History : Ancient

Introduces students to the chief disciplines, methods, and sources employed in "doing" ancient history. This book aims to give them a sense of the nature of evidence and its use in the reconstruction of the past. It also encourages them to consider the differences between their own experience of ancient sources - books, inscriptions, and coins. more...

Price: $64.95

John Sassoon’s study of the written laws of four thousand years ago puts paid to the belief that the most ancient laws were merely arbitrary and tyrannical. On the contrary, the earliest legal systems honestly tried to get to the truth, do justice to individuals, and preserve civil order. They used the death penalty surprisingly seldom, and then more because society had been threatened than an individual killed. Some of the surviving law codes are originals, others near-contemporary copies. Together they preserve a partial but vivid picture of life in the early cites. This occupies more than half the book. Comparison of ancient with modern principles occupies the remainder and is bound to be controversial; but it is important as well as fascinating. The first act of writing laws diminished the discretion of the judges and foretold a limit on individual justice. Some political principles such as uniformity of treatment or individual freedom have, when carried to extremes, produced crises in modern legal systems world wide. more...

Price: $29.95

Traces the history of Messenian ethnicity from the archaic period to the Roman Empire. more...

Price: $96.00

Tyrants and tyranny are more than the antithesis of democracy and the mark of political failure: they are a dynamic response to social and political pressures. This book examines the autocratic rulers and dynasties of classical Greece and Rome and the changing concepts of tyranny in political thought and culture. It brings together historians, political theorists and philosophers, all offering new perspectives on the autocratic governments of the ancient world. The volume is divided into four parts. Part I looks at the ways in which the term 'tyranny' was used and understood, and the kinds of individual who were called tyrants. Part II focuses on the genesis of tyranny and the social and political circumstances in which tyrants arose. The chapters in Part III examine the presentation of tyrants by themselves and in literature and history. Part IV discusses the achievements of episodic tyranny within the non-autocratic regimes of Sparta and Rome and of autocratic regimes in Persia and the western Mediterranean world. more...

Price: $129.35

' This new journal from Brill makes many important promises to all scholars interested in the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East and the interactions between them. ... By opening a regular avenue for cooperation and conversation among scholars from many disciplines and countries, AWE has a real potential for fulfilling the promises it makes. ‘// BMCR , 2003. more...

Price: $136.00