This is the first systematic study of Greek classicism, a crucial element of Graeco-Roman culture under Augustus, from the perspective of cultural identity: what vision of the world and their own role in it motivated Greek and Roman intellectuals to commit themselves to reliving the classical Greek past in Augustan Rome? This book will be of interest to scholars working on late Hellenistic and Early Imperial Greek and Roman literature and culture, the Second Sophistic, and ancient cultural identity, as well as intellectual historians of Western thought. All Greek and Latin is translated.

So far, the critical writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus have mainly attracted interest from historians of ancient linguistics. The Ideology of Classicism proposes a novel approach to Dionysius’ œuvre as a whole by providing the first systematic study of Greek classicism from the perspective of cultural identity. Drawing on cultural anthropology and Social Identity Theory, Wiater explores the world-view bound up with classicist criticism. Only from within this ideological framework can we understand why Greek and Roman intellectuals in Augustan Rome strove to speak and write like Demosthenes, Lysias, and Isocrates. Topics addressed by this study include Dionysius’ view of the classical past; mimesis and the aesthetics of reading; language and identity; Dionysius’ view of the Romans, their power and the role of Greek culture within it; Greek classicism and the contemporary controversy about Roman identity among Roman intellectuals; the self-image as Greek intellectuals in the Roman empire of Dionysius and his addressees; the dialogic design of Dionysius’ essays and how it implements a sense of elitism and distinction; Dionysius’ attitudes towards communities competing with him for leadership in rhetorical education and criticism, such as the Peripatetics and Stoics.

Investigates the construction of democratic ideology in Classical Athens through a study of the social memory of Athens' mythical pastProposes a novel approach to Athenian democratic ideology that opens new frontiers of investigation in ancient history and the social sciencesThe introduction clearly sets out the aims and methodology of the book and its place within the scholarship in ancient history and the social sciencesFour case studies illuminate the impact of Athenian democratic institutions on ideology, myth, and the use of social memoryOffers a long-awaited new interpretation of the Athenian funeral oration for the war deadOffers clear overviews of Athenian democratic institutions (e.g., Assembly, Council, lawcourts) based on the most recent scholarshipProvides up-to-date overviews of several values in Greek thought (e.g., charis, hybris, eugeneia)The debate on Athenian democratic ideology has long been polarised around two extremes. A Marxist tradition views ideology as a cover-up for Athens' internal divisions. Another tradition, sometimes referred to as culturalist, interprets it neutrally as the fixed set of ideas shared by the members of the Athenian community. Matteo Barbato addresses this dichotomy by providing a unitary approach to Athenian democratic ideology. Analysing four different myths from the perspective of the New Institutionalism, he demonstrates that Athenian democratic ideology was a fluid set of ideas, values and beliefs shared by the Athenians as a result of a constant ideological practice influenced by the institutions of the democracy. He shows that this process entailed the active participation of both the mass and the elite and enabled the Athenians to produce multiple and compatible ideas about their community and its mythical past.

The angry emotions, and the problems they presented, were an ancient Greek preoccupation from Homer to late antiquity. From the first lines of the Iliad to the church fathers of the fourth century A.D., the control or elimination of rage was an obsessive concern. From the Greek world it passed to the Romans. Drawing on a wide range of ancient texts, and on recent work in anthropology and psychology, Restraining Rage explains the rise and persistence of this concern. W. V. Harris shows that the discourse of anger-control was of crucial importance in several different spheres, in politics--both republican and monarchical--in the family, and in the slave economy. He suggests that it played a special role in maintaining male domination over women. He explores the working out of these themes in Attic tragedy, in the great Greek historians, in Aristotle and the Hellenistic philosophers, and in many other kinds of texts. From the time of Plato onward, educated Greeks developed a strong conscious interest in their own psychic health. Emotional control was part of this. Harris offers a new theory to explain this interest, and a history of the anger-therapy that derived from it. He ends by suggesting some contemporary lessons that can be drawn from the Greek and Roman experience.

Through an examination of university curricula and the writings of classical scholars, Caroline Winterer shows how classics was transformed from a narrow, language-based subject to a broader study of civilization. Building on German Romantic ideals of self-formation, nineteenth-century classicists argued that Americans could avoid modernity's pitfalls of materialism and industrialization by immersing themselves in the spirit of classical antiquity. Classicists pursued this vision by advocating a new pedagogy that shifted the emphasis from Latin to Greek texts.

Women and the Ideology of Political Exclusion explores the origin and evolution of the political ideology that has kept women away from centers of political power – from the birth of democracy in ancient Athens to the modern era. In this period of 2500 years, two parallel tracks advanced: while male authority tried to construct an ideology that justified women’s incompatibility with the political organization of the state, women attempted to resist their exclusion and thwart arguments about their inferiority. Although the issue of women’s status has been studied in detail in specific eras, this interdisciplinary collection extends the boundaries of the discussion. Drawing on a wide range of literary and historical sources, including Herodotus’ Histories, Plato’s Laws, María de San José’s Oaxaca Manuscript, and the work of Émilie Du Châtelet, Mary Boykin Chesnut, and Virginia Woolf, the chapters here reveal the various manifestations of the female-inferiority construct. Such an extensive overview of this historical trajectory promotes a deeper understanding of its causes, permutations, and persistence. Women may have made great gains toward political power, but they continue to encounter invisible barriers, raised by traditional stereotypes, that block their path to success. Women and the Ideology of Political Exclusion aims to make these barriers visible, raising awareness about the longevity and tenacity of arguments, the roots of which reach classical antiquity.

Brings together political theory, classical history, and ancient philosophy in order to reinterpret courage as a specifically democratic value, linked to ideals such as freedom, equality, and rationality, and with implications for the conduct of war, gender relations, and citizens' self-image as democrats.