Kategoria BISAC: History >> Ancient - Rome

Are there no limits to human cruelty? Is there any divine justice? Do the gods even matter if they do not occupy themselves with rewarding virtue and punishing wickedness? Seneca's plays might be dismissed as bombastic and extravagant answers to such questions--if so much of human history were not -Senecan- in its absurdity, melodrama, and terror. Here is an honest artist confronting the irrationality and cruelty of his world--the Rome of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero--and his art reflects the stress of the encounter. The surprise, perhaps, is that Seneca's world is so like our own.

Focusing attention on gravity-fed water-flow systems in medieval cities and monasteries, Water Technology in the Middle Ages: Cities, Monasteries, and Waterworks after the Roman Empire challenges the view that hydraulic engineering died with the Romans and remained moribund until the Renaissance. Roberta Magnusson explores the systems' technologies--how they worked, what uses the water served--and also the social rifts that created struggles over access to this basic necessity.

Mindful of theoretical questions about what hastens technological change and how society and...

Magic, miracles, daemonology, divination, astrology, and alchemy were the arcana mundi, the -secrets of the universe, - of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In this path-breaking collection of Greek and Roman writings on magic and the occult, Georg Luck provides a comprehensive sourcebook and introduction to magic as it was practiced by witches and sorcerers, magi and astrologers, in the Greek and Roman worlds.

In this new edition, Luck has gathered and translated 130 ancient texts dating from the eighth century BCE through the fourth century CE. Thoroughly revised, this...

This work contains a major revision of Douglas Thomson's Catullus: A Critical Edition (1978), with the addition of a full commentary and a wholly new introduction. For the introduction and for each of the poems there is an extensive and current bibliography.

In the introduction, apart from sections on the life of Catullus, on the arrangement of the poems, and on their literary background, there is a lengthy discussion of the history of the text, as well as a review of the progress of Catullan studies from the editio princeps to the present day.

There are about...

In Ancient Marbles to American Shores, Stephen L. Dyson uncovers the history of classical archaeology in the United States by exploring the people and programs that gave birth to archaeology as a discipline in this country. He puts aside the common formula of chronicling great digs, great discoveries, and great men in favor of a cultural, ideological, and institutional history of the subject.

The book explores the ways American contact with the monuments of Greece and Rome affected the national consciousness. It discusses how the spread of classical style laid the groundwork for...

Between the years 350 and 500 a large body of Latin "artes grammaticae" emerged, educational texts outlining the study of Latin grammar and attempting a systematic discussion of correct Latin usage. These texts the most complete of which are attributed to Donatus, Charisius, Servius, Diomedes, Pompeius, and Priscian have long been studied as documents in the history of linguistic theory and literary scholarship. In "Grammar and Christianity in the Late Roman World," Catherine Chin instead finds within them an opportunity to probe the connections between religious ideology and literary...

This title contains the full text of Plautus's Rudens, supplemented with an Introduction, extensive vocabulary and detailed textual notes.

• The most readable account available of the life of Tiberius, the second Roman emperor.
  
• Argues that Tiberius' character provides the key to understanding his reign.
  
• Portrays Tiberius as a man whose virtues and beliefs were corrupted by power.
  
• Shows how Tiberius' fears of conspiracy and assassination caused him to lose his grasp of reality.
  
• A new afterword...

• The most readable account available of the life of Tiberius, the second Roman emperor.
  
• Argues that Tiberius' character provides the key to understanding his reign.
  
• Portrays Tiberius as a man whose virtues and beliefs were corrupted by power.
  
• Shows how Tiberius' fears of conspiracy and assassination caused him to lose his grasp of reality.
  
• A new afterword...

• Examines the film's use of ancient sources, the ancient historical contexts, the political significance of the film, the history of its censorship and restoration, and its place in film history.
• Includes the most important passages from ancient authors' reports of the slave revolt in translation.