The Variae of Cassiodorus have long been valued as an epistolary collection offering a window into political and cultural life in a so-called barbarian successor state in sixth-century Italy. However, this study is the first to treat them as more than an assemblage of individual case studies and to analyse the collection's wider historical context. M. Shane Bjornlie highlights the insights the Variae provide into early medieval political, ecclesiastical, fiscal and legal affairs and the influence of the political and military turbulence of Justinian's reconquest of Italy and of political and cultural exchanges between Italy and Constantinople. The book also explores how Cassiodorus revised, updated and assembled the Variae for publication and what this reveals about his motives for publishing an epistolary record and for his own political life at a crucial period of transformation for the Roman world.

A Reference Grammar of French is a lively, wide-ranging and original handbook on the structure of the French language. It includes new information on register, pronunciation, gender, number, foreign words (Latin, Arabic, English, Spanish, Italian), adjectives and past participles used as nouns, texting, word order, frequency of occurrence of words, and usage with all geographical names. Examples come not only from France, but also from Quebec, Belgium and Switzerland. Readers will appreciate the initial passages illustrating the grammatical features of a given chapter. Also included is a user-friendly introduction to the French language, from its Latin origins to modern times. A full glossary explains any terms that might confuse the less experienced reader, and the index leads the student through the detailed labyrinth of grammatical features. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for students and teachers who want to perfect their knowledge of all aspects of French grammar.

Review
'... the book is never dull.' Minerva 'The possibility of exploring interpretations of the past within the past is an exciting one, and Alcock's book provides a welcome call for more intensive exploration of this theme within Greek archaeology, a field in which (with a few notable exceptions) its potential has not been sufficiently realised ... Overall, this volume, written in an engaging and accessible style, constitutes an inspiring introduction to an intriguing subject.' The Anglo-Hellenic Review '... pioneering and fascinating study.' Journal of Hellenic Studies 'Alcock offers an insightful study of that dynamic relationship between monument and landscape and encourages students of antiquity to recontextualise the archaeological evidence of the past in the past. All historians, not just landscape historians, should read this book.' Landscape History
Review
"[T]his important book, whose open-minded approach eschews glib labels and thus gives plenty of space for the imaginative interpretations essential to the theme, is relevant for cultural and political history...[Alcock] writes with confidence and authority to suggest new and diverse ways to approach what was surely an important part of the ancient world." Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"Alcock challenges us to see that people meander and move through a world populated with buildings and texts that speak, in a way, to one another, and to the pedestrians wandering among them. Don't forget to listen for the rhetoric of the landscape within the city and the rhetoric of the city within the empire. Alcock encourages us to put our ear to the very rocky ground, listening for what are considered usable memories, pasts convenient for present appropriation." - Laura Nasrallah, Harvard Divinity School

Published to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the first book to be printed in Cambridge by John Siberch in 1521, this book traces the development of the Press over four centuries. S.C. Roberts, who became Secretary to the Press Syndicate in 1922, blends archival research with an anecdotal style to produce this informative account. Appendices list the university printers up to 1921, including most famously Thomas Thomas, John Legate, Thomas Buck and John Baskerville, and the books published in each year between 1521 and 1750 by authors such as Erasmus, George Herbert, John Donne, John Milton, Isaac Newton and Thomas Browne. Aimed at the general reader, this lively account of the Press' major achievements is illustrated with a number of portraits and historical documents and remains a useful introduction to the history of the oldest publishing house in the world.

This is a definitive history of Cambridge University Press, the oldest press in the world. The origins of the modern University Press sprang from the charter granted to the University by Henry VIII in 1534, to provide for printers who would be able to work outside London and serve the University, and these volumes chart the history of the Press from 1534 to 1972. Volume I sets the early history of the Press in the context of authors, University authorities, and readers, and the wider issues of the book trade in Britain and overseas. Volume II deals with a period of fundamental changes in printing, publishing, and bookselling from 1698-1872 examining how the forces of commerce collided with the hopes or demands of scholarship and education. The final volume examines the ways in which the Press established itself as an international organisation with authors and customers across the world.

The Lysis is one of Plato's most engaging but also puzzling dialogues; it has often been regarded, in the modern period, as a philosophical failure. The full philosophical and literary exploration of the dialogue illustrates how it in fact provides a systematic and coherent, if incomplete, account of a special theory about, and special explanation of, human desire and action. Furthermore, it shows how that theory and explanation are fundamental to a whole range of other Platonic dialogues and indeed to the understanding of the corpus as a whole. Part One offers an analysis of, or running commentary on, the dialogue. In Part Two Professors Penner and Rowe examine the philosophical and methodological implications of the argument uncovered by the analysis. The whole is rounded off by an epilogue of the relation between the Lysis and some other Platonic (and Aristotelian) texts.

In this book, Sabine R. Huebner explores the world of the protagonists of the New Testament and the early Christians using the rich papyrological evidence from Roman Egypt. This gives us unparalleled insights into the everyday lives of the non-elite population in an area quite similar to neighboring Judaea-Palestine. What were the daily concerns and difficulties experienced by a carpenter's family or by a shepherd looking after his flocks? How did the average man or woman experience a Roman census? What obstacles did women living in a patriarchal society face in private, in public, and in the early Church? Given the flight of Jesus' family into Egypt, how mobile were the lower classes, what was their understanding of geography, and what costs and dangers were associated with travel? This volume gives a better understanding of the structural, social, and cultural conditions under which figures from the New Testament lived.

This book offers perspectives on the legal and intellectual developments of the twelfth century. Gratian's collection of Church law, the Decretum, was a key text in these developments. Compiled in around 1140, it remained a fundamental work throughout and beyond the Middle Ages. Until now, the many mysteries surrounding the creation of the Decretum have remained unsolved, thereby hampering exploration of the jurisprudential renaissance of the twelfth century. Professor Winroth has now discovered the original version of the Decretum, which has long lain unnoticed among medieval manuscripts, in a version about half as long as the final text. It is also different from the final version in many respects - for example, with regard to the use of of Roman law sources - enabling a reconsideration of the resurgence of law in the twelfth century.

What was crime in ancient Rome? Was it defined by law or social attitudes? How did damage to the individual differ from offences against the community as a whole? This 2007 book explores competing legal and extra-legal discourses in a number of areas, including theft, official malpractice, treason, sexual misconduct, crimes of violence, homicide, magic and perceptions of deviance. It argues that court practice was responsive to social change, despite the ingrained conservatism of the legal tradition, and that judges and litigants were in part responsible for the harsher operation of justice in Late Antiquity. Consideration is also given to how attitudes to crime were shaped not only by legal experts but also by the rhetorical education and practices of advocates, and by popular and even elite indifference to the finer points of law.

This is a revised and translated edition of Gilbert Dagron's Empereur et pretre, an acknowledged masterwork by one of the great Byzantine scholars of our time. The figure of the Byzantine emperor, a ruler who sometimes was also designated a priest, has long fascinated the western imagination. This book studies in detail the imperial union of 'two powers', temporal and spiritual, against a wide background of relations between Church and state and religious and political spheres. Presenting much unfamiliar material in complex, brilliant style, it is aimed at all historians concerned with royal and ecclesiastical sources of power.

Primo Levi has increasingly come to be recognised as one of the major literary voices of the twentieth century. This Companion brings together leading scholars to offer a stimulating introduction to all aspects of the work of this extraordinary writer.

This book revolutionises our understanding of race. Building upon the insight that races are products of culture rather than biology, Colin Kidd demonstrates that the Bible - the key text in Western culture - has left a vivid imprint on modern racial theories and prejudices. Fixing his attention on the changing relationship between race and theology in the Protestant Atlantic world between 1600 and 2000 Kidd shows that, while the Bible itself is colour-blind, its interpreters have imported racial significance into the scriptures. Kidd's study probes the theological anxieties which lurked behind the confident facade of of white racial supremacy in the age of empire and race slavery, as well as the ways in which racialist ideas left their mark upon new forms of religiosity. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the histories of race or religion.

First published in 2000, this translation of one of the great works of Western political thought is based on the assumption that when Plato chose the dialogue form for his writing, he intended these dialogues to sound like conversations - although conversations of a philosophical sort. In addition to a vivid, dignified and accurate rendition of Plato's text, the student and general reader will find many aids to comprehension in this volume: an introduction that assesses the cultural background to the Republic, its place within political philosophy, and its general argument; succinct notes in the body of the text; an analytical summary of the work's content; a full glossary of proper names; a chronology of important events; and a guide to further reading. The result is an accomplished and accessible edition of this seminal work, suitable for philosophers and classicists as well as historians of political thought at all levels.

This book offers an assessment of the content, structures and significance of education in Greek and Roman society. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, including the first systematic comparison of literary sources with the papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, Teresa Morgan shows how education developed from a loose repertoire of practices in classical Greece into a coherent system spanning the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. She examines the teaching of literature, grammar and rhetoric across a range of social groups and proposes a model of how the system was able both to maintain its coherence and to accommodate pupils' widely different backgrounds, needs and expectations. In addition Dr Morgan explores Hellenistic and Roman theories of cognitive development, showing how educationalists claimed to turn the raw material of humanity into good citizens and leaders of society.

Every Athenian alliance, every declaration of war, and every peace treaty was instituted by a decision of the assembly, where citizens voted after listening to speeches that presented varied and often opposing arguments about the best course of action. The fifteen preserved assembly speeches of the mid-fourth century BC thus provide an unparalleled body of evidence for the way that Athenians thought and felt about interstate relations: to understand this body of oratory is to understand how the Athenians of that period made decisions about war and peace. This 2010 book provides a comprehensive treatment of this subject. It deploys insights from a range of fields, from anthropology to international relations theory, in order not only to describe Athenian thinking, but also to explain it. Athenian thinking turns out to have been complex, sophisticated, and surprisingly familiar both in its virtues and its flaws.