There were heroic lives and deaths before and after, but none quite like Socrates'. He did not die by sword or spear, braving all to defend home and country, but as a condemned criminal, swallowing a painless dose of poison. And yet Socrates' death in 399 BCE has figured large in our world ever since, shaping how we think about heroism and celebrity, religion and family life, state control and individual freedom, the distance of intellectual life from daily activity--many of the key coordinates of Western culture. In this book Emily Wilson analyzes the enormous and enduring power the...
There were heroic lives and deaths before and after, but none quite like Socrates'. He did not die by sword or spear, braving all to defend home a...
Philosopher, dramatist, rhetorician, Stoic and pragmatist, Seneca was one of the most contradictory figures in ancient Rome, embracing a stern ascetic morality while amassing a fortune under Nero and eventually committing suicide. This biography reveals a life lived perilously in the gap between ideals and reality.
Philosopher, dramatist, rhetorician, Stoic and pragmatist, Seneca was one of the most contradictory figures in ancient Rome, embracing a stern ascetic...
In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different...
In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic lif...
