Richard Seaford

Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Reciprocity and Ritual

Margaret Atwood

Ian Morris

Christine Marion Korsgaard

Jonathan D. Spence

The author of the best-selling Why the West Rules—for Now theorizes on the effect that the evolution of human values has had on democracy and gender equality in the 10,000 years prior to the nineteenth century.

How Human Values Evolve

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels

Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-state

DIONYSOS (Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World)

Christopher Gill

Norman Postlethwaite

Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History Norman Postlethwaite

Reciprocity has been seen as an important notion for anthropologists studying economic and social relations, and this volume examines it in connection with Greek culture from Homer to the Hellenistic period.

Reciprocity in Ancient Greece

Matthew Wright

Selfhood and the Soul is a collection of new and original essays in honor of Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter. All of the essays in the volume contribute to a shared project--the exploration of ancient concepts of self and soul, understood in a broad sense--and, as in the work of the honor and himself, they are distinguished by a diversity of approach and subject matter, ranging widely across disciplinary boundaries to cover ancient philosophy, psychology, medical writing, and literary criticism. They can be read separately or together, taking the reader on a journey through topics and themes as varied as money, love, hope, pleasure, rage, free will, metempsychosis, Roman imperialism, cookery, and the Underworld, yet all committed to examining central issues about the experience of being a person and the question of how best to live. The international line-up of contributors includes many established figures in the disciplines of classical literature, ancient philosophy, and ancient medicine, as well as several younger scholars. All have been inspired by Christopher Gill's contributions to scholarly research in these fields and their collective work aspires to honor through imitation his remarkable combination of range with focus.

Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill

Selfhood and the Soul

John Wilkins

Selfhood and the Soul is a collection of new and original essays in honour of Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter. All of the essays in the volume contribute to a shared project - the exploration of ancient concepts of self and soul, understood in a broad sense - and, as in the work of the honorand himself, they are distinguished by a diversity of approach and subject matter, ranging widely across disciplinary boundaries to cover ancient philosophy, psychology, medical writing, and literary criticism. They can be read separately or together, taking the reader on a journey through topics and themes as varied as money, love, hope, pleasure, rage, free will, metempsychosis, Roman imperialism, cookery, and the Underworld, yet all committed to examining central issues about the experience of being a person and the question of how best to live. The international line-up of contributors includes many established figures in the disciplines of classical literature, ancient philosophy, and ancient medicine, as well as several younger scholars. All have been inspired by Christopher Gill's contributions to scholarly research in these fields and their collective work aspires to honour through imitation his remarkable combination of range with focus.

Explains for the first time the genesis and early form of both Indian and Greek philosophy, and their striking similarities.

A Historical Comparison

The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and India

This book further develops Professor Seaford's innovative work on the study of ritual and money in the developing Greek polis. It employs the concept of the chronotope, which refers to the phenomenon whereby the spatial and temporal frameworks explicit or implicit in a text have the same structure, and uncovers various such chronotopes in Homer, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Presocratic philosophy and in particular the tragedies of Aeschylus. Mikhail Bakhtin's pioneering use of the chronotope was in literary analysis. This study by contrast derives the variety of chronotopes manifest in Greek texts from the variety of socially integrative practices in the developing polis - notably reciprocity, collective ritual and monetised exchange. In particular, the Oresteia of Aeschylus embodies the reassuring absorption of the new and threatening monetised chronotope into the traditional chronotope that arises from collective ritual with its aetiological myth. This argument includes the first ever demonstration of the profound affinities between Aeschylus and the (Presocratic) philosophy of his time.

The Social Construction of Space and Time in the Tragedies of Aeschylus

Cosmology and the Polis

In the earliest drama the clash between the old world of ritual and the new world of money is revealed.

Reveals the shaping influence of money and ritual on Greek tragedy, the New Testament, Indian philosophy, and Wagner.

Selected Essays

Tragedy, Ritual and Money in Ancient Greece

Covering a wide range of issues which have been overlooked in the past, including mystery, cult and philosophy, Richard Seaford explores Dionysos – one of the most studied figures of the ancient Greek gods. Popularly known as the god of wine and frenzied abandon, and an influential figure for theatre where drama originated as part of the cult of Dionysos, Seaford goes beyond the mundane and usual to explore the history and influence of this god as never before. As a volume in the popular Gods and Heroes series, this is an indispensible introduction to the subject, and an excellent reference point for higher-level study.

Richard Seaford

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