Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind

Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind PDF

Author: Edith Hall

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2014-06-16

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0393244121

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"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

Introducing the Ancient Greeks

Introducing the Ancient Greeks PDF

Author: Edith Hall

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2015-04-02

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1847922589

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Who were the ancient Greeks? They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. But what was it that enabled them to achieve so much? The ancient Greeks were a geographically disparate people whose civilization lasted over twenty centuries - and that made us who we are today. And here Edith Hall gives us a revelatory way of viewing this scattered people, identifying ten unique personality traits that she shows to be unique and central to the widespread ancient Greeks. Hall introduces a people who are inquisitive, articulate and open-minded but also rebellious, individualistic, competitive and hedonistic. They prize excellence above all things but love to laugh. And, central to their identity, they are seafarers whose relationship with the sea underpins every aspect of their society. Expertly researched and elegantly told, this indispensable introduction unveils a civilization of incomparable richness and a people of astounding complexity.

Introducing the Ancient Greeks

Introducing the Ancient Greeks PDF

Author: Edith Hall

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2015-04-02

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1448161622

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They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. They wrote the timeless myths of Odysseus and Oedipus, and the histories of Leonidas’s three hundred Spartans and Alexander the Great. But who were the ancient Greeks? And what was it that enabled them to achieve so much? Here, Edith Hall gives us a revelatory way of viewing this geographically scattered people, visiting different communities at various key moments during twenty centuries of ancient history. Identifying ten unique traits central to the widespread ancient Greeks, Hall unveils a civilization of incomparable richness and a people of astounding complexity – and explains how they made us who we are today. ‘A thoroughly readable and illuminating account of this fascinating people... This excellent book makes us admire and like the ancient Greeks equally’ Independent ‘A worthy and lively introduction to one of the two groups of ancient peoples who really formed the western world’ Sunday Times ‘Throughout, Hall exemplifies her subjects’ spirit of inquiry, their originality and their open-mindedness’ Daily Telegraph ‘A book that is both erudite and splendidly entertaining’ Financial Times

Why Should I Care about the Ancient Greeks?

Why Should I Care about the Ancient Greeks? PDF

Author: Don Nardo

Publisher: Compass Point Books

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 65

ISBN-13: 0756565650

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Every four years, the world celebrates one of the most exciting contributions of the Ancient Greeks: the Olympic Games. That, of course, is not all this great civilization left behind. From theater to democracy, discover how the Greeks' ancient inventions and philosophies evolved into objects and ideas we know and treasure today.

Contemporary Athletics & Ancient Greek Ideals

Contemporary Athletics & Ancient Greek Ideals PDF

Author: Daniel A. Dombrowski

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-08-01

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 0226155498

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Despite their influence in our culture, sports inspire dramatically less philosophical consideration than such ostensibly weightier topics as religion, politics, or science. Arguing that athletic playfulness coexists with serious underpinnings, and that both demand more substantive attention, Daniel Dombrowski harnesses the insights of ancient Greek thinkers to illuminate contemporary athletics. Dombrowski contends that the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus shed important light on issues—such as the pursuit of excellence, the concept of play, and the power of accepting physical limitations while also improving one’s body—that remain just as relevant in our sports-obsessed age as they were in ancient Greece. Bringing these concepts to bear on contemporary concerns, Dombrowski considers such questions as whether athletic competition can be a moral substitute for war, whether it necessarily constitutes war by other means, and whether it encourages fascist tendencies or ethical virtue. The first volume to philosophically explore twenty-first-century sport in the context of its ancient predecessor, Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals reveals that their relationship has great and previously untapped potential to inform our understanding of human nature.

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece PDF

Author: Sarah B. Pomeroy

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780199846047

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A Political, Social, and Cultural History is a comprehensive and balanced history, covering the political, military, social, cultural, and economic history of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Era.

Aristotle's Way

Aristotle's Way PDF

Author: Edith Hall

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0735220816

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From renowned classicist Edith Hall, ARISTOTLE'S WAY is an examination of one of history's greatest philosophers, showing us how to lead happy, fulfilled, and meaningful lives Aristotle was the first philosopher to inquire into subjective happiness, and he understood its essence better and more clearly than anyone since. According to Aristotle, happiness is not about well-being, but instead a lasting state of contentment, which should be the ultimate goal of human life. We become happy through finding a purpose, realizing our potential, and modifying our behavior to become the best version of ourselves. With these objectives in mind, Aristotle developed a humane program for becoming a happy person, which has stood the test of time, comprising much of what today we associate with the good life: meaning, creativity, and positivity. Most importantly, Aristotle understood happiness as available to the vast majority us, but only, crucially, if we decide to apply ourselves to its creation--and he led by example. As Hall writes, "If you believe that the goal of human life is to maximize happiness, then you are a budding Aristotelian." In expert yet vibrant modern language, Hall lays out the crux of Aristotle's thinking, mixing affecting autobiographical anecdotes with a deep wealth of classical learning. For Hall, whose own life has been greatly improved by her understanding of Aristotle, this is an intensely personal subject. She distills his ancient wisdom into ten practical and universal lessons to help us confront life's difficult and crucial moments, summarizing a lifetime of the most rarefied and brilliant scholarship.

Plutarch and the Historical Tradition

Plutarch and the Historical Tradition PDF

Author: Philip A. Stadter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-11

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1134913184

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These essays, by experts in the field from five countries, examine Plutarch's interpretative and artistic reshaping of his historical sources in representative lives. Diverse essays treat literary elements such as the parallelism which renders a pair of lives a unit or the themes which unify the lives. Others consider the selecting, combining, simplifying, and enlarging employed in composition. The construction of a Plutarchian life, the essays demonstrate, required careful selection and creative reworking of the historical material available.

Gymnastics of the Mind

Gymnastics of the Mind PDF

Author: Raffaella Cribiore

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2005-01-24

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 140084441X

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This book is at once a thorough study of the educational system for the Greeks of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and a window to the vast panorama of educational practices in the Greco-Roman world. It describes how people learned, taught, and practiced literate skills, how schools functioned, and what the curriculum comprised. Raffaella Cribiore draws on over 400 papyri, ostraca (sherds of pottery or slices of limestone), and tablets that feature everything from exercises involving letters of the alphabet through rhetorical compositions that represented the work of advanced students. The exceptional wealth of surviving source material renders Egypt an ideal space of reference. The book makes excursions beyond Egypt as well, particularly in the Greek East, by examining the letters of the Antiochene Libanius that are concerned with education. The first part explores the conditions for teaching and learning, and the roles of teachers, parents, and students in education; the second vividly describes the progression from elementary to advanced education. Cribiore examines not only school exercises but also books and commentaries employed in education--an uncharted area of research. This allows the most comprehensive evaluation thus far of the three main stages of a liberal education, from the elementary teacher to the grammarian to the rhetorician. Also addressed, in unprecedented detail, are female education and the role of families in education. Gymnastics of the Mind will be an indispensable resource to students and scholars of the ancient world and of the history of education.

The Greek Way of Life

The Greek Way of Life PDF

Author: Robert Garland

Publisher: Bristol Classical Press

Published: 2015-03-26

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780715623770

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The Greek Way of Life is a survey of the major life experiences which constituted the social reality of classical Greece, broken down into the general topics of conception and pregnancy, birth, childhood, coming of age, early adulthood, and elders and the elderly. What emerges is a conception of the human being as a social animal par excellence whose nature was largely realised in the attainment of paradigmatic social roles: military service for men and childbearing for women. Among the subtopics are Greek medical ideas, the roles of women and children, marriage, care of the elderly, and the role of religious ideas. An engaging narrative and a useful sourcebook, this will appeal to both general readers and scholars.