Accommodating the Individual : Identity and Control after Alexander

Henry Heitmann-Gordon

ISBN 10: 3946317146 / ISBN 13: 9783946317142

Editore: Verlag Antike Mär 2018, 2018

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Neuware - How did the Greeks respond to the experiences of uncertainty that they so acutely made in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's world-changing conquest of the Persian Empire How were old values upheld and reshaped And how did the societies of Greek cities and royal courts accommodate the overwhelming newfound power of Greek individuals By developing a custom methodology, this book tries to shed new light on the complex textuality of the period of the Diadochi, the successors of Alexander. In four case studies, new readings are presented of Theophrastus Characters and Xenophon's Cyropaedia, but also of the substantial early Hellenistic anecdotal material, as well as the Colossus of Rhodes. The studies are united by an interest in how these texts cast the relationships between individuals and how they constructed various media of interrelation, such as money, friendship, women and the divine. Reading these texts on these terms reveals how values were renegotiated through paradoxes and inverted stories that subtly reshaped the utopias of the 4th century BCE. Overall, the study's hypothesis is that this particular brand of social storytelling contributed to the stabilisation of the nascent Hellenistic world by providing new visions of society capable of accommodating individual power and offering a new sense of control and place.

Codice articolo 9783946317142

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Accommodating the Individual : Identity and Control after Alexander
• Editore: Verlag Antike Mär 2018
• Data di pubblicazione: 2018
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 3946317146
• ISBN 13: 9783946317142
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 225 L x 155 A x 37 P (millimetri) 225 millimetri di larghezza per 155 millimetri di altezza per 37 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 799 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

How did the Greeks respond to the experiences of uncertainty that they so acutely made in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's world-changing conquest of the Persian Empire? How were old values upheld and reshaped? And how did the societies of Greek cities and royal courts accommodate the overwhelming newfound power of Greek individuals? By developing a custom methodology, this book tries to shed new light on the complex textuality of the period of the Diadochi, the successors of Alexander. In four case studies, new readings are presented of Theophrastus Characters and Xenophon's Cyropaedia, but also of the substantial early Hellenistic anecdotal material, as well as the Colossus of Rhodes. The studies are united by an interest in how these texts cast the relationships between individuals and how they constructed various media of interrelation, such as money, friendship, women and the divine. Reading these texts on these terms reveals how values were renegotiated through paradoxes and inverted stories that subtly reshaped the utopias of the 4th century BCE. Overall, the study's hypothesis is that this particular brand of social storytelling contributed to the stabilisation of the nascent Hellenistic world by providing new visions of society capable of accommodating individual power and offering a new sense of control and place.

Informazioni sull?autore

Henry Heitmann-Gordon is assistant professor at the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship for the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. Besides the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, his primary interest is in the thematic study of the cultural history and mentalities of the Ancient World, as well as in the entanglement between East and West.