This entertaining and useful book provides a comprehensive survey of films about the ancient world, from The Last Days of Pompeii to Gladiator. Jon Solomon catalogues, describes, and evaluates films set in ancient Greece and Rome, films about Greek and Roman history and mythology, films of the Old and New Testaments, films set in ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Persia, films of ancient tragedies, comic films set in the ancient world, and more. The book has been updated to include feature films and made-for-television movies produced in the past two decades. More than two hundred photographs illustrate both the films themselves and the ancient sources from which their imagery derives.

"The Ancient Economy holds pride of place among the handful of genuinely influential works of ancient history. This is Finley at the height of his remarkable powers and in his finest role as historical iconoclast and intellectual provocateur. It should be required reading for every student of pre-modern modes of production, exchange, and consumption."--Josiah Ober, author of Political Dissent in Democratic Athens

Ancient Greeks and Romans often turned to magic to achieve personal goals. Magical rites were seen as a route for direct access to the gods, for material gains as well as spiritual satisfaction. In this survey of magical beliefs and practices from the sixth century B.C.E. through late antiquity, Fritz Graf sheds new light on ancient religion. Graf explores the important types of magic in Greco-Roman antiquity, describing rites and explaining the theory behind them. And he characterizes the ancient magician: his training and initiation, social status, and presumed connections with the divine world. With trenchant analysis of underlying conceptions and vivid account of illustrative cases, Graf gives a full picture of the practice of magic and its implications. He concludes with an evaluation of the relation of magic to religion.

This collection is designed to encourage students to examine issues pertaining to a broad range of themes through the analysis of relevant ancient literary and non-literary texts. Covering a wide variety of social and cultural concerns?-ranging from marriage, family, war, and religion, to political culture, slavery, and entertainment?-the texts are arranged thematically within a general chronological framework to provide a broad overview of life in the Ancient World. --Publisher's description.

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own. This is the first volume in a bold series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This old-fashioned narrative history employs the methods of “history from beneath”—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.

This sweeping work covers world cultures from prehistory through the year 700 C.E. With in-depth analysis of civilizations, key figures, cities, cultures and daily life. Its three volumes stretch beyond the boundaries of the ancient world of Greece, Rome and Egypt, to include Egypt, China, the Near East, Europe, Africa, the Americas and more, to provide true world coverage. The set begins with 26 overview essays, from Agriculture to Writing Systems, followed by 1,100 alphabetically arranged essays on persons, cultures, wars, battles, documents or works, traditions or cultural phenomena, structures or artifacts, places or sites, terms, and groups or civilizations. Next, over 200 entries provide in-depth overviews of historic civilizations, times and places. Lastly, the set provides detailed descriptions of "life as" an individual living in a given time and place. Coverage is broad in scope, yet easy to use, with guides for pronunciation, geography, word usage, and timelines included. Additional appendices include a Categorized List of Contents, Timeline, Geographical Guide to Ancient World, Glossary, Websites, and Bibliography, as well as a Name Index and a comprehensive Subject Index. Not only does the set provide encyclopedic coverage of the Ancient World and its civilizations, but it goes on to offer students and researchers new insight into what it meant to live in a specific time and place. No other reference tool provides this unique combination of material. -- Amazon.com.

Ancient history has traditionally focused on Greece and Rome. This book takes a global approach to the distant past, following the development of human societies across the globe from the last Ice Age, 11,700 years ago, to the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE. The only book of its kind, A Global History of the Ancient World provides succinct narratives of the first Asian, African and European civilizations and their importance for later history without foregoing the key topics of conventional textbooks. Thematic overviews give truly global perspectives on connections, disconnections and parallel developments shaping the ancient world. Written for students of history, classics and related disciplines, the book will appeal to anyone interested in widening their view of early history.

The ancient world saw the birth and collapse of great civilizations. In mainstream history the Classical world is dominated by Greece and Rome, and the Biblical world is centred on the Hebrews. Yet the roughly four-and-a-half thousand years (4000 bcad 550) covered in this book saw many peoples come and go within the brawling, multi-cultural mass of humanity that occupied the ancient Middle East, Mediterranean and beyond. While a handful of ancient cultures have garnered much of the credit, these forgotten peoples also helped to lay the foundations of our modern world. This guide brings these lost peoples out of the shadows to highlight their influence and achievements. Forty-five entries span the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, offering an alternative history focusing on the names we arent familiar with, from the Hurrians to the Hephthalites, as well as the peoples whose names we know, such as the Philistines and the Vandals, but whose real significance has been obscured. Each entry charts the rise and fall of a lost people, and how their culture echoes through history into the present. Important ancient artefacts are illustrated throughout and fifty specially drawn maps help orientate the reader within this tumultuous period of history. Philip Matyszak brings to life the rich diversity of the peoples founding cities, inventing alphabets and battling each other in the ancient world, and explores how and why they came to be forgotten.

Grant offers a study of the primary historians of Greece and Rome, discussing the works and methods of the founders of the historical discipline. These philosophers studied history as a moral discipline that bears meaningfully not only on the past but on future human conduct.