New Books in Ancient History

Most studies of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander III focus on the military aspects of his life and reign. Yet Alexander’s campaigns would not have been possible had it not been for the enormous plunder his armies seized in their conquests. In The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World (Oxford University Press, 2016), Frank L. Holt sifts through the ancient sources to provide new insights into an understudied aspect of Alexander’s empire. Though he subsequently downplayed its holdings, Alexander inherited a substantial treasury when he took the throne in 336 BCE. This he used to win the vast wealth possessed by the Persian monarchy, making himself the richest person in the world in the process. Alexander employed his wealth in numerous ways to solidify his rule, yet as Holt demonstrates at various points even he was forced to borrow money in order to cover the expenses of his ongoing campaigns, which he did by turning to the similarly-enriched soldiers accompanying him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People have long been captivated by stories of dragons. Myths related to dragon slaying can be found across many civilizations around the world, even among the most ancient cultures including ancient Israel. In his book The Dragon, the Mountain, and the Nations, Robert Miller chronicles the trajectories and transformations of this myth, and brings out the major role of dragon slaying in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Join us as we talk with Robert Miller about an age-old, fascinating topic: dragons!Robert D. Miller II earned his Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from the University of Michigan, and is Associate Professor of Old Testament at The Catholic University of America, and Research Associate with University of Pretoria, South Africa. His other books include Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History of Israel in the 12th and 11th Centuries BC (2005), Oral Tradition in Ancient Israel (2011), and Covenant and Grace in the Old Testament: Assyrian Propaganda and Israelite Faith (2012). Robert teaches courses in Old Testament, the ancient Near East, and Archaeology. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author ofThe Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did capitalism exist in ancient Greece, the cradle of democracy and western civilization? I was joined to discuss this and other issues with Donni Wang, the author of Before the Market: The Political Economy of Olympianism (Common Ground, 2018). The book is not a traditional book of economics as history and philosophy play a big role. Not surprisingly Donni studied Economics, at Berkeley, and Classics, at Stanford. She now holds a position in History at Shanghai University. Previous studies have applied quantitative models and social science methods to determine the extent of market activities and growth in ancient Greece. Before the Market, instead, employs techniques from the cultural-linguistic turn to examine economic matters. With this approach the author argues to be able to shed light on a new economic system—one that is vastly different from the market system. At the same time, the underlying theoretical framework that links culture, identity, and action also prompts a radical redefinition of state power, democracy, and community, resulting in a narrative of ancient Greece that is both more dynamic and complex than in conventional accounts and also more useful and relevant for today’s world. For the concerned reader, this book is laden with lessons and ideas for both envisioning wholesale economic transformation that is needed to address the problems of the 21st century as well as examples of specific practice that can be adopted. Concepts like the commons, collective knowledge, joint ownership, and gift exchange speak directly to a number of grass-roots movements that seek to embrace alternative ways of organizing economic life. In addition, Before the Market provides a reading of democracy politics that points the way forward to a truly tolerant, inclusive and egalitarian global order. A very interesting, erudite, sophisticated and provocative book worth reading.Andrea Bernardi is Senior Lecturer in Employment and Organization Studies at Oxford Brookes University in the UK. He holds a doctorate in Organization Theory from the University of Milan, Bicocca. He has held teaching and research positions in Italy, China and the UK. Among his research interests are the use of history in management studies, the co-operative sector, and Chinese co-operatives. His latest project is looking at health care in rural China. He is the co-convener of the EAEPE’s permanent track on Critical Management Studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today the word “barbarian” has a derogatory connotation for most people. Yet in the classical world it was one that was often used not as a pejorative but as a means of denoting people of different cultural backgrounds, which was regularly done in an era in which interactions with them were commonplace. Erik Jensen’s book Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World (Hackett Publishing Company, 2018) examines the concept of barbarians as understood by the Hellenic. Hellenistic, and Roman civilizations, showing how their ever-evolving use of the phrase offers us an understanding of their concepts of identity. Noting the origin of the word as a descriptor of how the Greeks interpreted foreign languages, Jensen explains how it was an early example of how the politically fractious people of the region identified the shared factors that distinguished them from others. Such distinctions were frequently relevant given the Greek presence in the Mediterranean world, which manifested itself in trade, colonization, and later in the conquests that established the Hellenistic world. By contrast the Roman interaction with others was defined by conquest from the start, which led to the development of a different criteria of which peoples were and were not regarded as outsiders. As Jensen reveals, it was the crises of the late imperial period which hardened the concept of barbarians into the negative one which we use today, one which has skewed our understanding of the ancient world as a consequence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.E., Rabbi Akiva was the greatest rabbi of his time and one of the most important influences on Judaism as we know it today. Traditional sources tell how he was raised in poverty and unschooled in religious tradition but began to learn the Torah as an adult. In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E., he helped shape a new direction for Judaism through his brilliance and his character. Mystic, legalist, theologian, and interpreter, he disputed with his colleagues in dramatic fashion yet was admired and beloved by his peers. Executed by Roman authorities for his insistence on teaching Torah in public, he became the exemplar of Jewish martyrdom.Drawing on the latest historical and literary scholarship, Barry W. Holtz‘s Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud (Yale University Press, 2017) goes beyond older biographies, untangling a complex assortment of ancient sources to present a clear and nuanced portrait of Talmudic hero Rabbi Akiva.Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Denying Her Voice: The Figure of Miriam in Ancient Jewish Literature (Vandenhock and Ruprecht, 2016) Hanna Tervanotko first analyzes the treatment and development of Miriam as a literary character in ancient Jewish texts, taking into account all the references to this figure preserved in ancient Jewish literature from the exilic period to the early second century C.E.: Exodus 15:20-21; Deuteronomy 24:8-9; Numbers 12:1-15; 20:1; 26:59; 1 Chronicles 5:29; Micah 6:4, the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q365 6 II, 1-7; 4Q377 2 I, 9; 4Q543 1 I, 6 = 4Q545 1 I, 5; 4Q546 12, 4; 4Q547 4 I, 10; 4Q549 2, 8), Jubilees 47:4; Ezekiel the Tragedian 18; Demetrius Chronographer frag. 3; texts by Philo of Alexandria: De vita contemplativa 87; Legum allegoriae 1.76; 2.66-67; 3.103; De agricultura 80-81; Liber antiquitatum biblicarum 9:10; 20:8, and finally texts by Josephus: Antiquitates judaicae 2.221; 3.54; 3.105; 4.78.These texts demonstrate that the picture of Miriam preserved in the ancient Jewish texts is richer than the Hebrew Bible suggests. The results provide a contradictory image of Miriam. On the one hand she becomes a tool of Levitical politics, whereas on the other she continues to enjoy a freer role. People continued to interpret earlier literary traditions in light of new situations, and interpretations varied in different contexts. Second, in light of poststructuralist literary studies that treat texts as reflections of specific social situations, Tervanotko argues that the treatment of Miriam in ancient Jewish literature reflects mostly a reality in which women had little space as active agents. Despite the general tendency to allow women only little room, the references to Miriam suggest that at least some prominent women may have enjoyed occasional freedom.Phillip Sherman is Associate Professor of Religion at Maryville College in Maryville, TN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dominant social norms and expectations shape how individuals and their public activities are understood. In Roman antiquity, various shifts influenced the production and dissolution of prejudices towards certain types of occupations. In Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean (University of Michigan Press, 2016), Sarah Bond, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Iowa, explores the legal, social, and literary modes of persecution and stigmatization of unseemly occupations and voluntary associations. One’s membership in Roman society was often regulated through reputation and social position. Criers, funerary workers, and tanners were among the many trades that were viewed as unwholesome, marginalizing these individuals from the broader community. Over time there were shifts in social perceptions of certain types of work, often catalyzed by religious communities. In our discussion we talked about taboos as an analytical category, reading soundscapes in ancient texts, views of death, corpses, and pollution, the social context of tanners and their odors, mint workers and state labor, bakers and sensual trades, gladiators, archeological topography, the role of Christian and Jewish communities in shaping social norms, and maybe surprisingly, rednecks, the field of Classics, blogging, how to do good public scholarship, the Women of Ancient History database, and how walls embody emotions of fear.Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kjpetersen@unomaha.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The daughter of the emperor Theodosius I, Galla Placidia successfully navigated the tumultuous politics of the late Roman Empire to rule as regent for her son Valentinian III. In Rome’s Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), Joyce Salisbury details the extent of this accomplishment by situating it within the context of her time. Orphaned at an early age, Placidia grew up in the household of Stilicho, a Vandal general who had established himself as the most powerful figure in the western Empire. The sacking of Rome in 410 made her the captive of the victorious Goths, eventually marrying their leader Ataulf. After the tragic death of their son and Ataulf’s subsequent assassination brought her hopes of establishing a Romano-Gothic dynasty to an end, she was forced by her ruling half-brother Honorius to marry his general Constantius III. With Constantinus and Honorius’s deaths leaving her son Valentinian as emperor, Placidia became regent for the boy, in which capacity she dealt with the problems of barbarian invasions, rebellious commanders, and the many other challenges of an empire in decline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mainstream readings of Numbers have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis—Leviticus with Deuteronomy and Joshua, composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. By contrast, Pekka Pitkanen reads Numbers as part of a wider work of Genesis—Joshua, a carefully crafted programmatic settler colonial document for a new society in Canaanite highlands in the late second millennium BCE—a document that seeks to replace pre-existing indigenous societies. On this show, we speak with Pekka Pitkanen about his new approach to Numbers in his recent book, A Commentary on Numbers: Narrative, Ritual and Colonialism (Routledge, 2017).Dr Pekka Pitkanen is a senior lecturer in the School of Liberal and Performing Arts at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. He also has an MDiv in theology from Chongshin University, Seoul, Korea, and a PhD on Old Testament studies from University of Gloucestershire. He is the author of Central Sanctuary and Centralization of Worship in Ancient Israel (2003) and Joshua (2010). His main area of specialization is the study of the sacred texts of Christianity (OT/HB) in the context of the ancient world and from a number of perspectives including archaeology, sociology, and anthropology.L. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus (Peeters, 2012), and Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus (IVP Academic, 2015). He can be reached at mmorales@gpts.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Peloponnesian War was one of the first subjects of historical inquiry, and one that has been the subject of many works ever since Thucydides wrote his famous account of the conflict. Yet these works typically focus just on the decades when Sparta’s Peloponnesian League fought against the Athenian empire. In The Plague of War: Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press, 2017), Jennifer T. Roberts sets the war within the broader context of inter-state hostilities in 5th and 4th century Greece. As she explains, fighting between the two sides did not begin in 431, nor did it really end in 404. Instead the Peloponnesian War was just one of a series of conflicts that stretched throughout the Hellenic era, in which victories often simply set the stage for the next round of battles. Though Sparta may have defeated Athens in 404, by continuing the story beyond then Roberts shows how the new alignments that resulted transformed the city states in ways that led to Sparta’s own defeat in 371, making her triumph in the war only a fleeting one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices