1. The origins of superstition

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Stuart Vyse
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Religious Practices

‘The origins of superstition’ describes practices of magic, prophecy, and divination in the ancient world, and the changing meaning of superstition through time. Throughout its long history, superstition has been a transactional concept with no fixed meaning of its own except in contrast to some other, more accepted world-view. The origin of the concept is found in ancient Greece in the 4th century bce, and for the next 2,000 years, superstition stood in contrast to the religious practices recommended by the elites. The word ‘superstition’ has often been levelled at practices that, even today, we would consider magical or paranormal, and yet versions of most of these practices are still with us.

Cosmopolitan Classicism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Evangelista
Keyword(s):  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
French Language ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
Modern France ◽  
Pierre Louys ◽  
Hellenistic Greece

Oscar Wilde associated ancient Greece and modern France as the homelands of artistic autonomy and personal freedom. France and the French language were crucial in his adoption of a cosmopolitan identity in which his close emotional and intellectual engagement with the ancient world also played a key role. His practices of classical reception therefore have roots in the French as well as English traditions. Wilde’s attitude towards ancient Greece initially shows the influence of French Parnassian poetry. As time goes on, however, he starts to engage with the new images of the ancient world promoted by Decadence and Symbolism, which sidelined the Greek classicism idealized by the Parnassians in favour of Hellenistic and Latin antiquity. Particularly important to Wilde were his exchanges with French Symbolist authors Marcel Schwob and Pierre Louÿs, whose writings on Hellenistic Greece are in dialogue with Wilde’s works, notably ‘The Critic as Artist’ and Salomé.

Spies in Ancient Greece

1998 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Strategic Plan ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Independent States ◽  
The Mediterranean

This paper is written to give some account of the part played by secret agents against foreign states. Only in the most incidental way will it mention secret agents who tried to detect internal dissent and conspiracy. Plato thought that all Greek states were in a permanent state of war, declared or undeclared. Even in modern times no two independent states have totally identical interests, and when negotiating about clashes of interests, in peacetime just as in war, any government will seek a position in which it can keep its own secrets and discern those of the opposing side. We know very little of Greek spying in time of peace. When diplomacy failed, Greek states could have recourse to war to attain their objectives. War requires some strategic plan of intended operations. In modern conditions many experts must have a hand in devising the plan, and it must be prepared well in advance. In the ancient world things were simpler. One wonders how many Carthaginians knew, or had to know, that Hannibal intended to march round the Mediterranean and attack Italy. Certainly he took the Romans by surprise. The execution of the plan is best entrusted so far as possible to a single commander, even in modern times. We know next to nothing about how military policy was determined in peacetime, but we have a little more information about conditions in times of war.

The Physical Cosmos: Aristotelian Dialectics

2018 ◽  
pp. 76-109
Author(s):  
Anthony Cordingley
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
Creative Transformation ◽  
Cosmic Order ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the impact of the dialectics of the Ancient world after Plato upon Beckett’s French novels and the peculiar set of relations between characters and their physical environment in How It Is. It accounts for the presence of Aristotelian ideas of cosmic order, syllogism, space and time. Beckett’s study of formal logic as a student at Trinity College, Dublin and his private study of philosophy in 1932 is examined in this light; particularly his “Philosophy Notes,” along with further sources for his knowledge. The Aristotelian world view of his “I” is shown to be confronted with a set of relations resembling those of the Ancient Greek Stoics. The materiality of spatio-temporal relations in How It Is and the metaphysical coordinates between the “I”, its cosmos and any transcendent other are interrogated. The dialectic between Aristotelian and Stoic physics and metaphysics in How It Is emerges as a conceptual framework for exploring many of the novel’s contradictions, as well as the many confusions and digressions of its narrator/narrated. Beckett’s creative transformation of this ancient dialectic is shown, furthermore, to lead him to formal innovations, such as the novel’s continuous present tense and its complex narrative structure.

A Discussion of Josiah Ober’s The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1142-1143
Author(s):  
Arlene W. Saxonhouse
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
Political Inquiry ◽  
Greek World

Ancient Greece has long exercised a powerful hold on the imagination of modern political science. But until fairly recently, this influence has largely been philosophical, related to the origins of many theoretical concepts—including the concept of politics itself—in the ancient world. In The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, Josiah Ober offers a synoptic and ambitious social theoretical account of the ancient Greek world, the sources of its power, the causes of its decline, and the lessons that can be drawn from this story for contemporary social and political science. We have thus invited a range of political scientists to comment on Ober’s account of classical Greece and its relevance to contemporary political inquiry.

Genocide in the Ancient World

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans van Wees
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
European Literature ◽  
Trojan War ◽  
Religious Dimension ◽  
The Face ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Perceived Challenge

This article examines genocide in the ancient world, by examining European literature and comparing the atrocities committed during the events of the Trojan War. The massacre of all Troy's male inhabitants and the enslavement of its women and children were fictional, but it had many counterparts in ancient history. It was almost the normative form of genocide in ancient Greece and some other parts of the ancient world, although mass enslavements and mass executions which made no distinctions of gender or age are also widely attested. The Greeks' reasons for treating the Trojans so brutally were typical of the motivations for genocide in antiquity: it was usually an act of ‘conspicuous destruction’, a display of force designed to assert the power and status of the perpetrator in the face of a perceived challenge. Ancient genocide sometimes had a religious dimension.

The Delphic Oracle: Belief and Behaviour in Ancient Greece—and Africa

1965 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. R. Whittaker
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Modern Trend ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Real ◽  
Cultural Institution

Until comparatively recently writers on religion were absorbed by questions concerning the origins of religious beliefs and practices. They endowed primitive man with a kind of rational logicality in his belief, or, like Frazer, they saw his religious practices as simply the application of erroneous reasoning. The modern trend is to try to view the religious or cultural institution as an essential part of society, existing because of the needs of that society. This is the theme, for instance, of Malinowski when he says that “religion is not born out of speculation or reflection, still less out of illusion or misapprehension, but rather out of the real tragedies of human life, out of the conflict between human plans and realities.”

Causation and "The Ancient World View"

1964 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Grant
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Ancient World

Attitudes Towards Animals in Ancient Greece

1979 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven H. Lonsdale
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Position ◽  
Aetiological Beliefs

Among the general questions that arise in analysing a culture's outlook on its fauna are the following: Where do animals belong in the world-view of that culture, in their cosmogony or historical mythology, and how do these aetiological beliefs reflect upon the economic position of animals? What is the range of emotional attitudes towards man's enigmatic and uncanny half-brothers, especially domesticated species? Are animals used in entertainment? Questions such as these may be further refined by determining which species are domesticated, which hunted; which are eaten by man, which taboo; which animals does man sacrifice or worship? Are animals kept as pets, and if so, what kinds of names does a culture give them–human names or abstract names embodying a spiritual quality or force in nature? To what extent are these non-verbal creatures a substitute for affection or sadistic punishment, or a target for aggressive or hostile feelings? In other words, what qualities does man project onto animals? Or put slightly differently, which powers does he attribute to the animal? Is an animal thought capable of curing illness, for example? And finally, what are some of the recurrent symbols that emerge for a given animal in legend or myth?

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