The Hellenistic World : New Perspectives

The Hellenistic World assembles fourteen new papers, by an international group of contributors, on the pivotal age between the death of Alexander the Great and Cleopatra VII. Subjects range from settlement patterns, non-Greek populations and marginal peoples, the personnel, rivalries and religious ideologies of the royal courts, and on to the wider question of the political structure of the Hellenistic world. Considerable attention is paid to the revolutionary art of the period and to the reception of its culture in more recent times, including images of Cleopatra on film.

The history of the Hellenistic world has long been more popular than has widely been realized. This volume seeks to contribute to that popularity. Here are fourteen new perspectives on the period from a distinguished and international group of scholars. Their varied papers are grouped around five key themes: Structure and System, King and Court, Family and Kinship, Landscape and People, Art and Image. The popularity of the Hellenistic world is reflected in the CPW series dedicated to it: D. Ogden, Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death; and, I; A. Erskine & L. Llwellyn-Jones (eds), Creating a Hellenistic World; E. Carney, King and Court in Ancient Macedonia; I. Kralli, The Hellenistic Peloponnese; A. Erskine, L. Llwellyn-Jones and S. Wallace (eds), The Hellenistic Court; T. Howe and F. Pownall (eds) Ancient Macedonians in the Greek and Roman Sources; K. Erickson (ed.), The Seleukid Empire (281-222 BC).