The third in a series that explores cultural and ethical values in Classical antiquity, this volume examines the dichotomy between 'city' and 'country' in ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Fourteen papers address a variety of topics on this theme, and include a variety of methodological approaches--archaeological, iconographic, literary and philosophical. The book demonstrates that, despite a common rhetoric of polarity in antiquity that tended to construct city and countryside as very distinct, oppositional categories, there was far less consistency (and far more nuance) about the ideologies...

The fourth in a series that explores cultural and ethical values in Classical Antiquity, this volume examines the negative foils, the anti-values, against which positive value notions are conceptualized and calibrated in Classical Antiquity. Eighteen chapters address this theme from different perspectives -historical, literary, legal and philosophical. What makes someone into a prototypically 'bad' citizen? Or an abomination of a scholar? What is the relationship between ugliness and value? How do icons of sexual perversion, monstruous emperors and detestable habits function in philosophical...

Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300-1475 contributes to two fields, the history of the language arts and the history of literary theory. It brings together essential sources in the disciplines of grammar and rhetoric which were used to understand literary form and language and teach literary composition. Grammar and rhetoric, the language disciplines, formed the basis of any education from antiquity through the Middle Ages, no matter what future career a student would want to pursue. Because literature was also the subject matter of grammatical teaching,...

How does a discourse of 'valuing others' help to make a group a group? The fifth in a series exploring 'ancient values', this book investigates what value terms and evaluative concepts were used in Greece and Rome to articulate the idea that people 'belong together', as a family, a group, a polis, a community, or just as fellow human beings. Human communities thrive on prosocial behavior. In eighteen chapters, ranging from Greek tragedy to the Roman gladiators and from house architecture to the concept of friendship, this book demonstrates how such behavior is anchored and promoted by...