Interpreting the monuments of Athens in light of literature, R. E. Wycherley brings before us the city the ancients knew. Philosophers, statesmen, travelers, dramatists, poets, private citizens—the words of all these suggest how the city looked at various periods, how its monuments came to be built, and how they served the people in daily life. Professor Wycherley concentrates on the classical period, illustrating his work with plans, reconstructions, and photographs. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Most visitors to the Acropolis in Athens pause to wonder how the large marble pieces were hauled up the sacred mount. In fact, even with today's far more advanced construction equipment, it would be impossible to match the precision with which the ancient builders built the imposing structures of the Parthenon in just eight years! The Stones of the Parthenon is a riveting investigation of the technological achievements of the ancient Greeks. This highly readable account explains how an 11-ton Doric column capital was quarried and transported to Athens. The author's intricate line drawings clearly illustrate the methods and tools employed in the accomplishment of this feat of ancient craftsmanship.
In Horos, Thea Potter explores the complex relationship between classical philosophy and the ‘horos’, a stone that Athenians erected to mark the boundaries of their marketplace, their gravestones, their roads and their private property. Potter weaves this history into a meditation on the ancient philosophical concept of horos, the foundational project of determination and definition, arguing that it is central to the development of classical philosophy and the marketplace. Horos challenges many significant interpretations of ancient thought. With nuance and insight, Potter combines the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer and archaic Greek inscriptions with the twentieth-century continental philosophy of Heidegger, Derrida and Walter Benjamin. The result is a powerful study of the theme of boundaries in classical Athenian society as evidenced by boundary stones, law and exchange, ontology, insurgency and occupation. The innovative book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of ancient Greek social history, philosophy, and literature, as well as to the general reader who is curious to know more about classical life and philosophy.
This book examines the various ways ancient Athenians purposefully reused stone artifacts, objects, and buildings in order to shape their own and their descendants' collective ideas about their community's past and its bearing on the present and future. The book introduces the concept of "upcycling" to refer to this intentionally meaningful reuse, where evidence is preserved of an intentionality behind the decision to re-employ a particular object in a particular new context, often with implications for the shared memory of a group. Utilizing archaeological, literary, and epigraphic evidence, this investigation connects seemingly disparate cases of upcycling over eight centuries of Athenian history, treating the city as a continuously evolving cultural community. In establishin g upcycling as a distinct phenomenon of intentionally meaningful reuse, this study offers a process- and agency-focused alternative to the traditional discourses on spolia and reuse, while also making a substantial contribution to the growing field of memory studies by identifying a crucial component within the overall "work of memory" within a community. Through an original interdisciplinary approach, the book illuminates a vital practice through which Athenians shaped social memory in the physical realm, literally building their history into their city.
The publication of "Theophrastus on Stones" is without question an important event for scholars and students interested in the history of pure and applied science. By common consent one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers and naturalists, Theophrastus is still a highly significant figure in the development of mineralogy and other scientific and technological areas, yet no modern annotated translation of his treatise "On Stones" has hitherto been available. It has been more than two hundred years since the first English translation by John Hill appeared. French and German translations have been published within the last fifty years as parts of other works, but they contain neither text nor commentary. This book, which includes the original text, an English translation, and a commentary, gives the reader-with or without a knowledge of Greek-an invaluable interpretation of the technical aspects of the treatise and the rationale of the processes described in it. It will have a wide appeal not merely for the classical scholar but for a larger public whose interests lie in such scientific fields as chemistry, archaeology, mineralogy, and geology. Earle R. Caley and John F. C. Richards have brought to completion a book which is a distinguished addition to scientific and classical literature. Earle Radcliffe Caley, a native of Ohio, received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Ohio State. From 1928 to 1942 he taught at Princeton University. On several occasions he served as a chemist for the excavation of the Agora at Athens, Greece. Since 1946 he has been on the faculty of Ohio State's Department of Chemistry. Professor Caley has written on various applications of chemistry to archaeology. For certain articles in this special field, he received the Lewis Prize of the American Philosophical Society in 1940 and a citation from the American Classical League in 1954. John Francis Chatterton Richards, author of various publications on classical literature, was graduated B.A. at Oxford in 1921 and M.A. in 1927. He began teaching at Dartmouth College in 1927. From 1930 to 1936 he was Instructor and Tutor at Harvard University, from which he received the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees. He has taught classics at the University of Rochester, and, since 1939, has been in the Department of Classics at Columbia University.
Schliemann's excavation is but the opening chapter in this exciting story of what modern science has revealed about the ancient cultures of the Aegeans and Grecians. It is a story that begins with the potsherds of Neolithic villages and climaxes in the glories of Lyric, Classical and Hellenistic Greece. Among its fascinating events is Ventris' deciphering of the archaic Linear B script, a breakthrough which revealed the secrets of the fabulous Minoan civlization. Wedding the complex techniques of such archaeological methods as the carbon-14 dating of artifacts to an astonishingly complete cultural history of man in Greece, the author has produced a lavishly illustrated study that will interest nonprofessionals as much as archaeologists, historians, travelers and students of the fine arts.
In unraveling the long-hidden issues of the most famous free speech case of all time, noted author I.F. Stone ranges far and wide over Roman as well as Greek history to present an engaging and rewarding introduction to classical antiquity and its relevance to society today. The New York Times called this national best-seller an "intellectual thriller."
A general introduction to the history and major monuments of ancient Athens from earliest times to the 6th century AD. Divided into two sections, the first providing a basic narrative history, the second focusing on individual sites. Neither section is in-depth although there are plenty of illustrations and references to further reading.
