Thales of Miletus, in the 6th century BCE, asserted that “everything is full of gods”. In his view, even inanimate things were in fact animate. His vision of the world, taken up by Plato, implies the presence of an infinite number of divinities in the kosmos, which is also inhabited by human beings. The complexity […]
Read MoreAnyone who has ever watched the Six Nations in Rugby or the World Cup in Football probably is familiar with the sentiment of beating a neighbouring country or rival brings among the faithful. What these competitions show is how overcoming a detested neighbour in head-to-head contests can provide incomparable feelings of victory. Is this feeling […]
Read MoreBy exploring how athletic champions wanted their victories to be understood, “Hellenistic Athletes” sheds new light on the relationship of sport, society and politics in the Greek world. Read the full blog post by author Sebastian Scharff: A Gateway to the Mindsets of Greek Athletes The exclusion of Russian athletes from athletic contests is a […]
Read MoreFrench people are often surprised that foreigners come to France to study ancient Greece. It is easy for them to understand why foreign philosophers might go there. It is a matter of genuine national pride that ‘French theory’ conquered the Anglophone world in the 1980s. But few French realise that among foreign historians of ancient […]
Read MoreHow modern is the concept of a posthuman, mechanical body which extends beyond its flesh and skin and interacts with inorganic material to the extent of blurring the boundaries between its deep nature and that of the inanimate objects and technological artefacts that surround it? Can the function of a human body be fully explained […]
Read MoreWhat are the effects of empire-building, and how can we study them? With Making the Middle Republic, my two co-editors and I present a collection of papers emphasizing the importance of the fourth and third centuries BCE to the broader development of Republican Rome and Italy. This period saw the earliest phases of Roman imperial […]
Read MoreThe young Augustine was repelled by the Gospels. Or so he says, at least, in a passage from the Confessions (3.5.9) in which he reflects on his former, ‘inflated pride’. The student of rhetoric in love with Latin literature struggled to accept a written style that he perceived as ‘unworthy’ of his Marcus Tully (Cicero). […]
Read MoreThe Roman Empire was constantly in motion. People, products, and ideas crisscrossed the Mediterranean at what must have seemed like lightning speed. One of these ideas was the worship of the Egyptian gods Isis and Sarapis, which first appeared in Greece in the late 4th century BCE. By the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian […]
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