Details
Author
Bilde, Per, Troels Engberg-Pedersen And Lise Hannestad (Eds.)
Publishers
Aarhus : Aarhus University Press, 1996.
Size
Studies in Hellenistic Civilization ; 7. 147 p. Original cloth with dust jacket.
Description
From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Overall very good and clean. - CONTENTS: Oswin Murray: Hellenistic Royal Symposia -- Robert Fleischer: Hellenistic Royal Iconography on Coins -- Am�e Kuhrt: The Seleucid Kings and Babylonia: New Perspectives on the Seleucid Realm in the East -- Josef Wieseh�fer: �King of Kings� and �Philhell�� Kingship in Arsacid Iran -- Lise Hannestad: �This Contributes in no small way to one�s Reputation:� The Bithynian Kings and Greek Culture -- Tessa Rajak: Hasmonean Kingship and the Invention of Tradition -- Erich S. Gruen: Hellenistic Kingship: Puzzles, Problems, and Possibilities. - Kingship was perhaps the most important single institution of the Hellenistic period. The enormous territories conquered by Alexander were organized not as a �democratic� Greek republic or a Greek type of �tyranny�, but as a monarchy inspired by the Macedonian Kingdom and the Persian Empire. After Alexander�s death the institution of kingship was carried on by the Diadochs in the Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Thracian and Macedonian monarchies. In the second and the first centuries BC a number of new states arose, almost all of them similarly organized as kingdoms: Pergamon, Bithynia, Pontos and Cappadocia in Asia Minor, and Bactria, Parthia, Armenia, Commagene, Judaea and Nabataea in the Asian and Syrian parts of the former Seleucid Empire. Thus, in the Hellenistic period the idea of kingship seems to have become almost contagious, and the proclamation of a king appears to have been the simplest way of etablishing sovereignty. This monarchic legacy was eventually taken over by the Roman Empire from where it was later transferred to medieval Europe. This volume focuses on the symbolic aspects of the Hellenistic monarchies: what were the values and the ideals in these kingdoms? Were they identical or different in the various Hellenistic states? Were some of them taken over from the Macedonian and Persian Monarchies, or created in the Hellenistic Period? In the present volume these questions are approached in two ways, one topical and one geographical. Oswyn Murray, Robert Fleischer and Erich S. Gruen treat essential aspects of Hellenistic Kingship thematically, while Am�e Kuhrt, Josef Wieseh�, Lise Hannestad and Tessa Rajak each examines one of the Hellenistic Kingdoms. ISBN 9788772884745