Best of
Greece

1991

Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.


Peter Green - 1991
    His dream was at times characterized as a benevolent interest in the brotherhood of man, sometimes as a brute interest in the exercise of power. Green, a Cambridge-trained classicist who is also a novelist, portrays Alexander as both a complex personality and a single-minded general, a man capable of such diverse expediencies as patricide or the massacre of civilians. Green describes his Alexander as "not only the most brilliant (and ambitious) field commander in history, but also supremely indifferent to all those administrative excellences and idealistic yearnings foisted upon him by later generations, especially those who found the conqueror, tout court, a little hard upon their liberal sensibilities."This biography begins not with one of the universally known incidents of Alexander's life, but with an account of his father, Philip of Macedonia, whose many-territoried empire was the first on the continent of Europe to have an effectively centralized government and military. What Philip and Macedonia had to offer, Alexander made his own, but Philip and Macedonia also made Alexander form an important context for understanding Alexander himself. Yet his origins and training do not fully explain the man. After he was named hegemon of the Hellenic League, many philosophers came to congratulate Alexander, but one was conspicuous by his absence: Diogenes the Cynic, an ascetic who lived in a clay tub. Piqued and curious, Alexander himself visited the philosopher, who, when asked if there was anything Alexander could do for him, made the famous reply, "Don't stand between me and the sun." Alexander's courtiers jeered, but Alexander silenced them: "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." This remark was as unexpected in Alexander as it would be in a modern leader.For the general reader, the book, redolent with gritty details and fully aware of Alexander's darker side, offers a gripping tale of Alexander's career. Full backnotes, fourteen maps, and chronological and genealogical tables serve readers with more specialized interests.

Late Into the Night: The Last Poems of Yannis Ritsos


Yiannis Ritsos - 1991
    Ritsos felt defeated in his own health and politics, but as a poet he experienced a surge of creativity that is fascinating to follow in its chronology and exactitude.

George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography


Roderick Beaton - 1991
    Acclaimed for his thought-provoking lyric poetry, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. At the same time, he rose in the diplomatic corps to the position of Ambassador to Britain. This biography of Seferis provides insights into his work, life, and country. culture, draws on previously unknown sources to tell Seferis's story. He describes how Seferis occupied key diplomatic positions during periods of historic crisis before, during, and after World War II. He explores Seferis's service as Ambassador to London at a time when Greece and Great Britain were disputing the future of Cyprus, noting that some of Seferis's finest poetry was written about that troubled island. He analyses Seferis's literary production and his impact on Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, and other British and American writers. Exploring the interplay between poet and diplomat, public and private, and poetry and politics in Seferis's life and career, this book should interest anyone interested in 20th-century Greek literature, culture, or history.

Photographs


Allen Ginsberg - 1991
    Pointing his camera randomly at the counterculture around him, the poet created a unique visual record of his friends and companions covering a period of almost forty years. His subjects include Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Robert Frank, Paul Bowles, Timothy Leary, dozens of other writers, painters, and friends, and several revealing self-portraits. Beneath each photograph are Ginsberg's handwritten reminiscences of the circumstances, people, and places relating to the photograph.

University Physics


Harris Benson - 1991
    This revised edition retains the accurate writing of the first edition and incorporates feedback obtained over five successive printings, resulting in a virtually error-free text.

Sappho's Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece


Diane J. Rayor - 1991
    Throughout the Greek world, her contemporaries composed lyric poetry full of passion, and in the centuries that followed the golden age of archaic lyric, new forms of poetry emerged. In this unique anthology, today's reader can enjoy the works of seventeen poets, including a selection of archaic lyric and the complete surviving works of the ancient Greek women poets—the latter appearing together in one volume for the first time.Sappho's Lyre is a combination of diligent research and poetic artistry. The translations are based on the most recent discoveries of papyri (including "new" Archilochos and Stesichoros) and the latest editions and scholarship. The introduction and notes provide historical and literary contexts that make this ancient poetry more accessible to modern readers.Although this book is primarily aimed at the reader who does not know Greek, it would be a splendid supplement to a Greek language course. It will also have wide appeal for readers of' ancient literature, women's studies, mythology, and lovers of poetry.

Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy


Cornelius Castoriadis - 1991
    Examining the co-birth in ancient Greece of philosophy and politics, Castoriadis shows how the Greeks' radical questioning of established ideas and institutions gave rise to the project of autonomy. The end of philosophy proclaimed by Postmodernism would mean the end of this project. That end is now hastened by the lethal expansion of technoscience, the waning of political and social conflict, and the resignation of intellectuals who blindly defend Western culture as it is or who merely denounce or deconstruct it as it has been. Discussing and criticizing Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Weber, Heidegger, and Habermas, the author of The Imaginary Institution of Society and Crossroads in the Labyrinth poses a radical challenge to our inherited philosophy.

Homer's Odyssey: A Companion Based on the English Translation of Richmond Lattimore


Peter Jones - 1991
    It also illuminates epic style, Homer's methods of composition, the structure of work, and his characterization. The introduction describes the features of oral poetry and looks at the history of the text of the Odyssey.The commentary based on Richard Lattimore’s translation, since it is both widely read and technically accurate, but it will be equally relevant to other translations.This series of Companions is designed for readers who approach the authors of the ancient world with little or no knowledge of Latin or Greek, or of the classical world. The commentaries accompany readily available translations, and the series should be of value to students of classical civilization studies, and history, for GCSE and A Level and at university. Each volume in the series includes the following: an introduction to the author and his work, with reference to scholarly views; a commentary providing explanation of detail, historical background, and a discussion of difficult or key passages; and periodic summaries of situation or content.

The Honey And The Hemlock: Democracy & Paranoia In Ancient Athens & Modern America


Eli Sagan - 1991
    The book draws from Athenian and American experience.

Greek Lyric, Volume III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others


Stesichorus - 1991
    Stesichorus was called by ancient writers "most Homeric"--a recognition of his epic themes and noble style. He composed verses about the Trojan War and its aftermath, the Argonauts, the adventures of Heracles. He may have been a solo singer, performing these poems to his own cithara accompaniment. Ibycus probably belonged to the colony of Rhegium in southwestern Italy. Like Stesichorus he wrote lyrical narratives on mythological themes, but he also composed erotic poems. Simonides is said to have spent his later years in Sicily. He was in Athens at the time of the Persian Wars, though, and was acclaimed for his epitaph on the Athenians who died at Marathon. He was a successful poet in various genres, including victory odes, dirges, and dithyrambic poetry. The power of his pathos emerges in the fragments we have.All the extant verse of these poets is given in this third volume of David Campbell's edition of Greek lyric poetry, along with the ancients' accounts of their lives and works. Ten contemporary poets are also included, among them Arion, Lasus, and Pratinas.The Greek Lyric edition is five volumes. Sappho and Alcaeus-- the illustrious singers of sixth-century Lesbos--are in the first volume. Volume II contains the work of Anacreon, composer of solo song; the "Anacreontea;" and the earliest writers of choral poetry, notably the seventh-century Spartans Alcman and Terpander. Bacchylides and other fifth-century poets are in Volume IV along with Corinna (although some argue that she belongs to the third century). The last volume includes the new school of dithyrambic poets (mid-fifth to mid-fourth century), together with the anonymous poems: drinking songs, children's songs, cult hymns, and others.

A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume I: Books I - III


Simon Hornblower - 1991
    Of the three books covered in this volume, Book I presents Thucydides' aims in writing the work and the historical background to the war. Books II and III describe the main events of the first five years of the war (431-426) and include Pericles' funeral oration, the plague of Athens, the revolt of Mytilene, the destruction of Plataea, and civil war in Corcyra.Thucydides intended his work to be an everlasting Possession and the continuing importance of his work is undisputed. Simon Hornblower's commentary, by translating every passage or phrase of Greek commented on, for the first time allows the reader with little or no Greek to appreciate the detail of Thucydides' thought and subject-matter. It is the first complete commentary written by a single author this century and explores both the historical and literary aspects of the work. A full index is provided at the end of the volume.

The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles, and Ideology


Mogens Herman Hansen - 1991
    is the most famous and perhaps the most nearly perfect example of direct democracy. Covering the period 403-322 B.C., Mogens Herman Hansen focuses on the crucial last thirty years, which coincided with the political career of Demosthenes. Hansen distinguishes between the city’s seven political institutions: the Assembly, the nomothetai, the People’s Court, the boards of magistrates, the Council of Five Hundred, the Areopagos, and ho boulomenos. He discusses how Athenians conceived liberty both as the ability to participate in the decision-making process and as the right to live without oppression from the state or other citizens.

Dancing Girl: Themes and Improvisations in a Greek Village Setting


Thordis Simonsen - 1991
    She observed the village scene, made photographs, and wrote in her journal. In 1982, Thordis left her job teaching biology and anthropology, sold her middle-aged car, placed her beloved cat in a carefully chosen foster home, and moved to Elika. One day Thordis sat with an itinerant saddlemaker. When a village man passed by, the saddlemaker called out, "She tells me she has lived in Elika for over a year now." The villager proclaimed, “Yes, it's true. She's an Elikiotissa now!” The villagers called Thordis an Elikiotissa—a woman of Elika—because she participated widely in village life. She attended weddings and pig slaughters, had gone to sea with fishermen, roamed the hills with shepherds, picked olives, and reaped wheat. She also bought and single-handedly restored a roofless peasant dwelling long used as a sheep corral. In 1991, Thordis published Dancing Girl: Themes and Improvisations in a Greek Village Setting. Rendered in details down to the patches on a farmer's work shoes, this collection of forty-four vignettes interweaves stories villagers told Thordis with stories Thordis told about Elika and gossip she overheard about the “American girl.” The result is a portrait of a Greek village in transition and an American woman's metamorphosis. Thordis learned the meaning of hospitality from a goatherd who inhabited an exalted mountain realm; she learned patience from a local carpenter who defied his own deadlines; she learned the meaning of wit and wisdom from a great-grandmother who was unschooled. Above all, Dancing Girl acknowledges the ties that bind us all: feelings that need to be expressed and a human spirit that wants to be set free.

Bold Montana Bride


Karen A. Bale - 1991
    She would manage on her own before she married for money. But her stubbornness nearly got her killed when she braved a raging blizzard to rescue her cattle and barely managed to find shelter in a cave. Then handsome half-breed Flint McCormick came to her rescue, the way he always had ... but this time it was different. This time the rugged ranchhand's touch made her strain toward him, longing to feel his sinewy body pressed against her own. And all at once, Maddie knew that her lifelong friend and protector must become her first and only lover no matter what the consequences!SHE SURRENDERED TO HIS KISSESFlint had watched little Maddie grow up, always looking out for her and protecting her from harm. But when he finally tracked her through the snow to Eagle's Nest and wrapped his strong arms around her shivering body, he felt a surge of passion that was a far cry from brotherly affection! Her first kiss told him that Maddie was a woman now -- and that she wanted him as much as he wanted her! Flint vowed that once he'd warmed her rosy flesh with fiery caresses, he'd enflame her with ecstasy until she burned to feel the heat of his ultimate embrace...and willingly became his own BOLD MONTANA BRIDE.

A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town


Michael Herzfeld - 1991
    Focusing on the Cretan town of Rethemnos, once a center of learning under Venetian rule and later inhabited by the Turks, he examines major questions confronting conservators and citizens as they negotiate the "ownership" of history: Who defines the past? To whom does the past belong? What is "traditional" and how is this determined? Exploring the meanings of the built environment for Rethemnos's inhabitants, Herzfeld finds that their interest in it has more to do with personal histories and the immediate social context than with the formal history that attracts the conservators. He also investigates the inhabitants' social practices from the standpoints of household and kin group, political association, neighborhood, gender ideology, and the effects of these on attitudes toward home ownership. In the face of modernity, where tradition is an object of both reverence and commercialism, Rethemnos emerges as an important ethnographic window onto the ambiguous cultural fortunes of Greece.

Journey to the gods


John Hillaby - 1991