The fifteen papers in this volume cover a wide range of centre-periphery related studies, from the archaeology and history of the period to investigations into the intellectual millieux and religious thoughts and their contexts. Contributors include: L Hannestad (Greeks and Celts: The creation of a myth); F Kaul (The Gundestrup cauldron); B Cunliffe (Iberia and the Mediterranean); K Randsborg (Greek peripheries and barbarian centres); J E Skydsgaard (The Greeks in southern Russia); V Gabrielsen (Rhodes and Rome after the Third Macedonian War); S Alcock (Surveying the peripheries of the Hellenistic world); T Bekker-Nielsen (Centres and road networks in Cyprus); I Nielsen (Italic palaces); A Invernizzi (Centre and periphery in Seleucid Asia); G Shipley (World-systems analysis and the Hellenistic' world); P Bilde (Jesus and Paul and religious innovation).

The history of the hellenistic world has long been more popular than has widely been realized. This volume seeks to contribute to that popularity. Here are fourteen new perspectives on the period from a distinguished and international group of scholars. Their varied papers are grouped together around five themes: Structure and System; King and Court; Family and Kinship; Landscape and People; Art and Image. The book is conceived as a sister-volume to CPW's sucessful Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence, edited by Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees (1998).

The Hellenistic period began with the considerable expansion of the Greek world through the Macedonian conquest of the Persian empire and ended with Rome becoming the predominant political force in that world. This new and enlarged edition of Michel Austin's seminal work provides a panoramic view of this world through the medium of ancient sources. It now comprises over three hundred texts from literary, epigraphic and papyrological sources which are presented in original translations and supported by introductory sections, detailed notes and references, chronological tables, maps, illustrations of coins, and a full analytical index. The first edition has won widespread admiration since its publication in 1981. Updated with reference to the most recent scholarship on the subject, this new edition will prove invaluable for the study of a period which has received increasing recognition.

Located in the small kingdom of Commagene at the upper Euphrates, the late Hellenistic monument of Nemrud Dağ (c.50 BC) has been undeservedly neglected by scholars. Qualified as a Greco-Persian hybrid instigated by a lunatic king, this fascinating project of bricolage has been written out of history. This volume redresses that imbalance, interpreting Nemrud Dağ as an attempt at canon building by Antiochos I in order to construct a dynastic ideology and social order, and proving the monument's importance for our understanding of a crucial transitional phase from Hellenistic to Roman. Hellenistic Commagene therefore holds a profound significance for a number of discussions, such as the functioning of the Hellenistic koine and the genesis of Roman 'art', Hellenism and Persianism in antiquity, dynastic propaganda and the power of images, Romanisation in the East, the contextualising of the Augustan cultural revolution, and the role of Greek culture in the Roman world.

Rolf Strootman brings together various aspects of court culture in the Macedonian empires of the post-Achaemenid Near East. During the Hellenistic Period (c. 330-30 BCE), Alexander the Great and his successors reshaped their Persian and Greco-Macedonian legacies to create a new kind of rulership that was neither 'western' nor 'eastern' and would profoundly influence the later development of court culture and monarchy in both the Roman West and Iranian East.Drawing on the socio-political models of Norbert Elias and Charles Tilly, After the Achaemenids shows how the Hellenistic dynastic courts were instrumental in the integration of local elites in the empires, and the (re)distribution of power, wealth, and status. It analyses the competition among courtiers for royal favour and the, not always successful, attempts of the Hellenistic rulers to use these struggles to their own advantage.It demonstrates the interrelationships of the three competing 'Hellenistic' empires of the Seleukids, Antigonids and Ptolemies, casts new light on the phenomenon of Hellenistic Kingship by approaching it from the angle of the court and covers topics such as palace architecture, royal women, court ceremonial, and coronation ritual.

Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire had far-reaching impact, in space and time. Much of the territory that he seized would remain under the control of Macedonian kings until the arrival of the Romans. But Macedonian power also brought with it Greeks and Greek culture. In this book, leading scholars in the field explore the creation of this Hellenistic world, its cultural, political and economic transformations, and how far these were a consequence of Alexander's conquests. New kingdoms were established, new cities such as Alexandria and Antioch were founded, art and literature discovered fresh patrons. Egyptians and Iranians had to come to terms with Graeco-Macedonian rulers and settlers, while Greeks and Macedonians learned the ways of more ancient cultures. The essays presented here offer an exciting interdisciplinary approach to the study of this emerging Hellenistic world, its newness but also its oldness, both real and imagined.

Coinage is one of our key sources for the rich and fascinating history of the Hellenistic world (323–31 BC). This book provides students of the period with an up-to-date introduction to Hellenistic gold, silver and bronze coins in their cultural and economic contexts. It also offers new perspectives on four major themes in contemporary Hellenistic history: globalisation, identity, political economy and ideology. With more than 250 illustrations, and written in a lucid and accessible style, this book sheds new light on the diverse and multicultural societies of the Hellenistic world, from Alexander to Augustus. The author assumes no prior knowledge of Hellenistic history, and all Greek and Latin texts are translated throughout.

The Greek World After Alexander 323–30 BC examines social changes in the old and new cities of the Greek world and in the new post-Alexandrian kingdoms. An appraisal of the momentous military and political changes after the era of Alexander, this book considers developments in literature, religion, philosophy, and science, and establishes how far they are presented as radical departures from the culture of Classical Greece or were continuous developments from it. Graham Shipley explores the culture of the Hellenistic world in the context of the social divisions between an educated elite and a general population at once more mobile and less involved in the political life of the Greek city.

'I am a Christian' is the confession of the martyrs of early Christian texts and, no doubt, of many others; but what did this confession mean, and how was early Christian identity constructed? This innovative study sets the emergence of Christian identity in the first two centuries, as it is constructed by the broad range of surviving literature, within the wider context of Jewish and Graeco-Roman identity. It uses a number of models from contemporary constructionist views of identity formation to explore how what comes to be seen as 'Christian' literature creates a sense of what to be 'a Christian' means, and traces both continuities and discontinuities with the ways in which Jewish and Graeco-Roman identity were also being constructed through their texts. It seeks to acknowledge the centrality of texts in shaping early Christianity, historically as well as in our perception of it, while also exploring how we might move from those texts to the individuals and communities who preserved them. Such an approach challenges more traditional emphases on the development of institutions, whether structures or credal and ethical formulations, which often fail to recognize the rhetorical function of the texts on which they draw, and the uncertainties of how well these reflect the actual practice and experience of individuals and communities. While building on recent recognition of the diversity of early Christianity, the book goes on to explore the question whether it is possible to speak of a distinctive Christian identity across both the range of early texts and as a pressing historical and theological question in the contemporary world.

The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one, the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon. The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as an external comparator that was not caught in the net of the Abrahamic religions. The volume is organised around several themes, reflecting the concerns of the initial project with the articulation between norm and practice, the role of authorities and institutions, and the social and individual fluidity on the ground. Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and principles about conversion conversion are not rare in societies experiencing religious change, and the first section of the book examines some of the main issues brought up by surviving sources. This is followed by three sections examining different aspects of how those principles were - or were not - put into practice: how conversion was handled by the state, how it was continuously redefined by individual ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and how it was enshrined through different forms of institutionalization. Finally, a topographical coda examines the effects of religious change on the iconic holy city of Jerusalem.