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  3. Key Themes in Ancient History

Key Themes In Ancient History aims to provide readable, informed and original studies of various basic topics, designed in the first instance for students and teachers of Classics and Ancient History, but also for those engaged in related disciplines. Each volume is devoted to a general theme in Greek, Roman, or where appropriate, Graeco-Roman history, or to some salient aspect or aspects of it. Besides indicating the state of current research in the relevant area, authors seek to show how the theme is significant for our own as well as ancient culture and society. By providing books for courses that are oriented around themes, it is hoped to encourage and stimulate promising new developments in teaching and research in ancient history.

  • General Editors: P. A. Cartledge, University of Cambridge, G. D. Woolf, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York

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30 results in Key Themes in Ancient History

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Risk in the Roman World
  • Jerry Toner
  • Published online:
    16 November 2023
    Print publication:
    30 November 2023
  • Modern risk studies have viewed the inhabitants of the ancient world as being both dominated by fate and exposed to fewer risks, but this very readable and groundbreaking new book challenges these views. It shows that the Romans inhabited a world full of danger and also that they not only understood uncertainty but employed a variety of ways to help to affect future outcomes. The first section focuses on the range of cultural attitudes and traditional practices that served to help control risk, particularly among the non-elite population. The book also examines the increasingly sophisticated areas of expertise, such as the law, logistics and maritime loans, which served to limit uncertainty in a systematic manner. Religious expertise in the form of dream interpretation and oracles also developed new ways of dealing with the future and the implicit biases of these sources can reveal much about ancient attitudes to risk.

Roman Law in Context
  • 2nd edition
  • David Johnston
  • Published online:
    28 April 2022
    Print publication:
    12 May 2022
  • This book explains how Roman law worked for those who lived by it, by viewing it in the light of the society and economy in which it operated. Written in an accessible style with the minimum of legal technicality, the book is designed for students and teachers of Roman history as well as interested general readers. Topics covered include the family and inheritance, property and the use of land, business and commercial transactions, and litigation. In this second edition, all chapters have been extensively revised and updated, and a new chapter on crime and punishment has been included. The book ends with an epilogue covering the fate of Roman law in medieval and modern Europe. David Johnston is a lawyer practising in the courts and draws on his experience of law in practice to shape the work and provide new insights for his readers.

Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece
  • Sara Forsdyke
  • Published online:
    08 June 2021
    Print publication:
    10 June 2021
  • Slavery in ancient Greece was commonplace. In this book Sara Forsdyke uncovers the wide range of experiences of slaves and focuses on their own perspectives, rather than those of their owners, giving a voice to a group that is often rendered silent by the historical record. By reading ancient sources 'against the grain,' and through careful deployment of comparative evidence from more recent slave-owning societies, she demonstrates that slaves engaged in a variety of strategies to deal with their conditions of enslavement, ranging from calculated accommodation to full-scale rebellion. Along the way, she establishes that slaves made a vital contribution to almost all aspects of Greek society. Above all, despite their often brutal treatment, they sometimes displayed great ingenuity in exploiting the tensions and contradictions within the system of slavery.

Warfare in the Roman World
  • A. D. Lee
  • Published online:
    04 September 2020
    Print publication:
    17 September 2020
  • Warfare was a recurrent phenomenon of fundamental importance throughout Roman history. Its scale and form varied across time and place, but it had wide-ranging impacts on politics, society and economy. This book focuses on important themes in the interplay between warfare and these broader contexts, including attitudes to war and peace, the values associated with military service, the role of material resources, military mutiny and civil war, and social and cultural aspects of the military. It also examines experiences of warfare, focusing on approaches to Roman battle and the impact of war on civilians. Importantly and distinctively, these different themes are traced across a millennium of Roman history from the Republic through to the end of Late Antiquity in the early seventh century, with a view to highlighting important continuities and changes across Roman history, and alerting readers to valuable but often less familiar material from the empire's final centuries.

Empire and Political Cultures in the Roman World
  • Emma Dench
  • Published online:
    27 July 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2018
  • This book evaluates a hundred years of scholarship on how empire transformed the Roman world, and advances a new theory of how the empire worked and was experienced. It engages extensively with Rome's Republican empire as well as the 'Empire of the Caesars', examines a broad range of ancient evidence (material, documentary, and literary) that illuminates multiple perspectives, and emphasizes the much longer history of imperial rule within which the Roman Empire emerged. Steering a course between overemphasis on resistance and overemphasis on consensus, it highlights the political, social, religious and cultural consequences of an imperial system within which functions of state were substantially delegated to, or more often simply assumed by, local agencies and institutions. The book is accessible and of value to a wide range of undergraduate and graduate students as well as of interest to all scholars concerned with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

Roman Political Thought
  • Jed W. Atkins
  • Published online:
    30 March 2018
    Print publication:
    12 April 2018
  • What can the Romans teach us about politics? This thematic introduction to Roman political thought shows how the Roman world developed political ideas of lasting significance, from the consequential constitutional notions of the separation of powers, political legitimacy, and individual rights to key concepts in international relations, such as imperialism, just war theory, and cosmopolitanism. Jed W. Atkins relates these and many other important ideas to Roman republicanism, traces their evolution across all major periods of Roman history, and describes Christianity's important contributions to their development. Using the politics and political thought of the United States as a case study, he argues that the relevance of Roman political thought for modern liberal democracies lies in the profound mixture of ideas both familiar and foreign to us that shape and enliven Roman republicanism. Accessible to students and non-specialists, this book provides an invaluable guide to Roman political thought and its enduring legacies.

Science Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity
  • Liba Taub
  • Published online:
    20 April 2017
    Print publication:
    03 April 2017
  • We access Greek and Roman scientific ideas mainly through those texts which happen to survive. By concentrating only on the ideas conveyed, we may limit our understanding of the meaning of those ideas in their historical context. Through considering the diverse ways in which scientific ideas were communicated, in different types of texts, we can uncover otherwise hidden meanings and more fully comprehend the historical contexts in which those ideas were produced and shared, the aims of the authors and the expectations of ancient readers. Liba Taub explores the rich variety of formats used to discuss scientific, mathematical and technical subjects, from c.700 BCE to the sixth century CE. Each chapter concentrates on a particular genre - poetry, letter, encyclopaedia, commentary and biography - offering an introduction to Greek and Roman scientific ideas, while using a selection of ancient writings to focus on the ways in which we encounter them.

Politics in the Roman Republic
  • Henrik Mouritsen
  • Published online:
    16 March 2017
    Print publication:
    02 March 2017
  • The politics of the Roman Republic has in recent decades been the subject of intense debate, covering issues such as the degree of democracy and popular influence, 'parties' and ideology, politics as public ritual, and the character of Rome's political culture. This engaging book examines all these issues afresh, and presents an original synthesis of Rome's political institutions and practices. It begins by explaining the development of the Roman constitution over time before turning to the practical functioning of the Republic, focusing particularly on the role of the populus Romanus and the way its powers were expressed in the popular assemblies. Henrik Mouritsen concludes by exploring continuity and change in Roman politics as well as the process by which the republican system was eventually replaced by monarchy. This original and readable book will be important for all students and scholars of Roman history and of politics in general.

The Ancient City
  • Arjan Zuiderhoek
  • Published online:
    10 November 2016
    Print publication:
    31 October 2016
  • Greece and Rome were quintessentially urban societies. Ancient culture, politics and society arose and developed in the context of the polis and the civitas. In modern scholarship, the ancient city has been the subject of intense debates due to the strong association in Western thought between urbanism, capitalism and modernity. In this book, Arjan Zuiderhoek provides a survey of the main issues at stake in these debates, as well as a sketch of the chief characteristics of Greek and Roman cities. He argues that the ancient Greco-Roman city was indeed a highly specific form of urbanism, but that this does not imply that the ancient city was somehow 'superior' or 'inferior' to forms of urbanism in other societies, just (interestingly) different. The book is aimed primarily at students of ancient history and general readers, but also at scholars working on urbanism in other periods and places.

Religions of the Ancient Greeks
  • Simon Price
  • Published online:
    05 June 2016
    Print publication:
    28 June 1999
  • This 1999 book is about the religious life of the Greeks from the eighth century BC to the fifth century AD, looked at in the context of a variety of different cities and periods. Simon Price does not describe some abstract and self-contained system of religion or myths but examines local practices and ideas in the light of general Greek ideas, relating them for example, to gender roles and to cultural and political life (including Attic tragedy and the trial of Socrates). He also lays emphasis on the reactions to Greek religions of ancient thinkers - Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian. The evidence drawn on is of all kinds: literary texts, which are translated throughout; inscriptions, including an appendix of newly translated Greek inscriptions; and archaeology, which is highlighted in the numerous illustrations.

Language and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds
  • James Clackson
  • Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    30 April 2015
  • Texts written in Latin, Greek and other languages provide ancient historians with their primary evidence, but the role of language as a source for understanding the ancient world is often overlooked. Language played a key role in state-formation and the spread of Christianity, the construction of ethnicity, and negotiating positions of social status and group membership. Language could reinforce social norms and shed light on taboos. This book presents an accessible account of ways in which linguistic evidence can illuminate topics such as imperialism, ethnicity, social mobility, religion, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, without assuming the reader has any knowledge of Greek or Latin, or of linguistic jargon. It describes the rise of Greek and Latin at the expense of other languages spoken around the Mediterranean and details the social meanings of different styles, and the attitudes of ancient speakers towards linguistic differences.

Slavery and Society at Rome
  • Keith Bradley
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    13 October 1994
  • This book, first published in 1994, is concerned with discovering what it was like to be a slave in the classical Roman world, and with revealing the impact the institution of slavery made on Roman society at large. It shows how and in what sense Rome was a slave society through much of its history, considers how the Romans procured their slaves, discusses the work roles slaves fulfilled and the material conditions under which they spent their lives, investigates how slaves responded to and resisted slavery, and reveals how slavery, as an institution, became more and more oppressive over time under the impact of philosophical and religious teaching. The book stresses the harsh realities of life in slavery and the way in which slavery was an integral part of Roman civilisation.

The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad
  • Seth Schwartz
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014
  • This is an accessible and up-to-date account of the Jews during the millennium following Alexander the Great's conquest of the East. Unusually, it acknowledges the problems involved in constructing a narrative from fragmentary yet complex evidence and is, implicitly, an exploration of how this might be accomplished. Moreover, unlike most other introductions to the subject, it concentrates primarily on the people rather than issues of theology and adopts a resolutely unsentimental approach to the subject. Professor Schwartz particularly demonstrates the importance of studying Jewish history, texts and artefacts to the broader community of ancient historians because of what they can contribute to wider themes such as Roman imperialism. The book serves as an excellent introduction for students and scholars of Jewish history and of ancient history.

Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity
  • Lin Foxhall
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    09 May 2013
  • This book investigates how varying practices of gender shaped people's lives and experiences across the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. Exploring how gender was linked with other socio-political characteristics such as wealth, status, age and life-stage, as well as with individual choices, in the very different world of classical antiquity is fascinating in its own right. But later perceptions of ancient literature and art have profoundly influenced the development of gendered ideologies and hierarchies in the West, and influenced the study of gender itself. Questioning how best to untangle and interpret difficult sources is a key aim. This book exploits a wide range of archaeological, material cultural, visual, spatial, demographic, epigraphical and literary evidence to consider households, families, life-cycles and the engendering of time, legal and political institutions, beliefs about bodies, sex and sexuality, gender and space, the economic implications of engendered practices, and gender in religion and magic.

Space and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds
  • Michael Scott
  • Published online:
    05 December 2012
    Print publication:
    15 November 2012
  • We cannot properly understand history without a full appreciation of the spaces through which its actors moved, whether in the home or in the public sphere, and the ways in which they thought about and represented the spaces of their worlds. In this book Michael Scott employs the full range of literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence in order to demonstrate the many different ways in which spatial analysis can illuminate our understanding of Greek and Roman society and the ways in which these societies thought of, and interacted with, the spaces they occupied and created. Through a series of innovative case studies of texts, physical spaces and cultural constructs, ranging geographically across North Africa, Greece and Roman Italy, as well as an up-to-date introduction on spatial scholarship, this book provides an ideal starting point for students and non-specialists.

Domestic Space in Classical Antiquity
  • Lisa C. Nevett
  • Published online:
    05 August 2012
    Print publication:
    05 August 2010
  • Housing is shaped by culturally-specific expectations about the kinds of architecture and furnishings that are appropriate; about how and where different activities should be carried out; and by and with whom. It is those expectations, and the wider social and cultural systems of which they are a part, that are explored in this volume. At the same time, the book as a whole argues two larger points: first, that while houses, households and families have in recent years become increasingly important as objects of inquiry in Greek and Roman contexts, their potential as sources of information about broader social-historical issues has yet to be fully realised; and second, that greater weight and independence should be given to material culture as a source for studying ancient history. The book will be invaluable for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and scholars.

Money in Classical Antiquity
  • Sitta von Reden
  • Published online:
    05 August 2012
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010
  • This book was the first to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the impact of money on the economy, society and culture of the Greek and Roman worlds. It uses new approaches in economic history to explore how money affected the economy in antiquity and demonstrates that the crucial factors in its increasing influence were state-formation, expanding political networks, metal supply and above all an increasing sophistication of credit and contractual law. Covering a wide range of monetary contexts within the Mediterranean over almost a thousand years (c.600 BC–AD 300), it demonstrates that money played different roles in different social and political circumstances. The book will prove an invaluable introduction to upper-level students of ancient money, while also offering perspectives for future research to the specialist.

Food and Society in Classical Antiquity
  • Peter Garnsey
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    22 April 1999
  • This is the first study of food in classical antiquity that treats it as both a biological and a cultural phenomenon. The variables of food quantity, quality and availability, and the impact of disease, are evaluated and a judgement reached which inclines to pessimism. Food is also a symbol, evoking other basic human needs and desires, especially sex, and performing social and cultural roles which can be either integrative or divisive. The book explores food taboos in Greek, Roman, and Jewish society, and food-allocation within the family, as well as more familiar cultural and economic polarities which are highlighted by food and eating. The author draws on a wide range of evidence new and old, from written sources to human skeletal remains, and uses both comparative historical evidence from early modern and contemporary developing societies and the anthropological literature, to create a case-study of food in antiquity.

Roman Law in Context
  • David Johnston
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 September 1999
  • Roman Law in Context explains how Roman law worked for those who lived by it, by viewing it in the light of the society and economy in which it operated. The book discusses three main areas of Roman law and life: the family and inheritance; property and the use of land; commercial transactions and the management of businesses. It also deals with the question of litigation and how readily the Roman citizen could assert his or her legal rights in practice. In addition it provides an introduction to using the main sources of Roman law. The book ends with an epilogue discussing the role of Roman law in medieval and modern Europe, a bibliographical essay, and a glossary of legal terms. The book involves the minimum of legal technicality and is intended to be accessible to students and teachers of Roman history as well as interested general readers.

Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice
  • Paul Cartledge
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 May 2009
  • Ancient Greece was a place of tremendous political experiment and innovation, and it was here too that the first serious political thinkers emerged. Using carefully selected case-studies, in this book Professor Cartledge investigates the dynamic interaction between ancient Greek political thought and practice from early historic times to the early Roman Empire. Of concern throughout are three major issues: first, the relationship of political thought and practice; second, the relevance of class and status to explaining political behaviour and thinking; third, democracy - its invention, development and expansion, and extinction, prior to its recent resuscitation and even apotheosis. In addition, monarchy in various forms and at different periods and the peculiar political structures of Sparta are treated in detail over a chronological range extending from Homer to Plutarch. The book provides an introduction to the topic for all students and non-specialists who appreciate the continued relevance of ancient Greece to political theory and practice today.

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