Classical era, Mediterranean
07 Oct 2024 10:59
I couldn't have been more than nine or ten when I started reading books about Greek mythology. At about the same age I first read Mary Renault's The Lion in the Gateway; the agonies that followed on the realization that one set of my ancestors were the Bactrians in Xerxes's army may easily be imagined. Add to this a mother educated at a pukka lyceo classico and high-school and college Latin (begun because, as the principal told me at the time, "It was thought you would do better in a language you didn't have to speak") and you have the makings of a life-long interest in dead Mediterranean languages with lots of declensions and their speakers.
- See also:
- Alexander the Great
- Ancient metallurgy
- Ancient trade
- Democracy
- Empires and Imperialism
- Epicureanism
- the Etruscans
- Import of Eastern religions to Europe
- Ionia
- the Late Bronze Age Collapse
- Lucretius
- Myths
- Phoenicians
- Plato
- Karl Popper
- Proto-industrialism
- Reception and Appropriations of Classical Culture
- Republics
- Rome
- Recommended, big-picture:
- Walter Burkert, Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age [How the Greeks became civilized]
- M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy
- G. S. Kirk, The Nature of the Greek Myths
- Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion
- Plato gets his own notebook
- Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, Part I
- Tacitus
- The Histories
- The Annals
- Recommended, close-ups:
- Bryn Mawr Classical Review
- Peter Green (ed.), Hellenistic History and Culture
- G. E. R. Lloyd
- Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind
- Demystifying Mentalities
- Josiah Ober
- "Learning from Athens: Success by design", Boston Review 31:2 (March-April 2006)
- Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens [Review: Liberty was Born from Endless Meetings]
- Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought
- W. G. Runciman, "The Diffusion of Christianity in the Third Century AD as a Case-Study in the Theory of Cultural Selection", European Journal of Sociology 45 (2004): 3--21 [For more on Runciman's theory of cultural selection, see here.]
- W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India [Eurocentric, and in places (e.g., the Macedonian princesses) more imaginative than a historian really ought to be. But extremely thorough and apparently unsurpassed.]
- David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World
- To read (primary):
- Augustine
- De civitate Dei
- Confessioness
- Ausonius
- Avianus, Fabulæ
- Boethius
- Catullus
- Herodotus
- Ovid
- Ars
- Fasti
- Posidonius
- Procopious, The Secret History
- Propertius
- Tacitus, Germania
- To read (secondary):
- Ory Amitay, From Alexander to Jesus
- Graham Anderson, The Fairy Tale in the Ancient World
- Arnaldo Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization
- Janet M. Atwill, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition [Rhetoric as techne]
- Ryan K. Balot, Courage in the Democratic Polis:: Ideology and Critique in Classical Athens
- Sandra Blakely, Myth, Ritual and Metallurgy in Ancient Greece and Recent Africa
- John Boardman, The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity
- Hugh Bowden, Mystery Cults of the Ancient World
- Alain Bresson, The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy: Institutions, Markets, and Growth in the City-States
- Tom Brughmans and Andrew Wilson (eds.), Simulating Roman Economies: Theories, Methods, and Computational Models
- Anthony Bulloch, Erich S. Gruen, A. A. Long, and Andrew Stewart (eds.), Images and Ideologies: Self-definition in the Hellenistic World
- Walter Burkert, Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture
- J. B. Bury, E. A. Barber, Edwyn Bevan, and W. W. Tarn, The Hellenistic Age
- Claude Calame
- The Craft of Poetic Speech in Ancient Greece
- Myth and History in Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony
- Lionel Casson
- Travel in the Ancient World
- Libraries in the Ancient World
- Francois Chamoux, Hellenistic Civilization
- Marshall Clagett, Greek Science in Antiquity
- Joan Breton Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece
- Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt
- de Coulanges, The Ancient City
- Aubrey De Selincourt, The World of Herodotus
- William Desmond, Cynics
- Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth in Ancient Greece
- O. A. W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps
- Eric R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine
- Donald Engels
- Classical Cats
- The Logistics of Macedonian Army
- Henry R. Fairclough, Love of Nature Among the Greeks and Romans
- Margalit Finkelberg, The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece
- M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World
- Michael Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece
- David Furley, The Greek Cosmologists, vol. I: The Formation of the Atomic Theory and Its Earliest Critics
- Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity
- Peter Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis
- Cathy Gere, Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism
- Mark Golden and Peter Toohey (eds.), Inventing Ancient Culture: Historicism, Periodization, and the Ancient World
- Jose Gonzalez, The Epic Rhapsode and His Craft: Homeric Performance in a Diachronic Perspective
- D. W. Graham, Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy
- Robert Graves, What Food the Centaurs Ate [Pre-classical 'shrooms.]
- Peter Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age
- Erich S. Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity
- Moses Hadas, Ancilla to Classical Reading
- Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems
- William V. Harris, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity
- Greta Hawes, Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth ["Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of Greek myth as a living, local tradition... "]
- Eric Havelock
- The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics
- Preface to Plato
- The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences
- Brooke Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece
- Frank L. Holt, Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions [reviewed in BMCR, 2004.06.34]
- Carl Huffman, Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician-King
- J. Donald Hughes, Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans: Ecology in the Ancient Mediterranean
- Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity [Reviewed in BMCR, 2004.06.49]
- George Kennedy, History of Rhetoric, Volume I: The Art of Persuasion in Greece
- George B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement
- Amelie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White, Hellenism in the East: Greek and Non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander
- Leslie Kurke, The Traffic in Praise: Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy [Review in BMCR]
- Robert Lamberton and John J. Keaney, Homer's Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic's Earliest Exegetes
- Jennifer Larson, Greek Heroine Cults
- Mary R. Lefkowitz, Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths
- Ling, Ancient Mosaics
- G. E. R. Lloyd
- The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science
- The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China
- The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece
- Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science
- Carolina López-Ruiz, When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East
- Nicole Loraux
- Giovanni Manetti, Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity
- Phillip Brook Manville, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens
- Dale B. Martin, Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians
- Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World
- Indra Kagis McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture
- Margaret Christina Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity
- Anna Missiou, Literacy and Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens
- Alfonso Moreno, Feeding the Democracy: The Athenian Grain Supply in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC
- Gilbert Murray, The Classical Tradition in Poetry
- F. S. Naiden, Ancient Suplication
- Reviel Netz, The Transformation of Mathematics in the Early Mediterranean World: From Problems to Equations
- Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
- Josiah Ober
- Athenian Legacies: Essays of the Politics of Going on Together
- Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory
- Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People
- Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity
- James I. Porter (eds.), Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome
- David M. Pritchard (ed.), War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens
- Raaflaub, Ober and Wallace, The Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece
- Diane J. Rayor, Sappho's Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece
- Bryan P. Reardon, The Form of Greek Romance
- Daniel T. Reff, Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New
- L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature
- Jennifer Tolbert Roberts
- Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture
- The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece
- Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture
- Eric Robinson, Democracy beyond Athens: Popular government in the Greek classical age
- Nicholas Rockwell, Thebes: A History
- James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction [Review in BMCR]
- Joseph Roisman, The Rhetoric of Conspiracy in Ancient Athens
- Michael Ivanovitch Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World
- Giovanni Roberto Ruffini, Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt
- W. G. Runciman, "Doomed to extinction: the polis as an evolutionary dead end", in Oswyn Murray and Simon Price (eds.), The Greek City: From Homer to Alexander, 1990
- Richard Seaford, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy
- David N. Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity
- Charles Segal, Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey
- Steven E. Sidebotham, Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route
- Steven Shankman
- Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking Through Comparisons
- The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China
- Susan Sherwin-White and Amelie Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire
- Jocelyn Penny Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive
Studies of Memory and and Literacy in Classical Antiquity [Review in
BMCR]
- Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome
- Michael Sommer, Palmyra: A History
- Deborah Tarn Steiner, The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece
- Peter T. Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts
- David W. Tandy, Warriors into Traders: The Power of Markets in Early Greece
- William G. Thalmann, The Swineherd and the Bow: Representations of Class in the Odyssey
- Rosalind Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion
- Frances B. Titchener and Richard F. Moorton, The Eye Expanded: Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity
- Giusto Traina, 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire
- Theresa Urbainczyk, Slave Revolts in Antiquity
- Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship
- Fikret Yegul, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity
- Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity