Scholars have long been divided on the question of whether the Amazons of Greek legend actually existed. Notably, Soviet archaeologists' discoveries of the bodies of women warriors in the 1980s appeared to directly contradict western classicists' denial of the veracity of the Amazon myth, and there have been few concessions between the two schools of thought since. Postcolonial Amazons offers a ground-breaking re-evaluation of the place of martial women in the ancient world, bridging the gap between myth and historical reality and expanding our conception of the Amazon archetype. By shifting the center of debate to the periphery of the region known to the Greeks, the startling conclusion emerges that the ancient Athenian conception of women as weak and fearful was not at all typical of the region of that time, even within Greece. Surrounding the Athenians were numerous peoples who held that women could be courageous, able, clever, and daring, suggesting that although Greek stories of Amazons may be exaggerations, they were based upon a real historical understanding of women who fought. While re-examining the sources of the Amazon myth, this compelling volume also resituates the Amazons in the broader context from which they have been extracted, illustrating that although they were the quintessential example of female masculinity in ancient Greek thought, they were not the only instance of this phenomenon: masculine women were masqueraded on the Greek stage, described in the Hippocratic corpus, took part in the struggle to control Alexander the Great's empire after his death, and served as bodyguards in ancient India. Against the backdrop of the ongoing debates surrounding gender norms and fluidity, Postcolonial Amazons breaks new ground as an ancient history of female masculinity and demonstrates that these ideas have a much longer and more durable heritage than we may have supposed.

This volume explores how art and artifacts can tell women’s stories of war—a critical way into these stories, often hidden due to the second-tier status of reporting women’s accomplishments. This unique lens reveals personal, cultural, and historically noteworthy experiences often not found in records, manuscripts, and texts. Nine stories from history are examined, from the mythical Amazons of Ancient Greece to a female prisoner of war during World War II. Each of the social, political, and battlefield experiences of Penthesilea, Artemisia, Boudica, the feminine cavaliers, the Dahomey Amazons, suffragists, World War I medical corps, and a World War II prisoner of war are intertwined with a particular work of art or an artifact. These include pottery, iconographic images, public sculpture, stone engraving, clothing, decorative arts, paintings, and pulp art. While each story stands alone, brought together in this volume they represent a cross-sectional reflection on the record of women and war. The chapters cover not only a diverse range of women from around the globe - the African continent, the Hispanic territory of Europe, Carian and Ancient Greece and Rome, Iran, Great Britain-Scotland-ancient Caledonia, Western Europe, and North America—but also a diverse choice of artwork and artifacts, eras, and the nature of the wars being fought. This book will be of value to those interested in gender across history and its interplay in the field of war.

This Companion covers a range of receptions of ancient Greek and Roman gender and sexuality. It explores ancient representations of these concepts as we define them today, as well as recent perspectives that have been projected back onto antiquity. Beginning in antiquity, the chapters examine how the ancient Greeks and Romans regarded concepts of what we would today call "gender" and "sexuality" based on the evidence available to us, and chart the varied interpretations and receptions of these concepts across time to the present day. In exploring how different cultures have "received" the classical past, the volume investigates these cultures’ different interpretations of Greek and Roman sexualities, and what these interpretations can reveal about their own attitudes. Through the contributions in this book, the reader gains a deeper understanding of this essential part of human existence, derived from influential sources. From ancient to modern and postmodern perspectives, from cinematic productions to TikTok videos, receptions of ancient gender and sexuality abound. This volume is of interest to students and scholars of ancient history, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, and ancient societies, as well as those working on popular culture and gender studies more broadly.

Royal women did much more to wield power besides marrying the king and producing the heir. Subverting the dichotomies of public/private and formal/informal that gender public authority as male and informal authority as female, this book examines royal women as agents of influence. With an expansive chronological and geographic scope—from ancient to early modern and covering Egypt, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Asia Minor—these essays trace patterns of influence often disguised by narrower studies of government studies and officials. Contributors highlight the theme of dynastic loyalty by focusing on the roles and actions of individual royal women, examining patterns within dynasties, and considering what factors generated loyalty and disloyalty to a dynasty or individual ruler. Contributors show that whether serving as the font of dynastic authority or playing informal roles of child-bearer, patron, or religious promoter, royal women have been central to the issue of dynastic loyalty throughout the ancient, medieval, and modern eras.

In the ancient Mediterranean world, the sea was an essential domain for trade, cultural exchange, communication, exploration, and colonisation. In tandem with the lived reality of this maritime space, a parallel experience of the sea emerged in narrative representations from ancient Greece and Rome, of the sea as a cultural imaginary. This imaginary seems often to oscillate between two extremes: the utopian and the catastrophic; such representations can be found in narratives from ancient history, philosophy, society, and literature, as well as in their post-classical receptions. Utopia can be found in some imaginary island paradise far away and across the distant sea; the sea can hold an unknown, mysterious, divine wealth below its surface; and the sea itself as a powerful watery body can hold a liberating potential. The utopian quality of the sea and seafaring can become a powerful metaphor for articulating political notions of the ideal state or for expressing an individual’s sense of hope and subjectivity. Yet the catastrophic sea balances any perfective imaginings: the sea threatens coastal inhabitants with floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes and sailors with storms and the accompanying monsters. From symbolic perspectives, the catastrophic sea represents violence, instability, the savage, and even cosmological chaos. The twelve papers in this volume explore the themes of utopia and catastrophe in the liminal environment of the sea, through the lens of history, philosophy, literature and classical reception. Contributors: Manuel Álvarez-Martí-Aguilar, Vilius Bartninkas, Aaron L. Beek, Ross Clare, Gabriele Cornelli, Isaia Crosson, Ryan Denson, Rhiannon Easterbrook, Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz, Georgia L. Irby, Simona Martorana, Guy Middleton, Hamish Williams.

A sweeping new account of ancient Greek culture and its remarkable diversity Covering the whole of the ancient Greek experience from its beginnings late in the third millennium BCE to the Roman conquest in 30 BCE, Out of One, Many is an accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking. In this fresh and witty exploration of the thought, culture, society, and history of the Greeks, Jennifer Roberts traces not only the common values that united them across the seas and the centuries, but also the enormous diversity in their ideas and beliefs. Examining the huge importance to the Greeks of religion, mythology, the Homeric epics, tragic and comic drama, philosophy, and the city-state, the book offers shifting perspectives on an extraordinary and astonishingly creative people. Century after century, in one medium after another, the Greeks addressed big questions, many of which are still very much with us, from whether gods exist and what happens after we die to what political system is best and how we can know what is real. Yet for all their virtues, Greek men set themselves apart from women and foreigners and profited from the unpaid labor of enslaved workers, and the book also looks at the mixed legacy of the ancient Greeks today. The result is a rich, wide-ranging, and compelling history of a fascinating and profoundly influential culture in all its complexity—and the myriad ways, good and bad, it continues to shape us today.

This collection argues that the final form of prophetic texts attempts a picture of stability; of a new world that emerges in the aftermath of the turbulent experiences of Israel/Judah's history, sustained by a coherent community and identity. The essays within both describe and analyse the various categories of otherness in prophetic literature which threaten such an identity, displaying the complex and contradictory nature of such depictions -- particularly given the reality that these texts emerge from communities considered other. The contributors provides an interdisciplinary exploration of otherness that draws upon multiple insights into the conception and expression of the other, beyond obvious examples traditionally examined in Biblical Studies. Touching upon the rhetoric associated with identity markers such as space, race/ethnicity, gender and religious activity, Prophetic Otherness allows for further consideration of the ethics of the prophetic corpus, and its understanding of fairness and justice in relation to broad communities.

Legendary director, actor, author, and provocateur Werner Herzog has incalculably influenced contemporary cinema for decades. Until now there has been no sustained effort to gather and present a variety of diverse philosophical approaches to his films and to the thinking behind their creation. The Philosophy of Werner Herzog, edited by M. Blake Wilson and Christopher Turner,collects fourteen essays by professional philosophers and film theorists from around the globe, who explore the famed German auteur’s notions of “ecstatic truth” as opposed to “accountants’ truth,” his conception of nature and its penchant for “overwhelming and collective murder,” his controversial film production techniques, his debts to his philosophical and aesthetic forebears, and finally, his pointed objections to his would-be critics––including, among others, the contributors to this book themselves. By probing how Herzog’s thinking behind the camera is revealed in the action he captures in front of it, The Philosophy of Werner Herzog shines new light upon the images and dialog we see and hear on the screen by enriching our appreciation of a prolific––yet enigmatic––film artist.

"Through a set of original essays, this volume showcases new directions in the well-established field of the study of women in Greco-Roman antiquity. Sarah Pomeroy's groundbreaking Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (1975) introduced scholars, students, and general readers to a new area of inquiry. Building upon and moving beyond that seminal work, the contributions to this volume together represent a next step in this interdisciplinary field. Contributors, all of whom have been influenced directly or indirectly by Pomeroy's Goddesses and other work, include scholars with training in the study of history, literature, law, art, medicine, epigraphy, papyrology, and archaeology. Covering a wide range of time periods and utilizing a variety of approaches, the essays will help readers to see women in antiquity with new eyes and to view anew issues related to women today"--

Threats is a comprehensive and scientifically accurate exploration into threats at every level, from animalistic competition to social manipulation and political strife.