Grant Parker – författare

Travel in the Roman Mind presents a broad spectrum of travel experiences in the Roman world from the Republic to the Late Empire. The sources reveal both the nature of travellers’ real-world interactions with humans and landscapes and the challenges of all kinds that travellers faced as well as travels imagined in dreams and fiction, as well as reflections on the very idea and value of travel. The varied impact – from transformative to very negative – that travel can make upon the entire mentalité of individuals and even of a people gradually emerges.Assembling very dispersed ancient evidence, long passages provide the reader with opportunities to evaluate how travel shaped and changed Romans’ outlook over several centuries. Notes and commentaries provide context allowing readers to understand the spatial dynamics of Roman culture and how travel sits in the broad picture of Roman life. This is the first collection of primary sources on the growing subject of travel in the ancient world and will be indispensable for students of Roman culture.This volume presents a broad spectrum of travel experiences in the Roman world from the Republic to the Late Empire. The sources reveal both the nature of travellers’ real-world interactions with humans and landscapes and the challenges that travellers faced, as well as travels imagined in dreams and fiction, and reflections on the very idea and value of travel. Assembling very dispersed ancient evidence, long passages provide the reader with opportunities to evaluate how travel shaped and changed Romans’ outlook over several centuries. Notes and commentaries provide context allowing readers to understand the spatial dynamics of Roman culture and how travel sits in the broad picture of Roman life. This is the first collection of primary sources on the growing subject of travel in the ancient world and will be indispensable for students of Roman culture.

Latin and especially Greek texts of the imperial period contain a wealth of references to 'India'. Professor Parker offers a survey of such texts, read against a wide range of other sources, both archaeological and documentary. He emphasises the social processes whereby the notion of India gained its exotic features, including the role of the Persian empire and of Alexander's expedition. Three kinds of social context receive special attention: the trade in luxury commodities; the political discourse of empire and its limits; and India's status as a place of special knowledge, embodied in 'naked philosophers'. Roman ideas about India ranged from the specific and concrete to the wildly fantastic and the book attempts to account for such variety. It ends by considering the afterlife of such ideas into late antiquity and beyond.

Latin and especially Greek texts of the imperial period contain a wealth of references to 'India'. Professor Parker offers a survey of such texts, read against a wide range of other sources, both archaeological and documentary. He emphasises the social processes whereby the notion of India gained its exotic features, including the role of the Persian empire and of Alexander's expedition. Three kinds of social context receive special attention: the trade in luxury commodities; the political discourse of empire and its limits; and India's status as a place of special knowledge, embodied in 'naked philosophers'. Roman ideas about India ranged from the specific and concrete to the wildly fantastic and the book attempts to account for such variety. It ends by considering the afterlife of such ideas into late antiquity and beyond.

This book brings antiquity into conversation with the present.The Mediterranean is the meeting point of three continents - Asia, Africa, and Europe - as well as three major monotheistic religions - Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Focusing on global networks and cultural exchanges, ""Mediterranean Passages"" collects writings from across 3,000 years to provide a pan-Mediterranean perspective of the cultural, political, and economic relations that crisscross the region, linking people, places, and ideas from antiquity to the present.From Homer's hymn to Apollo to the writing of French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida, from the contemporary accounts of North African Berber conqueror Tariq ibn al-Yazid to the journalism of American I. F. Stone, this chronologically organized anthology juxtaposes the voices and experiences of travelers, exiles, and colonizers who have lived in or visited the Mediterranean region since before 1200 B.C.E. Literary and historical texts and a gallery of illustrations, including maps, architectural drawings, photographs, and paintings provide glimpses of travel and migration, trade routes, military conquest, and cultural exchange. Together, these selections highlight the networks of connections, intersections, and interruptions that animate a vital and contested geographical space.

Drawn from a variety of academic disciplines and perspectives, Ancient India in Its Wider World approaches ancient India both historically and geographically. The primary temporal focus lies in India’s “Early Historic” period, from the mid-first millennium BCE through the mid-first millennium CE. Geographically, the volume places India at the center of discussions, rather than view South Asia as a corner of the “Roman World” or of some other externally based “world system.” Placing India at the center prompts attention to the extraordinary internal variability and complexity that characterized South Asia during this remarkable period. The subcontinent’s diverse political, economic, linguistic, and ideological structures affected interactions with ahd perceptions of the outside world, both in specific places and at specific times. Contributors examine power and material culture, Greek and Roman understandings of India, and Indian knowledge and understandings of outsiders. The volume as a whole directs us to issues of knowledge and representation—how how individuals in various ancient societies knew or understood the “other.” Ancient India and Its Wider World illuminates the complex webs and networks that throughout Indian history have linked South Asians to each other and to the world beyond the subcontinent. A very wide world indeed.

How have ancient Greece and Rome intersected with South African histories? This book canvasses architecture, literature, visual arts and historical memory. Some of the most telling manifestations of classical reception in South Africa have been indirect, for example neo-classical architecture or retellings of mythical stories. Far from being the mere handmaiden of colonialism (and later apartheid), classical antiquity has enabled challenges to the South African establishment, and provided a template for making sense of cross-cultural encounters. Though access to classical education has been limited, many South Africans, black and white, have used classical frames of reference and drawn inspiration from the ancient Greeks and Romans. While classical antiquity may seem antithetical to post-apartheid notions of heritage, it deserves to be seen in this light. Museums, historical sites and artworks, up to the present day, reveal juxtapositions in which classical themes are integrated into South African pasts.

An Open Access edition of this book will be available on publication on the Liverpool University Press and African Minds websitesThough Greco-Roman antiquity (‘classics’) has often been considered the handmaid of colonialism, its various forms have nonetheless endured through many of the continent’s decolonising transitions. Southern Africa is no exception. This book canvasses the variety of forms classics has taken in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and especially South Africa, and even the dynamics of transformation itself. How does (u)Mzantsi classics (of southern Africa) look in an era ofprofound change, whether violent or otherwise? What are its future prospects? Contributors focus on pedagogies, historical consciousness, the creative arts and popular culture. The volume, in its overall shape, responds to the idea of dialogue – in both the Greek form associated with Plato’s rendition of Socrates’ wisdom and in the African concept of ubuntu. Here are dialogues between scholars, both emerging and established, as well as students – some of whom were directly impacted by the Fallist protests of the late 20-teens. Rather than offering an apologia for classics, these dialogues engage with pressing questions of relevance, identity, change, the canon, and the dynamics of decolonisation and potential recolonisation. The goal is to interrogate classics – the ways it has been taught, studied, perceived, transformed and even lived – from many points of view.