It marked the end of summer and the beginning of the harvest season, and on that day the first meal of the year's new food crop was eaten. The chief custom was the resorting of the rural communities to certain heights or water-sides to spend the day in festivity, sports and bilberry-picking. The custom existed also in the Isle of Man, Cornwall, Wales and in the north of England. Formerly it must have been general in all Celtic lands for there is no doubt that it is a survival of Lughnasa (Lugnasad), the Celtic festival held on the first of August. In the description of the celebration much emerges of the old life of the countryside, and so the study is, in part, a contribution to social history. Moreover, as the people preserved legends of the origin of the festival and of the assembly-sites, it has been possible to show a correspondence with ancient mythology, as expressed in Irish literature and in the cult-figures of Roman Gaul. The dominant myth of the festival is brought to light. A panorama, both extensive and detailed, is unfolded in the study, which reveals, inter alia, the nature of Crom Dubh, shows that legends of Cu Chulainn, Saint Patrick, and Cornwall's Jack the Tinkard originate in tales of Lugh, suggests why Jephthah's daughter was connected with the festival in the Isle of Man, glances at the medieval cult of Saint James, and interprets anew the battle of Moytura and the Etain saga. It shows a relationship between the old assembly of Tailtiu an the Croagh Patrick pilgrimage. It discusses Puck Fair. It ranges from Lugudunum in first-century Gaul to Dun Lughaidh at the foot of Errigal. Figures from Irish mythology, hagiography and history throng its pages.

    The rise of Greek civilisation was described in the last-named book; in the present work we begin with that of the Persians, one of the great imperial peoples of history, who deserve more sympathetic treatment than, from our inevitably and rightly phil-Hellenic point of view, they have sometimes received. The Persian Wars themselves, too, embrace much more than the great culminating episode of Xerxes' invasion, which Thucydides dismissed as 'settled by two battles at sea and two on land'. He would have been more just if he had compared that, not to the whole length of the Peloponnesian War, but to the one episode of the Sicilian expedition. The Persian wars too, together with the simultaneous struggle against Persia's allies, the Phoenicians, were a prolonged though intermittent series of campaigns, ranging in time from Cyrus' conquest of Ionia in 546 to Kimon's last campaign in Cyprus in 450, and in space extending throughout the whole length of the Mediterranean. To trace the course and connections of these campaigns, together with the rise, just in time to be the decisive factor, of the democracy of Athens and of its sea-power, is a task the more worth attempting for the fact that it has not been the subject of a full-length study since that of Grundy, published in 1899.

    Contains many black & white photographs throughout.

    Lavishly-illustrated coffee-table type book summarizing the then current state of historical/archaeological knowledge about various vanished civilizations around the world.

    

    379The philosopher Philo was born about 20 BCE to a prominent Jewish family in Alexandria, the chief home of the Jewish Diaspora as well as the chief center of Hellenistic culture; he was trained in Greek as well as Jewish learning. In attempting to reconcile biblical teachings with Greek philosophy he developed ideas that had wide influence on Christian and Jewish religious thought.The Loeb Classical Library edition of the works of Philo is in ten volumes and two supplements, distributed as follows. Volume I: Creation; Interpretation of Genesis II and III. II: On the Cherubim; The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain; The Worse Attacks the Better; The Posterity and Exile of Cain; On the Giants. III: The Unchangeableness of God; On Husbandry; Noah's Work as a Planter; On Drunkenness; On Sobriety. IV: The Confusion of Tongues; The Migration of Abraham; The Heir of Divine Things; On the Preliminary Studies. V: On Flight and Finding; Change of Names; On Dreams. VI: Abraham; Joseph; Moses. VII: The Decalogue; On Special Laws Books I-III. VIII: On Special Laws Book IV; On the Virtues; Rewards and Punishments. IX: Every Good Man Is Free; The Contemplative Life; The Eternity of the World; Against Flaccus; Apology for the Jews; On Providence. X: On the Embassy to Gaius; indexes. Supplement I: Questions on Genesis. II: Questions on Exodus; index to supplements.