Edinburgh Leventis Studies – serie

Classical Greece was permeated by a spirit of rivalry. Games and sports, theatrical performances, courtroom trials, recitation of poetry, canvassing for public office, war itself - all aspects of life were informed by a competitive ethos. This pioneering book considers how the Greeks viewed, explained, exploited and controlled the emotions that entered into such rivalrous activities, and looks at what the private and public effects were of such feelings as ambition, desire, pride, passion, envy and spite.Among the questions the authors address: How was envy distinguished from emulation? Was rivalry central to democratic politics? What was the relation between envy and erotic jealousy? Did the Greeks feel erotic jealousy at all? Did the views of philosophers correspond to those reflected in the historians, tragic poets and orators? Were there differences in attitude towards the rivalrous emotions within ancient Greece, or between Greece and Rome? Did jealousy, envy and malice have bad effects on ancient society, or could they be channelled to positive ends by stimulating effort and innovation? Can the ancient Greek and Roman views of envy, spite and jealousy contribute anything to our own understanding of these universally troubling emotions?This is the first book devoted to the emotions of rivalry in the classical world taken as a whole. With chapters written by a dozen scholars in ancient history, literature and philosophy, it contributes notably to the study of ancient Greece and to the history of the emotions more generally.

This volume brings together contributions from leading Plato scholars from Britain, Europe and North America on a closely defined topic central to Plato’s thought and to Ancient Philosophy –Plato’s Form of the Good. The importance of the collection lies in the combination and presentation in one place of a range of different approaches to the good in Plato’s Republic, and different solutions to the problems posed and proposed by these approaches. The two central issues, which form an underlying thread throughout the collection, are: first whether Plato’s Republic is centred on what is good for individual humans, or on some quasi-moral good; and secondly, what the Form of the Good is.Pursuing the Good goes beyond recent studies in the field, and will appeal to classicists and philosophers alike. To the advanced student, it represents a wide-ranging introduction to central issues of Plato’s philosophy; for the academic it will provide stimulus through antithetical and controversial solutions to questions old and new.

A wide examination of the ways in which the Greeks constructed, de-constructed, engaged with and relied on their pastsThis volume in The Edinburgh Leventis Studies series collects the papers presented at the sixth A. G. Leventis conference organised under the auspices of the Department of Classics at the University of Edinburgh. As with earlier volumes, it engages with new research and new approaches to the Greek past, and brings the fruits of that research to a wider audience.  Although Greek historians were fundamental in the enterprise of preserving the memory of great deeds in antiquity, they were not alone in their interest in the past. The Greeks themselves, quite apart from their historians and in a variety of non-historiographical media, were constantly creating pasts for themselves that answered to the needs - political, social, moral and even religious - of their society. In this volume eighteen scholars discuss the variety of ways in which the Greeks constructed de-constructed, engaged with, alluded to, and relied on their pasts whether it was in the poetry of Homer, in the victory odes of Pindar, in tragedy and comedy on the Athenian stage, in their pictorial art, in their political assemblies, or in their religious practices. What emerges is a comprehensive overview of the importance of and presence of the past at every level of Greek society.In the final chapter the three discussants present at the conference (Simon Goldhill, Christopher Pelling and Suzanne Saïd) survey the contributions to the volume, summarise its overall contributions as well as indicate new directions that further scholarship might follow.

The ‘Classic’ narratology that has been widely applied to classical texts is aimed at a universal taxonomy for describing narratives. More recently, ‘new narratologies’ have begun linking the formal characteristics of narrative to their historical and ideological contexts. This volume seeks such a rethinking for Greek literature. It has 2 closely related objectives: to define what is characteristically Greek in Greek narratives of different periods and genres, and to see how narrative techniques and concerns develop over time. The 15 distinguished contributors explore questions such as: how is Homeric epic like and unlike Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible? What do Greek historians consistently fail to tell us, having learned from the tradition what to ignore? How does lyric modify narrative techniques from other genres?This study will appeal to students and scholars of classics as well comparative literature and literary theory

The Greek gods are still very much present in modern consciousness. Although Apollo and Dionysos, Artemis and Aphrodite, Zeus and Hermes are household names, it is much less clear what these divinities meant and stood for in ancient Greece. In fact, they have been very much neglected in modern scholarship. This book brings together a team of international scholars with the aim of remedying this situation and generating new approaches to the nature and development of the Greek gods in the period from Homer until Late Antiquity. The book looks at individual gods, but also asks to what extent cult, myth and literary genre determine the nature of a divinity. How do the Greek gods function in a polytheistic pantheon and what is their connection to the heroes? What is the influence of philosophy? What does archaeology tell us about the gods? In what way do the gods in Late Antiquity differ from those in classical Greece? This book presents a synchronic and diachronic view of the gods as they functioned in Greek culture until the triumph of Christianity.

Political history and history of ideas, art history, theories of nations and nationalism, Classical Reception studies, modern Greek history and modern Scottish history come together in this collection of essays by experts in all these fields. The starting point for the volume is the bicentenary of the Greek Revolution (1821 1832), for the first time linked to the cultural and intellectual history of Scotland, and particularly of Edinburgh, during roughly the same period. The book's two parts respectively contextualise the struggle for Greek national independence in space and time, and explore the engagement of Scots with Greece during the period, as well as parallels between the two nations. Throughout, the Greek Revolution and its Scottish supporters are viewed in relation to the Classical Tradition, or Classical Reception.This pioneering book makes a unique contribution to the burgeoning literature on the Greek Revolution during the anniversary decade, and raises issues of national identity and self-determination that have contemporary resonances in both Greece and Scotland, at opposite ends of Europe, today.

Plato's Republic is the master's masterpiece; but how to go about interpreting it is still disputed. Indeed, it may be a masterpiece just because how to understand it is fiercely controversial. This collection of 24 original essays by an international mix of junior and senior scholars reconsiders the Republic as a written text and rethinks its philosophical legacy. The volume seeks to explore how the Republic goes about doing philosophy with its reader without importing assumptions as to what counts as a philosophy and what does not, what should be kept and what discarded. The working assumption for uniting these different aspects is that 'Plato writes nothing in vain'. To that end, much can be learned by studying how its sections can take on different meanings between a first and subsequent re-reading.

This authoritative series of essays brings together a group of eminent scholars engaged with Imperial Greece in the first work of its kind to address the art-history, archaeology, numismatics and prose literature of Imperial Greek cities in one volume, covering the period from pre-Imperial Hellenistic developments to the late third century CE.The book provides a wide coverage and is organised into thematic sections including: the overall context of Greek cities in the Roman Empire and their Hellenistic roots; festival culture; prominent figures who shaped Hellenic identity; some key prose-writers of the period; Hellenism in action in the Roman Empire; and further perspectives on Hellenic culture outside the learned mainstreams.

What makes us laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time? How do these two primal, seemingly discrete and non-verbal modes of expression intersect in everyday life and ritual, and what range of emotions do they evoke? How may they be voiced, shaped and coloured in literature and liturgy, art and music? Bringing together scholars from diverse periods and disciplines of Hellenic and Byzantine studies, this volume explores the shifting shapes and functions of laughter and tears.  With a focus on the tragic, the comic and the tragicomic dimensions of laughter and tears in art, literature and performance, as well as on their emotional, socio-cultural and religious significance, it breaks new ground in the study of ancient and Byzantine affectivity.