Includes section "Comptes rendus".

The collected essays explore late antique and Byzantine Constantinople in matters sacred, political, cultural, and commercial.

Ptolemy's Geography is the only book on cartography to have survived from the classical period and one of the most influential scientific works of all time. Written in the second century AD, for more than fifteen centuries it was the most detailed topography of Europe and Asia available and the best reference on how to gather data and draw maps. Ptolemy championed the use of astronomical observation and applied mathematics in determining geographical locations. But more importantly, he introduced the practice of writing down coordinates of latitude and longitude for every feature drawn on a world map, so that someone else possessing only the text of the Geography could reproduce Ptolemy's map at any time, in whole or in part, at any scale. Here Berggren and Jones render an exemplary translation of the Geography and provide a thorough introduction, which treats the historical and technical background of Ptolemy's work, the contents of the Geography, and the later history of the work.

A great deal of information has come to light over the past several decades about the role of arbitration between the Greek states. Arbitration and mediation were, in fact, central institutions in Hellenistic public life. In this comprehensive study, Sheila Ager brings together the scattered body of literary and epigraphical sources on arbitration, together with up-to-date bibliographic references, and commentary. The sources collected here range widely; Ager presents an exhaustive record of documents ranging from the settlement of a minor territorial squabble between two tiny city-states to the resolution of major conflicts separating the great powers of the day. In addition, Ager's introduction sets the documents in historical context and outlines distinctions among categories of arbitration. The work also includes indices to literary passages, inscriptions, persons, places, subjects, and Greek and Latin terms in the documents. This collection of many previously inaccessible texts will become a primary resource for any scholar or student working in the field of Hellenistic history.

For more than two millennia Istanbul has stood at the crossroads of the world, perched at the very tip of Europe, gazing across at the shores of Asia. The history of this city—known as Byzantium, then Constantinople, now Istanbul—is at once glorious, outsized, and astounding. Founded by the Greeks, its location blessed it as a center for trade but also made it a target of every empire in history, from Alexander the Great and his Macedonian Empire, to the Romans and later the Ottomans. At its most spectacular, Istanbul was re-founded by Emperor Constantine I as New Rome, the capital of the eastern Roman Empire. He dramatically expanded the city, filling it with artistic treasures, and adorning the streets with opulent palaces. Constantine built new walls around it all—walls that were truly impregnable and preserved power, wealth, and withstood any aggressor—walls that still stand for tourists to visit. From its ancient past to the present, we meet the city through its ordinary citizens—the Jews, Muslims, Italians, Greeks, and Russians who used the famous baths and walked the bazaars, and the rulers who built it up and then destroyed it, including Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the man who christened the city "Istanbul" in 1930. Thomas Madden's entertaining narrative brings to life the city we see today, including the rich splendor of the churches and monasteries that spread throughout the city. Istanbul draws on a lifetime of study and the latest scholarship, transporting readers to a city of unparalleled importance and majesty that holds the key to understanding modern civilization. In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, "If the Earth were a single state, Istanbul would be its capital."

The region of Boiotia was one of the most powerful regions in Greece between the Peloponnesian War and the rise of Macedonian power under Philip II and Alexander the Great. Its influence stretched across most of the Greek mainland and, at times, across the Aegean; its fourth-century leaders were of legendary ability. But the Boiotian hegemony over Greece was short lived, and less than four decades after the Boiotians defeated the Spartans at the battle of Leuktra in 371 B.C., Alexander the Great destroyed Thebes, Boiotia's largest city, and left the fabric of Boiotian power in tatters. Boiotia in the Fourth Century B.C. works from the premise that the traditional picture of hegemony and great men tells only a partial story, one that is limited in the diversity of historical experience. The breadth of essays in this volume is designed to give a picture of the current state of scholarship and to provide a series of in-depth studies of particular evidence, experience, and events. These studies present exciting new perspectives based on recent archaeological work and the discovery of new material evidence. And rather than turning away from the region following the famous Macedonian victory at Chaironeia in 338 B.C., or the destruction of Thebes three years later, the scholars cover the entire span of the century, and the questions posed are as diverse as the experiences of the Boiotians: How free were Boiotian communities, and how do we explain their demographic resilience among the catastrophes? Is the exercise of power visible in the material evidence, and how did Boiotians fare outside the region? How did experience of widespread displacement and exile shape Boiotian interactivity at the end of the century? By posing these and other questions, the book offers a new historical vision of the region in the period during which it was of greatest consequence to the wider Greek world. Contributors: Samuel D. Gartland, John Ma, Robin Osborne, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, P. J. Rhodes, Thom Russell, Albert Schachter, Michael Scott, Anthony Snodgrass.

Called variously the ’Byzantine epic’, the ’epic of Modern Greece’, an ’epic-romance’ and ’romance’, the poem of Digenes Akrites has, since its rediscovery towards the end of the nineteenth century, exerted a tenacious hold on the imagination of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and from many countries of the world, as well as of writers and public figures in Greece. There are many reasons for this, not least among them the prestige accorded to ’national epics’ in the nineteenth century and for some time afterwards. Another reason must surely be the work’s uniqueness: there is nothing quite like Digenes Akrites in either Byzantine or Modern Greek literature. However, this uniqueness is not confined to its problematic place in the literary ’canon’ and literary history. As historical testimony, and in its complex relationship to later oral song and to older myth and story-telling, Digenes Akrites again has no close parallels of comparable length in Byzantine or Modern Greek culture. Whether as a literary text, a historical source, or a manifestation of an oral popular culture, Digenes Akrites remains, more than a century after its rediscovery, persistently enigmatic. This Byzantine ’epic’ or ’romance’ has now become the focus of new research across a range of disciplines since the publication in 1985 of a radically revised edition based on the Escorial text of the poem, by Stylianos Alexiou. The papers in this volume, derived from a conference held in May 1992 at King’s College London, seeks to present and discuss the results of this new research. Digenes Akrites: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry is the second in the series published by Variorum for the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London.

A leading authority in the field, Phillip Harding presents the very first English translations of the six Athenian writers known as the Atthidographers. In his vivid and detailed history, Harding examines the remaining fragments of these historical writers' work – in chronological order – and how these writings, dating from the fifth and fourth century BC, reveal an invaluable wealth of information about early Athenian history, legend, religion, customs and anecdotes. Harding also goes on to study how these histories of Athens and its people were the source for later surviving historians such as Plutarch and Diodorus. With the aid of linking text and detailed annotation, anyone with an interest in Athenian history, classical Greece need look no further.