Hellenistic Constructs

Essays in Culture, History, and Historiography

Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, Erich S. Gruen, Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, Erich S. Gruen

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520206762
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520918337
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia antica

The Hellenistic period (approximately the last three centuries B.C.), with its cultural complexities and enduring legacies, retains a lasting fascination today. Reflecting the vigor and productivity of scholarship directed at this period in the past decade, this collection of original essays is a wide-ranging exploration of current discoveries and questions. The twelve essays emphasize the cultural interaction of Greek and non-Greek societies in the Hellenistic period, in contrast to more conventional focuses on politics, society, or economy. The result of original research by some of the leading scholars in Hellenistic history and culture, this volume is an exemplary illustration of the cultural richness of this period. Paul Cartledge's introduction contains an illuminating introductory overview of current trends in Hellenistic scholarship. The essays themselves range over broad questions of comparative historiography, literature, religion, and the roles of Athens, Rome, and the Jews within the context of the Hellenistic world. The volume is dedicated to Frank Walbank and includes an updated bibliography of his work which has been essential to our understanding of the Hellenistic period.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• Introduction
• ONE. The Heroic Past in a Hellenistic Present
• TWO. “These fragments have I shored against my ruins”: Apollonios Rhodios and the Social Revalidation of Myth for a New Age
• THREE. Fact and Fiction: Jewish Legends in a Hellenistic Context
• FOUR. Hellenistic History in a Near Eastern Perspective: The Book of Daniel
• FIVE. The Hellenistic World and Roman Political Patronage
• SIX. Athens between Rome and the Kings: 229/8 to 129 B.C.
• SEVEN. Poseidonios and Athenion: A Study in Hellenistic Historiography
• EIGHT. The Middle Stoics and Slavery
• NINE. Physis and Nomos: Polybius, the Romans, and Cato the Elder
• TEN. The Court Society of the Hellenistic Age
• ELEVEN. Decolonizing Ptolemaic Egypt
• TWELVE. The Infrastructure of Splendour: Census and Taxes in Ptolemaic Egypt
• PUBLICATIONS OF F. W. WALBANK
• GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX