In 80 A.D., ten-year-old Roman sleuth Flavia and her friends sail from Corinth to Rhodes to try to stop a mysterious man who is kidnapping children and selling them into slavery.
Henry Miller’s landmark travel book, now reissued in a new edition, is ready to be stuffed into any vagabond’s backpack. Like the ancient colossus that stood over the harbor of Rhodes, Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi stands as a seminal classic in travel literature. It has preceded the footsteps of prominent travel writers such as Pico Iyer and Rolf Potts. The book Miller would later cite as his favorite began with a young woman’s seductive description of Greece. Miller headed out with his friend Lawrence Durrell to explore the Grecian countryside: a flock of sheep nearly tramples the two as they lie naked on a beach; the Greek poet Katsmbalis, the “colossus” of Miller’s book, stirs every rooster within earshot of the Acropolis with his own loud crowing; cold hard-boiled eggs are warmed in a village’s single stove, and they stay in hotels that “have seen better days, but which have an aroma of the past.”
This study of the relationship between Cecil Rhodes and the Cape Afrikaners fills many gaps in his political biography. Previous biographers have rarely consulted the abundant Cape Afrikaner sources that this book refers to and which contribute to a better understanding of Rhodes' political career. Rhodes, who appeared on the political scene of the Cape Colony in the 1880s, played an important role in the shaping of the political outlook of the Cape Afrikaners during the last two decades of the century.
Cecil Rhodes 'lived only for his schemes and enjoyed life only as a cannon ball enjoys space, travelling to its aim blindly and spreading ruin on its way. He was a great man, no doubt - a man who rendered immense service to his country, but humanity is not much indebted to him.' The time is ripe for a new biography of Cecil Rhodes: the hero of imperialism needs to be seen with the perspective to examine the tremendous changes which have taken place since the British Empire was at its height. This major re-assessment deals with the man, rather than the politics - and shows Rhodes to be ruthless, energetic, idealistic, and very much a product of his time. We see him first as a far from amiable child, the son of a country vicar. As a youth he went to South Africa, where he made a fortune diamond mining. This fortune provided the means to pursue his political ambitions - a crazy dream to put as much red on the map as possible. In fact he only achieved what was to become Northern and Southern Rhodesia. His brutality to the native peoples of Africa, his financial chicanery, his involvement in the farcical Jameson Raid, his suppressed homosexuality, his ideas about racial superiority, and his exaggerated respect for an Oxford education which led to his most lasting memorial - the Rhodes Scholarships - are all covered in this frank biography.
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and all sorts of mysteries attaching to them, have intrigued people since the second century BCE. Why were these particular creations chosen and when? And why did the ancients want to draw up such a list in the first place? What were the technical and cultural factors involved in the creation and listing of the Wonders? The Seven Wonders still rival many of the phenomenal products of both nature and mankind in their size, majesty, and beauty. Six of them no longer stand, having been destroyed by natural disaster or by human intervention. From the Pyramids at Giza to the Colossus of Rhodes, from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, from the Temple of Ephesus to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have never ceased to fascinate down the ages.
The Macedonian Empire lasted only 36 years, beginning with Philip II's assumption of the throne in 359 B.C. and ending with the death of his son Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. In that span, the two leaders changed the map in the known world. Philip established new tactics that forever ended the highly stylized mode that had characterized Classic Greek warfare, and Alexander's superb leadership made the army an unstoppable force. This work first examines the 11 great armies and three great navies of the era, along with their operations and logistics. The primary focus is then on each campaign and significant battle fought by Philip or Alexander, detailing how the battles were fought, the tactics of the opposing armies, and how the Macedonians were able to triumph.
The Colossus of Rhodes is both the most famous and the least well-known monument of Ancient Greece. Numbered among the Seven Wonders of the World, this bronze statue of the god Helios, thirty-four metres in height, was created by the sculptor Chares of Lindos between the years 295 and 283 BC, only to be destroyed by an earthquake in 227 BC. The legends that have spread after its collapse seem so strange and contradictory that, from an archaeological point of view, it has become a minor and almost neglected object, which specialists in Greek sculpture barely mention in their work. In The Colossus of Rhodes, the first comprehensive examination of the Colossus, Nathan Badoud mobilises a large array of sources, ranging from antiquity to the present day, proposing an intellectual excavation through the layers of the literary, artistic, and scientific tradition to discover the historical Colossus. It envisages the statue in its religious, political, and topographical contexts, exploring its function, its technique, its appearance, its meaning, and its location. Badoud reconsiders the beginnings of the Hellenistic world, marked by the emergence of Rhodes as an imperial power, embodied by the Colossus.