Legacy Series – serie

This book is about much more than `the glory that was Greece'. In this fresh appraisal, replacing the original Legacy of Greece edited by Sir Richard Livingstone in 1921, fourteen distinguished contributors, all specialists in their field, describe a particular aspect of Greek culture, and then assess what later generations have made of this valuable inheritance. The result is a lucid and succinct introduction to how the ancient Greeks lived and thought, and to their influence on the world we know today. The wide range of topics covered includes politics, literature, history, education, philosophy, science, myth, and art and architecture.

The rich and varied legacy of India, built up over many centuries, is still an influential force. Its contribution to world history and world civilization is here described in a series of essays interpreting India's culture to the West. Written by expert scholars, they evaluate Indian achievements and innovations in the fields of art and architecture, music, science, literature, philosophy and religion.

The achievements of the Roman world have profoundly affected European and world civilization. The original Legacy of Rome, edited by Cyril Bailey, was published in 1923 and has been widely read and enjoyed. Nearly seventy years on, this new edition, illustrated with 24 pages of plates, offers an entirely fresh assessment of the influence of ancient Rome on the literature, art, culture, thought, and governance of later times.Fourteen contributors from a variety of disciplines each bring their individual knowledge and experience to the subjects discussed. Classical scholars consider the influence of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, pastoral, satire, and rhetoric. Historians assess Rome's impact through the ages, and textual transmission. Art, architecture, law, drama, and language are also individually discussed. The varied approach and content of this new appraisal bear witness to the richness of the civilization which forms such a large part of our heritage today.

Influence from Mesopotamia on adjacent civilizations has often been proposed on the basis of scattered similarities. For the first time a wide-ranging assessment from 3000 BC to the Middle Ages investigates how similarities arose in Egypt, Palestine, Anatolia, and Greece. The development of writing for accountancy, astronomy, devination, and belles lettres emanated from Mesopotamians who took their academic traditions into countries beyond their political control. Each country soon transformed what it received into its own, individual culture. When cuneiform writing disappeared, Babylonian cults and literature, now in Aramaic and Greek, flourished during the Roman Empire. The Manichaeans adapted the old traditions which then perished under persecution, but traces persist in Hermetic works, court narratives and romances, and in the Arabian Nights. When ancient Mesopotamia was rediscovered in the last century, British scholars were at the forefront of international research. Public excitement has been reflected in pictures and poems, films and fashion.