Robert Garland Livres

A vivid, engaging, and colorful description of life in Ancient Greece from the perspective of ordinary people.

An entertaining romp through the myths of Ancient Rome, retold by Robert Garland.

Aimed at students and scholars of ancient history, this highly accessible book will fascinate anyone interested in the burgeoning fields of refugee and diaspora studies.

"Death for the Greeks was not an instantaneous event, rather a process or passage which required strenuous efforts on the part of the living to ensure that the dead achieved full and final transfer to the next world. The central questions which this book attempts to answer are: the extent to which death was a preoccupying concern among the Greeks; the feelings with which the individual may have anticipated his death; the nature of the bonds between the living and the dead; and the light shed by burial practices upon characteristic elements of Greek society. While the beliefs of ordinary Greeks about their ordinary dead form the book's central focus, there is also a chapter on 'special dead' - the unburied, murderers and their victims, children, and suicides."--BOOK JACKET.

Focussing on Athens in 490-323 BCE, How to Survive in Ancient Greece is ex- pat's guide to living in the ancient city. Covers all areas of everyday life in this ancient civilisation, from religious beliefs and travel through to what to wear.

Most classical authors and modern historians depict the ancient Greek world as essentially stable and even static, once the so-called colonisation movement came to an end. But Robert Garland argues that the Greeks were highly mobile, that their movement was essential to the survival, success and sheer sustainability of their society and that this wandering became a defining characteristic of their culture. Addressing a neglected but essential subject, this work focuses on the diaspora of tens of thousands of people between about 700 and 325 BCE, demonstrating the degree to which Greeks were liable to be forced to leave their homes due to political upheaval, oppression, poverty, warfare, or simply a desire to better themselves

No areaof Greek life was wholly untouched by religion, and a basic knowledge ofthis aspect of life is essential to anyone seeking a proper understanding ofthe classical world. In this engaging survey Robert Garland brings out theunique quality of Greek religion - its practical and worldly approach toman's relationship with the divine -and shows how religious ritual was integral to the daily routine of bothpublic and private life.

Greek mythology isn't the equivalent of the Bible or the Qur'an. There is no standardized version of any myth. Myths aren't sacred. Whether you happen to be Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides or any other Greek, or even you or me, every myth is yours to tell and interpret any way you like. Just to give one example. An oracle has decreed that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. In Homer's version, Oedipus carries on ruling in Thebes when he discovers he has fulfilled the oracle, whereas in the version that Sophocles gives us in his play Oedipus the King, Oedipus blinds himself and goes into voluntary exile. That said, certain details are unalterable. Oedipus has to be ignorant of the fact that the man whom he kills is his father and that the woman whom he marries is his mother; he has to fulfil the awful prophecy of the oracle; and he has to come to a realisation of what he has done afterwards. But everything else is pretty much up for grabs. Greek mythology is very much alive and well in the contemporary world. There are many narrative versions of the myths currently available, but this book will do something very different: it will give the characters the chance to tell their stories in their own words. In so doing, it will give both gods and humans the opportunity to reflect upon their life stories and, in places, justify their actions. In this way they will come across as real people, just as they are, say, in the plays of the dramatists