Classica Et Mediaevalia


Book Description




Professing Classics


Book Description

Thirteen original essays study the mobility of Classicists sensu latiore, including philologists and archaeologists, between the Anglophone and Germanophone worlds between the mid-19th C. and 2020, concentrating on the North Atlantic Triangle. American classicists "rushed across the seas" for doctoral work in Germany (the great Hellenist Gildersleeve, the American circle around Wölfflin, the historian of classical scholarship Gudeman). The archaeologist Schliemann’s dubious profiteering in America is exposed. Two contemporary scholars describe how they moved to enrich their career horizons (Ludwig, Shanzer). More, however, sadly, were forced to seek asylum from 20th century Fascism and anti-Semitism (Bieler, Brendel, Fraenkel). One (Gudeman) emigrated from America to Germany in the early Nazi period and later died in a labor camp. The lasting prominence of one novelist (Wallace) and one critic with a dark past (Pöschl), whose influential works crossed the sea, are also evaluated. The volume includes work in academic sociology, archival and epistolographical detective-work, in life writing, transmission-reception, and the history of scholarship.




Waltharius and Ruodlieb


Book Description

Published in 1984: The Waltharius and Ruodlieb are considered by many scholars to be among the finest works of medieval Latin literature. Both the Waltharius, composed by an anonymous eleventh-century poet from Southern Germany, are heroic narratives that provide examples of the creative transformation of the Latin epic tradition into a vehicle for expression of Christian values.




A Heritage Of Holy Wood


Book Description

This fascinating study reconstructs the tradition of the Legend of the True Cross in text and image, from its tentative beginnings in 4th-century Jerusalem to the culminating expression of its multi-layered cosmic content in 14th and 15th-century monumental cycles in Germany and Italy.




Ancient Greece and Rome


Book Description

Sir Thomas Fairfax, not Oliver Cromwell, was creator and commander of Parliament's New Model Army from 1645 to1650. Although Fairfax emerged as England's most successful commander of the 1640s, this book challenges the orthodoxy that he was purely a military figure, showing how he was not apolitical or disinterested in politics. The book combines narrative and thematic approaches to explore the wider issues of popular allegiance, puritan religion, concepts of honour, image, reputation, memory, gender, literature, and Fairfax's relationship with Cromwell. 'Black Tom' delivers a groundbreaking examination of the transformative experience of the English revolution from the viewpoint of one of its leading, yet most neglected, participants. It is the first modern academic study of Fairfax, making it essential reading for university students as well as historians of the seventeenth century. Its accessible style will appeal to a wider audience of those interested in the civil wars and interregnum more generally.




Hymns of the Holy Cross


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Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.


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This biography portrays Alexander as both a complex personality and a single-minded general, a man capable of such diverse expediencies as patricide or the massacre of civilians. Writing for the general reader, the author provides gritty details on Alexander's darker side while providing a gripping tale of Alexander's career.




The Gospel as Epic in Late Antiquity


Book Description

Preliminary material -- PROLEGOMENA -- TEXT AND CONTEXT -- TRADITION AND DESIGN -- EPIC AND EVANGEL -- STRUCTURE AND MEANING -- SOUND AND SENSE -- POPULARITY AND INFLUENCE -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX OF PASSAGES -- GENERAL INDEX.




The Romans


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Kevin McGeogh approaches the centuries-long story of Rome thematically, exploring its geography, history, economics, social structures, material culture, and intellectual achievements. The book not only addresses such topics as historical personalities, forms of government, and religion, but also coinage, administrative organization, festivities, the art of leisure, death and burial rituals, and much more. Each chapter provides an up-to-date summary of our knowledge of Roman civilization, making this book an indeal introduction to this fascinating and complex culture.




Worshippers of the Gods


Book Description

Worshippers of the Gods tells how the Latin writers who witnessed the political and social rise of Christianity rethought the role of traditional religion in the empire and city of Rome. In parallel with the empire's legal Christianisation, it traces changing attitudes toward paganism from the last empire-wide persecution of Christians under the Tetrarchy to the removal of state funds from the Roman cults in the early 380s. Influential recent scholarship has seen Christian polemical literature-a crucial body of evidence for late antique polytheism-as an exercise in Christian identity-making. In response, Worshippers of the Gods argues that Lactantius, Firmicus Maternus, Ambrosiaster, and Ambrose offered substantive critiques of traditional religion shaped to their political circumstances and to the preoccupations of contemporary polytheists. By bringing together this polemical literature with imperial laws, pagan inscriptions, and the letters and papers of the senator Symmachus, Worshippers of the Gods reveals the changing horizons of Roman thought on traditional religion in the fourth century. Through its five interlocking case studies, it shows how key episodes in the Empire's religious history-the Tetrarchic persecution, Constantine's adoption of Christianity, the altar of Victory affair, and the 'disestablishment' of the Roman cults-shaped contemporary conceptions of polytheism. It also argues that the idea of a unified 'paganism', often seen as a capricious invention, actually arose as a Christian response to the eclectic, philosophical polytheism in vogue at Rome.