Phiroze Vasunia – författare

The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies is a unique collection of some seventy articles which together explore the ways in which ancient Greece has been, is, and might be studied. It is intended to inform its readers, but also, importantly, to inspire them, and to enable them to pursue their own research by introducing the primary resources and exploring the latest agenda for their study. The emphasis is on the breadth and potential of Hellenic Studies as a flourishing and exciting intellectual arena, and also upon its relevance to the way we think about ourselves today.

The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies is a unique collection of some seventy articles which together explore the ways in which ancient Greece has been, is, and might be studied. It is intended to inform its readers, but also, importantly, to inspire them, and to enable them to pursue their own research by introducing the primary resources and exploring the latest agenda for their study. The emphasis is on the breadth and potential of Hellenic Studies as a flourishing and exciting intellectual arena, and also upon its relevance to the way we think about ourselves today.

This extraordinary book provides a detailed account of the relationship between classical antiquity and the British colonial presence in India. It examines some of the great figures of the colonial period such as Gandhi, Nehru, Macaulay, Jowett, and William Jones, and covers a range of different disciplines as it sweeps from the eighteenth century to the end of the British Raj in the twentieth.Using a variety of materials, including archival documents and familiar texts, Vasunia shows how classical culture pervaded the thoughts and minds of the British colonizers. His book highlights the many Indian receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity and analyses how Indians turned to ancient Greece and Rome during the colonial period for a variety of purposes, including anti-colonialism, nationalism, and collaboration.Offering a unique cross-cultural study, this volume will be of interest to literary scholars and historians of the classical world, the British Empire, and South Asia.

This extraordinary book provides a detailed account of the relationship between classical antiquity and the British colonial presence in India. It examines some of the great figures of the colonial period such as Gandhi, Nehru, Macaulay, Jowett, and William Jones, and covers a range of different disciplines as it sweeps from the eighteenth century to the end of the British Raj in the twentieth. Using a variety of materials, including archival documents and familiar texts, Vasunia shows how classical culture pervaded the thoughts and minds of the British colonizers. His book highlights the many Indian receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity and analyses how Indians turned to ancient Greece and Rome during the colonial period for a variety of purposes, including anti-colonialism, nationalism, and collaboration. Offering a unique cross-cultural study, this volume will be of interest to literary scholars and historians of the classical world, the British Empire, and South Asia.

Numerous nations have in one way or another engaged with the cultures of classical Greece and Rome. What impact does the classical past have on ideas of the nation, nationhood, nationality, and what effect does the national space have on classical culture? How has classical culture been imagined in various national traditions, what importance has it had within them, and for whom? This collection of essays by an international team of experts tackles the vexed relationship between Classics and national cultures, presenting essays on many regions, including China, India, Mexico, Japan, and South Africa, as well as Germany, Greece, and Italy. It poses new questions for the study of antiquity and for the history of nations and nationalisms.

The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies is a unique collection of some seventy articles which together explore the ways in which ancient Greece has been, is, and might be studied. It is intended to inform its readers, but also, importantly, to inspire them, and to enable them to pursue their own research by introducing the primary resources and exploring the latest agenda for their study. The emphasis is on the breadth and potential of Hellenic Studies as a flourishing and exciting intellectual arena, and also upon its relevance to the way we think about ourselves today.

The Egyptians mesmerized the ancient Greeks for scores of years. The Greek literature and art of the classical period are especially thick with representations of Egypt and Egyptians. Yet despite numerous firsthand contacts with Egypt, Greek writers constructed their own Egypt, one that differed in significant ways from actual Egyptian history, society, and culture. Informed by recent work on orientalism and colonialism, this book unravels the significance of these misrepresentations of Egypt in the Greek cultural imagination in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. Looking in particular at issues of identity, otherness, and cultural anxiety, Phiroze Vasunia shows how Greek authors constructed an image of Egypt that reflected their own attitudes and prejudices about Greece itself. He focuses his discussion on Aeschylus Suppliants; Book 2 of Herodotus; Euripides' Helen; Plato's Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Critias; and Isocrates' Busiris.Reconstructing the history of the bias that informed these writings, Vasunia shows that Egypt in these works was shaped in relation to Greek institutions, values, and ideas on such subjects as gender and sexuality, death, writing, and political and ethnic identity. This study traces the tendentiousness of Greek representations by introducing comparative Egyptian material, thus interrogating the Greek texts and authors from a cross-cultural perspective. A final chapter also considers the invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great and shows how he exploited and revised the discursive tradition in his conquest of the country. Firmly and knowledgeably rooted in classical studies and the ancient sources, this study takes a broad look at the issue of cross-cultural exchange in antiquity by framing it within the perspective of contemporary cultural studies. In addition, this provocative and original work shows how Greek writers made possible literary Europe's most persistent and adaptable obsession: the barbarian.

Ancient science is a subject that commands extensive general interest. This is the first non-technical survey of the interface between ancient and modern science. It is aimed at crossover student sales in classics, the history of ideas and the history and philosophy of science. Modern science and its technology are the children of the seventeenth-century. But the bold investigative experimentation and scientific systems of thought that this era spawned were in turn thoroughly influenced by Greek and Roman authors and ideas. Xenophanes' ideas about fossils informed the science of geology. Copernicus and his novel notion that the earth revolved around the sun, and not vice versa, were arguably influenced by the Samian philosopher and mathematician, Aristarchus. And the anatomists of Alexandria still - even today - have valuable insights to bring to current ethical discussions of vivisection and animal welfare. Shedding fresh light on topics such as Euclid's geometry, Aristotelian physics and the proto-Darwinism of pre-Socratic thinkers like Empedocles, Philippa Lang addresses the fascinating differences and similarities between ancient and modern conceptions of 'science'.She discusses the origins of the cosmos; natural laws in mathematics and physics; conceptions and philosophies of biology and disease; ideas about mechanistic science and technology as they have been used to control the societies of human beings; and the important nexus between science, morality and ethics.Greek and Roman parallels illuminate and clarify the meaning of science itself.

How do different cultures think about race? In the modern era, racial distinctiveness has been assessed primarily in terms of a person's physical appearance. But it was not always so. As Denise McCoskey shows, the ancient Greeks and Romans did not use skin colour as the basis for categorising ethnic disparity. The colour of one's skin lies at the foundation of racial variability today because it was used during the heyday of European exploration and colonialism to construct a hierarchy of civilizations and then justify slavery and other forms of economic exploitation. Assumptions about race thus have to take into account factors other than mere physiognomy. This is particularly true in relation to the classical world. In fifth century Athens, racial theory during the Persian Wars produced the categories 'Greek' and 'Barbarian', and set them in brutal opposition to one another: a process that could be as intense and destructive as 'black and 'white' in our own age. Ideas about race in antiquity were therefore completely distinct but as closely bound to political and historical contexts as those that came later.This provocative book boldly explores the complex matrices of race - and the differing interpretations of ancient and modern - across epic, tragedy and the novel. Ranging from Theocritus to Toni Morrison, and from Tacitus and Pliny to Bernal's seminal study Black Athena, this is a powerful and original new assessment.

Modern sport cannot be understood without ancient sport. Sport saturates contemporary society and the global reach of sport and its intense popularity characterizes the modern world. But, at the same time, sport is one of the most ancient human pursuits. In the globalized sport of today, the type of athletic performance and the ideology of sport and its apparent origins are mostly derived from the model of one pre-modern civilization: Graeco-Roman antiquity.Juxtaposing ancient writers with recent ones, including the modern Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin and physical fitness impresario Bernarr Macfadden, and by examining the representation of sport in Olympic films, Miller demonstrates the ancient heritage of contemporary sport, and the creative ways in which ancient sport has been adapted, appropriated, mishandled and reimagined. Sport today contains a surprising contradiction: its explicit modernity (from its technological sophistication and integration into capitalist markets to its institutionalization and celebrity culture) and its supposed antiquity (from the mythology of the Olympics to the ancient roots of sporting civic and national pride, and the emotional and near religious fervour of sports fans).This book intervenes in one of the most important of the receptions of classical antiquity by examining how sports personalities, agencies, institutions and movements have consciously connected themselves to the Graeco-Roman past, even as they continue to insist on their own centrality in the modern world.

Modern sport cannot be understood without ancient sport. Sport saturates contemporary society and the global reach of sport and its intense popularity characterizes the modern world. But, at the same time, sport is one of the most ancient human pursuits. In the globalized sport of today, the type of athletic performance and the ideology of sport and its apparent origins are mostly derived from the model of one pre-modern civilization: Graeco-Roman antiquity.Juxtaposing ancient writers with recent ones, including the modern Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin and physical fitness impresario Bernarr Macfadden, and by examining the representation of sport in Olympic films, Miller demonstrates the ancient heritage of contemporary sport, and the creative ways in which ancient sport has been adapted, appropriated, mishandled and reimagined. Sport today contains a surprising contradiction: its explicit modernity (from its technological sophistication and integration into capitalist markets to its institutionalization and celebrity culture) and its supposed antiquity (from the mythology of the Olympics to the ancient roots of sporting civic and national pride, and the emotional and near religious fervour of sports fans).This book intervenes in one of the most important of the receptions of classical antiquity by examining how sports personalities, agencies, institutions and movements have consciously connected themselves to the Graeco-Roman past, even as they continue to insist on their own centrality in the modern world.

The Politics of Form in Greek Literature explores the relationship between form and political life specifically in Greek textual culture. In the last generation or so, classicists (and their counterparts in other disciplines) have begun to pay greater attention to the socio-historical contexts of literary production and sought to historicize aesthetic practice. However, historicism (and in particular New Historicism) is only one mode of approaching the question of form, which is increasingly brought into dialogue with a number of other issues (e.g. gender). Bringing together contributions from a range of experts, this volume examines these and other related approaches, assessing their limitations and discussing possibilities for the future. Individual chapters discuss an array of ancient authors, including Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Callimachus, and more, and sketch out the specifically Greek contribution to the debate, as well as the implications for other disciplines. What emerges from this book are new ways of thinking about form, and indeed about politics, that will be of value to scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences.

The Politics of Form in Greek Literature explores the relationship between form and political life specifically in Greek textual culture. In the last generation or so, classicists (and their counterparts in other disciplines) have begun to pay greater attention to the socio-historical contexts of literary production and sought to historicize aesthetic practice. However, historicism (and in particular New Historicism) is only one mode of approaching the question of form, which is increasingly brought into dialogue with a number of other issues (e.g. gender). Bringing together contributions from a range of experts, this volume examines these and other related approaches, assessing their limitations and discussing possibilities for the future. Individual chapters discuss an array of ancient authors, including Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Callimachus, and more, and sketch out the specifically Greek contribution to the debate, as well as the implications for other disciplines. What emerges from this book are new ways of thinking about form, and indeed about politics, that will be of value to scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences.

The Politics of Form in Greek Literature explores the relationship between form and political life specifically in Greek textual culture. In the last generation or so, classicists (and their counterparts in other disciplines) have begun to pay greater attention to the socio-historical contexts of literary production and sought to historicize aesthetic practice. However, historicism (and in particular New Historicism) is only one mode of approaching the question of form, which is increasingly brought into dialogue with a number of other issues (e.g. gender). Bringing together contributions from a range of experts, this volume examines these and other related approaches, assessing their limitations and discussing possibilities for the future. Individual chapters discuss an array of ancient authors, including Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Callimachus, and more, and sketch out the specifically Greek contribution to the debate, as well as the implications for other disciplines. What emerges from this book are new ways of thinking about form, and indeed about politics, that will be of value to scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences.

The Politics of Form in Greek Literature explores the relationship between form and political life specifically in Greek textual culture. In the last generation or so, classicists (and their counterparts in other disciplines) have begun to pay greater attention to the socio-historical contexts of literary production and sought to historicize aesthetic practice. However, historicism (and in particular New Historicism) is only one mode of approaching the question of form, which is increasingly brought into dialogue with a number of other issues (e.g. gender). Bringing together contributions from a range of experts, this volume examines these and other related approaches, assessing their limitations and discussing possibilities for the future. Individual chapters discuss an array of ancient authors, including Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Callimachus, and more, and sketch out the specifically Greek contribution to the debate, as well as the implications for other disciplines. What emerges from this book are new ways of thinking about form, and indeed about politics, that will be of value to scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences.

This book explores the pivotal role played by ancient mousike¯ – in all its facets – in the development of musical practices and ideas throughout history. Since antiquity, music has consistently played a significant role in social and cultural life, and although the terms in which it is expressed and the cultural meanings it conveys vary dramatically across different times and geographies, the influence of the ancient Greek concept on modern Western notions is nevertheless striking.In a series of lucid and engaging thematic chapters, Eleonora Rocconi surveys the roles and functions of the Greek notion of music from classical antiquity, through the Renaissance and early modern eras, and up to the present day. The discussion is structured around the key concepts, theoretical models and aesthetic issues at play – from the educational and therapeutic value of music, to its place in the ideal of cosmic harmony and its relationship to the senses and emotions – as well as the function of music in debates around individual and cultural identity. What emerges is a timely reassessment of the paradigmatic value of the Greek model in the musical reception of antiquity in different historical periods. It highlights the ongoing contribution of mousike¯ to modern cultural debates within the realms of classics, musicology, philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology, performance and cultural studies, as well as in artistic environments. It also offers a clear and comprehensive account of its inexhaustible source of inspiration for musicians, theorists, scholars and antiquarians across the centuries.

This book explores the pivotal role played by ancient mousike—in all its facets—in the development of musical practices and ideas throughout history. Since antiquity, music has consistently played a significant role in social and cultural life, and although the terms in which it is expressed and the cultural meanings it conveys vary dramatically across different times and geographies, the influence of the ancient Greek concept on modern Western notions is nevertheless striking. In a series of lucid and engaging thematic chapters, Eleonora Rocconi surveys the roles and functions of music from classical antiquity, through the Renaissance and early modern eras, and up to the present day. The discussion is structured around the key concepts, theoretical models, and aesthetic issues at play - from the educational and therapeutic value of music to its place in the ideal of cosmic harmony and its relationship to the senses and emotions - as well as the function of music in debates around individual and cultural identity. What emerges is a timely reassessment of the paradigmatic value of the Greek model in the musical reception of antiquity in different historical periods. It highlights the ongoing contribution of mousike to modern cultural debates within the realms of classics, musicology, philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology, performance, and cultural studies, as well as in artistic environments, and offers a clear and comprehensive account of its inexhaustible source of inspiration for musicians, theorists, scholars, and antiquarians across the centuries.

Is psychiatry a distinctively modern approach to mental difference and distress, or is it a continuation of ancient Greek ideas – in the realm not only of medicine (consider ‘melancholia’), but also of philosophy (source of the idea of ‘therapeutics of the soul’) and tragic drama (inspiration for, among other concepts, the ‘Oedipus complex’)? This volume examines how psychiatry, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have been shaped by classical antiquity (and ideas about antiquity), and it explores the stories told about what this relationship between the psy disciplines and ancient Greece might mean.Taking as a starting point the debate about what exactly mental illnesses might be, Jessica Wright explores how contemporary tensions and debates reflect efforts to smooth over inconsistencies and discontinuities between ancient and modern ideas about illnesses affecting the mind. The volume goes on to investigate key concepts that bridge classical antiquity and modern psychiatry, showing how these ideas have been adapted and repurposed for new circumstances, analysing how they are deployed to negotiate the legitimacy of current theories, and demonstrating how the roles they play in psychiatry reshape our understandings of antiquity itself. What emerges above all is how the process of examining the connections between modern psychiatry and classical antiquity, whether historical, constructed or imagined, can illuminate modern ideas about mental illness, approaches to treating it, and its place in contemporary society and culture.

Is psychiatry a distinctively modern approach to mental difference and distress, or is it a continuation of ancient Greek ideas – in the realm not only of medicine (consider ‘melancholia’), but also of philosophy (source of the idea of ‘therapeutics of the soul’) and tragic drama (inspiration for, among other concepts, the ‘Oedipus complex’)? This volume examines how psychiatry, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have been shaped by classical antiquity (and ideas about antiquity), and it explores the stories told about what this relationship between the psy disciplines and ancient Greece might mean.Taking as a starting point the debate about what exactly mental illnesses might be, Jessica Wright explores how contemporary tensions and debates reflect efforts to smooth over inconsistencies and discontinuities between ancient and modern ideas about illnesses affecting the mind. The volume goes on to investigate key concepts that bridge classical antiquity and modern psychiatry, showing how these ideas have been adapted and repurposed for new circumstances, analysing how they are deployed to negotiate the legitimacy of current theories, and demonstrating how the roles they play in psychiatry reshape our understandings of antiquity itself. What emerges above all is how the process of examining the connections between modern psychiatry and classical antiquity, whether historical, constructed or imagined, can illuminate modern ideas about mental illness, approaches to treating it, and its place in contemporary society and culture.

In this open access book, leading Greek scholars explore the rich and diverse poetry and prose of the long Hellenistic period. Chapters focus on the poets of Alexandria such as Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius, and Posidippus and on prose texts written in Greek in the Roman Empire. This volume demonstrates the versatility of this literature and examines its multiple cultural affiliations. The Hellenistic writers emerge from this volume as complex, playful, and politically engaged figures, interested in the relationship between culture and society, and far removed from the stereotype of them as distant or elitist. This book makes a major contribution to the study of Hellenistic Greek culture.Susan Stephens is the Sarah Hart Kimball Emerita Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, USA. Her contributions to the study of Hellenistic literature and culture are immense. She is the author of over fifty articles and the author or editor of ten books. Many of these publications have made a significant impact on the study of the ancient world. Her research on the poets of Alexandria and on ancient Greek prose fiction is widely regarded as path-breaking. She is an inspiring and influential teacher who guided and mentored generations of students and is closely associated with Stanford, where she obtained her undergraduate and doctoral degrees and where she taught from 1978 until her retirement.The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Stanford University.

In this open access book, leading Greek scholars explore the rich and diverse poetry and prose of the long Hellenistic period. Chapters focus on the poets of Alexandria such as Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius, and Posidippus and on prose texts written in Greek in the Roman Empire. This volume demonstrates the versatility of this literature and examines its multiple cultural affiliations. The Hellenistic writers emerge from this volume as complex, playful, and politically engaged figures, interested in the relationship between culture and society, and far removed from the stereotype of them as distant or elitist. This book makes a major contribution to the study of Hellenistic Greek culture.Susan Stephens is the Sarah Hart Kimball Emerita Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, USA. Her contributions to the study of Hellenistic literature and culture are immense. She is the author of over fifty articles and the author or editor of ten books. Many of these publications have made a significant impact on the study of the ancient world. Her research on the poets of Alexandria and on ancient Greek prose fiction is widely regarded as path-breaking. She is an inspiring and influential teacher who guided and mentored generations of students and is closely associated with Stanford, where she obtained her undergraduate and doctoral degrees and where she taught from 1978 until her retirement.The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Stanford University.

What is a religion? What triggered the spontaneous development of distinct religions throughout the ancient world? How do religions evoke the ultimate realities they claim to address? Such questions are as evergreen as belief itself. The Hellenistic and Roman worlds were a fertile seedbed of the monotheistic faiths that dominate today's western image of religion, as well as many global conflicts. In this concise and elegant overview, Jorg Rupke addresses the similarities and differences of religions in antiquity, tracing their sometimes complex lineage into modern systems of belief. Greek and Roman religion is discussed not in isolation, but in the broader context of western Asia and Egypt. The author also addresses developments relating to early Islam on the south-eastern margins of the Byzantine Empire.Examining such topics as the functions of priests and religious functionaries; religious individualism; the relationship between religion and political identity; the acceptance of the pagan Julian calendar by Christians; and contrasting ancient and modern understandings of divination, Rupke shows that study of pre-modern culture enables us more daringly to explore the contemporary religious world.

What is a religion? What triggered the spontaneous development of distinct religions throughout the ancient world? How do religions evoke the ultimate realities they claim to address? Such questions are as evergreen as belief itself. The Hellenistic and Roman worlds were a fertile seedbed of the monotheistic faiths that dominate today's western image of religion, as well as many global conflicts. In this concise and elegant overview, Jorg Rupke addresses the similarities and differences of religions in antiquity, tracing their sometimes complex lineage into modern systems of belief. Greek and Roman religion is discussed not in isolation, but in the broader context of western Asia and Egypt. The author also addresses developments relating to early Islam on the south-eastern margins of the Byzantine Empire.Examining such topics as the functions of priests and religious functionaries; religious individualism; the relationship between religion and political identity; the acceptance of the pagan Julian calendar by Christians; and contrasting ancient and modern understandings of divination, Rupke shows that study of pre-modern culture enables us more daringly to explore the contemporary religious world.

The impulse to try to anticipate the future, and make sense of apparently random events, is irrepressible. Why and how the ancient Greeks tried to foretell the outcome of the present is the subject of Esther Eidinow's lively appraisal, which explores the legacy of ancient Greek notions of luck, fate and fortune in our own era, drawing on approaches to cognitive anthropology. Perhaps the most famous of all sites of prediction is the Oracle at Delphi. But the Delphic Oracle is only the best-known example from a landscape covered by oracular sanctuaries; while across the literary genres of antiquity there are myriad tales - such as that of doomed Oedipus - which wrestle with the cruel vicissitudes of fate and fortune. Exploring some of the key ideas of ancient Greek culture that resonate with modern conceptions of destiny, Eidinow examines the ancients' notion of luck as a means to explain daily experiences. Focusing on writers such as Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Demosthenes, the author shows how concepts of fate in antiquity changed over time, in response to social and political currents.She draws too on modern cultural texts like "Terminator 2" and "Lawrence of Arabia", demonstrating how the recurring questions 'what if?' and 'why me?' are fundamental to the human relationship with an uncertain future, whether it be in the ancient past or the present day.

The impulse to try to anticipate the future, and make sense of apparently random events, is irrepressible. Why and how the ancient Greeks tried to foretell the outcome of the present is the subject of Esther Eidinow's lively appraisal, which explores the legacy of ancient Greek notions of luck, fate and fortune in our own era, drawing on approaches to cognitive anthropology. Perhaps the most famous of all sites of prediction is the Oracle at Delphi. But the Delphic Oracle is only the best-known example from a landscape covered by oracular sanctuaries; while across the literary genres of antiquity there are myriad tales - such as that of doomed Oedipus - which wrestle with the cruel vicissitudes of fate and fortune. Exploring some of the key ideas of ancient Greek culture that resonate with modern conceptions of destiny, Eidinow examines the ancients' notion of luck as a means to explain daily experiences. Focusing on writers such as Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Demosthenes, the author shows how concepts of fate in antiquity changed over time, in response to social and political currents.She draws too on modern cultural texts like "Terminator 2" and "Lawrence of Arabia", demonstrating how the recurring questions 'what if?' and 'why me?' are fundamental to the human relationship with an uncertain future, whether it be in the ancient past or the present day.

Ancient Greece is famous as the civilization which 'gave' the world democracy. Democracy has in modern times become the rallying cry of liberation from supposed totalitarianism and dictatorship. And the desire by the western powers, especially America, to foment (or impose) democracy across the globe is one of the most powerful driving motors in present-day geopolitics: not least in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, a lively and well informed treatment of the nexus between politics in antiquity and political discourse in the modern era is both timely and apposite. As Kostas Vlassopoulos shows, much can be learned about the practice of politics from a comparative discussion of the classical and the contemporary. His starting point is that the value of looking back to a political system with different assumptions and elements can help us think, and even shape, what the future of modern politics might be.He discusses the contrasting political systems prevalent in the Greek city-states of Athens, Sparta and Corinth; tensions between democrats and oligarchs in Periclean Athens; the bitter rivalries which led to the Peloponnesian Wars in the fifth century BCE; and, the delicate balance of powers between people, senate and emperor in the hierarchical society of republican and latterly imperial Rome. Above all, the book shows how important and surprising the study of antiquity can be in reassessing and revaluating modern political debates.

Ancient Greece is famous as the civilization which 'gave' the world democracy. Democracy has in modern times become the rallying cry of liberation from supposed totalitarianism and dictatorship. And the desire by the western powers, especially America, to foment (or impose) democracy across the globe is one of the most powerful driving motors in present-day geopolitics: not least in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, a lively and well informed treatment of the nexus between politics in antiquity and political discourse in the modern era is both timely and apposite. As Kostas Vlassopoulos shows, much can be learned about the practice of politics from a comparative discussion of the classical and the contemporary. His starting point is that the value of looking back to a political system with different assumptions and elements can help us think, and even shape, what the future of modern politics might be.He discusses the contrasting political systems prevalent in the Greek city-states of Athens, Sparta and Corinth; tensions between democrats and oligarchs in Periclean Athens; the bitter rivalries which led to the Peloponnesian Wars in the fifth century BCE; and, the delicate balance of powers between people, senate and emperor in the hierarchical society of republican and latterly imperial Rome. Above all, the book shows how important and surprising the study of antiquity can be in reassessing and revaluating modern political debates.

'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' is perhaps the most famous phrase of all in the American Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson's momentous words are closely related to the French concept of 'liberte, egalite, fraternite'; and both ideas incarnate a notion of freedom as inalienable human right that in the modern world we expect to take for granted. In the ancient world, by contrast, the concepts of freedom and equality had little purchase. Athenians, Spartans and Romans all possessed slaves or helots (unfree bondsmen), and society was unequal at every stratum. Why, then, if modern society abominates slavery, does what antiquity thought about serfdom matter today? Page duBois shows that slavery, far from being extinct, is alive and well in the contemporary era. Slaves are associated not just with the Colosseum of ancient Rome but also with Californian labour factories and south Asian sweatshops, while young women and children appear increasingly vulnerable to sexual trafficking. Applying such modern experiences of bondage (economic or sexual) to slavery in antiquity, the author explores the writings on the subject of Aristotle, Plautus, Terence and Aristophanes.She also examines the case of Spartacus, famous leader of a Roman slave rebellion, and relates ancient notions of liberation to the all-too-common immigrant experience of enslavement to a globalized world of rampant corporatism and exploitative capitalism.