“A Pure World of Signs”: Language and Empire
in Cosmopolis
March 2011; published online May 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: classical philosophy. 21029 words.
This chapter examines how early imperial intellectuals thought about Atticism and how the early imperial elite used language and in particular literary Atticism to create a model of the unity of the null...
The Advent of Pluralism
April 2011; published online May 2011.
Book. Subjects: classical philosophy. 400 pages.
This book is concerned with the relationship between a modern philosophical idea and an ancient historical moment. It explores how the notion of pluralism, made famous by Isaiah Berlin, may be seen...
Aeschylus
in Classics
Published online December 2009.
Article. Subjects: classical studies; classical art and architecture; classical history; classical literature; classical philosophy. 12130 words.
Aeschylus (also spelled Aischylos or Aiskhylos) was born c. 525/4 bce to an aristocratic family in Eleusis, a town in western Attica, part of the territory controlled by Athens. He was...
After Ethnicity: Zeno as Citizen
in Cosmopolis
March 2011; published online May 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: classical philosophy. 18348 words.
This chapter examines how Stoicism provided a way of thinking about space, culture, ethnicity, and the relationship of the parts to the whole. It discusses how Athenian intellectuals (or perhaps...
After Rome: The Ends of the World
in Pliny the Elder's Natural History
March 2004; published online September 2007.
Chapter. Subjects: classical philosophy. 12129 words.
This chapter addresses the question of primitivism in the Natural History by examining Pliny's account of the primitive Chauci, inhabitants of the north-west German coast. The rather hostile...
Ajax: moral certainty
in The Advent of Pluralism
April 2011; published online May 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: classical philosophy. 14770 words.
This chapter turns attention towards Sophocles' Ajax, particularly in light of Homeric precedents. It argues that Ajax personifies a strong link between heroism and the monistic style of...
Alexander the Great
in Classics
Published online April 2011.
Article. Subjects: classical studies; classical art and architecture; classical history; classical literature; classical philosophy. 23057 words.
It has been said about Alexander the Great (b. 356–d. 323 bce) that his name marked the end of an old world epoch and the beginning of a new one. Alexander’s empire that stretched from...
Alteration and Persistence: Form and Matter in the Physics and De Generatione et Corruptione
in The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle
August 2012; published online November 2012.
Article. Subjects: philosophy; classical philosophy. 12007 words.
Aristotle's Physics is a study of nature (phusis) and of natural objects (ta phusei). According to him, these objects—either all of them or at least some of them—are in motion. That is, they are...
Ammianus Marcellinus
in Classics
Published online May 2011.
Article. Subjects: classical studies; classical art and architecture; classical history; classical literature; classical philosophy. 11656 words.
Ammianus Marcellinus (b. c. 330—d. after 390) was a native Greek speaker who served in the Roman army and in about 390 completed the Res gestae, a Latin history in thirty-one books from...
Anaxagoras
in Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity
January 2008; published online March 2012.
Chapter. Subjects: classical philosophy. 13815 words.
The earliest western philosophers were the bright original Greek thinkers traditionally known as the Presocratics—a line-up which included such heterogeneous figures as Thales, Anaximander,...