The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.

Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

Greek artefacts, craftsmen and artists had penetrated Rome since regal days; from the second century BC this trickle had become a continuing and influential flood, contributing together with Italic and Etruscan architecture and art, and the developing central Italian and Roman concrete architecture, to the rich tapestry of the art of the capital. Vespasian (69-79), founder of the Flavian dynasty, showed an astute pragmatism in his handling of architecture and art. In the provinces the architectural and art forms characteristic of the Flavian era continued to flourish. Dynamism returned to imperial commissions with the Romano-Spanish Trajan. The age of Hadrian (117-38) proved to be extraordinary, largely because of the extent to which he was able to impress upon it his own many-sided personality: ruler, philhellene, architect, dilettante, poet, traveller and romantic. The rich artistic harvest of the Flavian to the Antonine ages was not just an imperial, but a corporate achievement, one which offered a worthy inheritance to following generations.

Art and architecture

Mycenaean texts : the Linear B tablets / Silvia Ferrara -- Phoinikēia grammata : an alphabet for the Greek language / Roger D. Woodard -- Inscriptions / Rudolph Wachter -- Papyri / Arthur Verhoogt -- The manuscript tradition / Niels Gaul -- Phonology / Philomen Probert -- Morphology and word formation / Michael Weiss -- Semantics and vocabulary / Michael Clarke -- Syntax / Evert van Emde Boas and Luuk Huitink -- Pragmatics : speech and text / Egbert J. Bakker -- Greek and Proto-Indo-European / Jeremy Rau -- Mycenaean Greek / Rupert Thompson -- Greek dialects in the archaic and classical ages / Stephen Colvin -- Greek and the languages of Asia Minor to the classical period / Shane Hawkins -- Linguistic diversity in Asia Minor during the Empire : Koine and the non-Greek languages / Claude Brixhe -- Greek in Egypt / Sofia Torallas Tovar -- Jewish and Christian Greek / Coulter H. George -- Greek and Latin bilingualism / Bruno Rochette -- Register variation / Andreas Willi -- Female speech / Thorsten Fogen -- Forms of address and markers of status / Eleanor Dickey -- Technical languages : science and medicine / Francesca Schironi -- Inherited poetics / Joshua T. Katz -- Language and meter / Gregory Nagy -- Literary dialects / Olga Tribulato -- The Greek of epic / Olav Hackstein -- The language of Greek lyric poetry / Michael Silk -- The Greek of Athenian tragedy / Richard Rutherford -- Kunstprosa : philosophy, history, oratory / Victor Bers -- The literary heritage as language : Atticism and second sophistic / Lawrence Kim -- Greek philosophers on language / Casper C. de Jonge and Johannes M. van Ophuijsen -- The birth of grammar in Greece / Andreas U. Schmidhauser -- Language as a system in ancient rhetoric and grammar / James I. Porter -- Byzantine literature and the classical past / Staffan Wahlgren -- Medieval and early modern Greek / David Holton and Io Manolessou -- Modern Greek / Peter Mackridge.

A companion to the ancient Greek language

In this book, Professor Simuț demonstrates how Baur came to understand Christian theology as a Gnostic philosophy of religion under the influence of Bohme's unorthodox esoteric theosophy and Hegel's modern religious philosophy.

F. C. Baur's Synthesis of Böhme and Hegel: Redefining Christian Theology as a Gnostic Philosophy of Religion

Contents Foreword by Robert Jewett Editor's Note Introduction Part 1: Introduction: From the Beginnings of Urban Roman Christianity to the Separation from the Synagogue Part 2: Topography Part 3: First Diachronic Section: General Information About Urban Roman Christianity Part 4: Second Diachronic Section: Prosopographic Investigation Part 5: The Fractionation of Roman Christianity Part 6: Final Remarks.

From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries

The theory of will in classical antiquity

Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum

Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum : Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der antiken Welt

Die griechische und lateinische Literatur der Kaiserzeit : von Augustus bis Justinian

I. Introduction II. The Julio-Claudian era 1. General Remarks 2. Rhetoric 3. Philosophy 4. Seneca 5. Poetry 6. Narrative Prose 7. Historiography 8. Specialist Literature 9. Jewish Literature III. The Flavian era 1. General Remarks 2. Greek Eloquence 3. Roman Poetry 4. Pliny the Elder 5. Quintilian 6. Plutarch 7. Epictetus 8. Christian Literature IV. The Age of the Antonines 1. General Remarks 2. Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Florus 3. Greek Educational Literature 4. Greek Entertainment Literature 5. Historiographers and Antiquarians 6. Grammar and Rhetoric 7. Apuleis of Madura 8. Greek and Latin Poetry 9. Philosophy 10. Sciences 11. Christian Literature V. The Severan era 1. General Remarks 2. Roman Jurisprudence 3. Latin Scholarly Literature 4. Philosophy 5. Christian Literature: the Greeks 6. Rhetorical Literature 7. Historiography 8. Christian Literature: the Latins VI. The Crisis of the 3rd Century A.D. 1. General remarks 2. Greek Prose Literature 3. Philosophy 4. Christian Literature VII. The Era of Diocletian and Constantine VIII. The Christian Empire 1. General Remarks 2. Grammarians and Antiquarians 3. Rhetoric: Theory and Literary Practice 4. Historiography 5. Philosophy 6. Technical Writings 7. Christian-theological Literature 8. Greek and Latin Poetry

Albrecht Dihle

Papers

The theory of will in classical antiquity

Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum

Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum : Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der antiken Welt

Die griechische und lateinische Literatur der Kaiserzeit : von Augustus bis Justinian

Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire: From Augustus to Justinian