination in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.
Looking in particular...

The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies is a unique collection of some seventy articles which together explore the ways in which ancient Greece has been, is, and might be studied. It is intended to inform its readers, but also, importantly, to inspire them, and to enable them to pursue their own research by introducing the primary resources and exploring the latest agenda for their study. The emphasis is on the breadth and potential of Hellenic Studies as a flourishing and exciting intellectual arena, and also upon its relevance to the way we think about ourselves today.

This extraordinary book provides a detailed account of the relationship between classical antiquity and the British colonial presence in India. It examines some of the great figures of the colonial period such as Gandhi, Nehru, Macaulay, Jowett, and William Jones, and covers a range of different disciplines as it sweeps from the eighteenth century to the end of the British Raj in the twentieth.
Using a variety of materials, including archival documents and familiar texts, Vasunia shows how classical culture pervaded the thoughts and minds of the British colonizers. His book highlights the...

Over 2,600 years ago the Parian poet Archilochus wrote 'we chased seven and killed them...the thousand of us.' In all parts of the world, and in all civilisations, the history of warfare, as well as the ironic humour of those who fight and die, can be traced back to the earliest records. But the vocabulary of modern warfare-army, military, strategy, tactics-derives from Greek and Latin, while metaphors of conflict similarly evoke ancient times. Such expressions and phrases as 'Live by the sword and die by the sword, ' 'Phyrrhic victory, ' and 'arms and the man' are commonplace, and all come...