Few books of scholarship have held up so well to public attention over the last two hundred years. At a time when the materials for this history were scant, a mind as great as Gibbon's was able to absorb everything known on the subject and dominate it with his historical erudition and inimitable literary style. The first volume, highly acclaimed on publication, was quickly reprinted in spite of an ambitious first print-run of 1000 copies. Careless proofreading meant numerous errors had to be rectified in later editions. It was not until the third edition, reprinted here, that the layout was improved and the footnotes appeared at the foot of each page and chapter numbers were placed in the margins.

The Student's Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.

Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity

In fourth-century Greece (BCE), the debate over the nature of philosophy generated a novel claim: that the highest form of wisdom is theoria, the rational 'vision' of metaphysical truths (the 'spectator theory of knowledge'). This 2004 book offers an original analysis of the construction of 'theoretical' philosophy in fourth-century Greece. In the effort to conceptualise and legitimise theoretical philosophy, the philosophers turned to a venerable cultural practice: theoria (state pilgrimage). In this practice, an individual journeyed abroad as an official witness of sacralized spectacles. This book examines the philosophic appropriation and transformation of theoria, and analyses the competing conceptions of theoretical wisdom in fourth-century philosophy. By tracing the link between traditional and philosophic theoria, this book locates the creation of theoretical philosophy in its historical context, analysing theoria as a cultural and an intellectual practice. It develops a new, interdisciplinary approach, drawing on philosophy, history and literary studies.

Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context

For the Greeks and Romans, the Earth's furthest perimeter was a realm radically different from what they perceived as central and human. The alien qualities of these "edges of the Earth" became the basis of a literary tradition that endured throughout antiquity and into the Renaissance, despite the growing challenges of emerging scientific perspectives. This survey reveals that the Greeks, and to a somewhat lesser extent the Romans, saw geography not as a branch of physical science but as an important literary genre. The tradition described by Romm emerged in Homer and Hestiod, whose imaginative geography defined the Earth by giving it boundaries - the river Ocean, the Pillars of Heracles, and other mythical forms of circumscription. Other Greek authors developed exotic literary landscapes by filling these "limits" with idealized human societies and bizarre or monstrous animal life, while the Romans adapted the concept of perimeters to goals of imperial conquest. As Hellenistic and Roman voyages of exploration failed to confirm the fancied landscapes, the tradition came to be seen as one in which invented narratives had masqueraded as truths. As a result, some of late antiquity's most daring innovations seized on geography as a theme for prose fiction, and the explorer's log became an important antecedent of the early modern novel.

"The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought. Geography, Exploration and Fiction", James S. Romm, New Jersey 1992 : [recenzja] / Izabela Żbikowska.

Through criticism and analysis of ancient traditions, Kahn reconstructs the pattern of Anaximander's thought using historical methods akin to the reconstructive techniques of comparative linguists.

Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology.

The study of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura is in important respects similar to that of Roman comedy: in both we are concerned with the relationship of a Latin text to a Greek background, and in both we are regularly in the illogical position of having to reconstruct that background from the Latin text. One is tempted to add that in both areas dogmatic assertion, a lack of humility in the face of uncertainty and a patronising unwillingness to concede sophistication to anything Latin have too long held the day. Clay's book is an attempt to redress the balance for Lucretius and his Epicurean background. Its message is that the De Rerum Natura is an Epicurean work, but one which fully recasts and refashions the Epicurean system for the Roman audience; its structure and approach are Lucretius' own, the re-presentation of a deep knowledge of the philosophy rather than the copying of a single source. Since the rest of this review will concentrate on disagreements and criticisms, we should say right away that this is a proposition with which we are in complete agreement. Anyone who reads C.'s book will come away with a picture of the De Rerum Natura as a sophisticated philosophical poem; which it is. The experience of reading will not be an easy one however. C. writes elegantly and precisely in the rather full 18th century style which is typical of American academic prose, but he is extremely allusive. On the surface he assumes no deep acquaintance with Lucretius or Epicurus in his reader, but to take only one instance, the reader who comes upon 'physiology' used casually in the sense of physiologia will be puzzled if he has not read his Letter to Herodotus. Rather complexity than banality, but it will take a determined student to persevere with the reading, particularly as the book is not one which lends itself to being read piecemeal. This is unfortunate, as in many ways it is an excellent introduction to the De Rerum Natura.

Lucretius and Epicurus

The discovery of the Mnesiepes inscription on Paros revealed the third century be belief that the young Archilochos was transformed into a poet by an encounter with the Muses It also revealed that the poet had become the object of a cult by his fellow islanders as he was transformed in death to a local hero This is the first attempt to trace the history of this cult from the late sixth century be to the third century ad The author also integrates the iconography of the poet into the history of this cult, and addresses for the first time the larger phenomenon of the cult of poets in the Greek states This study provides appendices giving sources of information for these cults, including the text of the Mnesiepes inscription It is illustrated by in-text figures and plates

Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis

The Athenian Garden

Philodemus: On Frank Criticism

"Paradosis and Survival" presents Diskin Clay's fifteen essays devoted to recovering the three main phases of Epicureanism in antiquity: the origin in the first generation of the school in Athens; its spread to Italy in the first century b.c.e.; and its movement to Lycia in the second century c.e. Clay recognizes the subtle intertwining of philosophy and lifestyle, and he makes use of papyri and inscriptions as well as familiar philosophical texts to illuminate both.The first series of essays concentrates on the mechanisms Epicurus devised to assure the survival of the philosophy beyond its Athenian roots. Clay presents social history on an equal footing with doctrine, and offers for the first time evidence for hero cults among philosophers who believed that the soul died with the body. The second set of essays concentrates Epicureanism in the age of Cicero, Philodemus, and Lucretius. In the four essays on "De Rerum Natura," Lucretius is viewed not as a transparency through which we can view the Greek of Epicurus, but a Roman philosopher in control of both doctrine and rhetoric. The book concludes with the study of the philosophy in Oenoanda, Lycia, in which the author brilliantly situates post-1968 discoveries from Oenoanda and the Villa de Papiri in Herculaneum in the context of the second-century mountain city.This study of Epicureanism as a social movement will be of interest to students of ancient philosophy and the philosophy of early modern Europe, when Epicureanism was revived. In addition, scholars of the New Testament will find parallels to the rise and spread of Christianity.Diskin Clay is the R. J. R. Nabisco Distinguished Professor of Classical Studies, Duke University.

Paradosis and Survival: Three Chapters in the History of Epicurean Philosophy

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