Reconstructing Western Civilization: Irreverant Essays on Antiquity

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Susquehanna University Press, 2006 - History - 392 pages
This is a collection of eleven essays, laced with humor and irony, on the Dawn of Man, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hebrews, Minoans and Mycenaens, classical Greece, Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic world, Rome's Republic and Empire, and several church fathers (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine) who influenced the Primitive Church. Tinsley highlights current research while showcasing themes of contemporary as well as ancient significance - misogyny, the manipulation of rhetoric to justify privilege, the contributions of the anonymous to the well-being of the famous, the paradox of progress, the distortion of prophecy, the use and misuse of myth and other media, the exploitation of spiritual, intellectual, physical, and sexual resources, the comforts and perils of provincialism versus the dangers and benefits of organization - spiritual, imperial, or both.
 

Contents

Introduction
7
Before Civilization
11
Middlemen The Civilizations of Mesopotamia
26
Forever Egypt
50
Our Hebrew Heritage
75
Crete and Mycenae
102
Classical Greece
121
Alexander and the Hellenistic World
155
Hellenistic Civilization
174
Republican Rome
200
Princeps and Principate 27 BCAD 180
235
Four Fathers and the Primitive Church
282
Notes
327
Bibliography
365
Index
377
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Page 17 - As soon as some ancient member in the great series of the Primates came to be less arboreal, owing to a change in its manner of procuring subsistence, or to some change in the surrounding conditions, its habitual manner of progression would have been modified: and thus it would have been rendered more strictly quadrupedal or bipedal.

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