Truth And History In The Ancient World

Author : Lisa Hau
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317558049
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Truth and History in the Ancient World written by Lisa Hau and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays investigates histories in the ancient world and the extent to which the producers and consumers of those histories believed them to be true. Ancient Greek historiographers repeatedly stressed the importance of truth to history; yet they also purported to believe in myth, distorted facts for nationalistic or moralizing purposes, and omitted events that modern audiences might consider crucial to a truthful account of the past. Truth and History in the Ancient World explores a pluralistic concept of truth – one in which different versions of the same historical event can all be true – or different kinds of truths and modes of belief are contingent on culture. Beginning with comparisons between historiography and aspects of belief in Greek tragedy, chapters include discussions of historiography through the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Ktesias, as well as Hellenistic and later historiography, material culture in Vitruvius, and Lucian’s satire. Rather than investigate whether historiography incorporates elements of poetic, rhetorical, or narrative techniques to shape historical accounts, or whether cultural memory is flexible or manipulated, this volume examines pluralities of truth and belief within the ancient world – and consequences for our understanding of culture, ancient or otherwise.

Author : Susan Wise Bauer
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393070891
Total Pages : 896 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome written by Susan Wise Bauer and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-03-17 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own. This is the first volume in a bold new series that tells the stories of all peoples, connecting historical events from Europe to the Middle East to the far coast of China, while still giving weight to the characteristics of each country. Susan Wise Bauer provides both sweeping scope and vivid attention to the individual lives that give flesh to abstract assertions about human history. Dozens of maps provide a clear geography of great events, while timelines give the reader an ongoing sense of the passage of years and cultural interconnection. This old-fashioned narrative history employs the methods of “history from beneath”—literature, epic traditions, private letters and accounts—to connect kings and leaders with the lives of those they ruled. The result is an engrossing tapestry of human behavior from which we may draw conclusions about the direction of world events and the causes behind them.

Author : Matthew Fraser
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1633886255
Total Pages : 459 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In Truth written by Matthew Fraser and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-03-27 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From ancient Rome to the current Internet age, this sweeping history of ideas explores how different epochs wrestled with the issue of truth and lies.From the ancient Greeks and Romans to the modern era, how have people determined what is true? How have those with power and influence sought to control the narrative? Are we living in a post-truth era, or is that notion simply the latest attempt to control the narrative? The relationship between truth and power is the key theme.Moving through major historical periods, the author focuses on notable people and events, from well-known leaders like Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler to lesser-known individuals like Procopius and Savonarola. He notes distinct parallels in history to current events. Julius Caesar's publication of his Gallic Wars and Civil Wars was an early exercise in political spin not unlike what we see today. During the English Civil War and the Enlightenment, pamphleteering coupled with the new power of the printing press challenged the status quo, as online and social media does in our time. And "fake news" was already being used by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in nineteenth-century Europe and by the "yellow journalism" of American newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer near the turn of the twentieth century.The author concludes optimistically, noting that we are debating and discussing truth more fiercely today than in any previous era. The determination to arrive at the truth, despite the manipulations of the powerful, bodes well for the future of democracy.

Author : Lisa Hau
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1317558057
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Truth and History in the Ancient World written by Lisa Hau and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays investigates histories in the ancient world and the extent to which the producers and consumers of those histories believed them to be true. Ancient Greek historiographers repeatedly stressed the importance of truth to history; yet they also purported to believe in myth, distorted facts for nationalistic or moralizing purposes, and omitted events that modern audiences might consider crucial to a truthful account of the past. Truth and History in the Ancient World explores a pluralistic concept of truth – one in which different versions of the same historical event can all be true – or different kinds of truths and modes of belief are contingent on culture. Beginning with comparisons between historiography and aspects of belief in Greek tragedy, chapters include discussions of historiography through the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Ktesias, as well as Hellenistic and later historiography, material culture in Vitruvius, and Lucian’s satire. Rather than investigate whether historiography incorporates elements of poetic, rhetorical, or narrative techniques to shape historical accounts, or whether cultural memory is flexible or manipulated, this volume examines pluralities of truth and belief within the ancient world – and consequences for our understanding of culture, ancient or otherwise.

Author : Page duBois
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131547087X
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Torture and Truth (Routledge Revivals) written by Page duBois and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1991, this book — through the examination of ancient Greek literary, philosophical and legal texts — analyses how the Athenian torture of slaves emerged from and reinforced the concept of truth as something hidden in the human body. It discusses the tradition of understanding truth as something that is generally concealed and the ideas of ‘secret space’ in both the female body and the Greek temple. This philosophy and practice is related to Greek views of the ‘Other’ (women and outsiders) and considers the role of torture in distinguishing slave and free in ancient Athens. A wide range of perspectives — from Plato to Sartre — are employed to examine the subject.

Author : Christopher Gill
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World written by Christopher Gill and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores the key issue of the nature of the boundary between fact and fiction, an issue which has become prominent especially through the upsurge of interest in the ancient novel and recent work on the rhetorical character of ancient historiography. The collection covers early Greek poetry (E.L. Bowie), Greek and Roman historiography (John Moles and T.P. Wiseman), Plato (Christopher Gill) and the Greek and Roman novel (John Morgan and Andrew Laird), and especially considers how far 'lying' was distinguished from 'fiction' at different periods and in different genres.

Author : Robert Benjamin Lewis
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Light and Truth written by Robert Benjamin Lewis and published by . This book was released on 1844 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : John Arnold
Publisher : Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 019285352X
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book History: A Very Short Introduction written by John Arnold and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 2000-02-24 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with an examination of how historians work, this "Very Short Introduction" aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.

Author : Matthew Fraser
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781633886247
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In Truth written by Matthew Fraser and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancient Greeks and Romans to the modern era, how have people determined what is true? The complex relationship between truth and power is the key theme in this book. Moving through major historical periods. Matthew Fraser traces the tumultuous saga of truth and falsehood from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the modern era to find distinct parallels between past and present. The book examines how notable people and events-from famous leaders such as Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler to lesser-known figures like Procopius and Savonarola-exploited the enduring tension between truth and lies. Julius Caesar's publication of Gallic Wars was an early exercise in political spin, not unlike what we see in politics today. During the English Civil War and later in the Enlightenment, the printing press empowered a new culture of pamphleteering that challenged the status quo, just as social media networks are doing in our internet era today. In the late nineteenth century, "fake news" was already being manipulated by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck and in the "yellow journalism" promoted by American newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. The author concludes optimistically, contending that-despite the manipulations of the powerful-we are debating and discussing truth more fiercely today than in any previous era. While the current crisis over truth appears to be threatening liberal democracy, our determination to arrive at the truth is a sign we are committed to reaffirming its fundamental values. Truth is remarkably resilient. Book jacket.

Author : Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307958337
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Battling the Gods written by Tim Whitmarsh and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.