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Towards the end of the fifth century BC Ctesias of Cnidus wrote his 23 book History of Persia. Ctesias is a remarkable figure: he lived and worked in the Persian court and, as a doctor, tended to the world’s most powerful kings and queens. His position gave him special insight into the workings of Persian court life and access to the gossip and scandal surrounding Persian history and court politics, past and present. His History of Persia was completed at a time when the Greeks were fascinated by Persia and seems very much to cater to contemporary interest in Persian wealth and opulence, powerful Persian women, the institution of the harem, kings and queens, eunuchs and secret plots. Presented here in English translation for the first time with commentaries, Ctesias offers a fascinating insight into Persia in the fifth century BC.
Explores the experiences spectators have when they watch a film collectively in a cinema.
A COMPANION TO THE ACHAEMENID PERSIAN EMPIRE A comprehensive review of the political, cultural, social, economic and religious history of the Achaemenid Empirem Often called the first world empire, the Achaemenid Empire is rooted in older Near Eastern traditions. A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire offers a perspective in which the history of the empire is embedded in the preceding and subsequent epochs. In this way, the traditions that shaped the Achaemenid Empire become as visible as the powerful impact it had on further historical development. But the work does not only break new ground in this respect, but also in the fact that, in addition to written testimonies of all kinds, it also considers material tradition as an equal factor in historical reconstruction. This comprehensive two-volume set features contributions by internationally-recognized experts that offer balanced coverage of the whole of the empire from Anatolia and Egypt across western Asia to northern India and Central Asia. Comprehensive in scope, the Companion provides readers with a panoramic view of the diversity, richness, and complexity of the Achaemenid Empire, dealing with all the many aspects of history, event history, administration, economy, society, communication, art, science and religion, illustrating the multifaceted nature of the first true empire. A unique historical account presented in its multiregional dimensions, this important resource deals with many aspects of history, administration, economy, society, communication, art, science and religion it deals with topics that have only recently attracted interest such as court life, leisure activities, gender roles, and more examines a variety of available sources to consider those predecessors who influenced Achaemenid structure, ideology, and self-expression contains the study of Nachleben and the history of perception up to the present day offers a spectrum of opinions in disputed fields of research, such as the interpretation of the imagery of Achaemenid art, or questions of religion includes extensive bibliographies in each chapter for use as starting points for further research devotes special interest to the east of the empire, which is often neglected in comparison to the western territories Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire is an indispensable work for students, instructors, and scholars of Persian and ancient world history, particularly the First Persian Empire.
A Greek doctor serving at the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes II in the fifth century BC, Ctesias met travellers and visitors from the far eastern reaches of the Persian Empire, merchants from along the Silk Road and Indians from near the Indus Valley. His Indika (On India), was the first monograph ever written on India by a western author, introducing its readers to such fantastic creatures as the unicorn and the martichora, along with real life subjects such as the parrot and the art of falconry. Confirming pre-existing conceptions of what were considered to be the edges of the earth, Ctesias' Indika helped shape the Greek view of India.
The contact zones between the Greco-Roman world and the Near East represent one of the most exciting and fast-moving areas of ancient-world studies. This new collection of essays, by world-renowned experts (and some new voices) in classical, Jewish, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Persian literature, focuses specifically on prose fiction, or 'the ancient novel'. Twenty chapters either offer fresh readings - from an intercultural perspective - of familiar texts (such as the biblical Esther and Ecclesiastes, Xenophon of Ephesus' Ephesian Story and Dictys of Crete's Journal), or introduce material that may be new to many readers: from demotic Egyptian papyri through old Avestan hymns to a Turkic translation of the Life of Aesop. The volume also considers issues of methodology and the history of scholarship on the topic. A concluding section deals with the question of how narratives, patterns and motifs may have come to be transmitted between cultures.
Towards the end of the fifth century BC Ctesias of Cnidus wrote his 23 book History of Persia. Ctesias is a remarkable figure: he lived and worked in the Persian court and, as a doctor, tended to the world’s most powerful kings and queens. His position gave him special insight into the workings of Persian court life and access to the gossip and scandal surrounding Persian history and court politics, past and present. His History of Persia was completed at a time when the Greeks were fascinated by Persia and seems very much to cater to contemporary interest in Persian wealth and opulence, powerful Persian women, the institution of the harem, kings and queens, eunuchs and secret plots. Presented here in English translation for the first time with commentaries, Ctesias offers a fascinating insight into Persia in the fifth century BC.
Ancient cities served as the actual, worldly landscape populated by “material” sites of memory. Some of these sites were personal and others were directly and intentionally involved in the shaping of a collective social memory, such as palaces, temples, inscriptions, walls, and gates. Many cities were also sites of social memory in a very different way. Like Babylon, Nineveh, or Jerusalem, they served as ciphers that activated and communicated various mnemonic worlds as they integrated multiple images, remembered events, and provided a variety of meanings in diverse ancient communities. Memory and the City in Ancient Israel contributes to the study of social memory in ancient Israel in the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods by exploring “the city,” both urban spaces and urban centers. It opens with a study that compares basic conceptualizing tendencies of cities in Mesopotamia with their counterparts in ancient Israel. Its essays then explore memories of gates, domestic spaces, threshing floors, palaces, city gardens and parks, natural and “domesticated” water in urban settings, cisterns, and wells. Finally, the studies turn to particular cities of memory in ancient Israel: Jerusalem, Samaria, Shechem, Mizpah, Tyre, Nineveh, and Babylon. The volume, which emerged from meetings of the European Association of Biblical Studies, includes the work of Stéphanie Anthonioz, Yairah Amit, Ehud Ben Zvi, Kåre Berge, Diana Edelman, Hadi Ghantous, Anne Katrine Gudme, Philippe Guillaume, Russell Hobson, Steven W. Holloway, Francis Landy, Daniel Pioske, Ulrike Sals, Carla Sulzbach, Karolien Vermeulen, and Carey Walsh.
This collection of essays investigates histories in the ancient world and the extent to which the producers and consumers of those histories believed them to be true. Ancient Greek historiographers repeatedly stressed the importance of truth to history; yet they also purported to believe in myth, distorted facts for nationalistic or moralizing purposes, and omitted events that modern audiences might consider crucial to a truthful account of the past. Truth and History in the Ancient World explores a pluralistic concept of truth – one in which different versions of the same historical event can all be true – or different kinds of truths and modes of belief are contingent on culture. Beginning with comparisons between historiography and aspects of belief in Greek tragedy, chapters include discussions of historiography through the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Ktesias, as well as Hellenistic and later historiography, material culture in Vitruvius, and Lucian’s satire. Rather than investigate whether historiography incorporates elements of poetic, rhetorical, or narrative techniques to shape historical accounts, or whether cultural memory is flexible or manipulated, this volume examines pluralities of truth and belief within the ancient world – and consequences for our understanding of culture, ancient or otherwise.
As long as there has been a need for language, there has been a need for translation; yet there is remarkably little scholarship available on pre-modern translation and translators. This exciting and innovative volume opens a window onto the complex world of translation in the multilingual and multicultural milieu of the ancient Mediterranean. From the biographies of emperors to Hittites scribes in the second millennium BCE to a Greek speaking Syrian slyly resisting translation under the Roman empire, the papers in this volume – fresh and innovative contributions by new and established scholars from a variety of disciplines including Classics, Near Eastern Studies, Biblical Studies, and Egyptology – show that translation has always been a phenomenon to be reckoned with. Accessible and of interest to scholars of translation studies and of the ancient Mediterranean, the contributions in Complicating the History of Western Translation argue that the ancient Mediterranean was a ‘translational’ society even when, paradoxically, cultures resisted or avoided translation. Indeed, this volume envisions an expansion of the understanding of what translation is, how it works, and how it should be seen as a major cultural force. Chronologically, the papers cover a period that ranges from around the third millennium BCE to the late second century CE; geographically they extend from Egypt to Rome to Britain and beyond. Each paper prompts us to reflect about the problematic nature of translation in the ancient world and challenges monolithic accounts of translation in the West.