From Ancient To Modern

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, New York, February 12-June 7, 2015.

"Originally published 1977 by Basil Blackwell Oxford in Great Britain and by Wesleyan University Press in the United States."

History comes alive in this engaging and lavishly illustrated chronicle, which spans world events and people from ancient times to the 21st century. The voices of the great and humble speak to us through songs, documents, edicts, poetry, letters, menus, and even graffiti, revealing each era's conflicts, daily life, arts, science, religion, and enduring influence. Interactive design focuses on the tangible artifacts of history, and magnificent illustrations--including period art, archival photographs, and expertly rendered scenes of long-ago events--bring vivid immediacy and eye appeal to every colorful spread. With its unique emphasis on voices from the past, its competitive price point, and its inviting, innovative design, Eyewitness to History is poised to be THE pick for value-minded customers looking for an absorbing take on world history.

“A wonderfully whimsical yet instructional view of Greco-Roman history.” —Kirkus Reviews In this thoroughly engaging book, Natalie Haynes brings her scholarship and wit to the most fascinating true stories of the ancient world. The Ancient Guide to Modern Life not only reveals the origins of our culture in areas including philosophy, politics, language, and art, it also draws illuminating connections between antiquity and our present time, to demonstrate that the Greeks and Romans were not so different from ourselves: Is Bart Simpson the successor to Aristophanes? Do the Beckhams have parallel lives with The Satiricon’s Trimalchio? Along the way Haynes debunks myths (gladiators didn’t salute the emperor before their deaths, and the last words of Julius Caesar weren’t “et tu, brute?”). From Athens to Zeno's paradox, this irresistible guide shows how the history and wisdom of the ancient world can inform and enrich our lives today. “A romp through some of the best-known, and some of the more obscure, writers, thought, and stories of Greece and Rome.” —Times Literary Supplement

Linked by the events of Bernard Knox's remarkable life, the twenty-five chapters of "Essays Ancient and Modern" cover subjects ranging from Hesiod, Homer, and Thucydides to Auden, Forster, and the Spanish Civil War. With a masterful eye for the telling detail, Knox continually reminds us that we share the present with antiquity's living past. A soldier in Italy finds a battered book in the rubble of a bombed-out firehouse-- and opens it to read Virgil's denunciation of war. An illiterate Greek bard composes a garbled Homeric song to celebrate the recent heroism of local partisans. A traveler heading north from modern Athens must choose between the Sacred Way-- or the NATO Road.

A historical exploration of events and daily life in Istanbul in both ancient and modern times.

An up-to-date accessible history of the phenomenal rise and fall of the greatest city of antiquity, describing its rise to pre-eminence and rapid demise as the greatest of all Greek tragedies. The first history of the city to continue the story through 1500 years of obscurity to its romantic revival under Byron's influence and up to the present day, is eminently qualified to write this book. A classicist by training, he has translated many of the key texts for Penguin Classics and OUP, is intimate with the latest scholarship and travels to Greece every year.

The West suffers from intense work pressure, longer and less well paid hours. This text is a sociological analysis of the relationship between overwork and unemployment. The only possible response, the author claims, is a renewal of the working class struggle.

The cultural battle known as the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns served as a sly cover for more deeply opposed views about the value of literature and the arts. One of the most public controversies of early modern Europe, the Quarrel has most often been depicted as pitting antiquarian conservatives against the insurgent critics of established authority. The Shock of the Ancient turns the canonical vision of those events on its head by demonstrating how the defenders of Greek literature—rather than clinging to an outmoded tradition—celebrated the radically different practices of the ancient world. At a time when the constraints of decorum and the politics of French absolutism quashed the expression of cultural differences, the ancient world presented a disturbing face of otherness. Larry F. Norman explores how the authoritative status of ancient Greek texts allowed them to justify literary depictions of the scandalous. The Shock of the Ancient surveys the diverse array of aesthetic models presented in these ancient works and considers how they both helped to undermine the rigid codes of neoclassicism and paved the way for the innovative philosophies of the Enlightenment. Broadly appealing to students of European literature, art history, and philosophy, this book is an important contribution to early modern literary and cultural debates.

How might we think and talk about indigenous philosophy? Why has Aboriginal knowledge not been given the status of philosophical knowledge? There's a quarrel about whose antiquity is at the foundation of Australian culture, and why contemporary forms of Aboriginality are marginal to Australia's modernity.