Book by Colleen McCullough

    Greece and the Western World 2. Minoan Crete 3. Schliemann and Mycenae 4. The Long Twilight 5. The Age of Heroes 6. From Sicily to SyriaThe Growth of Trade and Colonization 7. Delphi and Olympia 8. The Spartans 9. Revolution 10. Tyranny 11. The Origins of Democracy 12. Beyond GreeceThe Persian Empire 13. The Persian Wars 14. The Athenian Empire 15. The Art of Democracy 16. Sacrifice and Greek Religion 17. Theater and the Competition of Art 18. Sex and Gender 19. The Peloponnesian War, Part I 20. The Peloponnesian War, Part II 21. Socrates on Trial 22. Slavery and Freedom 23. Athens in Decline? 24. Philip, Alexander, and Greece in Transition

    All the historical and archaelogical evidence has been seamlessly pieced together to reconstruct the architectural wonders of these mighty civilizations. Re creating public buildings, religious temples, shops, and houses, Connolly reveals every aspect of life in glorious detail, from religion and food to drama, games, and the baths. In addition to the great monuments and moments of classical Greece and Rome, readers learn about a typical day in the life of an Athenian and a Roman. They read about and see the houses people inhabited; attend 5 day festivals and go to the theater; fight great battles and witness the birth of Rome's navy; visit temples and spend a day at the chariot races. The spectacular artwork and vivid descriptions provide a window into the fascinating history of these two extraordinary cities and civilizations. The Ancient City is the crowning achievement of Peter Connolly's distinguished career.

    

    Since elite Greek intellectuals tended to assume that ordinary men were incapable of ruling themselves, the longevity and resilience of Athenian popular rule presented a problem: how to explain the apparent success of a regime irrationally based on the inherent wisdom and practical efficacy of decisions made by non-elite citizens? The problem became acute after two oligarchic coups d' tat in the late fifth century B.C. The generosity and statesmanship that democrats showed after regaining political power contrasted starkly with the oligarchs' violence and corruption. Since it was no longer self-evident that better men meant better government, critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality.Ober offers fresh readings of the political works of Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, by placing them in the context of a competitive community of dissident writers. These thinkers struggled against both democratic ideology and intellectual rivals to articulate the best and most influential criticism of popular rule. The competitive Athenian environment stimulated a century of brilliant literary and conceptual innovation. Through Ober's re-creation of an ancient intellectual milieu, early Western political thought emerges not just as a footnote to Plato, but as a dissident commentary on the first Western democracy.

    Hippocrates' pronouncements on health, disease, and prognosis went unchallenged in the Western world until scientific advances in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made many of his ideas obsolete. And yet medical students in the United States and Europe still recite the Hippocratic oath upon completion of their studies. In view of Hippocrates' exceptional importance in the history of medicine, it may seem surprising that our knowledge of this fifth century b.c. Greek physician should be so incomplete.Nonetheless, Jacques Jouanna contends that a great deal can be concluded about the life and works of Hippocrates. Published to both critical and popular acclaim in France, Hippocrates reveals a man who was not only the greatest of the ancient physicians but also a philosopher of unrecognized ability and consequence who influenced both Plato and Aristotle; a historian who was the equal of Herodotus and Thucydides as a writer and superior to them in his powers of observation and analysis; and a master of tragical narrative who bears comparison with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Now that Hippocrates has at last emerged from the hagiographic mists of Byzantium and medieval Europe, the justice of his reputation as one of the greatest figures of antiquity can be more fully appreciated.

    From military history to architecture, ancient law to mythology, the sciences to the arts, these meticulously detailed entries breathe life into the people, places and events that shaped the development of classical civilization. Filled with both essay length articles and short quick reference entries, this extraordinarily thorough yet accessibly written book is a treasury of information on classical civilization. Arranged alphabetically, fully cross-referenced, and graced with a beautiful selection of full color plates, The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization will certainly become an essential resource for anyone interested in learning more about the cradle of western civilization.

    

    The variety of village life and buildings springs from a multitude of histories and influences, yet these towns are all, in their separate ways, quintessentially Greek.From north to south through the mainland and the Peloponnese, from west to east through the islands, there is a mixture of intimacy and grandeur. The Ionian Islands are home to belfried churches, pitched tile roofs, and porticoes, reflecting years of Venetian rule. The flat-roofed white houses of the Cyclades, startling against the blue Aegean sea, seem to express the very essence of Greece. And there are many other gems as well, with ancient temples, sandy bays, and cobbled paths.

    In the Iliad, Homer described the Thracians as formidable enemies of the Greeks in the Trojan War, and their mountainous country gave birth to legendary poets such as Orpheus. But the Thracians had no written language, and until recently little was known about this enigmatic people.

    This text covers the following areas of digital signal processing: basic discrete-time signals and systems, sampling, transform domain analysis of signals and systems, implementation of discrete time systems, and digital filter design.

    It offers a reading of the ancient biographies as clues to the reception of the Homeric poems in Antiquity and provides an introduction to the oral tradition which lay at the source of the Homeric epics. Above all, it takes us into the world of the Odyssey, a world that lies between history and fiction. It guides the reader through a poem which rivals the modern novel in its complexity, demonstrating the unity of the poem as a whole. It defines the many and varied figures of otherness by which the Greeks of the archaic period defined themselves and underlines the values promoted by the poem's depictions of men, women, and gods. Finally, it asks why, throughout the centuries from Homer to Kazantzakis and Joyce, the hero who never forgets his homeland and dreams constantly of return has never ceased to be the incarnation of what it is to be human. This translation is a revised and much expanded version of the original French text, and includes a new chapter on the representation of women in the Odyssey and an updated bibliography.

    And for much of the Classical period, war was more common than peace. Almost all accounts of ancient history assume that farming and fighting were critical events in the lives of the citizenry. Yet never before have we had a comprehensive modern study of the relationship between agriculture and warfare in the Greek world. In this completely revised edition of Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece, Victor Davis Hanson provides a systematic review of Greek agriculture and warfare and describes the relationship between these two important aspects of life in ancient communities. With careful attention to agronomic as well as military details, this well-written, thoroughly researched study reveals the remarkable resilience of those farmland communities.In the past, scholars have assumed that the agricultural infrastructure of ancient society was often ruined by attack, as, for example, Athens was relegated to poverty in the aftermath of the Persian and later Peloponnesian invasions. Hanson's study shows, however, that in reality attacks on agriculture rarely resulted in famines or permanent agrarian depression. Trees and vines are hard to destroy, and grainfields are only briefly vulnerable to torching. In addition, ancient armies were rather inefficient systematic ravagers and instead used other tactics, such as occupying their enemies' farms to incite infantry battle. Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece suggests that for all ancient societies, rural depression and desolation came about from more subtle phenomena—taxes, changes in political and social structure, and new cultural values—rather than from destructive warfare.

    Greece is a legendary destination, and anyone who has once fallen under its spell dreams of returning again and again. Here is a marvelous record of this enchanting land, portraying the essence of Greece - its striking sea and landscape, its peoples, its culture and history, and its ancient monuments. From the tip of the Peloponnese to the remote mountain villages of the far north to the islands of the Aegean, Brukoff's brilliant color images and Gage's evocative words delineate the heart of Greece.

    Jon D. Mikalson provides a chronological approach to religion in Hellenistic Athens, disproving the widely held belief that Hellenistic religion during this period represented a decline from the classical era. Drawing from epigraphical, historical, literary & archeological sources, he traces the religious cults & beliefs of Athenians from the battle of Chaeroneia in 338 to the devastation of Athens by Sulla in 86 BCE, demonstrating that traditional religion played a centrally vital role in Athenian private, social & political life. He describes the private & public religious practices of Athenians during this period, emphasizing the role these practices played in the life of the citizens & providing a careful scruntiny of individual cults. He concludes his study by using his findings from Athens to call into question several commonly held assumptions about the general development of religion in Hellenistic Greece.

    

    -- An electronic voyage through time offering hours of fascinating thought-provoking reading for history lovers and students of all ages-- Flashing lights guide you through a quiz with electronic sounds signaling 'victory' or 'try again'-- Detailed timelines also provide a picture of the interrelationships of events at different places and times

    Included are Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Archimedes, Ptolemy, and Galen.

    and ending with the death of his son Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. In that span, the two leaders changed the map in the known world. Philip established new tactics that forever ended the highly stylized mode that had characterized Classic Greek warfare, and Alexander's superb leadership made the army an unstoppable force. This work first examines the 11 great armies and three great navies of the era, along with their operations and logistics. The primary focus is then on each campaign and significant battle fought by Philip or Alexander, detailing how the battles were fought, the tactics of the opposing armies, and how the Macedonians were able to triumph.

    Presented here is a full account of these extraordinary finds and of the exciting expeditions that led to their discovery. Located on the northwestern end of the Nile River Delta, Alexandria was the greatest of Hellenistic cities and was a major center of Jewish and Christian culture. Athens' equal and political rival to Rome, Alexandria awed ancient travelers with its wealth, size, and cultural prestige. But unlike Athens and Rome, practically no visible trace of this splendid city remains, and, despite over a hundred years of archaeological efforts, the results have generally been considered meager. Recent excavations, however, have yielded an unexpected wealth of information. Directed by the French archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur and conducted with the most modern methods, these digs have greatly enriched our knowledge of the art and architecture of Alexandria and of the lives and living conditions of its inhabitants."

    These are accompanied by an introductory chapter and full explanatory notes. It makes accessible to all those interested in social history, and in particular the lives of women, an extraordinarily rich body of material from the ancient world.

    By carefully examining the context in which sculptures and paintings were produced, author Robin Osborne shows how artists responded to the challenges they faced in the formidable and ambitious world of the Greek city-state, producing the rich diversity of forms apparent in Greek art. Artistic developments of the period combined the influences of the symbolism and imagery of eastern Mediterranean art with the explorations of humanity embodied in the narratives of Greek poetry, while drawings and sculptures referred so intimately to the human form as to lead both ancient and modern theorists to talk in terms of the 'mimetic' role of art. Ranging widely over the fields of sculpture, vase painting, and the minor arts, and offering a wide selection of unusual images alongside the familiar masterpieces, this work discusses the changing forms of art, and how art was used to define men's relationships with other men, women, slaves, society, nature, and the gods.

    Surveys classical mythology, discussing the relationship between Greek and Roman myths, and describes the life and exploits of the god Zeus.

    This volume completes a series of four titles which comprehensively cover the development of Greek vases.