eBooks de Historia Universal, página 15 de 627

The Greeks, in Dr. Johnsons phrase, shock the mind by ascribing effects to non-entity. The culture of ancient Greece was thronged with personifications. In poetry and the visual arts, personified figures of what might seem abstractions claim our attention. This study examines the logic, the psychology and the practice of Greeks who worshipped these personifications with temples and sacrifices, and addressed them with hymns and prayers. Emma Stafford conducts case-studies of deified abstractions, such as Peitho (Persuasion), Eirene (Peace) and Hygieia (Health). She also considers general questions of Greek psychology, such as why so many of these figures were female. Modern scholars have asked, Did the Greeks believe their own myths? This study contributes importantly to the debate, by exploring widespread and creative popular theology in the historical period.

This volume is devoted to the discussion of Tell el-Yahudiyeh Wares repertory, unearthed in the Middle Bronze Age sites of the northern Levant. These juglets initially emerged in the northern Levant in two separate regions in Syria-Palestine. These two variants developed in two lines producing the Syro-Palestinian and the Levanto-Egyptian lines. This distinction should be from now on essential in considering Tell el-Yahudiyeh Ware. A significant focus is given to the collections discovered, over the last decades, in Damascus Oasis and southern Syria, labeled here the Syrian Tell el-Yahudiyeh Ware (Branch K). A large part of this Syrian corpus is introduced here for the first time. The evaluation shows that this material comprises more than half of Tell el-Yahudiyeh Ware in the northern Levant and was used from the beginning of the 18th to the middle of the 16th century BCE. Moreover, light is shed onto the archaeological contexts where the vessels originally belonged. This approach enhances the perception of this wares value and position in the material culture in the Middle Bronze Age Levant. All things considered, this book is a new addition to many decades of research that aims to understand the origin and development of one of the most challenging elements of the Middle Bronze Age pottery tradition.

For almost half a century, Vivian Nutton has been a leading figure in the study of ancient (and less ancient) medicine. The field itself has been revolutionised over that time. In this volume distinguished colleagues and former students develop, in his honour, key themes of his ground-breaking scholarship. Spanning from the Bronze Age to the Digital Age, involving the cult of Artemis and the corpuscular theories of Asclepiades of Bithynia, the medicinal uses of beavers and the cost of health-care and wet-nursing, case-histories, remedy exchange and the medical repercussions of political assassination, this book has at its centre the pluralism and diversity of the ancient medical marketplace. The lively interplay between choice and competition, unity and division, communication and debate, so notable in Vivian Nuttons foundational vision of the world of classical medicine, is richly examined across these pages.

This study offers a comprehensive analysis of utilitas, a central concept in Roman law, and its pivotal role in shaping legal interpretation. Moving beyond its traditional view as a merely pragmatic tool, utilitas is shown to guide legal outcomes that not only address practical needs but also align with broader ethical values of righteousness and justice. It argues that a complete understanding of utilitas in legal reasoning both in meaning and function can only be achieved by synthesizing jurisprudential, philosophical, and rhetorical perspectives. Through this interdisciplinary lens the e-book demonstrates that decisions made utilitatis causa, exceptional in their departure from established legal rules, can only be fully understood through the lens of rhetorical theory of legal interpretation, offering a framework that transcends the limitations of literal interpretation. Contributing to ongoing scholarly discourse in Roman law, legal theory, and philosophy, this study provides fresh insights into a concept that remains central to contemporary discussions of legal interpretation and justice.

Experts of ancient sport have long treated "money" and "honor" as opposites. Up to the 1970s, the idea of Greek gentlemens sport prevailed. It is one of the most exciting challenges for sport historians to overcome this opposition and to develop a concept that integrates the economic and symbolic motivations of ancient athletes. From the very beginning, economic aspects played a role in Greek sport, and honor remained important until the end of ancient athletics. But despite these continuities there are obvious developments in favor of economic factors: Cash prizes grew in importance since the Hellenistic period, and symbolical honors awarded to victorious athletes by their hometowns were transformed into financial ones. The studies collected in this volume aim at exploring the relationship of money and honor with regard to athletes, festivals and poleis.

Research on the process of European integration is usually restricted to the political, economic and legal aspects of Europeanisation. Still, we do not know enough about "practiced Europeanisation" in terms of everyday life and popular culture. Here, Peter Pichler explores a new area of research. He links the latest insights into the cultural history of the European Union with interdisciplinary research on heavy metal as a subculture throughout Europe. He presents the first historiographic exploration of European integration in this subculture since 1970.In general, subcultural Europeanisation predates even political Europeanisation, as evidenced by networks of the metal scene breaking through the Iron Curtain in the beginning of the 1980s. The European metal scene constituted a borderless space. Today, the shared knowledge of rituals, codes, clothes, history and values of metal are present across the continent. Pichler interprets this from a cultural-historical perspective against the background of Europeanisation after 1945.

American protestant missionaries, sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, initiated transcultural knowledge to Ottoman Syria. This e-book focusses on the generation of that knowledge involving local people from 1820 until the end of the nineteenth century.It includes the study of secularity, the formation of knowledge on topography and particularly biblical topography, networking between academic societies, the development of a font of type for printing in Arabic and the introduction of journals in Arabic language. The material and analysis presented illustrate how modernity became a global phenomenon and who "owns" modernity.

The Peutinger map and the Antonine itinerary represent two of the most important documents on travelling in the Roman world. With a focus on the three provinces Pannonia, Dacia and Moesia, Florin-Gheorghe Fodorean analyzes and compares the distances registered in these documents of ancient geography. By including data from other ancient sources the Itinerarium Burdigalense, the Notitia Dignitatum, and the Cosmographia of the Anonymous from Ravenna and by applying a new combination of methods, the author provides new insights into the Peutinger map and the Antonine itinerary. Fodorean discusses some important ancient literary sources, uses the data provided by milestones and compares the distances between the settlements recorded in the two documents. This new methodological approach leads him to the conclusion that the compilers of these most important documents of ancient geography used different sources.

In 1957, Ghana was the first sub-Saharan country in Africa to achieve independence. The key African figure in this process was Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of the new state. Having studied in the USA and in London he was influenced by socialist and pan-African ideals. His ambitious projects in the fields of education and scientific as well as technological development provided an example for other former colonies. But in 1966 he was overthrown by a military coup supported by the USA and died in exile in 1972. Fifty years later, his memory is omnipresent in Ghanaian society and in other African countries. Still, his achievements are a subject of controversy. Was he a hero of the anti-colonial struggle or an authoritarian dictator? This volume presents chapters by researchers from Ghana, Austria, Germany, and the USA. They analyse the visionary politics of Nkrumah, investigate the reasons for the growing protest against his rule and shed new light on the background of the coup. The last part is dedicated to questions of evaluation and memory. Fifty years after his fall from power, new research and distance from the events allow for a more balanced judgment of Nkrumah.

The economic crises since 2008, the tensions concerning the Euro, the Greek question and the refugee problem have fuelled a strong "Eurosceptic" movement. At the 2014 European elections, the rise of Eurosceptic forces could be observed in virtually all Member States of the EU. This publication regroups the contributions to a Conference organized 2014 in Strasburg by the CNRS-University of Strasbourg research unit "UMR Dynamiques europeennes", in the framework of the IDEX excellence project "The European Integration and the New Anti-Europeanism". In this first of two volumes, anti-Europeanism and Euroscepticism are examined as political phenomena and objects of interdisciplinary research. The focus is on "traditionally" Eurosceptic Great Britain and on sometimes very recent anti-European movements within the EC founding states (France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands), their discourses and voters. What reasons prompt anti-European voters: rejection of immigration, xenophobia, fear of the future, nationalism or the rejection of capitalism and globalization? Or is it the collective disappointment with the incapacity of the European elites to communicate with the majority of voters?

It was not until the 1850s that the average life expectancy in women began to rise noticeably in Germany and Europe. Up to the 1980s it increased in waves. Since then the gender gap has gradually decreased and settled. For decades demographers, historians, medical researchers and health scientists have provided partial explanations for this phenomenon. This volume now presents a comparison of seven Central, Western and Northern European countries spanning one and a half centuries: some of the selected countries took part in both World Wars, others remained neutral; in some countries the rate of smoking varies, others have widely differing female occupation rates. As a result of this comparison, the varying effects of biological and socio-cultural influences on the gender gap and the reversal of this secular trend can be placed with much greater scientific precision than before. The volume also contributes to objectify the public debate on the gender gap and its implications for health policy.

This e-book analyses the procedures, ideas and realities that allowed the people from the Greek East to become a part of the Roman Empire, while both preserving and redeveloping their cultural identity. The volume assesses this complex process both in the traditional Greek cities of the provinces of Achaea and Asia as well as in other areas that had been deeply hellenised for centuries, as the Near East. A common point of departure of the different essays is the notion that granting the Greeks a privileged position within the Roman Empire as a tribute to their civilisation was as possible an option as that of "barbarisation", i.e. the substitution of Greek cultural identity by the Roman one. Between the respect and conservation of political and cultural structures, and their total annihilation and substitution by new realities of undeniable Roman stamp, there existed a wide spectrum of political possibilities with strong cultural and religious undertones. In creating those new options, which Rome either opted for, refused, or transformed, the political and cultural activity of the Greeks themselves, and in particular the oligarchs who ruled the cities in the Mediterranean East, played an important role. This volume attempts to analyse all those new possibilities.

This volume results from a conference of Russian and British scholars of ancient history. It studies crises of various kinds in the history of civil communities in the Graeco-Roman world. Some chapters concern the main lines of Greek and Roman political development: instability in the Greek cities, the adaptation of aristocrats to the democracy of Athens, empire and crisis in fourth-century Greece; in the Roman Republic the dictatorship, the tribunate, changes in institutional arrangements which had far-reaching but unforeseen consequences; also in Rome the transition from the Middle to the Late Empire. Others focus on particular episodes where new interpretations are possible: a crisis of the pyramid-builders in Egypt which Herodotus misdated by more than a millennium; two problematic episodes in the hellenistic world, concerning Caunus, and Cius and Myrlea; in the Roman world, in connection with the transition from the Republic to the Principate an examination (particularly suitable for a Russian conference) of the interpretations of Russian scholars a century ago, and, finally, the survival of Neoplatonic communities in the Late Empire.

Current studies of the British Labour Party and the question of European Community (EC) membership are characterized by a striking absence of approaches combining the many transnational processes and contexts in which attitudes to the post-war European integration process developed, the application of non-British sources, and a close and archive-based analysis of the leaderships perceptions of joining the EC during the whole period 196073. As a result, this e-book addresses issues arising from processes and contexts in transnational arenas and questions related to continuity and change in attitudes to British EC membership.To a considerable extent it differentiates existing accounts of the British Labour Partys European policy up until Britain joined the EC in 1973. While establishing a correlation between intensified and restructured transnational social democratic networking and evolving perceptions of EC membership within the party leadership, it also demonstrates greater continuity in the partys European policies than existing studies have allowed. The e-book also clearly demonstrates that cross-border networking is an essential and often-neglected factor when explaining changed perceptions of supranational European integration during the period.

In the 1970s industry in the West had reached its limits, precipitating a major discussion about how to solve the crisis. But what was going on in Eastern Europe parallel to this development? Were any similar trends being registered? The authors of this volume pursue the answers to these questions by studying the politics, economics, social and cultural movements of that time in the multiethnic countries of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. It becomes clear that these two countries were themselves in the midst of a latent crisis resulting from the global developments around them and from their own internal conflicts. The symptoms of this crisis were well known in expert circles, but not registered fully by either the political leaders or the citizens at large.

Plutarch (born before AD 50, died after AD 120) is the ancient author who has arguably contributed more than any other to the popular conception of Sparta. Writing under the Roman Empire, at a time when the glory days of ancient Sparta were already long in the past, Plutarch represents a milestone in Spartas mythologisation, but at the same time is a vital source for our historical understanding of Sparta. In this volume, eight scholars from around the world come together to consider Plutarchs understanding and presentation of Sparta, his flaws and significance as an historical source, and his development of Sparta as a resonant subject and theme within his bestknown work, the Parallel Lives. This book is the latest in a series which the Classical Press of Wales is publishing on major sources for Sparta. Volumes on Xenophon and Sparta (Powell & Richer 2020) and Thucydides and Sparta (Powell & Debnar 2021) have already been released, and a further volume on Herodotus and Sparta is currently in preparation

Thucydides is widely seen as the most dispassionate and reliable contemporary source for the history of classical Sparta. But, compared with partisan authors such as Xenophon and Plutarch, his information on the subject is more scattered and implicit. Scholars in recent decades have made progress in teasing out the sense of Thucydides often lapidary remarks on Sparta. This book takes the process further. Its eight new studies by international specialists aim to reveal coherent structures both in Thucydidean thought and in Spartan reality.This volume is the second of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales applies to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Romes revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods.

Xenophon has for long, and understandably, enjoyed a privileged position as a reliable source on Sparta. Commander of a grand military expedition of Spartas devising, and a dependent of Spartas influential king Agesilaos, Xenophon knew Sparta from the inside, and - as himself an Athenian in exile - was well placed to comment on Spartas difference. The simplicity of his Greek style has a perfume of honesty. And yet... Recent research has with increasing force called into doubt Xenophons motives and truthfulness - especially as regards Sparta. Analysis of his Hellenica reveals much evasion and euphemism about Spartas failings - complicated by occasional outbursts against the iniquity of Spartan imperialism. His euphemistic Constitution of the Lakedaimonians (itself containing such an outburst), and his near-hagiography of the dead Agesilaos, have variously evoked trust and suspicion in historians. This book, by a distinguished team of specialists in Spartan history, is the first of a short series from CPW, approaching Spartan reality by way of close analysis of our main contemporary Greek sources: their access, their biases, the literary structure and the genre of their works.

The Seleukids, the easternmost of the Greek-speaking dynasties which succeeded Alexander the Great, were long portrayed by historians as inherently weak and doomed to decline after the death of their remarkable first king, Seleukos (281 BC). And yet they succeeded in ruling much of the Near and Middle East for over two centuries, overcoming problems of a multi-ethnic empire. In this book an international team of young, established scholars argues that in the decades after Seleukos the empire developed flexible structures that successfully bound it together in the face of a series of catastrophes. The strength of the Seleukid realm lay not simply in its vast swathes of territory, but rather in knowing how to tie the new, frequently non-Greek, nobility to the king through mutual recognition of sovereignty.

The term colonisation encompasses much diversity, from the settlement of the western Mediterranean and the Black sea by Greeks in the archaic period to the foundation of Roman colonies in mainland Italy during the Republic. Though very different in their motives and methods, both Greek and Roman colonisations are presented by our sources as organised and clearly defined processes, within which internal and external relations were firmly delineated. This volume contains six new studies, two Greek and four Roman. Contributors employ historiographical, comparative and post-colonial approaches to question ancient constructs. The book contains detailed case-studies as well as synoptic treatments. Contributors build on recent research in Greek and Roman history to show how ideologies of colonisation develop and come to dominate the historical record.