The citizens of ancient Athens were directly responsible for the development and power of its democracy; but how did they learn about politics and what their roles were within it? In this volume Livingstone argues that learning about political praxis (how to be a citizen) was an integral part of the everyday life of ancient Athenians. In the streets, shops and other meeting-places of the city people from all levels of society, from slaves to the very wealthy, exchanged knowledge and competed for power and status. The City as University explores the spaces and occasions where Athenians practised the arts of citizenship for which they and their city became famous. In the agora and on the pnyx, Athenian democracy was about performance and oratory; but the written word opened the way to ever-increasing sophistication in both the practice and theory of politics. As the arts of spin proliferated, spontaneous live debate in which the speaker’s authority came from being one of the many remained a core democratic value. Livingstone explores how ideas of democratic leadership evolved from the poetry of the legendary law-giver Solon to the writings of the sophist Alcidamas of Elaia. The volume offers a new approach to the study of ancient education and will be an invaluable tool to students of ancient politics and culture, and to all those studying the history of democracy.

Athens: The City as University (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies)

History

Livingstone, Niall

Ancient Civilizations

Routledge

<p>This is an introduction to the ancient genre of epigram, short poems literally written or inscribed 'on' an object or figuratively 'on' a topic. The authors set out what epigram means and why it matters, exploring its roots in inscriptions on stone and its literary flourishing in the Hellenistic world after Alexander. They trace its migration from Greece to Rome, where its most famous exponent was Martial, and consider the continuation of Greek epigram under the Roman empire in the so-called 'Second Sophistic'. The final chapter shows how Greek epigram achieved new importance in the nineteenth century as raw material for stories about the classical past.</p>

Epigram (New Surveys in the Classics, Series Number 38)

Literature & Fiction

Nisbet, Gideon

History & Criticism

Cambridge University Press

This volume contains the first scholarly commentary on the puzzling work Busiris - part mythological jeu d'esprit, part rhetorical treatise and part self-promoting polemic - by the Greek educator and rhetorician Isocrates (436-338 BC). The commentary reveals Isocrates' strategies in advertising his own political rhetoric as a middle way between amoral 'sophistic' education and the abstruse studies of Plato's Academy. Introductory chapters situate Busiris within the lively intellectual marketplace of 4th-century Athens, showing how the work parodies Plato's Republic, and how its revisionist treatment of the monster-king Busiris reflects Athenian fascination with the 'alien wisdom' of Egypt. As a whole, the book casts new light both on Isocrates himself, revealed as an agile and witty polemicist, and on the struggle between rhetoric and philosophy from which Hellenism and modern humanities were born.

A Commentary on Isocrates' Busiris (Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava Supplementum)

Brill Academic Pub

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Livingstone, Niall. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Livingstone, Niall