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No description available.

The origin of the concept of "godlike man" in Graeco-Roman civilization may be traced back to mythological accounts of sons of gods. Later the shaman-like figures of archaic Greece possess an other-worldliness which was clearly perceptible in an age of superstition and intense religiosity. Earliest representatives of the type for which sufficiently detailed evidence can be pieced together are Pythagoras and Empedocles. Socrates, whose enigmatic life has to be seen against the background of a more rational age, also possessed a "daemonic" personality. A variation of the concept occurs in ruler-cult. Alexander the Great, who emulated demi-gods, was worshipped by virtue of his own omnipotence. His controversial personality was open to the double interpretation of megalomania and the pursuit of a divine mission. There was. little religious significance in the worship of later rulers except possibly for Augustus, The divine king is discussed in philosophical thought from Xenophon and Plato down to the Stoics and Cynics of the imperial age. But it is in the light of the revival of religious Pythagorism that the later category, as portrayed by Philostratus, may best be viewed. Hence the thesis is chiefly concerned with Apollonius of Tyana and the literary and historical context of the age in which both he and his biographer lived. Striking parallels are afforded by Lucian, and a similar literary category may be seen in Jewish and popular Christian writings. A detailed study of the Graeco-Roman concept, it is hoped, may provide a background for current Christological discussion as well as throw light on the history of religious ideas in the ancient world.

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This quotation from Plato's Laws has often been seen as representative of the perception of inter-regional trade and traders held by the majority of classical Greeks. Plato and Aristotle dominate the moral philosophy of the classical world for modern scholars because their works survive in a fairly complete form, whereas, in contrast, the writings of other philosophers of the same era are frequently fragmentary. However, the quality and immediacy of the evidence presented by Plato and Aristotle can be dangerously seductive and, as a result, these works have been given disproportionate importance in previous studies of mercantile operations in the Greek world. In general the picture of merchants and inter-regional exchange that these two men present is very negative. One underlying reason for this negativity is their belief that wealth generated through trade unsettled the balance of society and, in certain circumstances, led to stasis. Rather than being based on the principles of equality and fair exchange, inter-regional commerce was seen as centred on the more aggressive concept of profit maximisation. Plato and Aristotle both saw inter-regional merchants as a symbol of failure for the polis, in its attempts to achieve what they viewed as the ideal state of complete self-sufficiency. Aristotle was to take this a step further, suggesting that the world was regulated by a natural order, an order that was centred on balance and equilibrium. Profit-orientated trade, in Aristotle's opinion, stood opposed to the normal state of equality found in nature, as it sought to upset the natural balance by demanding more for something than it was worth. As a result Aristotle accused inter-regional merchants of perverting the natural order of the world.

This thesis examines the ways in which slaves are represented in classical Greek sources. The aim of this study is to examine the ideology which informed Greek depictions of slaves. Through such an analysis, we can learn a great deal not only about important issues such as Greek perceptions of barbarians and manual labour, but also wider issues, such as the nature of our sources and the ways in which Greeks defined themselves through their use of the antithetical image of the slave - the quintessential "Other" to the Greek ideal. Since slaves are depicted in a range of material, this thesis draws upon representations of slaves from sources as varied as art, drama, oratory, and philosophy. In short, this study examines representations of slaves in their own right. It highlights the cross-generic pervasiveness of slave representation and examines how representation functioned to naturalise and perpetuate the institution of slavery in ancient Greece.

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No description available.

The orthodox view of Greek slavery, developed by a number of scholars but particularly by M.I. Finley, regards the ‘classical’ civilisations of Greece and Rome as cultures in which slavery developed to a high degree, which stood in contrast to neighbouring Near Eastern societies where the institution remained undeveloped in economic terms and was not understood in the same fashion, since these societies lacked a concept of freedom. This study provides a critical revision of this issue in two phases. The first analyses the legal nature of slave ownership in a cross-cultural perspective, and shows that the legal features of slavery are fundamentally similar in Greek and Near Eastern societies; both Greek and Near Eastern societies understood slavery in a similar fashion, and although societies of the latter kind lacked a developed cultural understanding of freedom, they understood the legal meaning of freedom and could distinguish slavery from other conditions. This undermines the Finleyan view that slavery in Greece and the Near East differed fundamentally in qualitative terms. The second phase shows that the notion that slavery remained an undeveloped institution in the Near East is incorrect by comparing the role of slavery in Greek societies with its role in several Near Eastern societies. By analysing the role of slavery in Biblical Israel, Neo- and Persian Babylonia and in the provinces of the Persian Empire, it shows that the Finleyan model is largely misleading. Instead of a stark contrast between Greek slave societies and non-Greek societies where slavery remained undeveloped, it is shown that a great deal of similarity existed in the extent to which slave labour was utilised in the eastern Mediterranean world. This study shows that slavery cannot be identified as a feature distinguishing ‘classical’ civilisations from neighbouring societies of the ancient Near East.