The Greek Way of Death

The Greek Way of Death PDF Author: Robert Garland
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801487460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
"Death for the Greeks was not an instantaneous event, rather a process or passage which required strenuous efforts on the part of the living to ensure that the dead achieved full and final transfer to the next world. The central questions which this book attempts to answer are: the extent to which death was a preoccupying concern among the Greeks; the feelings with which the individual may have anticipated his death; the nature of the bonds between the living and the dead; and the light shed by burial practices upon characteristic elements of Greek society. While the beliefs of ordinary Greeks about their ordinary dead form the book's central focus, there is also a chapter on 'special dead' - the unburied, murderers and their victims, children, and suicides."--BOOK JACKET.

The Greek Way of Death

The Greek Way of Death PDF Author: Robert Garland
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801487460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
"Death for the Greeks was not an instantaneous event, rather a process or passage which required strenuous efforts on the part of the living to ensure that the dead achieved full and final transfer to the next world. The central questions which this book attempts to answer are: the extent to which death was a preoccupying concern among the Greeks; the feelings with which the individual may have anticipated his death; the nature of the bonds between the living and the dead; and the light shed by burial practices upon characteristic elements of Greek society. While the beliefs of ordinary Greeks about their ordinary dead form the book's central focus, there is also a chapter on 'special dead' - the unburied, murderers and their victims, children, and suicides."--BOOK JACKET.

The Greek Way

The Greek Way PDF Author: Edith Hamilton
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393081862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Edith Hamilton buoyantly captures the spirit and achievements of the Greek civilization for our modern world. In The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton captures with "Homeric power and simplicity" (New York Times) the spirit of the golden age of Greece in the fifth century BC, the time of its highest achievements. She explores the Greek aesthetics of sculpture and writing and the lack of ornamentation in both. She examines the works of Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides, among others; the philosophy of Socrates and Plato’s role in preserving it; the historical accounts by Herodotus and Thucydides on the Greek wars with Persia and Sparta and by Xenophon on civilized living.

Death in the Greek World

Death in the Greek World PDF Author: Maria Serena Mirto
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806141879
Category : Death in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Examines ancient Greek conceptions of death and the afterlife In our contemporary Western society, death has become taboo. Despite its inevitability, we focus on maintaining youthfulness and well-being, while fearing death's intrusion in our daily activities. In contrast, observes Maria Serena Mirto, the ancient Greeks embraced death more openly and effectively, developing a variety of rituals to help them grieve the dead and, in the process, alleviate anxiety and suffering. In this fascinating book, Mirto examines conceptions of death and the afterlife in the ancient Greek world, revealing few similarities-and many differences-between ancient and modern ways of approaching death. Exploring the cultural and religious foundations underlying Greek burial rites and customs, Mirto traces the evolution of these practices during the archaic and classical periods. She explains the relationship between the living and the dead as reflected in grave markers, epitaphs, and burial offerings and discusses the social and political dimensions of burial and lamentation. She also describes shifting beliefs about life after death, showing how concepts of immortality, depicted so memorably in Homer's epics, began to change during the classical period. Death in the Greek World straddles the boundary between literary and religious imagination and synthesizes observations from archaeology, visual art, philosophy, politics, and law. The author places particular emphasis on Homer's epics, the first literary testimony of an understanding of death in ancient Greece. And because these stories are still so central to Western culture, her discussion casts new light on elements we thought we had already understood. Originally written and published in Italian, this English-language translation of Death in the Greek World includes the most recent scholarship on newly discovered texts and objects, and engages the latest theoretical perspectives on the gendered roles of men and women as agents of mourning. The volume also features a new section dealing with hero cults and a new appendix outlining fundamental developments in modern studies of death in the ancient Greek world. Volume 44 in the Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture Maria Serena Mirto is Associate Professor of Classical Philology, Department of Classics, University of Pisa, Italy. A. M. Osborne holds an MA in Modern and Medieval Languages from the University of Cambridge, and an MA with distinction in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia. A resident of the United Kingdom, she currently translates both academic and literary texts.

The Greek Way of Life

The Greek Way of Life PDF Author: Robert Garland
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
ISBN: 9780715623770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Greek Way of Life is a survey of the major life experiences which constituted the social reality of classical Greece, broken down into the general topics of conception and pregnancy, birth, childhood, coming of age, early adulthood, and elders and the elderly. What emerges is a conception of the human being as a social animal par excellence whose nature was largely realised in the attainment of paradigmatic social roles: military service for men and childbearing for women. Among the subtopics are Greek medical ideas, the roles of women and children, marriage, care of the elderly, and the role of religious ideas. An engaging narrative and a useful sourcebook, this will appeal to both general readers and scholars.

Wandering Greeks

Wandering Greeks PDF Author: Robert Garland
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069117380X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Most classical authors and modern historians depict the ancient Greek world as essentially stable and even static, once the so-called colonization movement came to an end. But Robert Garland argues that the Greeks were highly mobile, that their movement was essential to the survival, success, and sheer sustainability of their society, and that this wandering became a defining characteristic of their culture. Addressing a neglected but essential subject, Wandering Greeks focuses on the diaspora of tens of thousands of people between about 700 and 325 BCE, demonstrating the degree to which Greeks were liable to be forced to leave their homes due to political upheaval, oppression, poverty, warfare, or simply a desire to better themselves. Attempting to enter into the mind-set of these wanderers, the book provides an insightful and sympathetic account of what it meant for ancient Greeks to part from everyone and everything they held dear, to start a new life elsewhere—or even to become homeless, living on the open road or on the high seas with no end to their journey in sight. Each chapter identifies a specific kind of "wanderer," including the overseas settler, the deportee, the evacuee, the asylum-seeker, the fugitive, the economic migrant, and the itinerant, and the book also addresses repatriation and the idea of the "portable polis." The result is a vivid and unique portrait of ancient Greece as a culture of displaced persons.

The Greek Way of Life

The Greek Way of Life PDF Author: Robert Garland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This engrossing book is the first investigation of the life cycle of the ancient Greeks from the moment of conception to the onset of old age. Robert Garland draws on a wealth of evidence, including Greek drama and poetry, philosophical works, historical texts, medical tracts, inscriptions, and vase painting. Garland seeks to establish not only what the ancient Greeks did at various ages, but how their social persona was shaped in the process of aging. He investigates their attitudes towards reproduction, contraception, sterility, abortion, childbirth, child-rearing, puberty, generational conflict, marriage and its dissolution, and euthanasia. Garland explores such questions as to what extent the age-classes identified by the Greeks conform to actual changes in human physical, cognitive, and emotional qualities, and the relationship of age-classification to sex and social class. The author also surveys varying systems of age-categorization in different Greek states and considers whether the function of age-categorization as a means of organizing Greek society evolved over time. "The Greek Way of Life" will appeal to anyone with an interest in the ancient world. -- From publisher's description.

The Greek Way

The Greek Way PDF Author: Edith Hamilton
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Greek Way" by Edith Hamilton. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife

The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife PDF Author: Jan N. Bremmer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134768222
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Belief in the afterlife is still very much alive in Western civilisation, even though the truth of its existence is no longer universally accepted. Surprisingly, however, heaven, hell and the immortal soul were all ideas which arrived relatively late in the ancient world. Originally Greece and Israel - the cultures that gave us Christianity - had only the vaguest ideas of an afterlife. So where did these concepts come from and why did they develop? In this fascinating, learned, but highly readable book, Jan N. Bremmer - one of the foremost authorities on ancient religion - takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife, from the ancient Greeks to the modern near-death experience.

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours

The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours PDF Author: Gregory Nagy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674244192
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized. “Fascinating, often ingenious... A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.” —Times Literary Supplement “Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and...against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature... [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.” —Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

Who Killed Homer?

Who Killed Homer? PDF Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1893554260
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
With advice and informative readings of the great Greek texts, this title shows how we might save classics and the Greeks. It is suitable for those who agree that knowledge of classics acquaints us with the beauty and perils of our own culture.