Trends in Classics - Key Perspectives on Classical Research - Böcker

Slavery is attested throughout ancient Greek history and all over the Greek world. Unsurprisingly, then, scholarship on Greek slavery has proliferated in the past twenty-five or so years, making a holistic synthesis of such work especially desirable. This book offers a state-of-the-art guide to research on this subject, surveying recent scholarly trends and controversies and suggesting future directions for research. Topics include regional variation in slave systems; the economics of slavery; the treatment of enslaved people; sex and gender; agency, resistance, and revolt; manumission; and representations, metaphors, and legacies of Greek slavery. Readers, including those interested in slavery of other time periods, will find this book an essential resource in learning about key issues in Greek slavery studies or in pursuing their own research.

The study of Roman Historiography, and with it of individual historians, has undergone a sea change in the last half century, with emphasis increasingly placed on the structures of the text and the method of delivery rather than exclusively on the historical content of the work. Despite this change, and despite the steady accumulation of work on Livy and on the AUC, his 142 volume account of the growth of the Roman state, no new general monograph on Livy has appeared in the last fifty years. A new stock taking is therefore in order, the better to introduce Livy to a new generation of readers; not as the fusty moralizing historian, but as an exciting text with its own aesthetic and ethical contribution. Focusing on the intersection of politics and form, this book focuses on rhetorical mannerisms with which Livy clothes the historical skeleton: the structures of composition, the speeches he gives his characters, the mechanisms through which he interacts with the literary and historical world outside his own text, and the literary-critical methods, especially intertextuality and exemplarity, suitable for the historiographical text. This book will of use for those seeking a critical reppraisal of recent trends in work on Livy.

Cicero was not only a great Roman politician, lawyer and orator: he also dealt extensively with philosophy, which he believed constituted the surest foundation for his commitment to civic affairs. Not limiting himself to the translation of previous philosophical thought, he critically addressed central theoretical questions, and thereby made a lasting impact on Roman intellectual life. This book offers a modern guide to interpretations of Cicero’s philosophical studies, one that ranges across his numerous philosophical works. Addressed to students and scholars of ancient philosophy, and to interested readers in the humanities more generally, the volume aims to break down the boundaries between the philosophical, literary and linguistic dimensions of Cicero’s highly influential oeuvre.Stefano Maso is a full professor in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Ca’ Foscari – Venice. Among his books are: Grasp and Dissent: Cicero and Epicurean Philosophy (Brepols 2015); Epicurus on Eidola: Peri Phuseos Book II. Update, Proposals, and Discussions (ed. with F. Masi, Hakkert 2015). He is co-editor of “Lexis. Poetica, retorica e comunicazione nella tradizione classica”.

Although ancient Greek festivals are well understood on the basis of textual evidence, there is no up-to-date or sustained treatment of these dynamic, multi-day events in relation to ancient art. The current book examines the way ancient Greek festivals have been treated in scholarly research overtime as well as how festivals have been understood within the larger scope of ancient religion. By way of introduction, the ancient Greek terminology related to festivals - from their names to their component parts - is outlined, as are the key iconographic elements and descriptive vocabulary used to convey such complex subject matter on the surface of a vase or votive relief, in a large-scale sculpture, or in miniature on a gem. Of particular importance is the problem of identifying a festival or related activity (as opposed to private or domestic religion), and then of matching the iconography with a known, named occasion from antiquity (e.g. Anthesteria, Panathenaia, Thargelia). Readers will better understand the significance, complexity, and place of religious festivals in ancient Greek visual culture.

Neoanalysis has established itself as one of the two leading schools of interpretation in Homeric studies (together with the theory of Oral Poetry) since its introduction by J.T. Kakridis and its subsequent development by H. Pestalozzi, W. Schadewaldt and W. Kullmann. Long considered as a mainly German or at most a European theory, Neoanalysis has been combined in recent studies (M.W. Edwards, R. Janko, M. Finkelberg, J. Burgess, B. Currie, Chr. Tsagalis) with the theory of Oral Poetry, dominant chiefly in Anglo-American scholarship. This rapprochement paves the way for what seems to be a historical compromise between the two theories. The book traces the history of the neoanalytical theory from its first beginnings in the 1940’s and 1950’s until its recent transformation into an “Oral Neoanalysis” and offers a critical reappraisal of some of the theory’s basic features.

This volume provides a guide to research in the field of Greek Myth, introducing the main questions, theories and methods related to the study of Greek Myth today. The author points out, with critical reappraisal, the key themes and ideas in recent scholarship and makes suggestions for future lines of study. Aimed at students and scholars in Classics, it will also be of interest to larger audiences in the Humanities.

Nearly two centuries have passed since K. O. Müller published the first "scientific" study "on the habitat, the origin and the early history of the Macedonian people". An ever growing number of publications appearing each year has rendered urgent a critical appraisal of this exuberant production, the more so that many aspects of ancient Macedonia remain controversial, if not problematic. Yet after seventy years of large-scale systematic excavations the activity of Greek archaeologists, as well as the labour of scholars from all over the world, have revealed a heretofore terra incognita and given a consistency to the people that Alexander led to the end of the known world. Now more than ever before we can tackle the "main problems" that have been contested without conclusion: Where exactly was Macedonia? Which were its limits? Where did the Macedonians come from? What language did they speak? What cults did they practice? Did they believe in an afterlife? What political and social institutions did they have? What was Alexander's role in his father's death? What were his aims? To what extent can we trust ancient historians? Alexander failed to provide a stable successor to the Achaemenid multiethnic empire, and the sands of Egypt have effaced even the traces of his last abode, yet if he returned to life, he could still boast in the words of Cavafy, a modern Alexandrian in every sense, “a new Hellenic world, a great one, came to be ... with the extended dominions, with the various attempts at judicious adaptations. And the Greek koine language all the way to outer Bactria we carried it, to the peoples of India”.