Learn all the fun words and modern slang street phrases you never got to in Greek class with this fun, super-handy English-Greek phrasebook. Next time you’re traveling or just chattin’ in Greek with your friends, drop the textbook formality and bust out with expressions they never teach you in school, including: • cool slang • funny insults • explicit terms • raw swear words Dirty Greek teaches the casual expressions heard every day on the streets from Athens to Thessaloníki with phrases from "What’s up?" (Tee YEE-neh-teh?) to "Let’s party!" (EH-la na VHOO-meh toh VRA-thee!) and much more!

Some of the world's earliest large-form fictional narratives--what would today be called novels-are found in ancient Greece. Dating back to the first century CE, these narratives contain many of the elements common to the novelistic genre, for instance, the joining, separation, and reunion of two lovers. These ancient works have often been heralded as the ancestors of the modern novel; but what can we say of the origins of the Greek novel itself? This book argues that whereas much of Greek literature was committed to a form of cultural purism, presenting itself as part of a continuous tradition reaching back to the founding fathers within the tradition, the novel reveled in cultural hybridity. The earliest Greek novelistic literature combined Greek and non-Greek traditions. More than this, however, it also often self-consciously explored its own hybridity by focusing on stories of cultural hybridization, or what we would now call "mixed-race" relations. This book is thus not a conventional account of the origins of the Greek novel: it is not an attempt to pinpoint the moment of invention, and to trace its subsequent development in a straight line. Rather, it makes a virtue of the murkiness, or "dirtiness," of the origins of the novel: there is no single point of creation, no pure tradition, only transgression and transformation. The novel thus emerges as an outlier within the Greek literary corpus: a form of literature written in Greek, but not always committing to Greek cultural identity. Dirty Love focuses particularly on the relationship between Persian, Egyptian, Jewish and Greek literature, and explores such texts as Ctesias' Persica, Joseph and Aseneth, the Alexander Romance, and the tale of Ninus and Semiramis. It will appeal not only to those interested in Greek literary history, but also to readers of near eastern and biblical literature.

Book XII of The Greek Anthology, compiled at the court of Hadrian by the poet Strato, contains 258 polished epigrams on the subject of Boy Love'. The short poems, written by such poets as Callimachus, Meleager and Strato himself, are presented in Greek with facing English translation.

Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.

What determined the choices of the Greeks on the battlefield? Were their tactics defined by unwritten moral rules, or was all considered fair in war? In Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History, Roel Konijnendijk re-examines the literary evidence for the battle tactics and tactical thought of the Greeks during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Rejecting the traditional image of limited, ritualised battle, Konijnendijk sketches a world of brutally destructive engagements, restricted only by the stubborn amateurism of the men who fought. The resulting model of hoplite battle does away with most received wisdom about the nature of Greek battle tactics, and redefines the way they reflected the values of Greek culture as a whole.

The first English-language survey of ancient Greek divinatorymethods, Ancient Greek Divination offers a broad yetdetailed treatment of the earliest attempts by ancient Greeks toseek the counsel of the gods. Offers in-depth discussions of oracles, wandering diviners,do-it-yourself methods of foretelling the future, magicaldivinatory techniques, and much more Illustrates how the study of divination illuminates thementalities of ancient Greek religions and societies

Spanning from WWII to the Cold War and beyond, this is the “magnificent . . . triumphant” biography of the investigative journalist, resistance fighter, and whistle blower who helped expose the Watergate scandal (Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Leadership) He was one of the most fascinating figures in 20th-century political history. Yet today, Elias Demetracopoulos is strangely overlooked—even though his life reads like an epic adventure story . . . As a precocious twelve-year-old in occupied Athens, he engaged in heroic resistance efforts against the Nazis, for which he was imprisoned and tortured. After his life was miraculously spared, he became an investigative journalist, covering Greece’s tumultuous politics and America’s increasing influence in the region. A clever and scoop-hungry reporter, Elias soon gained access to powerful figures in both governments—and attracted many enemies. When the Greek military dictatorship took power in 1967, he narrowly escaped to Washington DC, where he would lead the fight to restore democracy in his homeland—while running afoul of the American government, too. Now, after a decade of research and original reporting, James H. Barron uncovers the story of a man whose tireless pursuit of uncomfortable truths would put him at odds with not only his own government, but that of the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations, making him a target of CIA, FBI, and State Department surveillance and harassment—and Greek kidnapping and assassination plots American authorities may have purposefully overlooked. A stunning feat of biographic storytelling, sweeping from World War II to the Cold War, Watergate and beyond, The Greek Connection is about a lifetime of standing up for democracy and a free press against powerful special interests. It has much to teach us about our own era’s abuses of power, dark money, journalist intimidation, and foreign interference in elections.