Inventing Ancient Culture Historicism, periodization and the ancient world

Inventing Ancient Culture discusses aspects of antiquity which we have tended to ignore. It asks the reader how far we have reinvented antiquity, by applying modern concepts and understandings to its study. Furthermore, it challenges the common notion that perceptions of the self, of modern societal and institutional structures, originated in the Enlightenment. Rather, the authors and contributors argue, there are many continuities and marked similarities between the classical and the modern world. Mark Golden and Peter Toohey have assembled a lively cast of contributors who analyse and argue about classical culture, its understandings of philosophy, friendship, the human body, sexuality and historiography

List of illustrations -- List of contributors -- GENERAL INTRODUCTION -- Mark Golden and Peter Toohey -- Part I Antiquity and the Enlightenment: Inventing the present -- INTRODUCTION/Mark Golden and Peter Toohey -- I TOWARDS A HISTORY OF BO[)Y HISTORY/Amy Richlin -- 2 PAINTERS AND PEDERASTS: ANCIENT ART, SEXUAI.ITY, AND SOCIAL HISTORY/Martin Kilmer -- 3 TRIMALCHIO’S CONSTIPATION: PERIODIZING MADNESS, EROS, AND TIME/Peter Tuohey -- 4 PHILOSOPHY, FRIENDSHIP, AND CULTURAL HISTORY/David Konstan -- 5 CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN ROMAN SOCIAL HISTORY: RETRIEVING FAMILY FEELING(S)’ FROM ROMAN LAW AND LITERATURE/Suzanne Dixon -- Part II Reconstructing the past: The practice of periodization -- INTRODUCTION/Mark Golden and Peter Toohey -- 6 PERIODIZATION AND TI IE HEROES: INVENTING ADARKAGE/Jan Morris -- 7 RECONSTRUCTING CHANGE: IDEOLOGY AND TIlE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES/Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood -- 8 THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION: THE CASE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR/Barry S. Strauss -- 9 CHANGE OR CONTINUITY? CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD IN 1-IELLENISTIC HISTORIOGRAPHY/Mark Golden -- 10 DID ROMAN WOMEN HAVE AN EMPIRE?/Phyllis Culham -- References -- Index.

Mark Golden is Professor of Classics at the University of Winnipeg. Heis the author of Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (1990). Peter Toohey is Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient 1-listory at theUniversity of New England, New South Wales. He is the author of ReadingEpic (1992) and Epic Lessons (1996).