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Classical archaeology has changed beyond recognition in the past generation, in its aims, its choice of subject-matter and the methods it uses. This book contains twenty-five chapters, some of them previously published only in rather inaccessible places, which have contributed to this change. The chapters cover four decades of work on pre-classical and classical Greece and some adjacent fields of scholarship, beginning in the 1960s when classical archaeology was not widely seen as a free-standing subject. They chart the progress of a movement for the intellectual independence of Greek archaeology and art, from history and textual studies and for recognition among other branches of archaeology. The key theme of the chapters is the importance of the Iron Age as the formative period in the making of classical Greece and the text varies this with comment on literature, history, anthropology, Aegean and European prehistory and Roman provincial archaeology. This collection represents innovative work in classical archaeology; challenges accepted boundaries and inhibitions; and is wide in scope, covering history, prehistory, art, literary interpretation, and field archaeology.

The nineteen chapters of this book cover a wide variety of topics concerned with the Macedonian monarchy of the Ptolemies, which ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great until the Roman empire, and which rested on military control based on a Greek and Macedonian military force settled on the land. The first five chapters examine ways in which Ptolemy I, Ptolemy III, and Cleopatra VII sought political legitimacy and support in this multicultural society. The next section looks at the Greek experience in Egypt, as settlers on the land, as members of specific ethnic groups, and as creators of an urban milieu in which they could feel at home. The third part treats the complex economic life of Ptolemaic Egypt, with its tension between the king's need for revenue and the Greeks' desire to enrich themselves in their new home and in particular to acquire some of Egypt's rich grainland, not only to work as soldiers or bureaucrats. The resulting interactions between Greeks and Egyptians occupy the final section. Throughout the case-studies that make up this book, the author stresses the internal stresses and fractures of this colonial society, with multiple groups of actors having conflicting interests but needing to cooperate for any of them to succeed.

This book is a profile of an extraordinary man, and a new interpretation of one of the most controversial figures in history. Julius Caesar played a leading role in the politics and culture of a world empire, dwarfing his contemporaries in ambition, achievement, and appetite. For that, he has occupied a central place in the political imagination of Europe ever since. Yet he remains something of an enigma, struck down by his own lieutenants because he could be neither comprehended nor contained. In surviving evidence, he emerges as incommensurate and nonpareil, just beyond the horizons of contemporary political thought and understanding. The result of the author's many years of research is a portrait of the Roman dictator that combines the evidence of political history and psychology. The product of a comprehensive study of the ancient sources, it paints a detailed portrait of a complex personality whose mission of ‘Romanisation’ lies at the root of modern Europe.

Sicily occupies a crucial position in the Mediterranean world. It is at the heart of many cross-currents of trade, people, and ideology that flowed unceasingly through the ancient period. The island was home to many people, most of them not native to it: Phoenicians, Greeks, and then Romans settled there, and sought ways of expressing their hybrid identities. The Sicilians, no less than their invaders, were concerned with their image and their contribution to the age. In this book, ideas of identity, image, and acculturation are the central themes. The contributions combine detailed investigation of the archaeological finds in which the island abounds with an examination of the understudied tradition of history and literature on or about the island. The book provides a chronological account of the island's history, interwoven with a series of discussions of Sicilian identity, to show Sicily as a centre of affairs from the Iron Age to the Augustan Empire, within the context of a fundamentally regional ancient world. It includes a chronology and guides for further reading.