Written by eminent classical scholar Michael Grant. The Ancient Mediterranean is a wonderfully revealing, unusually comprehensive history of all the peoples who lived around the Mediterranean from about 15,000 B.C. to the time of Constantine (306-337 A.D.). Many volumes, including Professor Grant's own previous works, trace the histories of the great civilizations of Greece and Rome. But this unique work looks at the influences and cultures of the entire region, including Egypt, Israel, Crete, Carthage, Ionia and the Eastern colonies. Syria, and the Etruscans, as well as the Greek and Roman states. Drawing on archaeology, geography, anthropology, and economics. Professor Grant shows how the great Oriental civilizations—Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia—originated attitudes and institutions ultimately passed on to the West. He describes the effect on the people and their achievements of the long, irregular coastline, the mountainous terrain surrounding small fertile plains, the typical plant life of olive and grape, and the rapidly changing weather. Further, he investigates how the demographic factors around this deep and stormy sea caused or influenced the great periods of ancient history, such as that of fifth-century Athens and of Rome in the first century A.D. Appealing and fascinating reading, this impeccably researched history brings a fresh perspective to understanding our ancient heritage.

Cultural identity in the classical world is explored from a variety of angles.

Publisher description

A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean presents a comprehensive collection of essays contributed by Classical Studies scholars that explore questions relating to ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world. Covers topics of ethnicity in civilizations ranging from ancient Egypt and Israel, to Greece and Rome, and into Late Antiquity Features cutting-edge research on ethnicity relating to Philistine, Etruscan, and Phoenician identities Reveals the explicit relationships between ancient and modern ethnicities Introduces an interpretation of ethnicity as an active component of social identity Represents a fundamental questioning of formally accepted and fixed categories in the field

How ancient Mediterranean trade thrived through state institutions From around 700 BCE until the first centuries CE, the Mediterranean enjoyed steady economic growth through trade, reaching a level not to be regained until the early modern era. This process of growth coincided with a process of state formation, culminating in the largest state the ancient Mediterranean would ever know, the Roman Empire. Subsequent economic decline coincided with state disintegration. How are the two processes related? In Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean, Taco Terpstra investigates how the organizational structure of trade benefited from state institutions. Although enforcement typically depended on private actors, traders could utilize a public infrastructure, which included not only courts and legal frameworks but also socially cohesive ideologies. Terpstra details how business practices emerged that were based on private order, yet took advantage of public institutions. Focusing on the activity of both private and public economic actors—from Greek city councilors and Ptolemaic officials to long-distance traders and Roman magistrates and financiers—Terpstra illuminates the complex relationship between economic development and state structures in the ancient Mediterranean.

This volume advances our understanding of early Christianity as a lived religion by approaching it through its rites, the emotions and affects surrounding those rites, and the material setting for the practice of them. The connections between emotions and ritual, between rites and their materiality, and between emotions and their physical manifestation in ancient Mediterranean culture have been inadequately explored as yet, especially with regard to early Christianity and its water and dining rites. Readers will find all three areas—ritual, emotion, and materiality—engaged in this exemplary interdisciplinary study, which provides fresh insights into early Christianity and its world. Ritual, Emotion, and Materiality in the Early Christian World will be of special interest to interdisciplinary-minded researchers, seminarians, and students who are attentive to theory and method, and those with an interest in the New Testament and earliest Christianity. It will also appeal to those working on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religion, emotion, and ritual from a comparative standpoint.

What was the ancient world like? Ancient sources tell us a great deal about the cultural patterns and values that prevailed in the Mediterranean of the biblical periods: how they constructed identity how they exercised control over groups, space, gender, and dress how they thought of friendship how they participated in social and economic exchange how ritual functioned and how kinship was constructed what healing practices, evil eye, and altered states of consciousness tell us about their sciences how they talked about each other behind their backs, and why The Ancient Mediterranean Social World makes the rich social context of the ancient Mediterranean available to readers through succinct introduction of key ideas, thoughtful selection of translated primary sources, and extensive cataloging of relevant primary sources. Zeba Crook brings together leading scholars to write on twenty different topics, from patronage to gender to loyalty to evil eye. Each chapter opens with an introduction to the topic, offers a short list of secondary sources, and an extensive list of primary sources. The passages in each chapter reflect the vast array of sources roughly from Homer to Augustine, including epigraphical, papyrological, literary, historical, philosophical, biblical, and dramatic texts. This authoritative volume serves as a ready reference for the novice and experienced scholar alike. Contributors: Alicia J. Batten, Giovanni B. Bazzana, Agnes Choi, Zeba A. Crook, John W. Daniels Jr., Dennis C. Duling, John H. Elliott, Amy Marie Fisher, Mischa Hooker, Emil A. Kramer, Jason T. Lamoreaux, Dietmar Neufeld, Jerome H. Neyrey, SJ, Douglas E. Oakman, Ronald D. Roberts, Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Colleen Shantz, Gary Stansell, Eric C. Stewart, Erin K. Vearncombe, and Ritva H. Williams.