Great Lives of the Ancient World – serie

Galileo, Leonardo, Newton, Tesla – all revered him. As an engineer, Archimedes of Syracuse almost single-handedly held off the world’s most powerful army. In an era of abacuses and sundials, he designed geared calculating devices that accurately modeled the solar system. As a mathematician, he knew more in 212 BCE than all of Europe for the next seventeen centuries. In this bold reimagining, modern polymath Nicholas Nicastro shines new light on Archimedes’ life and work. Far from the aloof, physically inept figure of historical myth, he is revealed to be an ambitious, combative and fiercely competitive man. A genius who challenged an empire, Archimedes emerges as the world’s first fully modern scientist – millennia before his intellectual descendants transformed our world.

Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Plato lived in turbulent times, born during a war that led to Athens’ defeat and decline. A restored democracy enabled the execution of his teacher Socrates.Carol Atack explores how his life in Athens influenced Plato’s thinking, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool, and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Accessibly written, this book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching big questions about existence and the societies we create, then and now.

This book offers a fresh perspective on the reign of Alexander the Great. It re-examines Alexander’s military victories and personality, while also exploring the impact of his campaigns on the people he conquered. Alexander’s story, Stephen Harrison argues, is one that includes the vital roles that other figures played in historical events. By considering the social and intellectual currents of the last two decades, Harrison highlights how changing contemporary experiences shape historical interpretations. Moving beyond polarized debates about Alexander, he provides a nuanced discussion of Alexander’s achievements and impact. The book presents an Alexander for the twenty-first century, offering new insights into how and why historical interpretations of him have changed.

People have written biographies of Confucius for over 2,000 years, but a recent discovery of a Chinese tomb containing the oldest written account of his life provides an opportunity to revisit the philosopher afresh. In this book, Mark Csikszentmihalyi tells the story of the life and wisdom of the Chinese thinker by exploring Confucius as a ritual prodigy, moral educator, scholar and political draftsman. He also considers how Confucius has been used as a symbol for traditional Chinese culture in modern times – both by those who want to radically reform or destroy it and by those who seek to preserve or revive it. Confucius: A New Tradition provides an insightful, accessible and concise account of a key figure in East Asian thought.

This book guides us through the fascinating life and writings of Marcus Aurelius, the only Roman emperor celebrated for centuries for his decency and earnest Stoic philosophy. Philosopher William O. Stephens explores Marcus’ reluctant rise to power, his marriage and his efforts to mould his son into a successor. He examines Marcus’ Stoic tenets as he describes the struggles of dealing with a fifteen-year pandemic, the betrayal of a trusted general, social upheaval centred on a new ‘superstition’ – Christianity – and how Marcus’ determination to stabilize the empire’s borders met with strife, broken treaties and protracted wars. This gripping narrative of Marcus’ life, times and thought, as well as his complex legacy, will appeal to all those interested in Roman history as well as to aspiring Stoics.

Pericles, the Athenian statesman, was a towering figure of his era, renowned for promoting Athenian democracy, shaping the Athenian Empire and championing the arts, notably through the Parthenon’s creation. Born to aristocracy, he was a fervent democrat, a masterful demagogue in the ancient sense and an eccentric in his personal life. Paul Cartledge explores Pericles’ life, examines Athenian history and provides an insightful account of Pericles’ political career, his role in Athens’s building programme, his intellectual connections and his love life. Cartledge further considers Pericles’ reputation in the theatre as well as the ways in which he has been represented over the centuries from antiquity to the present day. This is a nuanced, illuminating and lively portrayal of a remarkable politician.

Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Plato lived in turbulent times, born during a war that led to Athens’s defeat and decline. A restored democracy enabled the execution of his teacher Socrates.Carol Atack explores how his life in Athens influenced Plato’s thinking, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Now available in paperback, this accessibly written book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching big questions about existence and the societies we create, then and now.

Who was the so-called ‘father of medicine’, commonly associated with the celebrated Hippocratic Oath? Elizabeth Craik explores evidence for the historical Hippocrates, who lived in the fifth century bce, and combines it with documentation and compelling excerpts from the ‘Hippocratic Corpus’, a vast and surprisingly varied collection of Greek medical texts, linked in transmission with his name. Craik draws on a wide and vivid range of texts, and through a focus on place in the ancient world and with an innovatory attention to language she shows how several different ‘voices’ of the Corpus may all be regarded as Hippocratic. Hippocrates: Man, Medic, Myth brings a vital new orientation to important questions of origins and authorship and provides a novel interpretation of a key figure in the history of medicine.