Peter Thonemann – författare

'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New StatesmanTo an extraordinary extent we continue to live in the shadow of the classical world. At every level from languages to calendars to political systems, we are the descendants of a 'classical Europe', using frames of reference created by ancient Mediterranean cultures.As this consistently fresh and surprising new book makes clear, however, this was no less true for the inhabitants of those classical civilizations themselves, whose myths, history, and buildings were an elaborate engagement with an already old and revered past filled with great leaders and writers, emigrations and battles. Indeed, much of the reason we know so much about the classical past is the obsessive importance it held for so many generations of Greeks and Romans, who interpreted and reinterpreted their changing casts of heroes and villains. Figures such as Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar loom large in our imaginations today, but they were themselves fascinated by what had preceded them.The Birth of Classical Europe is therefore both an authoritative history, and also a fascinating attempt to show how our own changing values and interests have shaped our feelings about an era which is by some measures very remote but by others startlingly close.

The three centuries which followed the conquests of Alexander are perhaps the most thrilling of all periods of ancient history. This was an age of cultural globalization: in the third century BC, a single language carried you from the Rhône to the Indus. A Celt from the lower Danube could serve in the mercenary army of a Macedonian king ruling in Egypt, and a Greek philosopher from Cyprus could compare the religions of the Brahmins and the Jews on the basis of first-hand knowledge of both. Kings from Sicily to Tajikistan struggled to meet the challenges of ruling multi-ethnic states, and Greek city-states came together under the earliest federal governments known to history. The scientists of Ptolemaic Alexandria measured the circumference of the earth, while pioneering Greek argonauts explored the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic coast of Africa. Drawing on inscriptions, papyri, coinage, poetry, art, and archaeology, in this Very Short Introduction Peter Thonemann opens up the history and culture of the vast Hellenistic world, from the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) to the Roman conquest of the Ptolemaic kingdom (30 BC).ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

In late summer 2017, ongoing Turkish excavations at the site of Teos in Ionia uncovered one of the largest and most important Greek inscriptions to have been discovered this century. It records, in thrilling and moving detail, the assistance provided by the Teians in the repopulation and rebuilding of their daughter-city, Abdera in Thrace, after its sack by the Romans in 170 BC during the Third Macedonian War. The new text, published here for the first time, is startling testimony to the ancestral friendship- and support-networks that existed between Greek poleis in the Hellenistic world, and includes (among other things) the longest surviving description of an honorific statue to survive from the ancient world. In the light of the new inscription, the authors offer a full reassessment of the epigraphic and literary evidence for relations between Teos and Abdera, thereby providing a comprehensive long-term history of the two cities, from the sixth to the second century BC. The book also includes major new editions of the 'Teian Dirae' (public curses at Teos and Abdera in the early fifth century BC) and the second-century decree of Abdera for the Teian ambassadors Amymon and Megathymos, as well as two further new texts from the sanctuary of Dionysos at Teos.

The three centuries which followed the conquests of Alexander are perhaps the most thrilling of all periods of ancient history. This was an age of cultural globalization: in the third century BC, a single language carried you from the Rhône to the Indus. A Celt from the lower Danube could serve in the mercenary army of a Macedonian king ruling in Egypt, and a Greek philosopher from Cyprus could compare the religions of the Brahmins and the Jews on the basis of first-hand knowledge of both. Kings from Sicily to Tajikistan struggled to meet the challenges of ruling multi-ethnic states, and Greek city-states came together under the earliest federal governments known to history. The scientists of Ptolemaic Alexandria measured the circumference of the earth, while pioneering Greek argonauts explored the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic coast of Africa. Drawing on inscriptions, papyri, coinage, poetry, art, and archaeology Peter Thonemann opens up the history and culture of the vast Hellenistic world, from the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) to the Roman conquest of the Ptolemaic kingdom (30 BC).

'Dreams are products of the mind, and do not come from any external source'Artemidorus' The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica) is the richest and most vivid pre-Freudian account of dream interpretation, and the only dream-book to have survived complete from Graeco-Roman times. Written in Greek around AD 200, when dreams were believed by many to offer insight into future events, the work is a compendium of interpretations of dreams on a wide range of subjects relating to the natural, human, and divine worlds. It includes the meanings of dreams about the body, sex, eating and drinking, dress, the weather, animals, the gods, and much else. Artemidorus' technique of dream interpretation stresses the need to know the background of the dreamer, such as occupation, health, status, habits, and age, and the work is a fascinating social history, revealing much about ancient life, culture, and beliefs, and attitudes to the dominant power of Imperial Rome. Martin Hammond's fine translation is accompanied by a lucid introduction and explanatory notes by Peter Thonemann, which assist the reader in understanding this important work, which was an influence on both Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault.

Artemidorus' Oneirocritica ('The Interpretation of Dreams') is the only dream-book which has been preserved from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Composed around AD 200, it comprises a treatise and manual on dreams, their classification, and the various analytical tools which should be applied to their interpretation, making Artemidorus both one of the earliest documented and arguably the single most important predecessor and precursor of Freud. Artemidorus travelled widely through Greece, Asia, and Italy to collect people's dreams and record their outcomes, in the process casting a vivid light on social mores and religious beliefs in the Severan age: this volume, published as a companion to the new translation of The Interpretation of Dreams by Martin Hammond in the Oxford World's Classics series, aims to provide the non-specialist reader with a readable and engaging road-map to this vast and complex text. It offers a detailed analysis of Artemidorus' theory of dreams and the social function of ancient dream-interpretation, while also aiming to foster an understanding of the ways in which Artemidorus might be of interest to the cultural or social historian of the Graeco-Roman world. Alongside chapters on Artemidorus' life, career, and world-view, it also provides valuable insights into his conceptions of the human body, sexuality, the natural world, and the gods; his attitudes towards Rome, the contemporary Greek polis, and the social order; and his knowledge of Greek literature, myth, and history. In addition, its accessible exploration of the differences and similarities between ancient traditions of dream-analysis and modern psychoanalytic approaches will make this volume of interest to anybody with an interest in the history of dreams and dream interpretation.

Lucian's Alexander Or The False Prophet is a satiric biography of the religious entrepreneur and career fraudster Alexander of Abonouteichos. It recounts how, during the reign of Antoninus Pius (AD 138-161), Alexander succeeded in setting up a fraudulent new oracular cult of the snake-god Glykon in his home-town of Abonouteichos in Paphlagonia. In the Alexander, Lucian sets out to debunk the oracle as a scam, its founder as a debauched crook, and its clients as gullible idiots. The Alexander is an extraordinary and unclassifiable work: part biography, part invective, part Epicurean critique of divination. It casts a uniquely vivid light on social mores and religious beliefs in the Antonine age, and was a major influence on Erasmus, Ben Jonson, and Henry Fielding. The present volume is the first full-length treatment of the Alexander in English, and includes an extended historical and literary introduction, a new English translation, and a detailed commentary on the text. The volume also includes a translation of the surviving fragments of Oinomaos of Gadara's The Exposure of Sorcerers, a contemporary Cynic attack on oracular divination. All Greek is translated throughout.

In the third century BC, the Attalid dynasts of Pergamon in north-western Asia Minor were relatively minor players in Hellenistic great-power politics. This all changed in 188 BC, when, under the terms of the treaty of Apameia, the Attalids were granted the greater share of the former Seleukid territories in western and inner Anatolia. At a stroke, the Attalids were elevated to the status of one of the major powers of the eastern Mediterranean; but this new-found prominence came at a price. The vast expanse of Attalid Asia Minor had been won not by conquest, but through a pragmatic and humiliating grant by Roman commissioners. As a result, the ideological and bureaucratic structures through which the second-century Attalid rulers administered their kingdom differed sharply from those of the other major Hellenistic dynasties. With contributions from world-specialists on Hellenistic history and coinage, this book is the first full-length study to be dedicated to the political economy of the Attalid kingdom of Pergamon, focusing in particular on its financial administration, international relations, and the functioning of the state.

Antiquity’s satirist supreme.Lucian of Samosata on the Euphrates (fl. AD 160–190) ranks among the most dazzlingly creative, virtuosic, and boldly original writers of antiquity. Although he more than once characterizes his writings, many of them intended for public performance, as a combination of dialogue and comedy, in truth the diversity of his extant works is startling, ranging from philosophic and moral dialogue to invective, from mythology to contemporary biography to high fantasy, from mock encomium to Herodotean ethnography, and from generic combinations to unclassifiable novelties, all infused with ebullient wit, elegant humor, and refined satire, and all delivered in sparkling style.Included in the Loeb edition of Lucian are all of his approximately seventy-five authentic works together with those doubtfully attributed. Among the highlights of Volume I are True Stories, an early science-fiction account of a voyage to the moon, and Symposium, a rollicking dinner conversation among Stoic, Epicurean, Peripatetic, and Cynic philosophers.This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition by A. M. Harmon (1913), offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship.

Antiquity’s satirist supreme.Lucian of Samosata on the Euphrates (fl. AD 160–190) ranks among the most dazzlingly creative, virtuosic, and boldly original writers of antiquity. Although he more than once characterizes his writings, many of them intended for public performance, as a combination of dialogue and comedy, in truth the diversity of his extant works is startling, ranging from philosophic and moral dialogue to invective, from mythology to contemporary biography to high fantasy, from mock encomium to Herodotean ethnography, and from generic combinations to unclassifiable novelties, all infused with ebullient wit, elegant humor, and refined satire, and all delivered in sparkling style.Included in the Loeb edition of Lucian are all of his approximately seventy-five authentic works together with those doubtfully attributed. Highlights of Volume II include The Downward Journey, a voyage to the underworld; Timon, on the problems of being a rich misanthrope; and Sale of Lives, in which great philosophers of the past are auctioned off as slaves.This edition, which replaces the original Loeb edition by A. M. Harmon (1915), offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship.

Our conception of the culture and values of the ancient Greco-Roman world is largely based on texts and material evidence left behind by a small and atypical group of city-dwellers. The people of the deep Mediterranean countryside seldom appear in the historical record from antiquity, and almost never as historical actors. This book is the first extended historical ethnography of an ancient village society, based on an extraordinarily rich body of funerary and propitiatory inscriptions from a remote upland region of Roman Asia Minor. Rural kinship structures and household forms are analysed in detail, as are the region's demography, religious life, gender relations, class structure, normative standards and values. Roman north-east Lydia is perhaps the only non-urban society in the Greco-Roman world whose culture can be described at so fine-grained a level of detail: a world of tight-knit families, egalitarian values, hard agricultural labour, village solidarity, honour, piety and love.

This book is a study of the long-term historical geography of Asia Minor, from the fourth century BC to the thirteenth century AD. Using an astonishing breadth of sources, ranging from Byzantine monastic archives to Latin poetic texts, ancient land records to hagiographic biographies, Peter Thonemann reveals the complex and fascinating interplay between the natural environment and human activities in the Maeander valley. Both a large-scale regional history and a profound meditation on the role played by geography in human history, this book is an essential contribution to the history of the Eastern Mediterranean in Graeco-Roman antiquity and the Byzantine Middle Ages.

The bleak steppe and rolling highlands of inner Anatolia were one of the most remote and underdeveloped parts of the Roman empire. Still today, for most historians of the Roman world, ancient Phrygia largely remains terra incognita. Yet thanks to a startling abundance of Greek and Latin inscriptions on stone, the cultural history of the villages and small towns of Roman Phrygia is known to us in vivid and unexpected detail. Few parts of the Mediterranean world offer so rich a body of evidence for rural society in the Roman Imperial and late antique periods, and for the flourishing of ancient Christianity within this landscape. The eleven essays in this book offer new perspectives on the remarkable culture, lifestyles, art and institutions of the Anatolian uplands in antiquity.

Coinage is one of our key sources for the rich and fascinating history of the Hellenistic world (323-31 BC). This book provides students of the period with an up-to-date introduction to Hellenistic gold, silver and bronze coins in their cultural and economic contexts. It also offers new perspectives on four major themes in contemporary Hellenistic history: globalisation, identity, political economy and ideology. With more than 250 illustrations, and written in a lucid and accessible style, this book sheds new light on the diverse and multicultural societies of the Hellenistic world, from Alexander to Augustus. The author assumes no prior knowledge of Hellenistic history, and all Greek and Latin texts are translated throughout.

Coinage is one of our key sources for the rich and fascinating history of the Hellenistic world (323-31 BC). This book provides students of the period with an up-to-date introduction to Hellenistic gold, silver and bronze coins in their cultural and economic contexts. It also offers new perspectives on four major themes in contemporary Hellenistic history: globalisation, identity, political economy and ideology. With more than 250 illustrations, and written in a lucid and accessible style, this book sheds new light on the diverse and multicultural societies of the Hellenistic world, from Alexander to Augustus. The author assumes no prior knowledge of Hellenistic history, and all Greek and Latin texts are translated throughout.

This book is a study of the long-term historical geography of Asia Minor, from the fourth century BC to the thirteenth century AD. Using an astonishing breadth of sources, ranging from Byzantine monastic archives to Latin poetic texts, ancient land records to hagiographic biographies, Peter Thonemann reveals the complex and fascinating interplay between the natural environment and human activities in the Maeander valley. Both a large-scale regional history and a profound meditation on the role played by geography in human history, this book is an essential contribution to the history of the Eastern Mediterranean in Graeco-Roman antiquity and the Byzantine Middle Ages.

The bleak steppe and rolling highlands of inner Anatolia were one of the most remote and underdeveloped parts of the Roman empire. Still today, for most historians of the Roman world, ancient Phrygia largely remains terra incognita. Yet thanks to a startling abundance of Greek and Latin inscriptions on stone, the cultural history of the villages and small towns of Roman Phrygia is known to us in vivid and unexpected detail. Few parts of the Mediterranean world offer so rich a body of evidence for rural society in the Roman Imperial and late antique periods, and for the flourishing of ancient Christianity within this landscape. The eleven essays in this book offer new perspectives on the remarkable culture, lifestyles, art and institutions of the Anatolian uplands in antiquity.