Making A Great Ruler

Investigating the propaganda surrounding the grand duke, this study reveals that, in fact, there were two opposite images: that of a good ruler and that of a tyrant. The paradox is that frequently these opposites were based on the same features of the grand duke's character or episodes from his biography. The research is based on a wide array of written and visual sources as well as on records of oral tradition. Rich and diverse primary materials are analysed from the perspectives of political and social history, memorial culture, as well as iconography and rhetoric.

How does a ruler become "the Great"? Is greatness a part of authority exercised or a part of an image created? These and other questions are addressed in this volume on the life and memory of Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania (r.1392-1430). The study raises a hypothesis that Vytautas was the main engineer of his image as the great ruler while his contemporaries and later generations developed this image and adapted it to their needs and understandings. Investigating the propaganda surrounding the grand duke, this study reveals that, in fact, there were two opposite images: that of a good ruler and that of a tyrant. The paradox is that frequently these opposites were based on the same features of the grand duke's character or episodes from his biography. The research is based on a wide array of written and visual sources as well as on records of oral tradition. Rich and diverse primary materials are analysed from the perspectives of political and social history, memorial culture, as well as iconography and rhetoric.

Homer and the Good Ruler in Antiquity and Beyond focuses on the important question of how and why later authors employ Homeric poetry to reflect on various types and aspects of leadership. In a range of essays discussing generically diverse receptions of the epics of Homer in historically diverse contexts, this question is answered in various ways. Rather than considering Homer’s works as literary products, then, this volume discusses the pedagogic dimension of the Iliad and the Odyssey as perceived by later thinkers and writers interested in the parameters of good rule, such as Plato, Philodemus, Polybius, Vergil, and Eustathios.

Primary Sources for Ancient History: Volume I: The Ancient Near East and Greece By: Gary Forsythe Despite being condensed into neat identities of the Near East and Greece, these two titles cover a wide-ranging period of time, peoples, lands, and philosophies. Indeed, at first glance these peoples might have nothing in common except for their profound impact on our own world. In these comprehensive readings, however, we understand how all people struggled to define their relationship with their rulers, their gods, and their neighbors. Primary Sources for Ancient History, Volume I: The Ancient Near East and Greece is a comprehensive selection of ancient writings to supplement a narrative history. Beginning with the Old Babylonian Kingdom of nearly four millennia ago and moving chronologically and geographically to the Egyptian Pharaohs, the dispossessed Jewish nations, the fractured city-kingdoms of Ancient Greece, to end with Alexander’s domination of the known world, this book is comprehensive in scope. Every major period and people has at least one reading. From the Law Code of Hammurabi engraved on a stone pillar to scraps of Greek poetry, from Babylonia epics to tallies of food at religious festivals, these readings allow the personalities and actions of tyrants, philosophers, poets, and gods to take center stage. The same events and leaders can be seen through different peoples and viewpoints, giving a rich perspective. The Ancient Near East and Greece is a valuable resource for understanding the forces - religious, political, and cultural - that have developed the modern world.

In Making Sense of History: Narrativity and Literariness in the Ottoman Chronicle of Naʿīmā, Gül Şen offers the first comprehensive analysis of narrativity in the most prominent official Ottoman court chronicle

This anthology brought together the most important historical, legal, mythological, liturgical, and secular texts of the ancient Near East, with the purpose of providing a rich contextual base for understanding the people, cultures, and literature of the Old Testament. A scholar of religious thought and biblical archaeology, James Pritchard recruited the foremost linguists, historians, and archaeologists to select and translate the texts. The goal, in his words, was "a better understanding of the likenesses and differences which existed between Israel and the surrounding cultures." Before the publication of these volumes, students of the Old Testament found themselves having to search out scattered books and journals in various languages. This anthology brought these invaluable documents together, in one place and in one language, thereby expanding the meaning and significance of the Bible for generations of students and readers. As one reviewer put it, "This great volume is one of the most notable to have appeared in the field of Old Testament scholarship this century." Princeton published a follow-up companion volume, The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament (1954), and later a one-volume abridgment of the two, The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (1958). The continued popularity of this work in its various forms demonstrates that anthologies have a very important role to play in education--and in the mission of a university press.