Ancient Greek History

Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald. 2018. “The Languages of Christianity on the Silk Roads and the Transmission of Mediterranean Culture into Central Asia.” In Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750, edited by Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas, 206–219. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Mediterranean basin was a multicultural region with a great diversity of linguistic, religious, social, and ethnic groups. This dynamic social and cultural landscape encouraged extensive contact and exchange among different communities. This book seeks to explain what happened when different ethnic, social, linguistic, and religious groups, among others, came into contact with each other. What means did they employ to mediate their interactions? How did each group construct distinct identities while interacting with others? What new identities came into existence because of these contacts? Denise Demetriou brings together several strands of scholarship that have emerged recently, especially ethnic, religious, and Mediterranean studies. It reveals new aspects of identity construction in the region examining the Mediterranean as a whole and focuses not only on ethnic identity but also other types of collective identities, such as civic, linguistic, religious, and social identities.

This essay builds on foundations laid by Edward Harris in his essay 'Workshop, Marketplace and Household' (2002). In that essay, Harris set out the evidence for some 170 occupational terms and discussed the division of labour in the Athenian economy. This essay adds subsequent findings, bringing the list of occupational terms to 276. It then asks how many of these terms denote activities that could have provided individuals with an entire livelihood; I thus exclude part-time tasks and tasks that represent part of the chaîne opératoire involved in the production of this or that commodity, but a part that could not in itself have provided a complete livelihood to its practitioner. The chapter is under embargo by CUP, so pop me an email if you would like a copy.

Exceptional Now The climate has been warming since the industrial revolution, but how warm is climate now compared with the rest of the Holocene? Marcott et al. (p. 1198 ) constructed a record of global mean surface temperature for more than the last 11,000 years, using a variety of land- and marine-based proxy data from all around the world. The pattern of temperatures shows a rise as the world emerged from the last deglaciation, warm conditions until the middle of the Holocene, and a cooling trend over the next 5000 years that culminated around 200 years ago in the Little Ice Age. Temperatures have risen steadily since then, leaving us now with a global temperature higher than those during 90% of the entire Holocene.

The current paper introduces the actual CINP clinical guidelines for the treatment of Bipolar disorder (BD). The current clinical guidelines are based on evidence based data, but they also intend to be clinically useful, while a rigid algorithm was developed on the basis of firm evidence alone. Monotherapy was prioritised over combination therapy. There are separate recommendations for each of the major phases of BD expressed as a five-step algorithm. The current CINP clinical guidelines for the treatment of BD are the most up-to-date guidance, and are as evidence based as possible. They also include recommendations concerning the use of psychotherapeutic interventions, again on the basis of available evidence. This adherence of the workgroup to the evidence in a clinically oriented way helped to clarify the role of specific antidepressants and traditional agents like lithium, valproate or carbamazepine. The additional focus on specific clinical characteristics, including predominan...

Advances in the sequencing and the analysis of the genomes of both modern and ancient peoples have facilitated a number of breakthroughs in our understanding of human evolutionary history. These include the discovery of interbreeding between anatomically modern humans and extinct hominins; the development of an increasingly detailed description of the complex dispersal of modern humans out of Africa and their population expansion worldwide; and the characterization of many of the genetic adaptions of humans to local environmental conditions. Our interpretation of the evolutionary history and adaptation of humans is being transformed by analyses of these new genomic data.

Some Jewish magic was based on the Kabbalah, the Jewish traditions known as Haggadah, and other esoteric beliefs. This is a comprehensive review of Jewish magic from the 10th to the 15th century, including a rich lode of folklore. Many well-known Jewish traditions are explained, such as why a glass is broken at a wedding, and how the expression mazel tov is related to a belief in Astrology. Trachtenberg deals extensively with Golems, Succubi, the Lillim, (from Lilith--Adam's first wife), and other magical creatures, some well known such as werewolves, and others not so well, such as estrie, mare and broxa. There are detailed descriptions of talismans, amulets, charms, and other curious magical objects. There are chapters dealing with dream interpretation, medical beliefs, necromancy, and other forms of divination. There is also a short glossary, so if you are having trouble telling the difference between a Kaddish and a Kiddush, you're in luck. The author, Joshua Trachtenberg (b. 1904, d. 1959) was a reform rabbi on the east coast of the US. This is an elaboration of his Columbia University Ph.D. thesis. Trachtenberg's appreciation of the role of folk-magic in Jewish culture is important for the study of Judaism, and also the roots of modern Pagan beliefs and practices.

The legend of the Jew as sorcerer supreme was of Gentile making, fashioned after the latest pattern of the up-to-date thaumaturge, but like most ready-made fables it fitted the truth none too closely. For if Jews were not the malefic sorcerers that Christian animosity made them out to be, they still possessed an ancient and honorable tradition of magic which had been solicitously nourished until in the Middle Ages it reached its highest stage of development. Sheltered from Christian eyes by secrecy and the impenetrable wall of a strange tongue and an even stranger mystical vocabulary
-THE POWERS OF EVIL
At the basis of Jewish magic lay the belief in a vast, teeming “middle world,” a world neither of the flesh nor altogether and exclusively of the spirit. Demons and angels, to be counted only in myriads, populated that world; through their intermediacy the powers of magic were brought into operation. The most frequently employed terms for magic were hashba‘at malachim and hashba‘at shedim, invocation and conjuration of angels and demons. The peculiar rôle of the angels, heavenly counterparts of all earthly phenomena, as well as the direct servants and emissaries of God, closest to His ear, rendered powerful
-THE POWERS OF GOOD
The characteristic and distinguishing feature of medieval Jewish magic was the function which it assigned to the angels, the agents of God. The magical use of angels was of course predicated upon the assumption that the world is very thickly populated with them, and that they play a unique rôle in nature. The figures vary from a mere few hundred thousand all the way up to 496,000 myriads—and these are only partial estimates.¹ We may readily believe this when we learn that every single thing on earth, animate or inanimate, from man through all of creation, birds and beasts.
-AMULETS
One of the most popular of magical devices was the amulet, worn upon the person or attached to objects and animals (the Hebrew word for amulet, kame‘a, has the root meaning “to bind”). Even in our supposedly non-superstitious age the good-luck charm is still quite familiar, apologetically displayed on watch-chain, or carried furtively in the recesses of pockets and purses—the rabbit’s foot, the horseshoe, lucky coins, rings engraved with Chinese or Hebrew letters, animal molars. How much more common, then, are such objects in societies which unashamedly and openly accept them for what they are.
AND SO MUCH MORE !

The genus Citrus, comprising some of the most widely cultivated fruit crops worldwide, includes an uncertain number of species. Here we describe ten natural citrus species, using genomic, phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses of 60 accessions representing diverse citrus germ plasms, and propose that citrus diversified during the late Miocene epoch through a rapid southeast Asian radiation that correlates with a marked weakening of the monsoons. A second radiation enabled by migration across the Wallace line gave rise to the Australian limes in the early Pliocene epoch. Further identification and analyses of hybrids and admixed genomes provides insights into the genealogy of major commercial cultivars of citrus. Among mandarins and sweet orange, we find an extensive network of relatedness that illuminates the domestication of these groups. Widespread pummelo admixture among these mandarins and its correlation with fruit size and acidity suggests a plausible role of pummelo introgre...

This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the typology and topography of Spartan burials that is founded on archaeological evidence. Our knowledge of Spartan burial practices has long been based almost entirely on textual sources – excavations conducted in Sparta between 1906 and 1994 uncovered fewer than 20 pre-Roman graves. The absence of pre-Roman cemeteries led scholars to conclude that, as long as the Lycurgan customs were in effect, all burials in Sparta were intracommunal and that few tombs had been found because they had been destroyed by later building activity. Burial practices have, as a result, been seen as one of many ways in which Sparta was an outlier. The aforementioned recently published graves offer a different picture of Spartan burial practices. It is now clear that there was at least one extracommunal cemetery in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. What would normally be described as extramural burials did, therefore, take place, but intracommunal burials of adults continued to be made in Sparta throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Those burials were concentrated along important roads and on the slopes of hills. The emergent understanding of Spartan burial practices takes on added significance when placed in a wider context. Burial practices in Sparta align closely with those found in Argos and Corinth. Indeed, burial practices in Sparta, rather than being exceptional, are notably similar to those of its most important Peloponnesian neighbours; a key issue is that in all three poleis intracommunal burials continued to take place through the Hellenistic period. The finding that adults were buried both extracommunally and intracommunally in Sparta, Argos and Corinth after the Geometric period calls into question the standard narrative of the development of Greek burial practices in the post-Mycenaean period.

Note: This article has two parts: main text and supplementary materials (appendices listing of burials in Sparta, available here and on the ABSA website).

Thermokarst lakes formed across vast regions of Siberia and Alaska during the last deglaciation and are thought to be a net source of atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide during the Holocene epoch. However, the same thermokarst lakes can also sequester carbon, and it remains uncertain whether carbon uptake by thermokarst lakes can offset their greenhouse gas emissions. Here we use field observations of Siberian permafrost exposures, radiocarbon dating and spatial analyses to quantify Holocene carbon stocks and fluxes in lake sediments overlying thawed Pleistocene-aged permafrost. We find that carbon accumulation in deep thermokarst-lake sediments since the last deglaciation is about 1.6 times larger than the mass of Pleistocene-aged permafrost carbon released as greenhouse gases when the lakes first formed. Although methane and carbon dioxide emissions following thaw lead to immediate radiative warming, carbon uptake in peat-rich sediments occurs over millennial timescales. We ass...

According to received history, the Karyatid Temple on the Acropolis of Athens (commonly known as the “Erechtheion”) was, in the city’s first Ottoman period (1456–1687), converted into a Turkish harem. In this article, I investigate the story by scrutinizing sources from this period. I argue that the notion of the harem, although historically suspect, found fertile ground in an orientalist worldview that has been prevalent among western visitors and scholars. I propose that the tale may have been inspired by the temple’s conspicuous Karyatid statues. I close by considering the story of the harem as part of a phenomenon of “antagonistic narratives” (stories that concern the desecration or destruction of monuments by enemies) in history and archaeology. The article offers new perspectives on later uses of and stories about the Karyatid Temple, on western attitudes towards the presence of Turks in Greece, and on the role that material remains can play in the creation of narratives about the past.

In this volume we have brought together a group of scholars working on different periods and regions of the Mediterranean to study the family from the earliest historical periods of the Mediterranean to early medieval times spanning a time range from the second millennium bce to the sixth century ce. This volume also offers an outlook on the family in later periods of the Mediterranean, which helps us to put our findings into perspective with better documented periods. The family should be understood here as an evolving process, also called the family life cycle, comprising marriage, childbirth, death, and divorce. On the basis of the family and household we can study the organization of domestic space, gender relations , social representation, and small‐scale economic activities along a continuum of the centuries and millennia. A house in this volume is defined as the physical building, while a household defines a group of individuals sharing a common dwelling, usually family members and their servants and/or lodgers. In a comparative approach taking into consideration the material, visual, and textual evidence for answering questions of cultural influence and social change, a study of houses and households as the core units of society we hope will eventually enhance considerably our knowledge of social organization in the ancient Mediterranean at large. It is our view that the Greek and Roman worlds as pre‐industrial societies were not fundamentally different from societies in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean, and we firmly believe that further comparative work on the Mediterranean family therefore would prove itself extremely fruitful in mending the academic fragmentation of a subject split between so many different disciplines.

Modern studies have emphasised the contradictory nature of the ancient traditions concerning the aftermath of the Battle of Sepeia (494 BC), in which the Argive army was destroyed by the Spartans. This article tackles the most significant point of agreement in these traditions: the theme of Argive ‘oligandry’, the demographic crisis caused by the battle. An analysis conducted on the basis of Coale and Demeny’s Model Life Tables shows that the real impact of the demographic crisis was felt in the age structure of Argos’ population rather than in the sheer size of its citizen body. Consequently, this article argues that the political ramifications of the battle originated not from the demographic crisis alleged by the tradition, but from the state of powerlessness and regional isolation into which Argos was plunged by the defeat of 494. This argument, which supports a reappraisal of Plutarch’s (De mul. vir. 4) version of Argos’ response to Sepeia, also helps explain why Argos embraced a markedly aggressive foreign policy towards the towns of the plain in the following decades.

This article examines a red-figure pelike made by a previously unknown local workshop that was very likely located in Pella, the capital of the Kingdom of Macedonia. This vessel was in storage in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki and is one of the best preserved examples from that Macedonian workshop. In shape and decoration it recalls Attic vases of the second half of the fourth century BC, and particularly the work of Group G and the Amazon Painter. The pelike dates from c.320 BC and is attributed to the Pella B Painter.

About 3000 years ago, a major vegetation change occurred in Central Africa, when rainforest trees were abruptly replaced by savannas. Up to this point, the consensus of the scientific community has been that the forest disturbance was caused by climate change. We show here that chemical weathering in Central Africa, reconstructed from geochemical analyses of a marine sediment core, intensified abruptly at the same period, departing substantially from the long-term weathering fluctuations related to the Late Quaternary climate. Evidence that this weathering event was also contemporaneous with the migration of Bantu-speaking farmers across Central Africa suggests that human land-use intensification at that time had already made a major impact on the rainforest.

The treatment of war wounds is an ancient art, constantly refined to reflect improvements in weapons technology, transportation, antiseptic practices, and surgical techniques. Throughout most of the history of warfare, more soldiers died from disease than combat wounds, and misconceptions regarding the best timing and mode of treatment for injuries often resulted in more harm than good. Since the 19th century, mortality from war wounds steadily decreased as surgeons on all sides of conflicts developed systems for rapidly moving the wounded from the battlefield to frontline hospitals where surgical care is delivered. We review the most important trends in US and Western military trauma management over two centuries, including the shift from primary to delayed closure in wound management, refinement of amputation techniques, advances in evacuation philosophy and technology, the development of antiseptic practices, and the use of antibiotics. We also discuss how the lessons of history are reflected in contemporary US practices in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is a meticulous survey of the reception of some lyric subgenres
in Hellenistic poetry and it is meant to be the first of a series of contributions
on the subject. Leaving aside lyric in a religious context, the paper is divided
into two main sections, namely lyric poetry composed for rulers and lyric poetry
written for everyday people. In the new social context lyric poetry was intended
for presentation in the royal symposia. The Alexandrians wrote all types of occasional
lyric poetry (enkomia, epinikia, epithalamia, threnoi and epikedeia), a fact
that is reflected both in the work of distinguished poets, such as Callimachus,
Posidippus and Theocritus as well as in the epigrammatic tradition and in poetic
fragments found on papyri. Special attention is given to stichic lyric poetry and
to the new genre of the mime, whereas the oral tradition of the carmina popularia
and the making of lyric anthologies for symposiastic use complete the picture.

Early human food cultures were plant-based. Major religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism have recommended a vegetarian way of life since their conception. The recorded history of vegetarian nutrition started in the sixth century bc by followers of the Orphic mysteries. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras is considered the father of ethical vegetarianism. The Pythagorean way of life was followed by a number of important personalities and influenced vegetarian nutrition until the 19th century. In Europe, vegetarian nutrition more or less disappeared during the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance era and in the Age of Enlightenment, various personalities practiced vegetarianism. The first vegetarian society was started in England in 1847. The International Vegetarian Society was founded in 1908 and the first vegan society began in 1944. Prominent vegetarians during this time included Sylvester Graham, John Harvey Kellogg, and Maximilian Bircher-Benner. A paradigm shift occurred at the turn o...

This study examines the deliberative credentials of Athenian democracy. Much scholarship has investigated ancient Athens as a successful (or less successful) example of participative democracy and has stressed the importance of collective deliberation to its political system. Building on this research, this article explores whether the Athenians subscribed to, and implemented in their institutions of political decision-making, deliberative ideals and a commitment to consensus compatible with those central to modern literature on deliberative democracy in political theory. After a survey of relevant studies on deliberative and participative democracy, the article discusses the pitfalls of the plebiscitary forms of democracy to which ancient direct democracy is often compared. It then considers the deliberative setup of Athenian political decision-making, concentrating on Assembly procedures and the ideas that speakers and the public explicitly upheld through their conduct in the Assembly, investigated through a close reading of Assembly accounts and normative statements in the orators (particularly Demosthenes’s Prooimia). Finally, it analyzes an example of protracted debate in the Assembly—on the Sicilian expedition—to make the case that Athenian political decision-making strived to fulfil the deliberative ideal in order to create legitimacy, whether or not that democratic deliberation resulted in effective policy choices.

The book furnishes a unique insight into the world of meanings and emotions associated with hospital life by including narratives from both patients and caregivers. The story is told in a dozen episodes which illustrate the transformation of hospitals from  houses of mercy to tools of confinement, from dwellings of rehabilitation to spaces of clinical teaching and research, from rooms for birthing and dying to institutions of science and technology. From ancient Greece to the era of AIDS, the book  features key hospitals , covering the most important themes in the development of medicine and therapeutics.

In the first half of the third century B.C., two Greeks, Herophilus of Chalcedon and his younger contemporary Erasistratus of Ceos, became the first and last ancient scientists to perform systematic dissections of human cadavers. In all probability, they also conducted vivisections of condemned criminals. Their anatomical and physiological discoveries were extraordinary. The uniqueness of these events presents an intriguing historical puzzle. Animals had been dissected by Aristotle in the preceding century (and partly dissected by other Greeks in earlier centuries), and, later, Galen (second century A.D.) and others again systematically dissected numerous animals. But no ancient scientists ever seem to have resumed systematic human dissection. This paper explores, first, the cultural factors-including traditional Greek attitudes to the corpse and to the skin, also as manifested in Greek sacred laws-that may have prevented systematic human dissection during almost all of Greek antiqu...

Robinson Crusoe's memoirs form "the most fascinating boy's book ever written", wrote Leslie Stephen. This self-help book, within a matter of decades, had reached an audience as wide as any book ever written in English. Edited by Daniel Defoe, it had become part of the literary consciousness of European civilization. For three centuries, there has been a need for studies summarizing the related intriguing scientific issues in the fields of history, geography, cartography, astronomy, geology, botany, zoology, climatology, archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, and linguistics. If the story is true, readers are curious to follow it on maps. The world calls one of Juan Fernández Islands of Chile as Isla Robinson Crusoe, without much evidence. Rather, Cocos Island of Costa Rica seems a better candidate for scientists, based on Crusoe's observations about latitude, lunitidal records, climate, flora, fauna, topographic features, and his map of 1719. A later map of Cocos Island, from Stevenson's Treasure Island, is briefly mentioned. Crusoe's travels through China, Russia, and the Pyrenees offer unique geographic information by dozens of toponyms. Different editions of the book's three parts contain a few misprints in geographical names. His travel route is compared with that of ambassador Ides and many contemporary maps. Three centuries ago, based on the complaints and optical reasoning of a blind man, the world hastily categorized Crusoe's autobiography as a fiction, the first English novel. The stubborn fact remains that the heroes, the story, the location and details of the island, or the words of Friday are historical.