Fear And Loathing In Ancient Athens

Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war was the arena for a dramatic battle between politics and religion in the hearts and minds of the people. Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens, originally published in German but now available for the first time in an expanded and revised English edition, sheds new light on this dramatic period of history and offers a new approach to the study of Greek religion. The book explores an extraordinary range of events and topics, and will be an indispensable study for students and scholars studying Athenian religion and politics.

"Athens' Darling" tells the story of a brilliant and handsome Athenian general who falls in love with a beautiful slave girl, Timandra... They meet at times but she is owned by Alcibiades' bitter enemy, Hiero, who revels in the knowledge that Alcibiades by Athenian law, cannot take Timandra from him. It is also the story of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, in which Alcibiades rises to power and to lead the Athenian army. She is still the slave of Hiero who, with his followers are plotting to kill Alcibiades. Timandra discovers this, escapes and flees to the man she loves to warn him. Some events in Alcibiades' life in this book are based on historical fact--his appeal to women, his marriage to his first wife, the decision of the Athenians to send him to conquer Sicily, and the rise of a faction which sought to kill him. Also factual is his switching his allegiance to Sparta after this, his affair with the Spartan queen Timaea, and his return to power in Athens. Some of the characters are also actual people that lived in the 5th Century B.C., including the general Nicias and Socrates, Alcibiades' friend and mentor. Also factual are the plague that struck Athens, the accepted use of brothels, the use and abuse of slaves, and the Olympic games. What is fictional is the life of Timandra. All that is recorded about her is that she was a slave girl who was with Alcibiades when he died and arranged his funeral.

A study of the approbation of religious actions and artefacts and an investigation of the various authorities in religious activities in classical and Hellenistic Athens. New esthetic and social aspects and a new view of polis control of religion emerge.

Ancient Athenians resemble modern Americans in their moral discomfort with empire. Athenians had power and used it ruthlessly, but the infliction of suffering did not mesh well with their civic-self-image. Embracing the concepts of democracy and freedom, they proudly pitted themselves against tyranny and oppression, but in practice they were capable of being tyrannical. Pity and Power in Ancient Athens argues that the exercise of power in democratic Athens, especially during its brief fifth-century empire, raised troubling questions about the alleviation and infliction of suffering, and pity emerged as a topic in Atheninan culture at this time.

A major new history of the violent, protracted conflict between ancient Athens and Sparta.

Re-examines Aristophanes' engagement with Greek religion by studying his dramatization of traditional stories of religious experiences.

Religion was integral to the conduct of war in the ancient world and the Greeks were certainly no exception. No campaign was undertaken, no battle risked, without first making sacrifice to propitiate the appropriate gods (such as Ares, god of War) or consulting oracles and omens to divine their plans. Yet the link between war and religion is an area that has been regularly overlooked by modern scholars examining the conflicts of these times. This volume addresses that omission by drawing together the work of experts from across the globe. The chapters have been carefully structured by the editors so that this wide array of scholarship combines to give a coherent, comprehensive study of the role of religion in the wars of the Archaic and Classical Greek world. Aspects considered in depth will include: Greek writers on religion and war; declarations of war; fate and predestination, the sphagia and pre-battle sacrifices; omens, oracles and portents, trophies and dedications to cult centers; militarized deities; sacred truces and festivals; oaths and vows; religion & Greek military medicine.

Whether in the courts, Parliament or the pub, to persuade you need proof, be that argument- or evidence-based. But what counts as proof, and as satisfactory proof, varies from culture to culture and from context to context. This volume assembles a range of experts in ancient Greek literature to address the theme of proof from different angles and in the works of different authors and contexts. Much of the focus is on the Athenian orators, who discussed the nature and kinds of proof from at least the fourth century BC and are still the subject of lively debate. But demonstration through evidence and argument and the language of proof are not limited to the lawcourts. They have a place in other literary forms, prose and verse, including drama and historiography, and these too feature in the collection. The book will be of interest to students and professional scholars in the fields of Greek literature and law, and Greek social and political history.