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HISTORY:

Ancient

Dreaming and Experience in Classical Antiquity
William V. Harris
Hardcover June 2009
The Learned Banqueters, V, Books 10.420e-11
Athenaeus
Edited and translated by S. Douglas Olson
Hardcover May 2009
Lighting in Early Byzantium
Laskarina Bouras
Maria Parani
This book is the first general survey of lighting in Byzantium. The first part of the book discusses the technology and types of lighting devices and explains their decorative symbolism and social function. The second half illustrates this narrative by drawing on a Dumbarton Oaks exhibition.
Paperback May 2009
The Roman Triumph
Mary Beard
A radical reexamination of the most extraordinary of ancient ceremonies, this book explores the magnificence of the Roman Triumph--but also its darker side. The Triumph, Beard contends, prompted the Romans to question as well as celebrate military glory. Her richly illustrated work is a testament to the profound importance of the triumph in Roman culture--and for monarchs, dynasts and generals ever since.
Paperback May 2009
Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art, Volume 6
John Nesbitt
Assisted by Cecile Morrisson
Hardcover April 2009
Cleopatra and Rome
Diana E. E. Kleiner
In this beautifully illustrated book, we experience the synthesis of Cleopatra's and Rome's defining moments through surviving works of art and other remnants of what was once an opulent material culture. This culture best chronicles Cleopatra's legend and suggests her subtle but indelible mark on the art of imperial Rome at the critical moment of its inception.
Paperback April 2009
The Lost Capital of Byzantium
Steven Runciman
Foreword by John Freely
Paperback April 2009
Byzantine Magic
Edited by Henry Maguire
The authors reveal the scope, the forms, and the functioning of magic in Byzantine society, throwing light on a hitherto relatively little-known aspect of Byzantine culture, and, at the same time, expanding upon the contemporary debates concerning magic and its roles in pre-modern societies.
Paperback March 2009
East & West
Edited by T. Corey Brennan
Edited by Harriet I. Flower
Hardcover March 2009
Paradise Earned
Yannis Tzifopoulos
This is a study of the twelve small gold lamellae from Crete that were tokens for entrance into a golden afterlife. The lamellae are placed within the context of a small corpus of similar texts, and published with extensive commentary on their topography, lettering and engraving, dialect and orthography, meter, chronology, and usage. This work adduces parallels to the texts on the lamellae from the Byzantine period and modern Greece to illuminate the everlasting and persistent human quest for "earning Paradise."
Paperback March 2009
The Politics of Ethnicity and the Crisis of the Peloponnesian League
Edited by Peter Funke
Edited by Nino Luraghi
The crisis of Spartan power in the first half of the fourth century has been connected to Spartan inability to manage the hegemony built on the ruins of the Athenian Empire. The present book offers a new perspective, suggesting that the crisis that finally brought down Sparta was in important ways a result of centrifugal impulses within the Peloponnesian League.
Paperback March 2009
Love for Lydia
Edited by Nicholas D. Cahill
This generously illustrated volume, presents new studies by scholars closely involved with Professor Greenewalt’s excavations during the Sardis Expedition in western Turkey.
Hardcover February 2009
Greetings in the Lord
AnneMarie Luijendijk
This is the first book-length study on Christians in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the site where some of the most important and oldest fragments of early Christian books were unearthed. Bringing the people in these dry papyrus letters and documents back to life, the book reveals how diverse Christians lived in this city of diverse situations.
Paperback February 2009
Demons and Dancers
Ruth Webb
Compared to the wealth of information available to us about classical tragedy and comedy, not much is known about the culture of pantomime, mime, and dance in late antiquity. Webb fills this gap in our knowledge of the ancient world and provides us with a detailed look at social life in the late antique period through an investigation of its performance culture.
Hardcover January 2009
Genos Dikanikon
Victor Bers
Under the Athenian democracy, litigants were expected to speak for themselves, though they could memorize a speech written for them. These amateur performances often manifested an unmanly yielding to emotions of anger or fear; professional speech, Bers seeks to demonstrate, was to a large degree crafted in reaction to amateur stumbling.
Paperback January 2009
Histoires Grecques
Maurice Sartre
Translated by Catherine Porter
Sartre spans the grand narrative of Greek culture over a thousand years and a vast expanse of land and sea. Ranging from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean world, these excursions amount to a panoramic vision of one of the most important civilizations of all time.
Hardcover January 2009
Commentaries on Plato, Volume 1, Phaedrus and Ion
Marsilio Ficino
Edited and translated by Michael J. B. Allen
Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus, was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. This volume contains Ficino’s extended analysis and commentary on the Phaedrus.
Hardcover December 2008
The Fires of Vesuvius
Mary Beard
Although Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem, Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, she offers us the big picture of the inhabitants of the lost city.
Hardcover December 2008
From Egypt to Babylon
Paul Collins
For those who believe that globalization is a purely modern phenomenon, this book holds a startling and absorbing lesson. Readers are immersed in a world of exotic empires and states as they waxed and waned and interacted in a period of extraordinary internationalism—all before the rise of the Persian Empire.
Hardcover October 2008
Italy and Its Invaders
Girolamo Arnaldi
Translated by Antony Shugaar
From the earliest times, successive waves of foreign invaders have left their mark on Italy. Beginning with Germanic invasions that undermined the Roman Empire and culminating with the establishment of the modern nation, Girolamo Arnaldi explores the dynamic exchange between outsider and “native.”
Paperback October 2008
Xenophon's Retreat
Robin Waterfield
In The Expedition of Cyrus, Xenophon told how, in 401 b.c., a band of unruly Greek mercenaries traveled east to fight for the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to wrest the throne from his brother. With this first masterpiece of Western history forming the backbone of his book, Robin Waterfield explores what remains unsaid and assumed in Xenophon's account. The result is a nuanced and dramatic perspective on a critical moment in history that may tell us as much about our present-day adventures in the Middle East.
Paperback October 2008
Practitioners of the Divine
Beate Dignas
Kai Trampedach
“What is a Greek priest?” The volume, which has its origins in a symposium held at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., focuses on the question through a variety of lenses: the visual representation of cult personnel, priests as ritual experts, variations of priesthood, ideal concepts and their transformation, and the role of manteis.
Paperback October 2008
Art of Ancient Egypt
Gay Robins
From the awesome grandeur of the Great Pyramids to the delicacy of a face etched on an amulet, the power of ancient Egyptian art persists to this day. Spanning three thousand years, this illustrated history offers a thorough and delightfully readable introduction to the artwork.
Paperback September 2008
Hadrian
Thorsten Opper
Even in the panoply of Roman history, Hadrian stands out. This book moves beyond the familiar image of Hadrian to offer a new appraisal of this Emperor’s contradictory personality, his exploits and accomplishments, his rule, and his military role, against the backdrop of his twenty-one-year reign.
Hardcover September 2008
Euripides, VII, Fragments
Euripides
Edited and translated by Christopher Collard
Edited and translated by Martin Cropp
The extant plays and the fragments together make Euripides by far the best known of the classic Greek tragedians. This edition offers the first complete English translation of the fragments together with a selection of testimonia bearing on the content of the plays. Each play is prefaced by a select bibliography and an introductory discussion of its mythical background, plot, and location of the fragments, general character, chronology, and impact on subsequent literary and artistic traditions.
Hardcover June 2008
The Learned Banqueters, IV, Books 8-10.420e
Athenaeus
Edited and translated by S. Douglas Olson
Athenaeus describes a series of dinner parties at which the guests quote extensively from Greek literature. The work (which dates to the very end of the second century CE) is amusing and of extraordinary value as a treasury of quotations from works now lost.
Hardcover June 2008
Kourion
Edited by A. H. S. Megaw
More than fifty years after the earthquake of 365 destroyed Kourion, the seat of the Roman administration of Cyprus, a Christian basilica was built upon the remains of its pagan predecessor. Replete with mosaics and revetment, the basilica was the center of the ecclesiastical administration until its destruction in the late seventh century. In this long-awaited report, Megaw and colleagues present in full the results of excavations from the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s.
Hardcover January 2008
Holon
Michael Chazan
Liora Kolska Horwitz
Excavations at the open-air site of Holon, carried out by Tamar Noy between 1963 and 1970, were some of the first successful salvage projects in the region. This volume brings together the results of interdisciplinary research on the site of Holon--geology, dating, archaeology, paleontology, taphonomy, and spatial analysis--by a team of leading international researchers. This book will be an essential point of reference for students and specialists working in the archaeology of human evolution.
Paperback January 2008