The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art by
Beautifully illustrated in colour with many rare and unique photographs, prints, and drawings, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art presents the first balanced and truly world-wide survey of prehistoric art. The book also offers the first detailed account of how the world of scholarship became aware of the existence of prehistoric art, reproducing the very earliest drawings by explorers and surveyors from the 1600s onwards to create a unique pictorial as well as discursive resource. With this powerful combination of illustration and analysis, Paul Bahn describes what prehistoric art is and the different ways in which it can shed light on the lives and preoccupations of our ancestors: sexual, humorous, social, economic, and religious.
The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe by
* A complete survey of the development of European society, from Stone Age man to the fall of the Roman Empire.* Based on an entirely new concept - look at the entire European landscape and the way man has repsonded and adapted to it.Chapters cover both the well-known civilizations of Greece and Rome, and the less well known societies like ancient Russia.* Includes a useful time chart showing the developments of societies and their techniques against the background of events both historical and geographical.Expert contributors - the editor Barry Cunliffe is a well-known scholar and author of over 40 books. He is an active member of the British Heritage Council and the Council for British Archaeology.The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe looks at the changing landscape of Europe and the way man has responded and adapted to it over the millennia. Beautifully illustrated, it provides a complete survey of the development of European society from the continent's earliest evidence of humanpopulation, through the first farmers to barbarian and Iron Age societies, and the impact and eventual decline of Roman power. The twelve chapters focus on the principal periods and areas of innovation and culture, such as the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, showing not only how these societiesdeveloped but their relationships to each other and the landscape. Each chapter is written by an expert in his field and is accompanied by a rich assortment of colour and black-and-white plates, maps, and drawings.
The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt by
The civilization of Ancient Egypt extended from the fourth millennium BC to the conquest of Alexander. The Egyptians in their tombs recreated life for the dead in a naturalistic way, often against the background of the landscape in which they lived. They also left revealing portraits ranging from the civil servants of the kings to the kings and queens themselves who built the pyramids at Giza and Saqqara; the tombs at Thebes, including the treasure-filled burial-place of Tut-ankh-amon; the temples of Luxor and Karnak and the palaces of Akhenaten at Tell el Amarna and of Amenhotep III at Thebes.
Love Songs of the New Kingdom by
"An unusual and handsomely printed collection demonstrating that at least some things are relatively unchanged since the time of the pharaohs. Illustrated with art motifs from Egyptian tombs and adorned with hieroglyphic texts of some of the poems, these translations are a lusty, humorous, and sometimes sentimental as though they were written yesterday...."
Myths from Mesopotamia by
The ancient civilization of Mesopotamia thrived between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates over 4,000 years ago. The myths collected here, originally written in cuneiform on clay tablets, include parallels with the biblical stories of the Creation and the Flood, and the famous Epic of Gilgamesh,the tale of a man of great strength, whose heroic quest for immortality is dashed through one moment of weakness.Recent developments in Akkadian grammar and lexicography mean that this new translation, complete with notes, a glossary of deities, place-names, and key terms, and illustrations of the mythical monsters featured in the text, will replace all other versions.
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt by
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt is the only book available providing detailed historical coverage of Egypt from the early Stone Age to its incorporation into the Roman Empire. The lively essays and beautiful illustrations portray the emergence and development of the distinctive civilization of the ancient Egyptians covering the period from 700,000 BC to AD 311. Against the backdrop of the rise and fall of ruling dynasties, this book also examines cultural and social patterns, including stylistic developments in art and literature.
Classical Mythology: A Guide to the Mythical World of the Greeks and Romans by 
The Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation by
The debts that English poetry owes to the Classics are massive and various. But they have been richly repaid by the astonishingly inventive tradition of translation to which some of the greatest poets in the English language have contributed, including Chaucer and Jonson, Dryden and Pope,Tennyson and Ezra PoundThis anthology presents the wealth of this living tradition as it has never been seen before, ranging from King Alfred to contemporary poets such as Ted Hughes, and from North America to Ireland and Scotland. It offers a vast array of responses to the song, verse, and drama of ancient Greece andRome, and to poets themselves as varied as Homer, Sappho, and Euripides; Virgil, Ovid, and Juvenal. Organized by classical author and text, it runs from the epics of Homer to the late antique world where Greek and Latin writing both faced an emerging Christian culture, and juxtaposes Englishversions, sometimes of the same passage or poem, to dramatize the endless re-animation of one great poetic tradition in and through another.
The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture by 
The Oxford History of the Classical World by 
The Arts in Prehistoric Greece by
Originally published in 1978 by Penguin Books.
Ashes, Images, and Memories by 
Athens at the Margins by 
Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks by 
Greek Art by
First published in the early 1960s, this history of Greek art has beenenlarged and rewritten. It takes into account new finds as well as newideas and attitudes to the subject, and emphasizes that Greek artshould be seen in its proper context, not that of galleries andmuseums.
The Iliad by 
Oedipus Rex by 
The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens by 
Sophocles by 
Sophocles and the Politics of Tragedy by 
Treasures of Ancient Greece by 
The Life Worth Living in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy by
The account of the best life for humans - i.e. a happy or flourishing life - and what it might consist of was the central theme of ancient ethics. But what does it take to have a life that, if not happy, is at least worth living, compared with being dead or never having come into life? This question was also much discussed in antiquity, and David Machek's book reconstructs, for the first time, philosophical engagements with the question from Socrates to Plotinus. Machek's comprehensive book explores ancient views on a life worth living against a background of the pessimistic outlook on the human condition which was adopted by the Greek poets, and also shows the continuities and contrasts between the ancient perspective and modern philosophical debates about biomedical ethics and the ethics of procreation. His rich study of this relatively neglected theme offers a fresh and compelling narrative of ancient ethics.
The Children of Athena by
A brilliant, fascinating portrait of the intellectual tradition of Greek writers and thinkers during the Age of Rome. In 146 BC, Greece yielded to the military might of the Roman Republic; sixty years later, when Athens and other Greek city-states rebelled against Rome, the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla destroyed the city of Socrates and Plato, laying waste to the famous Academy where Aristotle had studied. However, the traditions of Greek cultural life continued to flourish during the centuries of Roman rule that followed--in the lives and work of a distinguished array of philosophers, doctors, scientists, geographers, and theologians. Charles Freeman's accounts of such luminaries as the physician Galen, the geographer Ptolemy, and the philosopher Plotinus are interwoven with contextual "interludes" that showcase a sequence of unjustly neglected and richly influential lives. A cultural history on an epic scale, The Children of Athena presents the story of a rich and vibrant tradition of Greek intellectual inquiry across a period of more than five hundred years, from the second century BC to the start of the fifth century AD.
Art and Society in Roman Britain by
An outline of Romano-British art making clear the close relationship between the political and economic history of the province and its art and arguing that Roman art responded rapidly to diverse influences. Laing also considers the development of Romano-British studies, the patrons and craftsmen themselves, and the diverse examples of art.
The Classical Roman Reader by
Western civilization is in many ways an outgrowth of the Roman Empire. The Classical Roman Reader, which contains a collection of some of the finest and most important writing of the Roman period, brings the modern reader into direct contact with the literature, political thought, science, art and architecture, and psychology of classical Rome. Here are the wonders of the Roman world presented in a modern, accessible manner. Each selection is preceded by an introduction that identifies the author and provides information that allows modern readers to consider these texts in a new light. What we discover might be surprising. For instance, in Cicero's orations and Marcus Aurelius' meditations, we hear echoes of today's political forums and popular-psychology talk-show hosts. Virgil's ironic dramatization of the founding myth in the Aeneid prepared the way for America's deeply embedded ambivalence toward the presidency. The Roman preference for practicality over philosophy, leading to a network of superhighways that joined Europe, Asia, Asia Minor, and Africa, literally paved the way for the "global village" of the contemporary world. From Plautus' wildly comic plays to Cato's instructions on farming, and from Catullus' erotic poems to Petronius' descriptions of the decadent splendor of the declining empire, The Classical Roman Reader provides access to the literary, artistic, social, religious, political, scientific, and philosophical texts that shaped Roman thinking and helped form the backbone of Western culture.
The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature by 
Roman Imperial Architecture by
The history of Roman Imperial architecture is one of the interaction of two dominant themes: in Rome itself the emergence of a new architecture based on the use of a revolutionary new material, Roman concrete; and in the provinces, the development of interrelated but distinctive Romano-provicial schools. The metropolitan school, exemplified in the Pantheon, the Imperial Baths, and the apartment houses of Ostia, constitutes Rome's great original contribution. The role of the provinces ranged from the preservation of a lively Hellenistic tradition to the assimilation of ideas from the east and from the military frontiers. It was--finally--Late Roman architecture that transmitted the heritage of Greece and Rome to the medieval world.
The Ancient Celts by 
Building Anglo-Saxon England by 
A Celtic Miscellany by
Including works from Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Breton and Manx, this Celtic Miscellany offers a rich blend of poetry and prose from the eighth to the nineteenth century, and provides a unique insight into the minds and literature of the Celtic people. It is a literature dominated by a deep sense of wonder, wild inventiveness and a profound sense of the uncanny, in which the natural world and the power of the individual spirit are celebrated with astonishing imaginative force. Skifully arranged by theme, from the hero-tales of Cú Chulainn, Bardic poetry and elegies, to the sensitive and intimate writings of early Celtic Christianity, this anthology provides a fascinating insight into a deeply creative literary tradition. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Early Irish Myths and Sagas by
These early Irish stories, probably first written down around the eighth century A.D., represent the oral tradition of the Iron Age Celts who flourished in Europe during the seven centuries before Christ. Building the economic, social and artistic foundations of the continent as they did, their myths and tales can be said to be the earliest voices from the dawn of Western civilisation. Later, with the growth of the Roman and Viking empires, their influence died except in Ireland. There, less exposed to new traditions, their original culture is preserved in these stories. Written in beautiful, elusive language, the main tension is between reality and fantasy, and the themes foreshadow those which preoccupied Yeats, Synge and Joyce. Throughout, the energy and pride of reality is allied powerfully with the magic of fantasy, creating a world where men mingle freely with the gods and where the afterworld is an extension of this heroic, romantic and idealistic picture.
The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples by 
Byzantine Art by 
Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire by 
Early Christian and Byzantine Art by
The appreciation of early Christian and Byzantine Art as a sublime expression of religious thought and feeling is a comparatively modern phenomenon. Byzantine art is both static and dynamic: static in the sense that once an image was established it was felt that no improvement was necessary; dynamic in the sense that there was never one style and these styles or modes were constantly changing. The story is not only complex in its unravelling but ranges widely over various media: mosaic, wall painting and painted panels, sculpture in marble and ivory, manuscript illumination, gold, silver, and precious stones, jewellery, silk and rich vestments. This is an account by a medieval art-historian.
Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800-1200 by
Professor Conant's detailed studies of Santiago de Compostela and of the abbey church at Cluny fit him for this account of building in the period of the round arch which preceeded Gothic. In this volume he shows how, at the instigation of the monasteries during the little renaissance of Charlemagne, Roman methods of construction were revived and fused with local traditions to produce a distinctive Carolingian manner; and how such monuments as the Palatine Chapel at Aachen already contained hints of the nobler and more mature Romanesque style which was to become international. professor Conant extends his survey to cover the regions of medieval France, Spain, Portugal, the Holy Land, Italy, Germany, Northern Europe, and Britain.
Gothic: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting by 
Gothic Art by 
Romanesque Art by 
Medieval Art, Medieval People by 
Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400 by 
The Middle Ages by 
The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe by 
Resplendent Faith by 
