The Serpent Column, a bronze sculpture that has stood in Delphi and Constantinople, today Istanbul, is a Greek representation of the Near Eastern primordial combat myth: it is Typhon, a dragon defeated by Zeus, and also Python slain by Apollo. The column was created after the Battle of Plataia (479 BC), where the sky was dominated by serpentine constellations and by the spiralling tails of the Milky Way. It was erected as a votive for Apollo and as a monument to the victory of the united Greek poleis over the Persians. It is as a victory monument that the column was transplanted to Constantinople and erected in the hippodrome. The column remained a monument to cosmic victory through centuries, but also took on other meanings. Through the Byzantine centuries these interpretation were fundamentally Christian, drawing upon serpentine imagery in Scripture, patristic and homiletic writings. When Byzantines saw the monument they reflected upon this multivalent serpentine symbolism, but also the fact that it was a bronze column. For these observers, it evoked the Temple's brazen pillars, Moses' brazen serpent, the serpentine tempter of Genesis (Satan), and the beast of Revelation. The column was inserted into Christian sacred history, symbolizing creation and the end times. The most enduring interpretation of the column, which is unrelated to religion, and therefore survived the Ottoman capture of the city, is as a talisman against snakes and snake-bites. It is this tale that was told by travellers to Constantinople throughout the Middle Ages, and it is this story that is told to tourists today who visit Istanbul. In this book, Paul Stephenson twists together multiple strands to relate the cultural biography of a unique monument.

The Serpent Column: A Cultural Biography (Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture)

Arts & Photography

Stephenson, Paul

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Analyzing the European Union Policy Process (The European Union Series, 22)

Readers are provided with a practical insight into how to analyze policies and policy-making in the EU. Using case studies to deepen readers' understanding, this book examines the various stages of the policy process - from the moment the issue reaches the agenda through to drafting, implementation and evaluation.

Politics & Social Sciences

Versluis, Esther

Keulen, Mendeltje van

Politics & Government

Red Globe Press

This is a narrative political history of the northern Balkans in the period 900-1204. It treats the Balkans as the frontier of the Byzantine empire, and considers imperial relations with the peoples living in the Balkans, including the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and Hungarians. It also considers responses to invasions from beyond the frontier: by steppe nomads, from beyond the Danube, and by western powers through Hungary and across the Adriatic sea. The first four crusades, 1095-1204, are considered in some detail, and extensive use is made of archaeology.

Byzantium's Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204

History

Europe

Cambridge University Press

The long reign of the Byzantine emperor Basil II (976-1025) has been considered a "golden age", in which his greatest achievement was the annexation of Bulgaria after a long and bloody war. Paul Stephenson reveals that the legend of the "Bulgar-slayer" was actually created long after his death. His reputation was exploited by contemporary scholars and politicians to help galvanize support for the Greek wars against Bulgarians in Macedonia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Byzantium's Balkan Frontier: A Political Study of the Northern Balkans, 900–1204

New Rome: The Empire in the East (History of the Ancient World)

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

A comprehensive new history of the Eastern Roman Empire based on the science of the human past. As modern empires rise and fall, ancient Rome becomes ever more significant. We yearn for Rome's power but fear Rome's ruin--will we turn out like the Romans, we wonder, or can we escape their fate? That question has obsessed centuries of historians and leaders, who have explored diverse political, religious, and economic forces to explain Roman decline. Yet the decisive factor remains elusive. In New Rome, Paul Stephenson looks beyond traditional texts and well-known artifacts to offer a novel, scientifically-minded interpretation of antiquity's end. It turns out that the descent of Rome is inscribed not only in parchments but also in ice cores and DNA. From these and other sources, we learn that pollution and pandemics influenced the fate of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. During its final five centuries, the empire in the east survived devastation by natural disasters, the degradation of the human environment, and pathogens previously unknown to the empire's densely populated, unsanitary cities. Despite the Plague of Justinian, regular "barbarian" invasions, a war with Persia, and the rise of Islam, the empire endured as a political entity. However, Greco-Roman civilization, a world of interconnected cities that had shared a common material culture for a millennium, did not. Politics, war, and religious strife drove the transformation of Eastern Rome, but they do not tell the whole story. Braiding the political history of the empire together with its urban, material, environmental, and epidemiological history, New Rome offers the most comprehensive explanation to date of the Eastern Empire's transformation into Byzantium.

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SPSS Manual for The Basic Practice of Statistic, Second Edition

Science & Math

Moore, David S.

Stephenson, Patricia

Rogers, Neal

Ritchie, Justine

Mathematics

W.H.Freeman

Book by Stephenson, Paul, Rogness, Neal, Stephenson, Patricia, Moore, David S., McCabe, George P.

SPSS Manual: for Introduction to the Practice of Statistics 4e

McCabe, George P.

Rogness, Neal

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