Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius PDF Download

Author: Christopher Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199600759
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Addressing central problems in the development of Roman imperialism in the 3rd and 2nd century BC, topics in this volume include the author Polybius, the characteristics of Roman power and imperial ambition, and the mechanisms used by Rome in creating and sustaining an empire in the East.

Author: Christopher Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191612464
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The essays in this volume address central problems in the development of Roman imperialism in the third and second century BC. Published in honour of the distinguished Oxford academic Peter Derow, they follow some of his main interests: the author Polybius, the characteristics of Roman power and imperial ambition, and the mechanisms used by Rome in creating and sustaining an empire in the east. Written by a distinguished group of international historians, all of whom were taught by Derow, the volume constitutes a new and distinctive contribution to the history of this centrally important period, as well as a major advance in the study of Polybius as a writer. In addition, the volume looks at the way Rome absorbed religions from the east, and at Hellenistic artistic culture. It also sheds new light on the important region of Illyria on the Adriatic Coast, which played a key part in Rome's rise to power. Archaeological, epigraphic, and textual evidence are brought together to create a sustained argument for Rome's determined and systematic pursuit of power.

Author: Craige Champion
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520929890
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Polybius was a Greek statesman and political prisoner of Rome in the second century b.c.e. His Histories provide the earliest continuous narrative of the rise of the Roman Empire. In this original study informed by recent work in cultural studies and on ethnicity, Craige Champion demonstrates that Polybius's work performs a literary and political balancing act of heretofore unappreciated subtlety and interest. Champion shows how Polybius contrived to tailor his historiography for multiple audiences, comprising his fellow Greeks, whose freedom Rome had usurped in his own generation, and the Roman conquerors. Champion focuses primarily on the ideological presuppositions and predispositions of Polybius's different audiences in order to interpret the apparent contradictions and incongruities in his text. In this way he develops a "politics of cultural indeterminacy" in which Polybius's collective representations of political and ethnic groups have different meanings for different audiences in different contexts. Situating these representations in the ideological, political, and historical contexts from which they arose, his book affords new and penetrating insights into a work whose subtlety and complexity have gone largely unrecognized.

Author: Donald Walter Baronowski
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472519876
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Polybius and Roman Imperialism explores in depth the complexity of the Greek historian Polybius' views on the expansion of Roman power. Although he considered imperialism intrinsically noble, and both admired and supported Roman domination, Polybius also evinced detachment from the ruling power. This detachment came in different forms: personal, cultural, patriotic and cultural. In general, he believed that the Romans cited morally acceptable pretexts for declaring war, observed justice in other aspects of foreign policy, and practised beneficence and moderation in their dealings with subject nations. Even with less than half of the original text surviving, the author reveals Polybius' personality and political philosophy.

Author: Craige B. Champion
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631231196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This broad-ranging reader on Roman imperialism brings together ancient documents in translation and a selection of the best recent scholarly essays, in order to introduce students to the major problems and controversies in studying this central aspect of Roman history. A broad-ranging reader on Roman imperialism, combining ancient documents in translation and a selection of the best recent scholarship on the subject. Introduces students to the major problems and controversies in the study of Roman imperialism. Examines diverse aspects of Roman imperialism, from the Romans’ motivations in acquiring an empire and their ideological justifications for imperial domination, to the complex political, economic, and cultural interactions between the Romans, their allies, and the subjected peoples. An introduction surveys modern work on Roman imperialism and provides the context of recent theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of empires in general. Includes notes with suggestions for further reading.

Author: Polybius
Publisher: Gateway Books
ISBN: 9780895269027
Category : History, Ancient
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
Written during his 16-year exile to Rome, Polybius' On Roman Imperialism attempts to explain why most of the inhabited world came under the domination of Rome within 53 years.

Author: Andromache Karanika
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135124339X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
This volume examines emotional trauma in the ancient world, focusing on literary texts from different genres (epic, theatre, lyric poetry, philosophy, historiography) and archaeological evidence. The material covered spans geographically from Greece and Rome to Judaea, with a chronological range from about 8th c. bce to 1st c. ce. The collection is organized according to broad themes to showcase the wide range of possibilities that trauma theory offers as a theoretical framework for a new analysis of ancient sources. It also demonstrates the various ways in which ancient texts illuminate contemporary problems and debates in trauma studies.

Author: Filippo Marsili
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438472013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Offers a new perspective on the relationship between religion and the creation of the first Chinese empires. Heaven Is Empty offers a new comparative perspective on the role of the sacred in the formation of China’s early empires (221 BCE–9 CE) and shows how the unification of the Central States was possible without a unitary and universalistic conception of religion. The cohesive function of the ancient Mediterranean cult of the divinized ruler was crucial for the legitimization of Rome’s empire across geographical and social boundaries. Eventually reelaborated in Christian terms, it came to embody the timelessness and universality of Western conceptions of legitimate authority, while representing an analytical template for studying other ancient empires. Filippo Marsili challenges such approaches in his examination of the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han (141–87 BCE). Wu purposely drew from regional traditions and tried to gain the support of local communities through his patronage of local cults. He was interested in rituals that envisioned the monarch as a military leader, who directly controlled the land and its resources, as a means for legitimizing radical administrative and economic centralization. In reconstructing this imperial model, Marsilire interprets fragmentary official accounts in light of material evidence and noncanonical and recently excavated texts. In bringing to life the courts, battlefields, markets, shrines, and pleasure quarters of early imperial China, Heaven Is Empty provides a postmodern and postcolonial reassessment of “religion” before the arrival of Buddhism and challenges the application of Greco-Roman and Abrahamic systemic, identitary, and exclusionary notions of the “sacred” to the analysis of pre-Christian and non-Western realities. “Heaven Is Empty is a tour de force. It reveals Marsili’s bold vision of early Chinese religion and his deft use of critical theory. The book will inspire scholars of early China for generations to come.” — Miranda Brown, author of The Politics of Mourning in Early China and The Art of Medicine in Early China: The Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive

Author: Mirko Canevaro
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191065358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In the Hellenistic period (c.323-31 BCE), Greek teachers, philosophers, historians, orators, and politicians found an essential point of reference in the democracy of Classical Athens and the political thought which it produced. However, while Athenian civic life and thought in the Classical period have been intensively studied, these aspects of the Hellenistic period have so far received much less attention. This volume seeks to bring together the two areas of research, shedding new light on these complementary parts of the history of the ancient Greek polis. The essays collected here encompass historical, philosophical, and literary approaches to the various Hellenistic responses to and adaptations of Classical Athenian politics. They survey the complex processes through which Athenian democratic ideals of equality, freedom, and civic virtue were emphasized, challenged, blunted, or reshaped in different Hellenistic contexts and genres. They also consider the reception, in the changed political circumstances, of Classical Athenian non- and anti-democratic political thought. This makes it possible to investigate how competing Classical Athenian ideas about the value or shortcomings of democracy and civic community continued to echo through new political debates in Hellenistic cities and schools. Looking ahead to the Roman Imperial period, the volume also explores to what extent those who idealized Classical Athens as a symbol of cultural and intellectual excellence drew on, or forgot, its legacy of democracy and vigorous political debate. By addressing these different questions it not only tracks changes in practices and conceptions of politics and the city in the Hellenistic world, but also examines developing approaches to culture, rhetoric, history, ethics, and philosophy, and especially their relationships with politics.

Author: Nikos Miltsios
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110584840
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Although scholars continue to address old questions about Polybius, it is clear that they are also turning their attention to aspects of his history that have been inadequately dealt with in the past or have even gone largely unnoticed. Polybius' history is increasingly treated not just as a source of valuable information on the impressive expansion of Roman rule in the Mediterranean world, but also as a complex and nuanced narrative with its own interests and purposes. Moreover, since (apart from Livy's use of Polybius, which has been thoroughly discussed) most studies of Polybius' reception focus on the modern world, especially in relation to the theory of mixed constitutions, finding out more about Polybius' impact on ancient Greek and Roman authors remains a major desideratum. This volume brings together contributions which, in either posing new questions or reformulating old ones, attest both to the ardent scholarly interest currently directed toward Polybius and to the variety of hermeneutical issues raised by his work. Subjects discussed include Polybius' historical ideas, his methods of composition, his views on the role of the historian, his representation of cultural difference, his intertextual affinities, and his reception and influence. Taken together, the papers in this collection attempt to promote a deeper understanding of the qualities and peculiarities of Polybius' history, as well as to offer fresh insights into the interpretation of this important work.