Why Cicero Matters (Bloomsbury, 2023) shows us how the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius, better known as Cicero, can help realize a new political world. His impact on humanitarianism, the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers of America is immense. Yet we give Julius Caesar all our attention. Why? What does this say about modern politics and political culture?
This book gives us Cicero as an antidote to the myth of the strong man of history. Reading Cicero's On Duties alongside two more introspective philosophical texts, On Friendship and On Old Age, we see how Cicero turned politics into a higher, intellectual form of art, believing in education, in culture and above all in the power of philosophy to instil morality. Cicero has reassuring words on the indispensable work philosophers make, and why the common good needs philosophy.
In an age when anti-intellectualism runs rampant, Why Cicero Matters introduces us to an ancient thinker who argues culture is, or ought to be, the foundation of any modern democracy, and books its building blocks.
Vittorio Bufacchi is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Cork, Ireland. He works in moral and political philosophy. He is the author of Violence and Social Justice (2007); Social Injustice (2012); and Everything Must Change: Philosophical Lessons From Lockdown (2021).
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.
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1:07:45
Sarah E. Bond, "Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire" (Yale UP, 2024)
Historian Sarah E. Bond retells the traditional story of Ancient Rome, revealing how groups of ancient workers unified, connected, and protested as they helped build an empire
From plebeians refusing to join the Roman army to bakers withholding bread, this is the first book to explore how Roman workers used strikes, boycotts, riots, and rebellion to get their voices—and their labor—acknowledged. Sarah E. Bond explores Ancient Rome from a new angle to show that the history of labor conflicts and collective action goes back thousands of years, uncovering a world far more similar to our own than we realize.
Workers often turned to their associations for solidarity and shared identity in the ancient world. Some of these groups even negotiated contracts, wages, and work conditions in a manner similar to modern labor unions. As the world begins to consider the value—and indeed the necessity—of unionization to protect workers, Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire (Yale UP, 2024) demonstrates that we can learn valuable lessons from ancient laborers and from attempts by the Roman government to limit their freedom.
New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review
Sarah E. Bond is the Erling B. “Jack” Holtsmark Associate Professor in the Classics in the Department of History at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean. She lives in Iowa City, IA.
Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston
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1:19:55
Anand Venkatkrishnan, "Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Where is the "life" in scholarly life? Is it possible to find in academic writing, so often abstracted from the everyday? How might religion bridge that gap? In Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History (Oxford UP, 2024), author Anand Venkatkrishnan explores these questions within the intellectual history of a popular Hindu scripture, the Bhagavata Purana, spanning the precolonial period of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries in India. He shows that Brahmin intellectuals writing in Sanskrit were neither impervious to the quotidian religious practices of bhakti, nor uninterested in its politics of language and caste. They supported, contested, and repurposed the social commentary of bhakti even in highly technical works of Sanskrit knowledge, and their personal religious commitments featured in a language and genre of writing that deliberately isolated itself from worldly matters. The religion of bhakti bound together the transregional discourse of Sanskrit learning and the local devotional practices of everyday people, though not in a top-down manner. Rather, vernacular ways of being, believing, and belonging in the world could and did reshape the contours of Sanskrit intellectuality.
Venkatkrishnan revisits the historiography of the Bhagavata Purana to expand our knowledge of the many different religious and philosophical communities that interpreted and laid claim to the themes of the text. While most associated with the traditions of Vaisnavism, Love in the Time of Scholarship brings to light how the Bhagavata was also studied by Saivas, Saktas, and others on the periphery of the text's history.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence.
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Karenleigh A. Overmann, "The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East" (Gorgias Press, 2024)
What are numbers, and where do they come from? Based on her groundbreaking study of material devices used for counting in the Ancient Near East, Karenleigh Overmann proposes a novel answer to these timeless questions.
Tune in as we talk with Karenleigh Overmann about her book, The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Gorgias Press, 2024).
Karenleigh Overmann earned a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Oxford, and is research fellow at the University of Bergen, Norway.
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Joel M. Rothman, "The Cosmic Journey in the Book of Revelation: Apocalyptic Cosmology and the Experience of Story-Space" (T&T Clark, 2023)
Cosmology and cosmic journeys play a significant role in biblical and extra-biblical texts, especially in apocalyptic narratives. What about for the book of Revelation? The answer is yes.
Join us as we speak with Joel Rothman about his recent book, The Cosmic Journey in the Book of Revelation: Apocalyptic Cosmology and the Experience of Story-Space (T&T Clark, 2023).
Joel Rothman recently earned his PhD at the University of Divinity in Australia.
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