Rethinking Revolutions through Ancient Greece

Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College. He has published widely on all aspects of Greek literature and on ancient culture. His books include Reading Greek Tragedy (1986), The Poet's Voice (1989), Foucault's Virginity (1992), Who Needs Greek? (2002), Love, Sex and Tragedy (2004) and The Temple of Jerusalem (2004). He is in demand as a lecturer across Europe and the USA and has appeared regularly on television and radio. Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College. His numerous publications include Greece in the Making (1996), Archaic and Classical Greek Art (1998), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (1999, edited with Simon Goldhill) and Greek Historical Inscriptions from the End of the Peloponnesian War to the Death of Alexander (2003, edited with P. J. Rhodes).

Review of the hardback: 'Rethinking Revolutions is a wide-ranging and stimulating collection of papers that do much to cause us not only to look at frequently-touted aspects of antiquity with fresh eyes, but to re-examine how the narratives of the past have been constructed by later ages, including our own. … Readers of this book will have their critical faculties sharpened and become privy to a number of new ways of thinking about ancient Greek culture and about what we and other have made of it. Talk of Greek revolution(s) may never be the same again.' POLIS: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought

• Introduction Robin Osborne; 1. When was the Athenian democratic revolution? Robin Osborne; 2. Revolutions in human time: age-class in Athens and the Greekness of Greek revolutions James Davidson; 3. Reflections on the 'Greek Revolution' in art: from changes in viewing to the transformation of subjectivity Jas' Elsner; 4. What's in a beard? Rethinking Hadrian's Hellenism Caroline Vout; 5. Religion and the rationality of the Greek city Thomas Harrison; 6. Rethinking religious revolution Simon Goldhill; 7. Paying attention: history as the development of a secular narrative Carolyn Dewald; 8. Talking about revolution: on political change in fourth-century Athens and historiographic method Danielle Allen; 9. Was there an Eleatic revolution in philosophy? Catherine Osborne; 10. The origins of medicine in the second century AD Helen King; 11. The 'New Music' - so what's new? Armand D'Angour.