Product Description
By "literary criticism" we usually mean a self-conscious act involving the technical and aesthetic appraisal, by individuals, of autonomous works of art. Aristotle and Plato come to mind. The word "social" does not. Yet, as this book shows, it should--if, that is, we wish to understand where literary criticism as we think of it today came from. Andrew Ford offers a new understanding of the development of criticism, demonstrating that its roots stretch back long before the sophists to public commentary on the performance of songs and poems in the preliterary era of ancient Greece. He pinpoints when and how, later in the Greek tradition than is usually assumed, poetry was studied as a discipline with its own principles and methods.

The Origins of Criticism complements the usual, history-of-ideas approach to the topic precisely by treating criticism as a social as well as a theoretical activity. With unprecedented and penetrating detail, Ford considers varying scholarly interpretations of the key texts discussed. Examining Greek discussions of poetry from the late sixth century B.C. through the rise of poetics in the late fourth, he asks when we first can recognize anything like the modern notions of literature as imaginative writing and of literary criticism as a special knowledge of such writing.

Serving as a monumental preface to Aristotle's Poetics, this book allows readers to discern the emergence, within the manifold activities that might be called criticism, of the historically specific discourse on poetry that has shaped subsequent Western approaches to literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A "Must Read"
This excellent book illustrates the sort of scholarship that intellectuals were inclined to expect before the postmodern turn led academics to believe that they could support arguments with opinions and autobiography.Ford examines the emergence in classical Greece not only of critical commentary and exegesis but also of poetic theory and poetry itself.Because he knows essentially everything about this period, Ford is able to apply linguistic and historical analysis to these topics to give readers the most in-depth treatment in print.Along the way, readers gain important insights into the works of Plato and Aristotle and are able to understand how the Sophists' teaching of poetry provided the foundation for their subsequent teaching of rhetoric.Ford writes, for example:"Viewing songs as objects produced by a craftsmanly kind of 'making' (poiesis) supported fifth-century rhetorical analyses based on language and structure, and paved the way for the fourth-century study of poetics, 'the art of (verbal) making" (p. 93).Readers who appreciate Edward Schiappa's work will find that THE ORIGINS OF CRITICISM is an excellent companion piece, illuminating the transition from orality to literacy between the sixth and fourth centuries.This text is a "must read" for any serious student of classical Greece.

James D. Williams, Ph.D. ... Read more

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The Iliad and Political Theory
The book treats the Iliad as a work of normative political theory.If this sounds attractive to you, you will almost certainly appreciate this book.Hammer does a fine job of teasing out a coherent and extremely interesting theory from this great poem.And if you are interested in the Iliad but have never thought of it as a work of political theory, you are likely to find very interesting new insights here.The book is an academic book, but quite accessible to "the intelligent general reader" who happens to have an interest in these questions. ... Read more

Product Description
The Gymnasium of Virtue is the first book devoted exclusively to the study of education in ancient Sparta, covering the period from the sixth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. Nigel Kennell refutes the popular notion that classical Spartan education was a conservative amalgam of 'primitive' customs not found elsewhere in Greece. He argues instead that later political and cultural movements made the system appear to be more distinctive than it actually had been, as a means of asserting Sparta's claim to be a unique society.

Using epigraphical, literary, and archaeological evidence, Kennell describes the development of all aspects of Spartan education, including the age-grade system and physical contests that were integral to the system. He shows that Spartan education reached its apogee in the early Roman Empire, when Spartans sought to distinguish themselves from other Greeks. He attributes many of the changes instituted later in the period to one person—the philosopher Sphaerus the Borysthenite, who was an adviser to the revolutionary king Cleomenes III in the third century B.C. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good Academic Study of The History of the Agoge
This is an excellent book about the Spartan system of educating young men (The Agoge).It looks at the way the Agoge existed in the Roman period and then traces it back through the Hellenistic period to the Archaic period.It has great coverage of the various rituals such as the Endurance contest. Occasionally, it becomes weighted down with discussion of details such as the names given to Spartan age groups.This is however within the scope of the book.It was not written so much for a general reader, though it can be read by one, but rather for someone with some knowledge of Spartan history.Overall, it is well researched and documented.Kennell reaches interesting conclusions about the Agoge's ties to society and religion. ... Read more

Product Description
The new series Studies in Classical Archaeologyaims to bring recent archaeological finds, fieldwork and research to the forefront among Greek scholars. This first volume includes 24 papers, plus an epilogue by John Boardman, taken from a colloquium held at Somerville College in Oxford in 2001. The papers are well illustrated throughout, including 86 pages of photographs, and covers a range of different approaches, finds and sites from c. 900 BC-AD 200. ... Read more

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The classical civilizations of Greece and Rome once dominated the world, and they continue to fascinate and inspire us. Classical art and architecture, drama and epic, philosophy and politics--these are the foundations of Western civilization. In The Classical World, eminent classicist Robin Lane Fox brilliantly chronicles this vast sweep of history from Homer to the reign of Hadrian. From the Peloponnesian War through the creation of Athenian democracy, from the turbulent empire of Alexander the Great to the creation of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Christianity, Fox serves as our witty and trenchant guide. He introduces us to extraordinary heroes and horrific villains, great thinkers and blood-thirsty tyrants. Throughout this vivid tour of two of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known, we remain in the hands of a great master. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

100% Satisfaction
I was very pleased with recieving this book.It was an excellent price and the quality of the book was as advertised, in excellent condition.

A magnificent, full-blooded, exciting and sympathetic history
"The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome" by Robin Lane Fox is an enormously ambitious book: it is a survey of almost a thousand years of complicated and interesting history in only 600 pages. Frankly, I'm generally skeptical of epic surveys - telescoped history is often watered-down history. Not so with "The Classical World", it is a magnificent, full-blooded, exciting and sympathetic account of Greece and Rome. Few scholars, I suspect, could pull-off anything similar: Lane Fox's classical knowledge is veritably encyclopedic. A particularly congenial aspect of the book is how Lane Fox's love for his subject matter shines through; he makes no apologies for his passion.

Negatives: a sometimes-ponderous writing style and a surfeit of French words, the themes of `luxury', `freedom' and `justice' seem occasionally procrustean, the book has a slow and somewhat confusing start and Lane Fox can be a bit pompous at times. All that said, I highly recommended it as an introduction to the classical world.

Well-Written but Reductive
In his "The Classical World:An Epic History of Greece and Rome," Oxford University's Robin Lane Fox tries to distill 900 years of classical history from the beginnings of Greek civilization to the rule of Hadrian, the Roman emperor fondest of Hellenic culture.Throughout Mr. Fox explores the themes of freedom, justice, and luxury, which was also what the ancients concerned themselves with as well.

Freedom, justice, and luxury are also themes that the thinkers and legislators of both Britain and America, as Rome's heirs, would also worry much about.Alexander Hamilton worried incessantly about luxury, and how it would drain the fledging republic's treasury and moral character.When Edmund Burke warned of the tension between liberty and empire he was referring to how young Englishmen were raping India and returning with the spoils to corrupt the British political process:for Burke, empire was a direct threat to British liberty.A much more vivid example found in "The Classical World" was Julius Caesar, whose ambitions were realized when he took command of Roman legions in Gaul, raped and pillaged these territories at the cost of millions of lives, and used the plunder to assure his political ascendancy back in Rome.(This is a disturbing insight into the nature of empire:the ambitious must exploit and expand the fringes of empire in order to rise successfully in the center.)

Mr. Fox thinks very little of Julius Caesar, who in his opinion was a mere opportunist who succeeded because of fortunate circumstances and the incompetence of his enemies.Mr. Fox also has nothing but outrageous slander for the other enemies of freedom and the republic:Mark Anthony a stupid thug, and Octavian a cowardly manipulator.Before Mr. Fox also writes how in destroying Greek freedom in order to advance his sense of freedom Alexander the Great was merely a product of the Macedonian warrior culture who sought conquest for the sake of conquest.Alexander the Great also had the good fortune to inherit tough veterans (soldiers who were still menacing and hardy even in their sixties) from his father.

This is most unfair and unkind of Mr. Fox.Both Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were creative military geniuses, and in attacking Caesar so viciously for being the immediate destroyer of the Roman republic Mr. Fox forgets that neither Athenian democracy nor Roman republicanism were stable anyway.Human history is full of flux, and that's what accounts for creativity and diversity:Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism are temporary phenomena, as are Roman imperialism and the American hegemony of today.

If he's ambivalent about the Romans Mr. Fox has nothing but glowing admiration for the Athenians.Athens was one of many Greek city-states that were continually competing against each other.These Greek city-states were originally ruled by an aristocratic class that formed a powerful cavalry before they were overthrown by a change in military tactics (a hoplite formation whereby infantry could withstand a cavalry change) and by the disorder and instability caused by the aristocracy's inane self-defeating competition over luxury.Tyrannies arose throughout the Greek world to bring order and stability, but that threatened the Greeks' love of freedom and justice.The Greek city-states constantly struggled between order and freedom, and Athens upon overthrowing their tyrant decided upon a remarkable innovation:equal rights for all its male citizens.Male citizens were selected by lot to serve as magistrates in Athens, and so given the limited population of Athens every male had an opportunity to serve as magistrate in his life-time.Democracy required oratory, and with oratory culture and learning also flourished.The Greeks' love of freedom and their oratory were two critical factors in their successful defense against the massive Persian invasion, the definitive historical event in Mr. Fox's understanding that secured the safety of the young child of democracy in the world.

The Greeks' successors in upholding the Western tradition the Romans thought the Greeks were too dishonest, too clever, too corrupt, and too homosexual.If the Greeks worshipped the trickster Odysseus then the Romans worshipped Aeneas, whose one quality was that he was pious.The Romans were first and foremost pious, and they were a hardworking, virtuous, and simple breed who offered citizenship from all walks of life.Their virtues - honesty, simplicity, piety, and openness - were to be the bedrocks of their republic and their empire.Rome simply had the most stable, strongest, and most coherent society in their region, and it was natural that they would go out to conquer most of the known world.And when they did so it would also be natural that their original values would be diluted, and that they would over time become corrupted by luxury and empire.

Thus, what killed the Roman republic was the inevitable progress of history, and while Julius Caesar may have been a military genius he became one because Rome at that particular juncture permitted him to be one.After all, Rome had many military geniuses before, but the Roman people would have revolted against an all-conquering hero who tried too hard to push the boundaries of Rome, their traditions, and their liberty (for example, read Shakespeare's Coriolanus).By the time of Caesar, Rome was ready and willing to become an empire - all it needed was an emperor.

A book that attempted to cover 900 years of history in 600 pages is bound to be simplistic and reductive, and Robin Lane Fox clearly betrays his prejudices.Even Herodotus is fairer and more nuanced.Robin Lane Fox considers Themistocles an Athenian hero who saved Greek democracy against the Persians with his brilliant oratory and naval genius; Herodotus considers Themistocles a double-dealing thief who sought to save his own skin and who got stupid lucky against the Persians.

What ultimately propels the book is Mr. Fox's clear elegant prose, but even his writing cannot sustain the book.It is too long by half.

Bloodless and biased
In his wonderful book about Alexander the Great, Lane Fox writes: "I am bored by institutions and I do not believe in structures." As a motto for historical writing, this is excellent advice. I only wish he had taken it here.

Instead, we are presented with dry academical style writing, where "classes" pursue abstract goals (as if there were such a thing in real life) and "forces" determine events. If this technique is applied to the case at hand, we'd have to conclude that the privileged classes at Oxford try to further enrich themselves by exploiting the defenseless common book lover.

Unfortunately, this isn't the only or even the main fault of this book. Lane Fox operates with an inflexible set of moral prejudices (Greeks good, Romans bad, Spartans worse) and demands full submission to this scheme from historical facts. Unsurprisingly, this leads to huge distortions; for example, what Thucydides says about Athenians and Spartans has to be turned upside down. On the other hand, when a detail is to the author's liking, caution is completely thrown to the wind, and the most absurd anecdotes from ancient writers are presented as if they were well-established historical facts (so the obviously highly unlikely claim that Claudius was made emperor by Caligula's bodyguards on a whim when they found him hiding behind a curtain).

In summary, this was a big let-down. The book manages to be dull and annoying at the same time.

Textbook style writing
This is comprehensive and detailed, good perhaps as source for reference. It resembles a textbook more than a well integrated history. It hops from topic to topic, losing organizational coherence. And like many textbooks that one yawned through in school, it is a matter-of-fact presentation of information, with the prose lacking vitality.
It will be interesting to see if his most recent release has the same stylistic deficiencies. ... Read more

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Continuously Finding
In his book, Finley recreates the ancient world of Greece from the Bronze through the Archaic Age. He does this, as historians before him have done, by examining the broad periods of history as they are associated with the tools and natural materials used in each. Then, once more knowledge is gained through further study and research, the periods in history can be broken down even further. The focal point of the book shows that, by studying ancient history and generalizing the past, one can use archeological evidence to construct a society for each place. Detail is added when facts are discovered and verified. Archeological findings are often things the ancients used, such as tools and pottery that they made out of natural substances in their local area. Historians and archeologists formulate answers to questions about who lived where, when, and why, and to discuss their relationships to other contemporaries. The author examines section by section Greece and examines it. The culture is revealed based on archeological discoveries that provide a basis for historical theories.Key to a location's survival is its relationship to other contemporary places, and exchange of goods and survival allows for growth both intellectually and technologically.
Finley originally published this book in 1970. He republished it in 1981 to incorporate new archeological discoveries. He has examined the ancient Greek world chronologically from Early Minoan to the Persian Wars from the social, economic, and political aspects.
Archeological evidence is valuable for describing and dividing changes in antiquity. Divisions were created as advancements occurred. One example of an advancement cited by Finley is the burial ritual. Much can be learned about a society by studying the way they bury their dead. The Cyclades included marble idols in the graves. The Cretans did nothing majestic with their tombs. The gold disks the Mycenaeans buried in their shaft-graves and the later pottery found in Mycenaean Tholos-tombs help to date the burial sites. By studying advancements in burial designs of these different groups, one can decipher the stages of development for a group of people. After determining who was buried in the tombs, one can interpret who and what traits were more honored by the more decorative ornamentation found.
When read along with a more in-depth and inclusive textbook designed to instruct the unfamiliar student with ancient times, this book is most helpful. It includes many terms assumed to be familiar but which are not, and therefore,definitions of these terms are needed. By reading a supplementary list of terms and committing to memory many of the characters names, approaching the text became easier. ... Read more

Product Description
A systematic survey of archaic Greek society and culture which introduces the reader to a wide range of new approaches to the period.

• The first comprehensive and accessible survey of developments in the study of archaic Greece
• Places Greek society of c.750-480 BCE in its chronological and geographical context
• Gives equal emphasis to established topics such as tyranny and political reform and newer subjects like gender and ethnicity
• Combines accounts of historical developments with regional surveys of archaeological evidence and in-depth treatments of selected themes
• Explores the impact of Eastern and other non-Greek cultures in the development of Greece
• Uses archaeological and literary evidence to reconstruct broad patterns of social and cultural development

Product Description
Inventing Ancient Culture is an exciting introduction to new approaches to the classics. There is a tendency for those interested in the broader field of cultural studies to claim that modern perceptions of self, modern affectivities, and modern societal and institutional structures date from the Enlightenment. This volume will vigorously challenge this misperception.

Contributors to the volume address issues including the extent of which cultural and social forms change through time, and the extent, or otherwise, of change in cultural systems since antiquity. ... Read more

Product Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases, SSTD 2003, held at Santorini Island, Greece in July 2003. The 28 revised full papers presented together with a keynote paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 105 submissions. the papers are organized in topical sections on access methods, advanced query processing, data mining and data warehousing, distance-based queries, mobility and moving points management, modeling and languages, similarity processing, systems and implementation issues. ... Read more

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Fergus Millar is one of the most influential contemporary historians of the ancient world. His essays and books, above all The Emperor in the Roman World and The Roman Near East, have transformed our understanding of the communal culture and civil government of the Greco-Roman world. This second volume of the three-volume collection of Millar's published essays draws together twenty of his classic pieces on the government, society, and culture of the Roman Empire (some of them published in inaccessible journals). Every article in Volume 2 addresses the themes of how the Roman Empire worked in practice and what it was like to live under Roman rule. As in the first volume of the collection, English translations of the extended Greek and Latin passages in the original articles make Millar's essays accessible to readers who do not read these languages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

She should've narrowed her thesis a little...
Ms. Wiltshire attempts a lot in this book -- to trace the theme of personal rights over 2000 years of history from ancient Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and into colonial America, culminating in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.The nature of the task and the size of the book make more than a cursory attempt at a historical lineage impossible.Nevertheless, Ms. Wiltshire has provided some introductory framework for the discussion.

Some portions of the book (particularly her discussion of the ninth and tenth amendments and her attempt to paint the Apostle Paul as a natural law theorist) are contrived.

I thought the book was a reasonable introduction to the subject until I read her conclusion and a separate essay she wrote on the book, in which she stated that her purpose in writing was to place the origin of the bill of rights in a classical, as opposed to a Judeo-Christian, context.While I would agree with her that the typical fundamentalist exaggerates when he paints the framers of the Constitution as almost entirely orthodox Christians, I would disagree with her conclusion that Christianity was not a primary influence.For a better treatment of this view, read Forrest McDonald's "Novus Ordo Seclorum:Intellectual Origins of the Constitution," where he concludes that it is futile to say with any dogmatism that the "founding fathers thought," or "the founding fathers intended," because the framers of the Constitution were a diverse group with diverse backgrounds and interests. ... Read more

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In this collection of sixteen literary and historical essays, Peter Green informs, entertains, and stimulates. He covers a wide range of subjects, from Greek attitudes toward death to the mysteries of the Delphic Oracle, from Tutankhamun and the gold of Egypt to sex in ancient literature, from the island of Lesbos (where he once lived) to the challenges of translating Ovid's wit and elegant eroticism into present-day English verse, from Victorian pederastic aesthetics to Marxism's losing battle with ancient history. This third volume of Green's essays (several previously unpublished) reveals throughout his serious concern that we are, in a very real sense, losing the legacy of antiquity through the corrosive methodologies of modern academic criticism. ... Read more

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The first edited volume in Sino-Hellenic Studies, this book compares early Chinese and ancient Greek thought and culture. ... Read more

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Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures II

Among the readings included are several existing letters by Emma (Einhard’s wife), The Life of Charlemagne, and The History of His Relics. The latter work transports us into an almost unknown world as Einhard, the cool rationalist, arranges for a relic salesman, a veritable bone seller, to acquire saints’ relics from Italy for installation into his new church. The reader is taken on an intrigue-filled trip to Rome, where Einhard’s men creep into churches at night to steal bones and then spirit them away to Einhard in the north. The relics are received in town after town as if they were the living saints come to cure the infirm. Einhard’s descriptions of the sick, the lame, and the blind of northern Europe vividly expose us to a side of medieval life too rarely encountered in other medieval sources. ... Read more

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Charlemagne's Courtier: The Complete Einhard
This wonderful volume provides a holistic collection of Einhard's writing with a detailed and indepth introduction.Dutton provides a solid historical background for Einhard and the society he lived in.Einhard's works offer a wonderful view of life in the middle ages.His biography ofCharlemagne is stylized, yet demonstrates the concerns of state, theexpectation of an emperor's subjects, and the role of the courtier inCarolingian Gaul.Einhard second major work, a treatise on the holymartyrs, brings the faith and practice of medieval Christianity to life. All of the works are tied together by Einhard's touching letters.Theseletters bring the man's character to life.They demonstrate not only theresponsibilities of a courtier, land owner, and abbot, but also his lovefor his family, his faith and the religious crisis he experienced when thetwo clashed.Every student of medieval history will benifit from readingthis book. ... Read more