By Nancy Evans
Civic Rites explores the spiritual origins of Western democracy through analyzing the govt. of fifth-century BCE Athens within the higher context of historic Greece and the jap Mediterranean. Deftly combining historical past, politics, and faith to weave jointly tales of democracy's first leaders and critics, Nancy Evans offers readers a contemporary's viewpoint on Athenian society. She vividly depicts the actual atmosphere and the ancestral rituals that nourished the folk of the earliest democratic nation, demonstrating how non secular issues have been embedded in Athenian governmental strategies. The book's lucid portrayals of the best-known Athenian festivals--honoring Athena, Demeter, and Dionysus--offer a balanced view of Athenian ritual and illustrate the diversity of such customs in fifth-century Athens.
Read Online or Download Civic Rites: Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens PDF
Similar greece books
The Hellenistic interval started with the substantial growth of the Greek global in the course of the Macedonian conquest of the Persian empire and ended with Rome changing into the important political strength in that global. This new and enlarged variation of Michel Austin's seminal paintings presents a breathtaking view of this global during the medium of historic resources.
Alexander the Great in His World (Blackwell Ancient Lives)
Alexander the good is among the such a lot celebrated figures of antiquity. during this e-book, Carol G. Thomas locations this robust determine in the context of his time, position, tradition, and ancestry for you to notice what impacts formed his lifestyles and profession. The ebook starts with an exploration of the Macedonia that conditioned the lives of its population.
Historical Dictionary of Modern Greece
Situated at the southern-most tip of the Balkan peninsula in Europe's southeast, Greece is a small state of a few eleven million humans. And whereas few humans have an extended background than the Greeks, smooth Greece is a reasonably younger kingdom, having been based in 1830. Greece has come some distance considering that then; it's been a shopper country, first of england after which of the USA, for a lot of its glossy life yet now it has secured an equivalent position on the best tables of NATO and the ecu.
"This is a difficult reappraisal of significant advancements in Greek society among the darkish a while and the flowering of Hellenistic tradition. Historians of Greek political existence and of Greek philosophy might want to reassess in regards to the relationships among social buildings and philosophical ethics, among brute financial or fabric evidence and ethical ideology.
- The Greek and Persian Wars 499-386 BC
- Men of Old Greece
- Athens: The Hidden Gems
- Top 10 Athens: The 10 Best of Everything (DK Eyewitness Travel)
Extra info for Civic Rites: Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens
Sample text
The Athenians were faced with constant pressure to import grain, and to export residents to colonies around the Mediterranean basin. The need to colonize and expand had been a factor in the larger Greek world since at least the tenth century. At that time Greeks began to settle other lands 18 cleisthenes around the Mediterranean, founding cities such as Corcyra (modern Corfu), Cyrene on the North Africa coast (today’s Libya), Syracuse in Sicily, and Naples in Italy. Even a city as far west as Marseilles on the coast of France started out as a Greek colony.
S. desert Southwest. The prevailing Mediterranean wind came in from the west, and Attica, being on the east side of a mountain range, received even less rainfall than some of its immediate neighbors. The arable land in the plains of Attica stretched between the mountains and the sea, and it was highly valued for the cultivation of grains—primarily barley, but wheat and rye were also grown. Wheat was the preferred cereal because it was a finer grain when milled, but barley was the preferred crop because it was more drought tolerant.
Dramatic festivals for the god Dionysus probably became popular during the rule of Pisistratus and his sons. Pisistratus used traditional cult practices to consolidate his power and advance a sense of cohesion and civic identity among the Athenians. An anecdote in Herodotus illustrates how Pisistratus’s sense of political theater eased his first return from exile: he found an unusually tall and beautiful woman, and dressed and armed her like Athena. This image of the goddess rode into Athens on a chariot announcing that she was bringing Pisistratus back to rule.