Showing papers in "Classical World in 1987"

The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets

Abstract: Chrysostom XVI): for 'funerary urn' read 'sarcophagus'; Saint Babylas was interred, not cremated, and the Greek word is \\apva£. P. 109 (Ephrem, Hymn 1, line 1): there is a superfluous 'which'. The three texts presented are not major sources on Julian. But they are not available in English translation. The editor and his collaborators have done students of late antiquity a service by making them accessible. It might have been useful to append a note on where translations of the principal contemporary sources are to be found Julian's own writings, Ammianus Marcellinus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 4 and 5, Libanius, Or. 1, 12-18. Julian fascinates the late twentieth-century world. There have been many scholarly studies on him in recent years. Gore Vidal wrote a best-seller on him. Lieu's book will help us to understand this extraordinary man, who faces us, inter alia, with a major problem on the place of the contingent in history. Had his anonymous assassin missed with his javelin, and had Julian gone on to live to a ripe old age, what would have happened? Christianity would hardly have disappeared. But perhaps a very different relationship would have been established between religious authority and political power. The history of Europe might have taken a very different course.

Arcana mundi : magic and the occult in the Greek and Roman worlds

Abstract: Magic, miracles, daemonology, divination, astrology, and alchemy were the arcana mundi, the \"secrets of the universe,\" of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In this path-breaking collection of Greek and Roman writings on magic and the occult, Georg Luck provides a comprehensive sourcebook and introduction to magic as it was practiced by witches and sorcerers, magi and astrologers, in the Greek and Roman worlds. In this new edition, Luck has gathered and translated 130 ancient texts dating from the eighth century BCE through the fourth century CE. Thoroughly revised, this volume offers several new elements: a comprehensive general introduction, an epilogue discussing the persistence of ancient magic into the early Christian and Byzantine eras, and an appendix on the use of mind-altering substances in occult practices. Also added is an extensive glossary of Greek and Latin magical terms. In Arcana Mundi Georg Luck presents a fascinating-and at times startling-alternative vision of the ancient world. \"For a long time it was fashionable to ignore the darker and, to us, perhaps, uncomfortable aspects of everyday life in Greece and Rome,\" Luck has written. \"But we can no longer idealize the Greeks with their 'artistic genius' and the Romans with their 'sober realism.' Magic and witchcraft, the fear of daemons and ghosts, the wish to manipulate invisible powers-all of this was very much a part of their lives.\

The Greek polis

Abstract: The University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization (nine volumes) makes available to students and teachers a unique selection of primary documents, many in new translations. These readings, prepared for the highly praised Western civilization sequence at the University of Chicago, were chosen by an outstanding group of scholars whose experience teaching that course spans almost four decades. Each volume includes rarely anthologized selections as well as standard, more familiar texts; a bibliography of recommended parallel readings; and introductions providing background for the selections. Beginning with Periclean Athens and concluding with twentieth-century Europe, these source materials enable teachers and students to explore a variety of critical approaches to important events and themes in Western history. Individual volumes provide essential background reading for courses covering specific eras and periods. The complete nine-volume series is ideal for general courses in history and Western civilization sequences.