The Boastful Chef


Book Description

This book explains the importance of food to ancient Greek comedy: it was a medium through which comedy could represent the material, social, agricultural, political and religious worlds to the Greek city-state. The text also contains translations of hundreds of comic fragments; and it reassesses the division of comedy into Sicilian and Attic Old, Middle, and New.




The Never-ending Feast


Book Description

Feast! Throughout human history, and in all parts of the world, feasts have been at the heart of life. The great museums of the world are full of the remains of countless ghostly feasts – dishes that once bore rich meats, pitchers used to pour choice wines, tall jars that held beer sipped through long straws of gold and lapis, immense cauldrons from which hundreds of people could be served. Why were feasts so important, and is there more to feasting than abundance and enjoyment? The Never-Ending Feast is a pioneering work that draws on anthropology, archaeology and history to look at the dynamics of feasting among the great societies of antiquity renowned for their magnificence and might. Reflecting new directions in academic study, the focus shifts beyond the medieval and early modern periods in Western Europe, eastwards to Mesopotamia, Assyria and Achaemenid Persia, early Greece, the Mongol Empire, Shang China and Heian Japan. The past speaks through texts and artefacts. We see how feasts were the primary arena for displays of hierarchy, status and power; a stage upon which loyalties and alliances were negotiated; the occasion for the mobilization and distribution of resources, a means of pleasing the gods, and the place where identities were created, consolidated – and destroyed. The Never-Ending Feast transforms our understanding of feasting past and present, revitalising the fields of anthropology, archaeology, history, museum studies, material culture and food studies, for all of which it is essential reading.







Revisioning John Chrysostom


Book Description

In Revisioning John Chrysostom, Chris de Wet and Wendy Mayer harness and promote a new wave of scholarship on the life and works of this famous late-antique (c. 350-407 CE) preacher. New theories from the cognitive and neurosciences, cultural and sleep studies, and history of the emotions, among others, meld with reconsideration of lapsed approaches – his debt to Graeco-Roman paideia, philosophy, and now medicine – resulting in sometimes surprising and challenging conclusions. Together the chapters produce a fresh vision of John Chrysostom that moves beyond the often negative views of the 20th century and open up substantially new vistas for exploration.




Brill's Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great


Book Description

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great offers a considerable range of topics, of interest to students and academics alike, in the long tradition of this subject’s significant impact, across a sometimes surprising and comprehensive variety of areas. Arguably no other historical figure has cast such a long shadow for so long a time. Every civilisation touched by the Macedonian Conqueror, along with many more that he never imagined, has scrambled to “own” some part of his legacy. This volume canvasses a comprehensive array of these receptions, beginning from Alexander’s own era and journeying up to the present, in order to come to grips with the impact left by this influential but elusive figure.




Lamb


Book Description

So long as humans have been raising animals, they have been eating lamb. In this engaging history, Brian Yarvin tells the story of how we’ve raised, cooked, and eaten lamb over the centuries and the place it’s established in a wide range of cuisines and cultures worldwide. Starting with the earliest days of lamb and sheep farming in the ancient Middle East, Yarvin traces the spread of lamb to cooks in ancient Rome and Greece. He details the earliest recorded meals involving lamb in the Zagros Mountains of Iraq and Iran, explores its role in Renaissance banquets in Italy, and follows its path to China, India, and even Navajo tribes in America. Taking his story up to the present, Yarvin considers the growing locavore movement, one that has found in lamb a manageable, sustainable source of healthy—and tasty—protein. Richly illustrated and peppered with recipes, Lamb will be the perfect accompaniment to your next grilled chop or braised shank.




The Wisdom of Sirach


Book Description

Study the wisdom of Ben Sira. A deuterocanonical collection of proverbs from the intertestamental period, the Book of Sirach has been treated by many Protestants as a bit of Catholic trivia. Yet careful study of Sirach reveals fascinating insights into Jewish thought two centuries before Jesus. Walter T. Wilson invites scholars and nonspecialists alike to discover the wisdom of this important yet under-studied text. A temple scribe writing in the second century BCE, Ben Sira aimed to instill fear of the Lord and discipline in his community. Interweaving practical advice and theoretical wisdom, his book instructs readers—then and now—in the principles of wisdom so that they may apply them to right action and lead the good life. Based on the New Revised Standard Version, Wilson’s commentary explicates the translated English text with careful attention to its historical and religious contexts, formal qualities, prevailing themes, and place in the canon (or lack thereof). The volume includes a helpful bibliography and notes.




Food and Drink in Antiquity: A Sourcebook


Book Description

Amid growing interest in food and drink as an academic discipline in recent years, this volume is the first to provide insight into eating and drinking by focusing on what the ancients themselves actually had to say about this important topic. A thorough and varied sourcebook, it is structured thematically and is a unique asset to any course on food and foodways. The chronological scope of the material extends from Greece of the 8th century BCE to the Late Roman Empire of the 4th century CE. Each chapter consists of an introduction along with a concluding bibliography of suggested readings. The excerpts themselves, rendered in clear and readable English that remains faithful to the original Latin or Greek, are set in their proper social and historical context, with the author of each passage fully identified. An unparalleled compilation of essential source material for Classics courses and with a wide range of evidence, drawing upon literary, inscriptional, legal and religious testimony, Food and Drink in Antiquity will also be particularly well suited to the interdisciplinary focus of modern food studies.




Visions and Faces of the Tragic


Book Description

This study presses beyond the pervasive early Christian aversion to pagan theatrical art in all its forms and investigates the growing critical engagement with the genre of tragedy by Christian authors, especially in the post-Constantinian era.




Bodily Fluids in Antiquity


Book Description

From ancient Egypt to Imperial Rome, from Greek medicine to early Christianity, this volume examines how human bodily fluids influenced ideas about gender, sexuality, politics, emotions, and morality, and how those ideas shaped later European thought. Comprising 24 chapters across seven key themes—language, gender, eroticism, nutrition, dissolution, death, and afterlife—this volume investigates bodily fluids in the context of the current sensory turn. It asks fundamental questions about physicality and fluidity: how were bodily fluids categorised and differentiated? How were fluids trapped inside the body perceived, and how did this perception alter when those fluids were externalised? Do ancient approaches complement or challenge our modern sensibilities about bodily fluids? How were religious practices influenced by attitudes towards bodily fluids, and how did religious authorities attempt to regulate or restrict their appearance? Why were some fluids taboo, and others cherished? In what ways were bodily fluids gendered? Offering a range of scholarly approaches and voices, this volume explores how ideas about the body and the fluids it contained and externalised are culturally conditioned and ideologically determined. The analysis encompasses the key geographic centres of the ancient Mediterranean basin, including Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and Egypt. By taking a longue durée perspective across a richly intertwined set of territories, this collection is the first to provide a comprehensive, wide-ranging study of bodily fluids in the ancient world. Bodily Fluids in Antiquity will be of particular interest to academic readers working in the fields of classics and its reception, archaeology, anthropology, and ancient to Early Modern history. It will also appeal to more general readers with an interest in the history of the body and history of medicine. Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.