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A decade ago, Tim Gallagher was one of the rediscoverers of the legendary ivory-billed woodpecker, which most scientists believed had been extinct for more than half a century—now Gallagher once again hits the trail, journeying deep into Mexico’s savagely beautiful Sierra Madre Occidental, home to rich wildlife, as well as to Mexican drug cartels, in a perilous quest to locate the most elusive bird in the world—the imperial woodpecker. The imperial woodpecker’s trumpetlike calls and distinctive hammering on massive pines once echoed through the high forests. Two feet tall, with deep black plumage, a brilliant snow-white shield on its back, and a crimson crest, the imperial woodpecker had largely disappeared fifty years ago, though reports persist of the bird still flying through remote mountain stands. In an attempt to find and protect the imperial woodpecker in its last habitat, Gallagher is guided by a map of sightings of this natural treasure of the Sierra Madre, bestowed on him by a friend on his deathbed. Charged with continuing the quest of a line of distinguished naturalists, including the great Aldo Leopold, Gallagher treks through this mysterious, historically untamed and untamable territory. Here, where an ancient petroglyph of the imperial can still be found, Geronimo led Apaches in their last stand, William Randolph Hearst held a storied million-acre ranch, and Pancho Villa once roamed, today ruthless drug lords terrorize residents and steal and strip the land. Gallagher’s passionate quest takes a harrowing turn as he encounters armed drug traffickers, burning houses, and fleeing villagers. His mission becomes a life-and-death drama that will keep armchair adventurers enthralled as he chases truth in the most dangerous of habitats.
An investigation into dream reports in the history and literature of early Roman culture.
The history and literature of the Roman Empire is full of reports of dream prophecies, dream ghosts and dream gods. This volume offers a fresh approach to the study of ancient dreams by asking not what the ancients dreamed or how they experienced dreaming, but why the Romans considered dreams to be important and worthy of recording. Dream reports from historical and imaginative literature from the high point of the Roman Empire (the first two centuries AD) are analysed as objects of cultural memory, records of events of cultural significance that contribute to the formation of a group's cultural identity. The book also introduces the term 'cultural imagination', as a tool for thinking about ancient myth and religion, and avoiding the question of 'belief', which arises mainly from creed-based religions. The book's conclusion compares dream reports in the Classical world with modern attitudes towards dreams and dreaming, identifying distinctive features of both the world of the Romans and our own culture.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1865. A Commonplace Book of Speculations Concerning the Mystery of Dreams and Visions, Records of Curious and Well Authenticated Dreams, and Notes on the Various Modes of Interpretation Adopted in Ancient and Modern Times.
Although the actual dreaming experience of the Byzantines lies beyond our reach, the remarkable number of dream narratives in the surviving sources of the period attests to the cardinal function of dreams as vehicles of meaning, and thus affords modern scholars access to the wider cultural fabric of symbolic representations of the Byzantine world. Whether recounting real or invented dreams, the narratives serve various purposes, such as political and religious agendas, personal aspirations or simply an author’s display of literary skill. It is only in recent years that Byzantine dreaming has attracted scholarly attention, and important publications have suggested the way in which Byzantines reshaped ancient interpretative models and applied new perceptions to the functions of dreams. This book - the first collection of studies on Byzantine dreams to be published - aims to demonstrate further the importance of closely examining dreams in Byzantium in their wider historical and cultural, as well as narrative, context. Linked by this common thread, the essays offer insights into the function of dreams in hagiography, historiography, rhetoric, epistolography, and romance. They explore gender and erotic aspects of dreams; they examine cross-cultural facets of dreaming, provide new readings, and contextualize specific cases; they also look at the Greco-Roman background and Islamic influences of Byzantine dreams and their Christianization. The volume provides a broad variety of perspectives, including those of psychoanalysis and anthropology.
Religion was integral to the conduct of war in the ancient world and the Romans were certainly no exception. No campaign was undertaken, no battle risked, without first making sacrifice to propitiate the appropriate gods (such as Mars, god of War) or consulting oracles and omens to divine their plans. Yet the link between war and religion is an area that has been regularly overlooked by modern scholars examining the conflicts of these times. This volume addresses that omission by drawing together the work of experts from across the globe. The chapters have been carefully structured by the editors so that this wide array of scholarship combines to give a coherent, comprehensive study of the role of religion in the wars of the Roman Empire. Aspects considered in depth include: the Imperial cults and legionary loyalty; the army and religious/regional disputes; Trajan and religion; Constantine and Christianity; omens and portents; funerary cults and practices; the cult of Mithras; the Imperial sacramentum; religion & Imperial military medicine.
Roman Britain is usually thought of as a land full of togas, towns and baths with Britons happily going about their Roman lives under the benign gaze of Rome. This is, to a great extent, a myth that developed after Roman control of Britain came to an end, in particular when the British Empire was at its height in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact, Britain was one of the least enthusiastic elements of the Roman Empire. The northern part of Britain was never conquered at all despite repeated attempts. Some Britons adopted Roman ways in order to advance themselves and become part of the new order, of just because they liked the new range of products available. However, many failed to acknowledge the Roman lifestyle at all, while many others were only outwardly Romanised, clinging to their own identities under the occupation. Britain never fully embraced the Empire and was itself never fully accepted by the rest of the Roman world. Even the Roman army in Britain became chronically rebellious and a source of instability that ultimately affected the whole Empire. As Roman power weakened, the Britons abandoned both Rome and almost all Roman culture, and the island became a land of warring kingdoms, as it had been before.