Showing titles in Ancient

Why didn't the ancient Greeks or Romans wear pants? How did they shave? How likely were they to drink fine wine, use birth control, or survive surgery? In a series of short and humorous essays, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants explores some of the questions about the Greeks and Romans that ancient historian Garrett Ryan has answered in the classroom and online. Unlike most books on the classical world, the focus is not on famous figures or events, but on the fascinating details of daily life.

The definitive life story of the Roman Emperor who shaped modern times. In this groundbreaking new biography of Justinian, Peter Sarris gives us an intimate insight into both the Emperor and the man. We meet a man who from the humblest beginnings, rose to become ruler of much of the known world...

From Genesis to Job, the Hebrew scriptures contain some of the most influential stories in Western civilization. But what do these stories tell us about daily life in ancient Israel? And why do they still speak to us today? In 24 captivating lectures, Professor Chapman introduces you to the stories of the Judeans in exile and grounds them in their historical context, giving you a grand vision of history as presented in the scriptures.

57 BC. The fearsome Belgae have gathered a great army to oppose Rome, and Fronto and the legions assemble once more to take Caesar's war against the most dangerous tribes in the northern world. While the legions battle the Celts in the fiercest war of Caesar's career, the plots and conspiracies...

Waiting to be rediscovered in the British Library is an ancient manuscript of the early Church, copied by an anonymous monk. The manuscript is at least 1,450 years old, possibly dating to the first century, Jesus' lifetime. And now, The Lost Gospel provides the first-ever translation from Syriac into English of this unique document that tells the inside story of Jesus' social, family, and political life. The Lost Gospel takes listeners on an unparalleled historical adventure through a paradigm-shifting manuscript.

Sparta traces the story of Ancient Greece's most iconic city-state, from its humble beginnings as a hamlet in the Peloponnese to its meteoric rise as the foremost military superpower of the Classical world. Andrew Bayliss uncovers the eclectic quirks that set Sparta above its rivals: its famous double monarchy, the harsh methods for raising children as soldiers and the unique role of women in Spartan life. Sparta was the world's first superpower and its legacy is still shaping popular culture and politics today. This is the story of its rise and fall.

Dio Cassius was a Roman statesman and historian of Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of history on ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the subsequent founding of Rome (753 BC), the formation of the republic (509 BC), and the creation of the empire (31 BC). The history continues until AD 229.

It's time for us to re-examine the past. Our lives are infinitely richer if we take the time to look at what the Greeks and Romans have given us in politics and law, religion and philosophy and education, and to learn how people really lived in Athens, Rome, Sparta and Alexandria. This is a book with a serious point to make but the author isn't simply a classicist but a comedian and broadcaster who has made television and radio documentaries about humour, education and Dorothy Parker. This is a book for us all.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Justin Avoth and Laurence Dobiesz. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Christopher Rowe read by Justin Avoth. 'Consider just this, and give your minds to this alone: whether or not what I say is just' Plato's...

Integrated approaches to teaching Greek and Roman history are a rarity in academia. Most scholars are historians of either Greek or Roman history and perform research solely in that specific field, an approach that author and award-winning Professor Robert Garland considers questionable.In these 36 passionate lectures, he provides and impressive and rare opportunity to understand the two dominant cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world in relation to one another-a relationship that has virtually no parallel in world history.

Savage and bloodthirsty, or civilized and peaceable? The Celts have long been a subject of enormous fascination, speculation, and misunderstanding. From the ancient Romans to the present day, their real nature has been obscured by a tangled web of preconceived ideas and stereotypes.

From best-selling social commentator and cultural historian Barbara Ehrenreich comes this fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture, showing that such mass festivities have been indigenous to the West since the ancient Greeks.

Byzantium is too-often considered merely the "eastern rump" of the old Roman Empire, a curious and even unsettling mix of the classical and medieval. Yet it was, according to Professor Harl, "without a doubt the greatest state in Christendom through much of the Middle Ages," and well worth our attention as a way to widen our perspective on everything from the decline of imperial Rome to the rise of the Renaissance.

Deep in the swampy heart of ancient Mexico, the Olmecs built a grand and influential civilization between 1800 and 400 BCE. The archaeological remains raise more questions than answers about the origins and legacy of this captivating Mesoamerican culture. How did the Olmecs carve and carry their famous colossal heads? Why did they live in flood-prone wetlands when better agricultural land was available? What are the secrets of their written language, and how can we unlock them?

In Ancient Rome all the best stories have one thing in common: murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city, Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theatre, Claudius was poisoned at dinner and Galba was beheaded in the forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered. But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? Emma Southon examines real-life homicides from Roman history to explore how perpetrator, victim and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people.

The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the "neglected half-millennium" now known as late antiquity was crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age.

Spend a year in the company of the ancient Egyptians, during the twenty-sixth and final year of the reign of Amenhotep II (c.1400 BC), which saw a royal transition bringing Thutmose IV to the throne of Upper and Lower Egypt. Following the Egyptian calendar year, which was divided into three seasons (inundation, sowing and harvest), we will meet a farmer and his family, an embalmer, an artisan, a royal physician, a priest and even a royal wife as they live their lives in Thebes and Memphis during the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom in this year in ancient Egyptian history.

Step back to Christianity's first three centuries to see how it transitioned from the religion of Jesus to a religion about Jesus. How did a single group from among many win the struggle for dominance to establish the beliefs central to the faith, rewrite the history of Christianity's internal conflicts, and produce a canon of sacred texts – the New Testament – that supported its own views?

A four-thousand-year history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions. “A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched labor of cultural provocation.” ―Los Angeles Times Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who...

In Our Time is one of BBC Radio's most successful and best-loved programmes, with a weekly listenership of over two million. Since 1998, it has 'transformed the landscape for serious ideas at peak listening time' (The Times), introducing its audience to an astonishing array of intriguing topics, from the epic of Gilgamesh to the gin craze. This special thematic collection focusses on some of the most important rulers, philosophers and writers of ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt.