How did Christianity grow into an international faith that shaped the world as we know it?‘Remarkable … A joy to read’ JOSEPHINE QUINN, author of How the World Made the West‘Dazzling … Will change how you see Rome, and Christianity, for ever’ CATHERINE NIXEY, author of Heresy'One of the most important books on ancient history in many years’ HARRY SIDEBOTTOM, author of Warrior o...

How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities.Ho...

How did Christianity grow into an international faith that shaped the world as we know it?Rome’s Age of Revolution corrects the triumphalist narrative that the Christian message was so persuasive, and indeed superior, that people converted in huge numbers, abandoning their pagan beliefs, thereby turning a small, persecuted sect into the state religion of the Roman Empire.Tim Whitmarsh shows that Christianity would never have succeeded if it had not...

How new is atheism?In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean to recover the stories of those who first refused the divinities.Long before the Enlightenment sowed the seeds of disbelief in a deeply Christian Europe, atheism was a matter of serious public debate in the Greek world. But history is written by those who prevail, and the Age of Faith mostly suppressed the lively free-thinking voices of antiquity.Tim Whitmarsh bri...

The "Second Sophistic" traditionally refers to a period at the height of the Roman Empire’s power that witnessed a flourishing of Greek rhetoric and oratory, and since the 19th century it has often been viewed as a defense of Hellenic civilization against the domination of Rome. This book proposes a very different model. Covering popular fiction, poetry and Greco-Jewish material, it argues for a rich, dynamic, and diverse culture, which cannot be reduced to a simple model of continuity. Sh...

This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of the ancient world find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consu...

Some of the world's earliest large-form fictional narratives--what would today be called novels-are found in ancient Greece. Dating back to the first century CE, these narratives contain many of the elements common to the novelistic genre, for instance, the joining, separation, and reunion of two lovers. These ancient works have often been heralded as the ancestors of the modern novel; but what can we say of the origins of the Greek novel itself? This book argues that whereas much of Greek...

The Greek romance was for the Roman period what epic was for the Archaic period or drama for the Classical: the central literary vehicle for articulating ideas about the relationship between self and community. This book offers a reading of the romance both as a distinctive narrative form (using a range of narrative theories) and as a paradigmatic expression of identity (social, sexual and cultural). At the same time it emphasises the elasticity of romance narrative and its ability to acco...

A stimulating and expert analysis of the unique conditions that allowed Christianity to take shape and flourish across the Roman Empire during its first three centuries, from one of our leading historians of the ancient worldThe Western world has been shaped by its Christian heritage—years are still measured by their distance from the birth of Jesus Christ. But Christianity was built on Roman foundations: it was Julius Caesar and his adopted son Augustus who create...

A stimulating and expert analysis of the unique conditions that allowed Christianity to take shape and flourish across the Roman Empire during its first three centuries, from one of our leading historians of the ancient worldThe Western world has been shaped by its Christian heritage—years are still measured by their distance from the birth of Jesus Christ. But Christianity was built on Roman foundations: it was Julius Caesar and his adopted son Augustus who create...

Demystifying the links between theory and practice for those studying in the field of early childhood.

Nonnus of Panopolis's Dionysiaca is the longest and most ambitious epic poem to survive from Greco-Roman antiquity. Written by an Egyptian Christian in the fifth century CE, this stunning mythological adventure explores the birth, upbringing, exploits, and ultimate apotheosis of the god Dionysus, including his establishment of mystery cults, discovery of the vine, conquest of India, and troubling relationships with mortal women. Its 48 books offer a portrait, viewed through a Dion...