Robin Osborne

University Lecturer in Ancient History and Fellow and Tutor Robin Osborne

Robin Osborne's introduction to the art, archaeology and history of ancient Greece shows how we can write the history of this period, and the insights which can be gained by doing so for our understanding of later periods of history

Greece in the Making, 1200-479 BC

T. C. W. Blanning

The complete Short Oxford History of Europe (series editor: Professor T C W Blanning) will cover the history of Europe from Classical Greece to the present in eleven volumes. In each, experts write to their strengths tackling the key issues, including society, economy, religion, politics, and culture, head-on in chapters that will be at once wide-ranging surveys and searching analyses. Each book is specifically designed with the non-specialist reader in mind; but theauthority of the contributors and the vigour of the interpretations will make them necessary and challenging reading for fellow a ...

Classical Greece, 500-323 BC

An accessible introduction for first year undergraduates to Greek history from the end of the Bronze Age (c.1200 BC) to the Roman conquest of Greece in the second century BC.

Greek History

Michael Scott

Daniel Jew

M. I. Finley (1912–86) was the most famous ancient historian of his generation. He was admired by his peers, and was Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. His unmistakable voice was familiar to tens of thousands of radio listeners, his polemical reviews and other journalism were found all over the broadsheets and weeklies, and his scholarly as well as his popular works sold in very large numbers as Penguin paperbacks. Yet this was also a man dismissed from his job at Rutgers University when he refused to answer the question of whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. This pioneering volume assesses Finley's achievements and analyses the nature of the impact of this charismatic individual and the means by which he changed the world of ancient history.

An Ancient Historian and his Impact

M. I. Finley

Sources for Greek History with explanatory notes.

Pseudo-Xenophon's Constitution of the Athenians

The Old Oligarch

Jeremy Tanner

Art's Agency and Art History re-articulates the relationship of the anthropology of art to key methodological and theoretical approaches in art history, sociology, and linguistics. Explores important concepts and perspectives in the anthropology of art Includes nine groundbreaking case studies by an internationally renowned group of art historians and art theorists Covers a wide range of periods, including Bronze-Age China, Classical Greece, Rome, and Mayan, as well as the modern Western world Features an introductory essay by leading experts, which helps clarify issues in the field Includes numerous illustrations

Art's Agency and Art History

This book introduces the history and archaeology of ancient Athens in the period from 800-500 BCE. Following the standard arrangement of the Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World series, author Robin Osborne deals successively with the sources; environmental setting; material culture (settlement pattern, burial customs, ceramic production); political, legal, and diplomatic history; economy and demography; social and religious customs; and cultural history (including history of sculpture) of archaic Athens. He provides not only a full and up-to-date guide to all these various aspects of Athenian history and archaeology, but also an integrated history which shows how all the different aspects intersect. Osborne guides the reader through an exciting story of the way in which the territory of Attica was re-occupied after the collapse of Bronze Age civilization, how Athens emerged as the dominant settlement, how the claims of family, place, and wealth were played out against one another, and how the Athenians came to place themselves both in relation to the wider Greek world and in relation to the gods. The account is illustrated with abundant maps and halftone images that bring the world of Athens to life. The political and cultural achievements of classical Athens (democracy, tragedy, the Parthenon and its sculpture) rested upon the foundations created in the archaic period, but Osborne shows that archaic Athens did not merely provide foundations for what came later but offered a fascinating history and culture of its own.

Volume II: Athens and Attica

The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World

A translation of Pseudo-Xenophon's Constitution of Athens , with an introduction.

How remarkable changes in ancient Greek pottery reveal the transformation of classical Greek culture Why did soldiers stop fighting, athletes stop competing, and lovers stop having graphic sex in classical Greek art? The scenes depicted on Athenian pottery of the mid-fifth century BC are very different from those of the late sixth century. Did Greek potters have a different world to see—or did they come to see the world differently? In this lavishly illustrated and engagingly written book, Robin Osborne argues that these remarkable changes are the best evidence for the shifting nature of classical Greek culture. Osborne examines the thousands of surviving Athenian red-figure pots painted between 520 and 440 BC and describes the changing depictions of soldiers and athletes, drinking parties and religious occasions, sexual relations, and scenes of daily life. He shows that it was not changes in each activity that determined how the world was shown, but changes in values and aesthetics. By demonstrating that changes in artistic style involve choices about what aspects of the world we decide to represent as well as how to represent them, this book rewrites the history of Greek art. By showing that Greeks came to see the world differently over the span of less than a century, it reassesses the history of classical Greece and of Athenian democracy. And by questioning whether art reflects or produces social and political change, it provokes a fresh examination of the role of images in an ever-evolving world.

Painted Pottery and the Creation of Classical Greece

The Transformation of Athens

Partiendo del mundo físico de la ciudad griega y del legado de su pasado arcaico, Robin Osborne nos proporciona, con esta obra, las bases fundamentales para adentrarnos en la historia económica, política, social y militar de la Grecia clásica. Cada capítulo, a cargo de un reconocido especialista, nos ofrece una aproximación temática a los aspectos clave de la vida en la ciudad clásica, con abundancia de ejemplos, ilustraciones, mapas e incluso las palabras mismas de los autores griegos de la época. A pesar de su brevedad, La Grecia clásica nos ofrece un completo panorama de la historia griega en el período clásico porque aborda tanto la economía o las instituciones cívicas, como los conflictos políticos, las guerras o la vida privada. Todos esos aspectos se conjugan para componer un mosaico revelador de las formas de vida individual y colectiva que construyeron los griegos durante los siglos quinto y cuarto a. de C.

La Grecia clásica

Susan E. Alcock

The fully revised second edition of this successful volume includesupdates on the latest archaeological research in all chapters, andtwo new essays on Greek and Roman art. It retains its unique,paired essay format, as well as key contributions from leadingarchaeologists and historians of the classical world. Second edition is updated and revised throughout, showcasingthe latest research and fresh theoretical approaches in classicalarchaeology Includes brand new essays on ancient Greek and Roman art in amodern context Designed to encourage critical thinking about theinterpretation of ancient material culture and the role of modernperceptions in shaping the study of art and archaeology Features paired essays – one covering the Greek world,the other, the Roman – to stimulate a dialogue not onlybetween the two ancient cultures, but between scholars fromdifferent historiographic and methodological traditions Includes maps, chronologies, diagrams, photographs, and shorteditorial introductions to each chapter

Classical Archaeology

Margaret Atkins

If poor individuals have always been with us, societies have not always seen the poor as a distinct social group. But within the Roman world, from at least the Late Republic onwards, the poor were an important force in social and political life and how to treat the poor was a topic of philosophical as well as political discussion. This book explains what poverty meant in antiquity, and why the poor came to be an important group in the Roman world, and it explores the issues which poverty and the poor raised for Roman society and for Roman writers. In essays which range widely in space and time across the whole Roman Empire, the contributors address both the reality and the representation of poverty, and examine the impact which Christianity had upon attitudes towards and treatment of the poor.

Poverty in the Roman World

Esther Eidinow

Julia Kindt

Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.

Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion

Barry Cunliffe

Professor of European Archaeology Barry Cunliffe

Urban life as we know it in the Mediterranean began in the early Iron Age: settlements of great size and internal diversity appear in the archaeological record. This collection of essays offers for the first time a systematic discussion of the beginnings of urbanization across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus through Greece and Italy to France and Spain. Leading scholars in the field look critically at what is meant by urbanization, and analyse the social processes that lead to the development of social complexity and the growth of towns. The introduction to the volume focuses on the history of the archaeology of urbanization and argues that proper understanding of the phenomenon demands loose and flexible criteria for what is termed a 'town'. The following eight chapters examine the development of individual settlements and patterns of urban settlement in Cyprus, Greece, Etruria, Latium, southern Italy, Sardinia, southern France and Spain. These chapters not only provide a general review of current knowledge of urban settlements of this period, but also raise significant issues of urbanization and the economy, urbanization and political organization, and of the degree of regionalism and diversity to be found within individual towns. The three analytical chapters which conclude this collection look more broadly at the town as a cultural phenomenon that has to be related to wider cultural trends, as an economic phenomenon that has to be related to changes in the Mediterranean economy and as a dynamic phenomenon, not merely a point on the map. Wide ranging in its geographical coverage, this volume will be essential reading for scholars and students of archaeology, settlement studies, the archaic period and geographers interested in the history of urban forms.

Mediterranean Urbanization 800-600 BC

Lyndal Roper

A collection of innovative essays on major topics in ancient Greece and Rome, first published in 2004.

Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society

Simon Goldhill

This book investigates the claims made about classical Greece being the period and place in which Western civilization developed.

Rethinking Revolutions Through Ancient Greece

Dějiny klasického Řecka

The complete Short Oxford History of Europe (series editor: Professor T C W Blanning) will cover the history of Europe from Classical Greece to the present in eleven volumes. In each, experts write to their strengths tackling the key issues, including society, economy, religion, politics, and culture, head-on in chapters that will be at once wide-ranging surveys and searching analyses. Each book is specifically designed with the non-specialist reader in mind; but the authority of the contributors and the vigour of the interpretations will make them necessary and challenging reading for fellow academics across a range of disciplines. Osborne's is the third book to be launched in the series, following on from the publication of Blanning's Eighteenth and Nineteenth century volumes. Robin Osborne provides an analysis which introduces the physical world of the Greek city and the inheritance of the classical city from its archaic past. With specially commissioned chapters, a team of experts introduce the reader to the economy of the Greek city, its political and religious institutions, the waging of warfare between cities, the nature and ancient analysis of struggles within cities, and the private life of individuals. The focus then moves to diachronic change within the city, tracing the broad narratives of Greek history through the fifth and fourth centuries, and concludes by demonstrating the changing ways in which the Greeks themselves construed individual and civic life. Looking at classical Greece as a whole, the reader is introduced to general issues through use of precise examples and through the words of Greek writers themselves. Maps, a timeline, and a selective bibliography help readers to ground the information that is given and direct their further studies.

500-323 BC

Classical Greece

Professor of Greek Literature and Culture and Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics Simon Goldhill

Goldhill Simon

This 1999 book discusses the ways performance is central to the practice and ideology of Athenian democracy.

Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy

An assessment of how the most famous ancient historian of the twentieth century achieved his impact.

Robin Osborne

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