Accessible introduction to Greek religion. Focuses on Athens in the classical period. Includes detailed discussion of Greek gods and heroes, myth and cult. Includes vivid descriptions of Greek religion as it was practiced. Ancient texts are presented in boxes to promote thought and discussion. Abundant illustrations help readers visualize the rich and varied religious life of ancient Greece.

    His Labour government introduced sweeping new legislation that unchained the country from its old conservative bonds, established the world's first nuclear free state and let loose a free market economic agenda that radically transformed the country. It was a rapid climb to the very top for the overweight doctor's son from working class South Auckland. As leader during the final years of the Cold War he confronted the agendas of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and lived through the political upheavals of the fall of the Soviet Union, post-apartheid South Africa and Rajiv Ghandi's India. Along the way he memorably defeated the Reverend Jerry Falwell in a famous Oxford Union debate about the morality and sanity of the nuclear arms race, and negotiated the aftermath of the tragic bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French agents in Auckland harbour.

    It includes some discussion of word usage, citing examples and characteristic phrases. Generally speaking, only words used by late writers and scientific terms have been omitted fromthe full lexicon. From Homer downwards, to the close of Attic Greek, care has been taken to include all words, as well as those used by Aristotle, Plutarch in his Lives, Polybius, Strabo, Lucian, and the writers of the New Testament.

    Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Eric Havelock shows that Plato's hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought.The reason for the dominance of this tradition was technological. In a nonliterate culture, stored experience necessary to cultural stability had to be preserved as poetry in order to be memorized. Plato attacks poets, particularly Homer, as the sole source of Greek moral and technical instruction--Mr. Havelock shows how the Iliad acted as an oral encyclopedia. Under the label of mimesis, Plato condemns the poetic process of emotional identification and the necessity of presenting content as a series of specific images in a continued narrative.The second part of the book discusses the Platonic Forms as an aspect of an increasingly rational culture. Literate Greece demanded, instead of poetic discourse, a vocabulary and a sentence structure both abstract and explicit in which experience could be described normatively and analytically: in short a language of ethics and science.

    In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti presents us with a story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. As he carefully weighs the evidence concerning the murder of Caesar, Parenti sketches in the background to the crime with fascinating detail about wider Roman society. The result is an entirely new perspective on a much-studied era.

    A masterpiece of technical exposition, it was the basic textbook of astronomy for more than a thousand years, and still is the main source for our knowledge of ancient astronomy. This translation, based on the standard Greek text of Heiberg, makes the work accessible to English readers in an intelligible and reliable form. It contains numerous corrections derived from medieval Arabic translations and extensive footnotes that take account of the great progress in understanding the work made in this century, due to the discovery of Babylonian records and other researches. It is designed to stand by itself as an interpretation of the original, but it will also be useful as an aid to reading the Greek text.

    Originally a rebel leader, Josephus changed sides after he was captured to become a Rome-appointed negotiator, and so was uniquely placed to observe these turbulent events, from the siege of Jerusalem to the final heroic resistance and mass suicides at Masada. His account provides much of what we know about the history of the Jews under Roman rule, with vivid portraits of such key figures as the Emperor Vespasian and Herod the Great. Often self-justifying and divided in its loyalties, The Jewish War nevertheless remains one of the most immediate accounts of war, its heroism and its horrors, ever written.

    His fame was such that many Greek medical writings became attributed to him. What they have in common is not dogma but, rather, constructive debate between one another. They also share a concern with meticulous observation and an insistence on physical, not supernatural, causation of illness. The writers were the pioneers of rational medicine; their ideas, dominant for centuries, still reveal to us the ideal of ethical practice, as well as the origins not just of Western medicine but of scientific method.This excellent selection of Hippocratic treatises shows the range of writing and thought. Some are technical works on embryology, surgery or anatomy; others are addressed to a lay audience; all are informed with the spirit of inquiry. G.E.R. Lloyd's authoritative introduction puts them into their contemporary context and assesses their later influence.

    

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    He also includes the first complete translation into English of the contexts in which the fragments have been transmitted to us, and of the ancient testimonia regarding Parmenides' life and thought. All of the fragments have been translated in full and are arranged in the order that has become canonical since the publication of the fifth edition of Diels-Rranz's Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Alternative renderings are provided for passages whose meaning is disputed or where major questions of interpretation hinge upon the text or translation adopted.In an extended introductory essay, Gallop offers guidance on the background of the poem, and a continuous exposition of it, together with a critical discussion of its basic argument. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography, a glossary of key terms in the poem, and a section on sources and authorities.

    Here Philip Matyszak describes fifty-seven of the foremost Romans of the Republic, spanning the centuries from its birth to its bloody death and including the best and the worst of the Roman elite: Licinius Crassus, a kind father and loving husband who crucified slaves by the thousands, or Cato the Censor, upright and incorruptible, xenophobic and misogynistic.Supported by a wealth of pictorial and archaeological detail, these personal histories provide an overview of the development and expansion of Rome, encompassing foreign and civil wars as well as social strife and key legislation. The biographies are supplemented by time lines, data files, and special features that highlight different aspects of Roman culture and society.

    

    The beginnings of Rome, once thought to be lost in the mists of legend, are now being revealed by an ever-increasing body of archaeological evidence, much of it unearthed during the past twenty-five years. This new material has made it possible to trace the development of Rome from an iron-age village to a major state which eventually outstripped its competitors and became a Mediterranean power. The Beginnings of Rome offers new and often controversial answers to major questions such as Rome's relations with the Etruscans, the conflict between patricians and plebeians, the causes of Roman imperialism and the growth of a slave-based economy.

    Erich Gruen's classic study of the late Republic examines institutions as well as personalities, social tensions as well as politics, the plebs and the army as well as the aristocracy.