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At the beginning of the Hellenistic Age, Sicily became the landing-place for political innovations produced by Hellenistic culture in the West and very soon it turned out to be the theatre for the comparison of different ethnicities: Sicilian natives, Greeks, Italics, Carthaginians and Romans.This book investigates the decades between 289 and 241 B.C. and the social as well as political development of Sicily by re-examining crucial events that made the island the first Roman provincia after the first Punic War: the failure of the first Hellenistic kingship in the West; the Sicilian expedition of Pyrrhus; the new Hellenistic kingship of Hiero of Syracuse; the first Punic War and the victory of Rome. Also, this study highlights how successfully the political modernization and the social innovations of the Hellenistic Age took place in Sicilian cities and the way some novelties were rejected and some traditional institutions still existed, even after the complete Roman conquest.

The Armenian Question in the Caucasus, Russian Archive Documents and Publications (1724-1914) is issued in this three-volume collection as a special topic of study for the first time in world historiography. The topic is presented as a complex based on rare documents and publications which were long stored as secret and top secret in the Russian State Historical Archive (St Petersburg) and the Russian State Military History Archive (Moscow). The first volume deals chronologically with the period 1724-1904 and comprises two sections. The first section provides an analysis of the documents and materials. The second section contains copies of the originals in the archives and publications. Eleven of the documents and materials presented in this volume are made publically available here for the first time. To guarantee academic objectivity, the contextual integrity of the archive documents has been preserved. All materials are arranged chronologically and by topic. The collection provides the reader with the opportunity to undertake a critical review of current theses on the Armenian question. It also assists the application of contemporary academic methods to a comprehensive study of the essence of this question.

The Armenian Question in the Caucasus, Russian Archive Documents and Publications (1724-1914) is issued in this three-volume collection as a special topic of study for the first time in world historiography. The topic is presented as a complex based on rare documents and publications which were long stored as secret and top secret in the Russian State Historical Archive (St Petersburg) and the Russian State Military History Archive (Moscow). The second volume deals chronologically with the period 1905-1906 and comprises two sections. The first section provides an analysis of the documents and materials. The second section contains copies of the originals in the archives and publications. Fourteen of the documents and materials presented in this volume are made publically available here for the first time. To guarantee academic objectivity, the contextual integrity of the archive documents has been preserved. All materials are arranged chronologically and by topic. The collection provides the reader with the opportunity to undertake a critical review of current theses on the Armenian question. It also assists the application of contemporary academic methods to a comprehensive study of the essence of this question.

This volume assembles leading Near Eastern art historians, archaeologists, and philologists to examine and apply critical contemporary approaches to the arts and artifacts of the ancient Near East. The contributions in the volume, which include a comprehensive first chapter by the editor and twelve paired chapters (each of which explores a key theme of the volume through a specific case study), are divided into six sections: Representation, Context, Complexity, Materiality, Space, and Time / Afterlives. A number of sub-themes and questions also thread through the volume as a whole: how might art historical, archaeological, anthropological, and philological approaches to the Near East complement and inform each other? How do word and image relate? And how might the field of Near Eastern studies not only adapt and apply approaches developed in other fields but also contribute to critical contemporary discourses? The volume is unified both by the themes that thread through it and by the comprehensive first chapter in the volume, which explores the status of Near Eastern arts and artifacts as simultaneously non-Western and ancient and as neither of these, and which provides a larger theoretical framework for issues addressed in the volume as a whole.

Appian of Alexandria lived in the early-to-mid second century AD, a time when the pax Romana flourished. His Roman History traced, through a series of ethnographic histories, the growth of Roman power throughout Italy and the Mediterranean World. But Appian also told the story of the civil wars which beset Rome from the time of Tiberius Gracchus to the death of Sextus Pompeius Magnus. The standing of his work in modern times is paradoxical. Consigned to the third rank by nineteenth-century historiographers, and poorly served by translators, Appians Roman History profoundly shapes our knowledge of Republican Rome, its empire and its internal politics. We need to know him better. This collection of 15 new papers from a distinguished international team studies both what Appian had to say and how he said it. The papers engage in a dialogue about the value of Appians text as a source of history, the relationship between that history and his own times, and the impact on his narrative of the authors own opinions - most notably that Rome enjoyed divinely-ordained good fortune. Some authors demonstrate that Appians text (and even his mistakes) can yield significant new information, others re-open the question of Appians use of source material in the light of recent studies showing him to be far more than a transmitter of other peoples work.

From the eighteenth century until 1945, German children were taught to model themselves on the young of an Ancient Greek city-state: Sparta. From older children, from teachers in the classroom, and from higher authority first in Prussia, then in Imperial and National Socialist Germany, came images of Sparta designed to inculcate ideals of endurance, discipline and of military self-sacrifice. Identification with Sparta could also be used to justify ideas of domination over Germanys eastern neighbours. Helen Roche is the first to examine this still sensitive topic systematically and in depth. She collects and analyses official and published German evocations of Sparta but also, and remarkably, reconstructs the experiences of German children taught to be little Spartans in the Prussian Cadet Corps and National Socialist elite schools, the Napolas. In treating the final, and gravest, period of this process, the author has personally collected testimony from numerous surviving German witnesses who attended the Napolas as children in the early 1940s. That testimony is presented here, in a work which is likely to proof definitive, not only for its treasury of new information, but for its elegant - and humane - analysis.

Eight leading contemporary interpreters of Classical Greek tragedy here explore its relation to the thought of the Archaic Period. Prominent topics are the nature and possibility of divine justice; the influence of the gods on humans; fate and human responsibility; the instability of fortune and the principle of alternation; hybris and ate; and the inheritance of guilt and suffering. Other themes are tragedys relation with Pre-Socratic philosophy, and the interplay between Archaic features of the genre and fifth-century ethical and political thought. The book makes a powerful case for the importance of Archaic thought not only in the evolution of the tragic genre, but also for developed features of the Classical tragedians art. Along with three papers on Aeschylus, four on Sophocles, and one on Euripides, there is an extensive introduction by the editor.

Sextus Pompeius Magnus Pius, son of Pompey the Great, fits uneasily - or not at all - into the grand narrative of the civil war of 49-31BC. Modern scholars tend to exclude him or mention him without asking what or whom he represented. Ronald Syme, the father of international orthodoxy in this field, famously remarked that Sextus was in reality an adventurer who was easily represented as a pirate. He was wrong. Sextus Pompeius plays havoc with key elements of the accepted narrative. His military success destroys the myth of continuous Caesarian victory. His commitment to rescuing the victims of Triumviral violence belies claims that only the Caesarian side represented clementia and justice. The naval strategy by which he conducted the war demonstrates his commitment to the same cause and ethics as his father and his fathers allies. Welch argues that, far from being a side-show or a bit player, Sextus Pompeius was integral to the fight for the res publica. She solves the problem by placing him at the centre of the story of Romes transition from Republic to Empire and so reveals a very different landscape that emerges as a result.

Much of ancient history can only be written thanks to evidence supplied by Plutarch. The historical methods and qualities of this vital source were for long subjected to little systematic analysis. However, over the last two decades an authoritative and profoundly influential set of studies has appeared in the field, the work of Christopher Pelling. Dispersed until now in a wide range of international journals and symposia, these fifteen studies are here published in a single volume, revised by the author with up-to-date annotations and bibliography. Together with three new studies, they form an essential reference-work for serious students of classical Greece and Rome.

Velleius Paterculus short work is the earliest surviving attempt on the part of a post-Augustan historian to survey the history of the res publica from its origins to his own times. In a period from which no other contemporary historical narrative survives in more than meagre fragments, Velleius work is uniquely important. It is a critical counter to the later accounts of Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, not simply because it offers a different view of Tiberius, but because Velleius saw continuity where later authors saw only radical change which destroyed the Republic and put monarchy in its place. For other reasons, too, Velleius occupies a unique position in Roman historiography. This collection of papers, by a distinguished cast of scholars, represents a wide-ranging re-examination of Velleius work, of its place within, and contribution to, Roman historiography and the intellectual history of the early Principate.

Cicero, and others in the Roman Republic, were masters of both invective and panegyric, two hugely important genres in ancient oratory, which influenced the later theory and practice of rhetoric. The papers in this volume address strategies of vituperation and eulogy within the Republic, and examine the mechanisms and effects of praise and blame.

The fifteen papers in this volume discuss issues of Roman social, cultural and political history from the foundation of the Principate to the age of barbarian settlements of the west. Working imaginatively from within the diverse evidence, they show the institutional continuity of the Roman empire between its early and later periods, and reveal the roots of political behaviour in social practice. Five of the papers, including three of the most substantial, are previously unpublished; others have appeared in collections which are now difficult to find. The author has edited the whole to bring out thematic connections as well as for consistency of presentation.

This important volume collects essays on topics in Greek history and epigraphy by an international cast of highly respected historians and epigraphers. Contributions include new and authoritative papers on Athenian politics and political institutions, the language and significance of honorific decrees, the role of inscriptions in the Athenian democratic state and elsewhere, as well as analyses of the methods for interpreting them. Together this collection represents an appropriate celebration of the work of the distinguished historian Professor Peter Rhodes.

A distinguished cast of scholars discusses models of gesture and non-verbal communication as they apply to Greek and Roman culture, literature and art. Topics include dress and costume in the Homeric poems; the importance of looking, eye-contact, and face-to-face orientation in Greek society; the construction of facial expression in Greek and Roman epic; the significance of gesture and body language in the visual meaning of ancient sculpture; the evidence for gesture and performance style in the texts of ancient drama; the erotic significance of feet and footprints; and the role of gesture in Roman law. The volume seeks to apply a sense of history as well as of theory in interpreting non-verbal communication. It looks both at the cross-cultural and at the culturally specific in its treatment of this important but long-neglected aspect of Classical Studies.

Inspired by our age-old fascination with equids, Materiality of the Horse brings the latest academic research in equine history to a wider readership. Themes examined within the book by specialist contributors include explorations of material culture relating to horses and what this discloses about the horse-human relationship; fresh observations on significant medieval horse-related texts from Europe and the Islamic world; and revealing insights into the effect of the introduction of horses into indigenous cultures in South America. Thought-provoking and original, Materiality of the Horse is the second volume in Trivent Publishings innovative "Rewriting Equestrian History" series.

Seleukid Perspectives explore the largest successor kingdom to Alexander the Greats empire. Seleukid kings established their power on the battlefield but did not rely on coercion alone. They constructed an ideal of kingship to render their authority morally and religiously acceptable. For this, they considered the traditions and sensitivities of their soldiers, subjects, and neighbours, while facing the pretensions of their rivals. What was beneficial or tolerable varied dramatically from one polity to the next. This e-book examines local influence on and reactions to Seleukid claims by focusing on rituals, discourse, and creative moments in which ideological themes were shaped. Seleukos I (320281 BCE) closely engaged with the imagery of Alexander and Macedonian rivals, borrowed from Near Eastern traditions, and courted sanctuaries of Apollo. Case studies for his descendants are drawn from Anatolia, Syria, Judaea, Babylonia, and Persia. Praise of the dynasty was more than flattery but part of a process in which subjects actively contributed to perpetuating, modifying, or undermining the royal image. The volume encourages new debates on the complexity and efficacy of Seleukid Ideology.

This volume assembles approaches to rituals in several cultures of the Ancient Mediterranean (Egyptian, Punic, Greek, Italian, Roman) from the second millennium BCE to Late Antiquity. Ritual dynamics is the common theme of the fourteen chapters. Rituals are understood as complex socio-cultural constructs that are connected with tensions: tensions within the cult community; tensions between norm and performance, expectation and reality, traditional significance and re-interpretation, stereotype and variability. Exploiting a variety of sources (literary sources, inscriptions, iconography), the authors approach the questions of how such tensions influence the performance and impact of rituals, how they generate change, how ritual agency is connected with gender and social standing, how rituals trigger particular emotions and create emotional communities, and how the literary and visual representations of rituals reflect their cultural relevance.

The bawdy comedies of Aristophanes gradually began to attract more attention among learned circles in the later 16th century. This trend culminated in 1586, when Nicodemus Frischlin produced new and strikingly original Latin versions of five plays by Aristophanes. With this work Frischlin completely recast the place of Aristophanes in the Republic of Letters, forcing readers to approach him as a dramatist of tremendous contemporary relevance. Frischlin was able to rehabilitate Aristophanes by calling attention both to the practical advice his plays could give on the administration of a res publica, and to the light they could shed on serious problems concerning rhetorical education and political discourse within the troubled Holy Roman Empire under Rudolf II. This work aims to restore Frischlins translations to their rightful place of honor within the broader reception tradition of Aristophanes and Old Comedy, while analyzing them within the context of Frischlins own longstandingcampaigns for educational and political reform.

Since the end of World War II, Nazi medical atrocities have been a topic of ambivalent reactions and debates, both in Germany and internationally: An early period of silence was followed by attempts of victims and representatives of medical organisations to describe what happened. Varying narratives developed, some of which had a stabilizing function for the identity of the profession, whereas others had a critical and de-stabilizing function. In todays international debates in the field of medical ethics, there are frequent references to Nazi medical atrocities, in particular in the context of discussions about research on human subjects, and on euthanasia. The volume analyses the narratives on Nazi medical atrocities, their historicity in different stages of post-war medicine, as well as in the international discourse on biomedical ethics.

The well-respected historian Manfried Rauchensteiner analyses the outbreak of World War I, Emperor Franz Josephs role in the conflict, and how the various nationalities of the Habsburg Monarchy reacted to the disintegration of this 640-yearold empire in 1918. After Archduke Franz Ferdinand"s assassination in Sarajevo in 1914, war was inevitable. Emperor Franz Joseph intended it, and everyone in Vienna expected it. How the war began and how Austria-Hungary managed to avoid capitulation only weeks later with the help of German troops reads like a thriller. Manfried Rauchensteiner"s book is based on decades of research and is a fascinating read to the very end, even though the final outcome, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, is already known. Originally published in German in 2013 by Bohlau, this standard work is now available in English.