Between the Han dynasty, founded in 206 B.C.E., and the Sui, which ended in 618 C.E., Chinese authors wrote many thousands of short textual items, each of which narrated or described some phenomenon deemed "strange." Most items told of encounters between humans and various deniz…
"Ancestry played a continuous role in the construction and portrayal of Roman emperorship in the first three centuries AD. Emperors and Ancestors is the first systematic analysis of the different ways in which imperial lineage was represented in the various 'media' through which…
You traveller, who make your way along the path, stop I ask - I beg you not to ignore my epitaph. Death never ceases to fascinate the living and in roman society, where the mortality was high, people were forced to confront the brevity of life and the impact of death. What did d…
The early Chinese empires: Qin and Han
"In 221 bc the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture. With this informative book, we are present at the…
"In AD 200, the Roman Empire seemed unassailable. Its vast territory accounted for most of the known world. By the end of the fifth century, Roman rule had vanished in Western Europe and much of northern Africa, and only a shrunken Eastern Empire remained. What accounts for this…
"One of the most significant transformations of the Roman world in Late Aniquity was the integration of barbarian peoples into the social, cultural, religious, and political milieu of the Medierranean world ... These 25 studies do much to break down old stereotypes about the cul…
More than simply a method of communication shared by a common people, the Hebrew language was always an integral part of the Jewish cultural system and, as such, tightly interwoven into the lives of the prophets, poets, scribes and priests who used it. In this unique social hist…
"For the past hundred years, much has been written about the early editions of Christian texts discovered in the region that was once Roman Egypt. Scholars have cited these papyrus manuscripts - containing the Bible and other Christian works - as evidence of Christianity's prese…
