Autopsy In Athens

This is an exciting time to study in Athens. The “rescue” excavations of recent years, conducted during construction of the Metro system and in preparation for the 2004 Olympics Games, combined with major restoration projects and a new enthusiasm for fresh examination of old material, using new techniques and applications, brings new perspectives and answers on many aspects of the ancient city of Athens and life, politics and religion in Attica. The 15 papers presented here contribute new findings that result from intensive, firsthand examinations of the archaeological and epigraphical evidence. They illustrate how much may be gained by reexamining material from older excavations, and from the methodological shift from documenting information to closer analysis and larger historical reflection. They offer a variety of perspectives on a range of issues: the ambiance of the ancient city for passersby, filled with roadside shrines; techniques of architectural construction and sculpting; religious expression in Athens including cults of Asklepios and Serapis; the precise procedures for Greek sacrifice; how the borders of Attica were defined over time, and details of its road-system. In presenting this volume the contributors are continuing in a long tradition of autopsy – in the sense of 'personal observation' – in Athens, that began even in the Hellenistic period and has continued through the writings of centuries of travelers and academics to the present day.

This book collects essays and other contributions by colleagues, students, and friends of the late Diskin Clay, reflecting the unusually broad range of his interests. Clay’s work in ancient philosophy, and particularly in Epicurus and Epicureanism and in Plato, is reflected chapters on Epicurean concerns by André Laks, David Sedley and Martin Ferguson Smith, as well as Jed Atkins on Lucretius and Leo Strauss; Michael Erler contributes a chapter on Plato. James Lesher discusses Xenophanes and Sophocles, and Aryeh Kosman contributes a jeu d’esprit on the obscure Pythagorean Ameinias. Greek cultural history finds multidisciplinary treatment in Rebecca Sinos’s study of Archilochus’ Heros and the Parian Relief, Frank Romer’s mythographic essay on Aphrodite’s origins and archaic mythopoieia more generally, and Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou’s explication of Callimachus’s kenning of Mt. Athos as "ox-piercing spit of your mother Arsinoe." More purely literary interests are pursued in chapters on ancient Greek (Joseph Russo on Homer, Dirk Obbink on Sappho), Latin (Jenny Strauss Clay and Gregson Davis on Horace), and post-classical poetry (Helen Hadzichronoglou on Cavafy, John Miller on Robert Pinsky and Ovid). Peter Burian contributes an essay on the possibility and impossibility of translating Aeschylus. In addition to these essays, two original poems (Rosanna Warren and Jeffrey Carson) and two pairs of translations (from Horace by Davis and from Foscolo by Burian) recognize Clay’s own activity as poet and translator. The volume begins with an Introduction discussing Clay’s life and work, and concludes with a bibliography of Clay’s publications.

"This multiauthor volume brings together thirteen chapters examining various aspects of structure and construction in the monuments of ancient Greece and Rome. Taken together they represent the international state of Bauforschung, the scientific, analytical, and often archaeological study of historic buildings. The chapters cover a variety of topics, such as construction processes, design principles, building traditions, and historical contexts. This range showcases the different technical and historical methodologies that are brought to bear on the Classical architecture of the ancient Mediterranean. At the same time, there is considerable overlap, which demonstrates that different approaches are bound together by the common aim to reconstruct historic built environments, the empirical nature of the undertaking, and the combination of visual and verbal argumentation. Bauforschung, Architectural history, Greece, Rome, Classical architecture, Historic buildings"--

A Companion to Greek Architecture provides an expansive overview of the topic, including design, engineering, and construction as well as theory, reception, and lasting impact. Covers both sacred and secular structures and complexes, with particular attention to architectural decoration, such as sculpture, interior design, floor mosaics, and wall painting Makes use of new research from computer-driven technologies, the study of inscriptions and archaeological evidence, and recently excavated buildings Brings together original scholarship from an esteemed group of archaeologists and art historians Presents the most up-to-date English language coverage of Greek architecture in several decades while also sketching out important areas and structures in need of further research

Ascending and Descending the Acropolis - Mobility in Athenian Religion provides new perspectives on religious mobilities within the geographically limited region of Attica in Greece from the Late Bronze Age to the second century AD. Attica is a particularly fruitful region to study these forms of mobility, as it provides rich evidence across a range of material and textual sources for a variety of different mobile situations - both inside the city of Athens itself (such as on and circumnavigating the Acropolis) and to sanctuaries in its hinterland (for example, those of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis and that of Artemis at Brauron), as well to as more distant sanctuaries, such as Delphi.

A definitive new history of the origins, evolution, and scope of the ancient Greek city-state The Greek polis, or city-state, was a resilient and adaptable political institution founded on the principles of citizenship, freedom, and equality. Emerging around 650 BCE and enduring to 350 CE, it offered a means for collaboration among fellow city-states and social bargaining between a community and its elites—but at what cost? Polis proposes a panoramic account of the ancient Greek city-state, its diverse forms, and enduring characteristics over the span of a millennium. In this landmark book, John Ma provides a new history of the polis, charting its spread and development into a common denominator for hundreds of communities from the Black Sea to North Africa and from the Near East to Italy. He explores its remarkable achievements as a political form offering community, autonomy, prosperity, public goods, and spaces of social justice for its members. He also reminds us that behind the successes of civic ideology and institutions lie entanglements with domination, empire, and enslavement. Ma’s sweeping and multifaceted narrative draws widely on a rich store of historical evidence while weighing in on lively scholarly debates and offering new readings of Aristotle as the great theoretician of the polis. A monumental work of scholarship, Polis transforms our understanding of antiquity while challenging us to grapple with the moral legacy of an idea whose very success centered on the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others.

"An examination of the combined subjects of ancient Greek art and religion, dealing with festivals, performance, rites of passage, and the archaeology of death, to name a few examples, to explore the visual, material, and textual dimensions of ancient Greek religion"--

This book offers a reassessment of the late Classical and early Hellenistic Athenian ephebeia, a state-organized and -funded system of mandatory national service for citizens in their nineteenth and twentieth years, consisting of garrison duty, military training, and civic education.