Classical era, Mediterranean

23 Oct 2022 13:39

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I couldn't have been more than nine or ten when I started reading books about Greek mythology. At about the same age I first read Mary Renault's The Lion in the Gateway; the agonies that followed on the realization that one set of my ancestors were the Bactrians in Xerxes's army may easily be imagined. Add to this a mother educated at a pukka lyceo classico and high-school and college Latin (begun because, as the principal told me at the time, "It was thought you would do better in a language you didn't have to speak") and you have the makings of a life-long interest in dead Mediterranean languages with lots of declensions and their speakers.

Cf.: Alexander the Great; Ancient metallurgy; Ancient trade; Democracy; Empires and Imperialism; Epicureanism; the Etruscans; Import of Eastern religions to Europe; Ionia; the Late Bronze Age Collapse; Lucian of Samosata; Lucretius; Myths; Phoenicians; Plato; Karl Popper; Proto-industrialism; Reception and Appropriations of Classical Culture; Republics; Rome. Probably others, too.

Recommended, big-picture:
• Walter Burkert, Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age [How the Greeks became civilized]
• M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy
• G. S. Kirk, The Nature of the Greek Myths
• Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion
• Plato gets his own notebook
• Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, Part I
• Tacitus
  • The Histories
  • The Annals

Recommended, close-ups:
• Bryn Mawr Classical Review
• Peter Green (ed.), Hellenistic History and Culture
• G. E. R. Lloyd
  • Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind
  • Demystifying Mentalities
• Josiah Ober
  • "Learning from Athens: Success by design", Boston Review 31:2 (March-April 2006)
  • Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens [Review: Liberty was Born from Endless Meetings]
• Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought
• W. G. Runciman, "The Diffusion of Christianity in the Third Century AD as a Case-Study in the Theory of Cultural Selection", European Journal of Sociology 45 (2004): 3--21 [For more on Runciman's theory of cultural selection, see here.]
• W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India [Eurocentric, and in places (e.g., the Macedonian princesses) more imaginative than a historian really ought to be. But extremely thorough and apparently unsurpassed.]
• David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World

To read (primary):
• Augustine
  • De civitate Dei
  • Confessioness
• Ausonius
• Avianus, Fabulæ
• Boethius
• Catullus
• Herodotus
• Ovid
  • Ars
  • Fasti
• Posidonius
• Procopious, The Secret History
• Propertius
• Tacitus, Germania

To read (secondary):
• Ory Amitay, From Alexander to Jesus
• Graham Anderson, The Fairy Tale in the Ancient World
• Arnaldo Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization
• Janet M. Atwill, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition [Rhetoric as techne]
• Ryan K. Balot, Courage in the Democratic Polis:: Ideology and Critique in Classical Athens
• Sandra Blakely, Myth, Ritual and Metallurgy in Ancient Greece and Recent Africa
• John Boardman, The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity
• Hugh Bowden, Mystery Cults of the Ancient World
• Alain Bresson, The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy: Institutions, Markets, and Growth in the City-States
• Anthony Bulloch, Erich S. Gruen, A. A. Long, and Andrew Stewart (eds.), Images and Ideologies: Self-definition in the Hellenistic World
• Walter Burkert, Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture
• J. B. Bury, E. A. Barber, Edwyn Bevan, and W. W. Tarn, The Hellenistic Age
• Claude Calame
  • The Craft of Poetic Speech in Ancient Greece
  • Myth and History in Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony
• Lionel Casson, Travel in the Ancient World
• Francois Chamoux, Hellenistic Civilization ["Presents Hellenistic civilization as pluralistic, diverse, and vibrant, looking in particular at the ways in which Greek ideas and cultural forms were received in different contexts and how the Greek language, along with Greek political thought, lifestyles, religion, art, and architecture, spread and were adapted throughout the Mediterranean basin."]
• Marshall Clagett, Greek Science in Antiquity
• Joan Breton Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece
• Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt
• de Coulanges, The Ancient City
• Aubrey De Selincourt, The World of Herodotus
• William Desmond, Cynics
• Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth in Ancient Greece
• O. A. W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps
• Eric R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine
• Donald Engels
  • Classical Cats
  • The Logistics of Macedonian Army
• Henry R. Fairclough, Love of Nature Among the Greeks and Romans
• Margalit Finkelberg, The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece
• M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World
• Michael Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece
• David Furley, The Greek Cosmologists, vol. I: The Formation of the Atomic Theory and Its Earliest Critics
• Kathy L. Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity
• Peter Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis
• Cathy Gere, Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism
• Mark Golden and Peter Toohey (eds.), Inventing Ancient Culture: Historicism, Periodization, and the Ancient World
• Jose Gonzalez, The Epic Rhapsode and His Craft: Homeric Performance in a Diachronic Perspective
• D. W. Graham, Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy
• Robert Graves, What Food the Centaurs Ate [Pre-classical 'shrooms.]
• Peter Green, Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age
• Erich S. Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity
• Moses Hadas, Ancilla to Classical Reading
• Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems
• William V. Harris, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity
• Greta Hawes, Pausanias in the World of Greek Myth ["Pausanias gives us the clearest glimpse of Greek myth as a living, local tradition... "]
• Eric Havelock
  • The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics
  • Preface to Plato
  • The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences
• Brooke Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece
• Frank L. Holt, Alexander the Great and the Mystery of the Elephant Medallions [reviewed in BMCR, 2004.06.34]
• Carl Huffman, Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician-King
• J. Donald Hughes, Environmental Problems of the Greeks and Romans: Ecology in the Ancient Mediterranean
• Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity [Reviewed in BMCR, 2004.06.49]
• George Kennedy, History of Rhetoric, Volume I: The Art of Persuasion in Greece
• George B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement
• Amelie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White, Hellenism in the East: Greek and Non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander
• Leslie Kurke, The Traffic in Praise: Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy [Review in BMCR]
• Robert Lamberton and John J. Keaney, Homer's Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic's Earliest Exegetes
• Jennifer Larson, Greek Heroine Cults
• Mary R. Lefkowitz, Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths
• Ling, Ancient Mosaics
• G. E. R. Lloyd
  • The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science
  • The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China
  • The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece
  • Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science
• Carolina López-Ruiz, When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East
• Nicole Loraux
  • The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens
  • [The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City
• Giovanni Manetti, Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity
• Phillip Brook Manville, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens
• Dale B. Martin, Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians
• Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World
• Indra Kagis McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture
• Margaret Christina Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity
• Anna Missiou, Literacy and Democracy in Fifth-Century Athens
• Alfonso Moreno, Feeding the Democracy: The Athenian Grain Supply in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC
• Gilbert Murray, The Classical Tradition in Poetry
• F. S. Naiden, Ancient Suplication
• Reviel Netz, The Transformation of Mathematics in the Early Mediterranean World: From Problems to Equations
• Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
• Josiah Ober
  • Athenian Legacies: Essays of the Politics of Going on Together
  • Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory
  • Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People
• Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity
• James I. Porter (eds.), Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome
• David M. Pritchard (ed.), War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens
• Raaflaub, Ober and Wallace, The Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece
• Diane J. Rayor, Sappho's Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece
• Bryan P. Reardon, The Form of Greek Romance
• Daniel T. Reff, Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New
• L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature
• Eric Robinson, Democracy beyond Athens: Popular government in the Greek classical age
• James S. Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration, and Fiction [Review in BMCR]
• Joseph Roisman, The Rhetoric of Conspiracy in Ancient Athens
• Michael Ivanovitch Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World
• Giovanni Roberto Ruffini, Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt
• W. G. Runciman, "Doomed to extinction: the polis as an evolutionary dead end", in Oswyn Murray and Simon Price (eds.), The Greek City: From Homer to Alexander, 1990
• Richard Seaford, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy
• David N. Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity
• Charles Segal, Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey
• Steven E. Sidebotham, Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route
• Steven Shankman
  • Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking Through Comparisons
  • The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China
• Susan Sherwin-White and Amelie Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire
• Jocelyn Penny Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and and Literacy in Classical Antiquity [Review in BMCR]
• Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome
• Deborah Tarn Steiner, The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece
• Peter T. Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts
• David W. Tandy, Warriors into Traders: The Power of Markets in Early Greece
• William G. Thalmann, The Swineherd and the Bow: Representations of Class in the Odyssey
• Rosalind Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion
• Frances B. Titchener and Richard F. Moorton, The Eye Expanded: Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity
• Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece
• Theresa Urbainczyk, Slave Revolts in Antiquity
• Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship
• Fikret Yegul, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity
• Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity