New books

The folks at Edgar Kent, a Canadian publishing house (apparently partnered with the University of Toronto Press), have asked me to forward the following to scholars who might be interested. The first, on Greek warfare, was written by a Marine who became a classicist, which intrigues me as a classicist whose father was a Marine. The second is by Frank Frost on Athenian historiography, which was lauded in the BMCR.

I guess there's no harm in giving them a little free publicity:

please find below details of our latest titles in Classics. We would appreciate if you would take the time to review these titles and forward this email to any scholars who may be interested in our books.



THE ATHLETES OF WAR

AN EVALUATION OF THE AGONISTIC ELEMENTS IN GREEK

WARFARE

by John C. Dayton



In this dramatically revisionist account of Greek warfare, John Dayton challenges the modern views that Greek warfare was more an aspect of the Greek spirit of competition than a desire to inflict drastic harm on an enemy. He examines all the ancient evidence bearing on the actual conduct of war and combat among the Greeks themselves and in struggles of Greeks with barbarians from the archaic period to the fourth century, and draws on Polybius for the evidence Roman warfare bears on the conduct of battles. A thorough analysis of casualty statistics shows that Greeks suffered heavily from warfare, and that there was no “tournament-like” limitation on the harm that one party might inflict on another. He places the scholarly analyses of Greek warfare in the context of the ideologies prevalent at the time modern historians study the question, and he uses the evidence of casualty figures suffered in modern conflicts to show that the damage Greek armies inflicted on one another is comparable to the losses suffered in modern “total war.”



The conception that Greek warfare was more an aspect of the Greek spirit of competition than a desire to inflict drastic harm on an enemy is a modern myth. The notion still exerts great cultural influence, and persists precisely because it is a myth, a durable belief in principled and ceremonial wars between Greeks that shares some elements with the belief in the peaceable savage who fights only for his own honor or in his own defense. Examining all the ancient sources that provide information on the nature and ideology of combat in the Greek world, John Dayton shows that this modern conception is thoroughly disprovable by any objective criteria. His presentation of the data also provides a basic source of information about Greek warfare and history for all studies in the future. This is a study essential to any understanding of Greek history, of which war was a constant feature.



Contents



Introduction • 1: The History of Agonism • 2: The Archaic Evidence •

3: The Fifth Century • 4: The Casualties • 5: The Fourth Century •

6: Polybius and the Roman Connection • Conclusion • Bibliography • Index



John Dayton combines military experience with classical training to provide an understanding of Greek attitudes towards war. Born in Michigan in 1966, he served with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1987 to 1991. He studied classics at Princeton and the University of Kansas, and received his doctorate from Brown University in 2003. He was the Heinrich Schliemann Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens in 2000-01, and subsequently has taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, Massachusetts and the University of Indiana. He is currently a member of the classics faculty of the University of Calgary.



Hardcover Edition

ISBN 0-88866-651-9 • $82.50 • 200 Pages



Order From:

University of Toronto Press

Phone: (416) 667-7791 or toll-free 1-800-565-9523 in North America.
Fax: (416) 667-7832 or toll-free 1-800-221-9985 in North America.
E-mail: publishing@utpress.utoronto.ca

Mail U.S.
2250 Military Road
Tonawanda, New York 14150

Mail Canada
5201 Dufferin Street
Toronto, On M3H 5T6

United Kingdom and Continental Europe
NBN International,
Phone 44 (0) 1752 202301,
Fax 44 (0) 1752 202333
E-mail: orders@nbninternational.com







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------







POLITICS AND THE ATHENIANS

ESSAYS ON ATHENIAN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY



by Frank J. Frost





From the Foreword by Erich Gruen, Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics, University of California, Berkeley



“Frank Frost has been among the leading historians of archaic and classical Greece for the past four decades and more.… The articles assembled here…put on exhibit the coherence and continuity of his writing over the years on the political history of Athens in its most dramatic and productive time, the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., on the tangled historiography treating that era, and on the severe limitations as well as the exciting challenge of reconstructing it.…. One thinks particularly of ‘Pericles,’… a compelling deconstruction of Plutarch’s simplistic dichotomy of aristocrats vs. democrats which had misled more than a generation of scholars. [and] his “Themistocles’ Place in Athenian Politics.” These seminal articles exhibit Frank’s great strength in the dissection of historiographical traditions and the extraction of reliable evidence to rebuild the picture.… He argues for the circumstances in which stories were concocted, traces the tortuous paths that they followed, and exposes plausible reasons for their alteration and manipulation that shed as much light on the motives of the tellers as on the meaning of the tales.



“One finds this form of scrupulous scrutiny again and again in his essays… alive to the vast lacunae in our testimony but also to the potential of discovery and the value of weaving together the diverse strands that survive.… He both sobers and stimulates his readers.



Contents



Foreword • Author’s Preface • Attic Literacy and the Solonian Seisachtheia • Aspects of Early Athenian Citizenship • The Rural Demes of Attica • Solon Pornoboskos and Aphrodite Pandemos • Solon and Salamis, Peisistratos and Nisaia • Plutarch and Theseus • Toward a History of Peisistratid Athens • The “Ominous” Birth of Peisistratos • Peisistratos, the Cults, and the Unification of Attica • Faith, Authority, and History in Early Athens • Politics in Early Athens • Tribal Politics and the Civic State • The Athenian Military before Cleisthenes • The Dubious Origins of the “Marathon” • Themistocles’ Place in Athenian Politics • Themistocles and Mnesiphilus • Troizen and the Persian War • A Note on Xerxes at Salamis • Thucydides I. 137.2 • Some Documents in Plutarch’s Lives • Aristodemos • Phylarchus, Fragment 76 • Pericles and Dracontides • Pericles, Thucydides, Son of Melesias, and Athenian Politics before the War • A Frank Frost Bibliography



“Frank Frost has been one of the most penetrating researchers into the social and political structure of archaic Athens.…His work has always been marked by a careful evaluation of the sources and an awareness of the contemporary context… This is a valuable book. It not only brings together a group of papers important for the study of Athenian history, but it also allows us to appreciate the achievement of an important American historian of ancient Greece. Let us hope for more in the future..” J.A.S. Evans in Bryn Mawr Classical Review



Hardcover Edition

ISBN 0-88866-650-0 • $82.50 • 299 Pages



Order From:

University of Toronto Press

Phone: (416) 667-7791 or toll-free 1-800-565-9523 in North America.
Fax: (416) 667-7832 or toll-free 1-800-221-9985 in North America.
E-mail: publishing@utpress.utoronto.ca

Mail U.S.
2250 Military Road
Tonawanda, New York 14150

Mail Canada
5201 Dufferin Street
Toronto, On M3H 5T6

United Kingdom and Continental Europe
NBN International,
Phone 44 (0) 1752 202301,
Fax 44 (0) 1752 202333
E-mail: orders@nbninternational.com



*Please quote the title and ISBN when ordering your books.