New Books in Ancient History

In the Greco-Roman world, gods were known to tame soundscapes, or acoustic landscapes. Zeus, Apollo, Orpheus, and other Classical deities demonstrated their power by bringing order to chaotic sound worlds, replacing cacophony with harmony. In late antiquity, Christians took up this archetype and applied it to Jesus. For many early Christians, the advent of Christ resembled the modern phenomenon of a musical key change, but on a grand scale: Jesus initiated a recalibration of the cosmic soundscape, ushering in a new world. However, according to many Christians in late antiquity, this universal key change was not yet complete. Late ancient Christians believed that they could participate in the ongoing sonic work of Christ by Christianizing the acoustic landscapes of the world.In Sounds for a New World: The Christianizing Soundscapes of Late Antiquity (Oxford UP, 2026), Dr. Philip Abbott explores how late ancient Christians envisioned themselves as participants in the worldwide retuning effort, harmonizing the Classical world to the new Christian reality. Rejecting the sounds of traditional Greco-Roman and Persian cultures, Christians advocated a variety of sonic practices to realize their grand retuning endeavor, including shouting, singing, silent meditation, chanting, and even belching. From the Latin West to the Syriac East, late ancient Christians formed a polyphonous chorus of diverse voices all joining in the great harmonizing work of Jesus as they Christianized the soundscapes of the world.For years, scholars have noted the monumental changes that took place in early Christianity during the so-called Constantinian Revolution. But Dr. Abbott turns our attention to an unexplored aspect of this transitional moment, arguing that it was not simply a political or religious revolution - it was a revolution of the senses. Central to this sensorial transformation was sound. As Christianity gained imperial power in the fourth century, Christians began the process of re-tuning the world for Christ. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere (U Nebraska Press, 2021) is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years. Steeves discusses the political history of American anthropology to focus on why pre-Clovis sites have been dismissed by the field for nearly a century. She explores supporting evidence from genetics and linguistic anthropology regarding First Peoples and time frames of early migrations. Additionally, she highlights the work and struggles faced by a small yet vibrant group of American and European archaeologists who have excavated and reported on numerous pre-Clovis archaeology sites. In this first book on Paleolithic archaeology of the Americas written from an Indigenous perspective, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere includes Indigenous oral traditions, archaeological evidence, and a critical and decolonizing discussion of the development of archaeology in the Americas. To learn more about Steeves’ research, please visit The Indigenous Paleolithic Database of the Americas at https://tipdba.com/. This interview was conducted by Lukas Rieppel, a historian at Brown University. You can learn more about his research here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Octavian's victory at Actium (31 B.C.) to its traditional endpoint in the West (476), the Roman Empire lasted a solid 500 years -- an impressive number by any standard, and fully one-fifth of all recorded history. In fact, the decline and final collapse of the Roman Empire took longer than most other empires even existed. Any historian trying to unearth the grand strategy of the Roman Empire must, therefore, always remain cognizant of the time scale, in which she is dealing. Although the pace of change in the Roman era never approached that of the modern era, it was not an empire in stasis. While the visible trappings may have changed little, the challenges Rome faced at its end were vastly different than those faced by Augustus and the Julio-Claudians. Over the centuries, the Empire's underlying economy, political arrangements, military affairs, and, most importantly, the myriad of external threats it faced were in constant flux, making adaptability to changing circumstances as important to Roman strategists as it is to strategists of the modern era. Yet the very idea of Rome having a grand strategy, or what it might be, did not concern historians until Edward Luttwak wrote The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third forty years ago. Although the work generated much debate, it failed to win over many ancient historians, in part because of its heavy emphasis on military force. By mostly neglecting any considerations of diplomacy, economics, politics, culture, or even the changing nature of the threats Rome faced, Luttwak tells only a portion of what should have been a much more wide-ranging narrative. For this and other reasons, such as its often dull presentation, it left an opportunity for another account of the rise and fall of Rome from a strategy perspective. Through a more encompassing definition of strategy and by focusing much of the narrative on crucial historical moments and the personalities involved, Rome: Strategy of Empire (Oxford UP, 2022) promises to provide a more persuasive and engaging history than Luttwak's. It aims not only to correct Luttwak's flaws and omissions, but will also employ the most recent work of current classical historians and archeologists to present a more complete and nuanced narrative of Roman strategic thinking and execution than is currently available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. In Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian(Harvard University Press, 2018), Angelos Chaniotis, Professor of Ancient History and Classics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, examines how his successors reorganized Persian lands to create a new empire stretching from the eastern Mediterranean as far as present-day Afghanistan, while in Greece and Macedonia a fragile balance of power repeatedly dissolved into war. Then, from the late third century BCE to the end of the first, Rome’s military and diplomatic might successively dismantled these post-Alexandrian political structures, one by one. During the Hellenistic period (c. 323–30 BCE), small polities struggled to retain the illusion of their identity and independence, in the face of violent antagonism among large states. With time, trade growth resumed and centers of intellectual and artistic achievement sprang up across a vast network, from Italy to Afghanistan and Russia to Ethiopia. But the death of Cleopatra in 30 BCE brought this Hellenistic moment to a close—or so the story goes. In Angelos Chaniotis’s view, however, the Hellenistic world continued to Hadrian’s death in 138 CE. Not only did Hellenistic social structures survive the coming of Rome, Chaniotis shows, but social, economic, and cultural trends that were set in motion between the deaths of Alexander and Cleopatra intensified during this extended period. Age of Conquests provides a compelling narrative of the main events that shaped ancient civilization during five crucial centuries. Ryan Tripp (Ph.D., History) is currently an adjunct in History at Los Medanos Community College and Southern New Hampshire University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific (Apollo, 2020), the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas tells the story of the peopling of the Pacific. In clear, accessible language Thomas shows us that most Pacific Islanders are in fact 'inter-islanders', or people defined by their movement across the ocean and between islands, rather than 'trapped' in islands in a far sea. Thomas also described the European discovery of the Pacific, and emphasizes the role Pacific Islanders played in teaching European explorers about the Pacific. 'European' knowledge of the Pacific, Thomas claims, was very much 'intercultural' and relied on indigenous Pacific knowledge of the region. In this episode of the podcast, Nick sits down with Alex Golub to discuss his book and the history of the Pacific. They talk about the influence of Epeli Hau‘ofa's writings on Nick's concept of 'inter-islanders' and discuss the complexities of intercultural contact in the nineteenth century Pacific which are exemplified by 'Tupaia's Chart' -- the map made for Captain Cook by Tupaia, the Tahitian navigator who led Cook to Aotearoa/New Zealand. Overall, Voyagers is an excellent introduction to Pacific history which can be read by anyone with an interest in the Pacific. Associate professor of anthropology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019) is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery in Roman households. Caitlín Eilís Barrett, Associate Professor of Classics at Cornell University, draws on case studies from Flavian Pompeii to investigate the close association between representations of Egypt and a particular type of Roman household space: the domestic garden. Through paintings and mosaics portraying the Nile, canals that turned the garden itself into a miniature "Nilescape," and statuary depicting Egyptian themes, many gardens in Pompeii offered ancient visitors evocations of a Roman vision of Egypt. Simultaneously faraway and familiar, these imagined landscapes made the unfathomable breadth of empire compatible with the familiarity of home. In contrast to older interpretations that connect Roman "Aegyptiaca" to the worship of Egyptian gods or the problematic concept of "Egyptomania," a contextual analysis of these garden assemblages suggests new possibilities for meaning. In Pompeian houses, Egyptian and Egyptian-looking objects and images interacted with their settings to construct complex entanglements of "foreign" and "familiar," "self" and "other." Representations of Egyptian landscapes in domestic gardens enabled individuals to present themselves as sophisticated citizens of empire. Yet at the same time, household material culture also exerted an agency of its own: domesticizing, familiarizing, and "Romanizing" once-foreign images and objects. That which was once imagined as alien and potentially dangerous was now part of the domus itself, increasingly incorporated into cultural constructions of what it meant to be "Roman." Featuring brilliant illustrations in both color and black and white, Domesticating Empire reveals the importance of material culture in transforming household space into a microcosm of empire. Ryan Tripp is adjunct history faculty for the College of Online and Continuing Education at Southern New Hampshire University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recognizing the absence of a God named Yahweh outside of ancient Israel, this study addresses the related questions of Yahweh's origins and the biblical claim that there were Yahweh-worshipers other than the Israelite people. Beginning with the Hebrew Bible, with an exhaustive survey of ancient Near Eastern literature and inscriptions discovered by archaeology, and using anthropology to reconstruct religious practices and beliefs of ancient Edom and Midian, this study proposes an answer. Yahweh-worshiping Midianites of the Early Iron Age brought their deity along with metallurgy into ancient Palestine and the Israelite people. Join us as we talk with Robert Miller about his latest book, Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021). Robert Miller, II, O.F.S., Ph.D., is Ordinary Professor of Old Testament and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at The Catholic University of America. Michael Morales is Professor of Biblical Studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and the author of The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus(Peeters, 2012), Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of Leviticus(IVP Academic, 2015), and Exodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption(IVP Academic, 2020). He can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Martha Rampton, Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual, and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000 (Cornell University Press, 2021) explores how magic was perceived, practiced, and prohibited in western Europe during the first millennium CE. Through the overlapping frameworks of religion, ritual, and gender, Martha Rampton connects early Christian reckonings with pagan magic to later doctrines and dogmas. Challenging established views on the role of women in ritual magic during this period, Rampton provides a new narrative of the ways in which magic was embedded within the foundational assumptions of western European society, informing how people understood the cosmos, divinity, and their own Christian faith. As Rampton shows, throughout the first Christian millennium, magic was thought to play a natural role within the functioning of the universe and existed within a rational cosmos hierarchically arranged according to a "great chain of being." Trafficking with the "demons of the lower air" was the essence of magic. Interactions with those demons occurred both in highly formalistic, ritual settings and on a routine and casual basis. Rampton tracks the competition between pagan magic and Christian belief from the first century CE, when it was fiercest, through the early Middle Ages, as atavistic forms of magic mutated and found sanctuary in the daily habits of the converted peoples and new paganisms entered Europe with their own forms of magic. By the year 1000, she concludes, many forms of magic had been tamed and were, by the reckoning of the elite, essentially ineffective, as were the women who practiced it and the rituals that attended it. Martha Rampton is full of energy and excitement about her book and she and Jana Byars have a wonderful, spirited chat.  Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, the Seleucid kings ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia, Armenia to the Persian Gulf. In a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, this Graeco-Macedonian imperial power introduced a linear and transcendent conception of time. Under Seleucid rule, time no longer restarted with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years, identical to the system we use today—continuous, irreversible, accumulating—became the de facto measure of historical duration. This new temporality, propagated throughout the empire, changed how people did business, recorded events, and oriented themselves to the larger world. Challenging this order, however, were rebellious subjects who resurrected their pre-Hellenistic pasts and created apocalyptic time frames that predicted the total end of history. The interaction of these complex and competing temporalities led to far-reaching religious, intellectual, and political developments. Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire (Harvard University Press, 2018) by Paul J. Kosmin, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, opens a new window onto empire, resistance, and the meaning of history in the ancient world. Ryan Tripp is an adjunct faculty member in history at Southern New Hampshire University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Violet Moller has written a narrative history of the transmission of books from the ancient world to the modern. In The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found (Doubleday, 2019), Moller traces the histories of migration of three ancient authors, Euclid, Ptolemy and Galen, from ancient Alexandria in 500 to Syria and Constantinople, to Baghdad in 800, and then to Renaissance Venice in the 15th century. Moller demonstrates how tenuous were the chances of such ancient works’ survival, from the depredations of invading armies to the hazards of fire and flooding, to the problems of translation through multiple languages over the centuries. The migration of ancient texts from Greece to the Middle East and back to medieval Europe is a fascinating story of how knowledge was preserved when certain conditions were met, such as political stability, the willingness of itinerant scholarly “manuscript hunters” to risk life and limb to find obscure, ancient texts, and the openness to tolerate and embrace knowledge derived from other cultures and civilizations. Moller’s book is the story of how the texts upon which the modern world was built were acquired through fortuitous accident and scholarly diligence. Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Though commonly used today to identify a polity that lasted for over a millennium, the label “Byzantine empire” is an anachronism imposed by more recent generations. As Anthony Kaldellis explains in Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium (Harvard University Press, 2019), this has contributed to the denial of the ethnic identity that most denizens of the empire had of themselves as Romans. Kaldellis traces the origins of this process of denial to the 8th century CE, with the papacy’s turn to the Franks as their protectors. The efforts by the Catholic Church to de-legitimize the Eastern Empire as the legatee of ancient Rome denied the self-identification of its residents as Romans, one that is reflected in much of the surviving literature from this era. This identity was so widely embraced by the residents of the empire as to make it a largely homogenous state ethnically throughout much of its existence, one that absorbed many of the bands of people from other ethnic groups who migrated to the empire over the centuries of its existence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy (Oxford University Press, 2018), offers a holistic treatment of the development of the Mid-Republican city from 396 to 168 BCE. As Romans established imperial control over Italy and beyond, the city itself radically transformed from an ambitious central Italian settlement into the capital of the Mediterranean world. Seth Bernard describes this transformation in terms of both new urban architecture, much of it unprecedented in form and extent, and new socioeconomic structures, including slavery, coinage, and market-exchange. These physical and historical developments were closely linked: building the Republican city was expensive, and meeting such costs had significant implications for urban society. Building Mid-Republican Rome brings both architectural and socioeconomic developments into a single account of urban change. Seth Bernard, an Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto, assembles a wide array of evidence, from literary sources to coins, epigraphy, and especially archaeological remains, revealing the period's importance for the decline of the Roman state's reliance on obligation and dependency and the rise of slavery and an urban labor market. This narrative is told through an investigation of the evolving institutional frameworks shaping the organization of public construction. A quantitative model of the costs of the Republican city walls reconstructs their economic impact. A new account of building technology in the period allows for a better understanding of the social and demographic profile of the city's builders. Building Mid-Republican Rome thus provides an innovative synthesis of a major Western city's spatial and historical aspects, shedding much-needed light on a seminal period in Rome's development. Ryan Tripp teaches history in California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are the canonical Gospels historically reliable? The four canonical Gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of these Gospels were intentional in how they handled historical information and sources. Building on recent work in the study of ancient biographies, Craig Keener argues that the writers of the canonical Gospels followed the literary practices of other biographers in their day. In Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2019), Keener explores the character of ancient biography and urges students and scholars to appreciate the Gospel writers’ method and degree of accuracy in recounting the life and ministry of Jesus. Keener’s Christobiography has far-reaching implications for the study of the canonical Gospels and historical Jesus research. He concludes that the four canonical Gospels are historically reliable ancient biographies. Dr. Craig Keener is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is the author of over 30 books, 6 of which have won awards in Christianity Today. Keener is also the New Testament editor for the award-winning NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, and is serving as the president of the Evangelical Theological Society. With more than a million copies of his books in circulation, Keener also serves the global church by teaching and lecturing all over the world. Jonathan Wright is a PhD student in New Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He holds an MDiv from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a ThM from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @jonrichwright, or jonathanrichardwright.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the earliest Christian confessions—that Jesus is Messiah and Lord—has long been recognized throughout the New Testament. Joshua Jipp shows that the New Testament is in fact built upon this foundational messianic claim, and each of its primary compositions is a unique creative expansion of this common thread. Having made the same argument about the Pauline epistles in his previous book Christ Is King: Paul’s Royal Ideology, Jipp works methodically through the New Testament to show how the authors proclaim Jesus as the incarnate, crucified, and enthroned messiah of God. In the second section of this book, Jipp moves beyond exegesis toward larger theological questions, such as those of Christology, soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology, revealing the practical value of reading the Bible with an eye to its messianic vision. The Messianic Theology of the New Testament (Eerdmans, 2020) functions as an excellent introductory text, honoring the vigorous pluralism of the New Testament books while still addressing the obvious question: what makes these twenty-seven different compositions one unified testament? Dr. Josh Jipp is associate professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. His previous books include Christ Is King: Paul's Royal Ideology and Saved by Faith and Hospitality, which won the Academy of Parish Clergy's Book of the Year award in 2018. Twitter: @TheRealJoshJipp Jonathan Wright is a PhD student in New Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @jonrichwright, or jonathanrichardwright.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The narrative that old books are worthless is designed to keep you from discovering that they are not." Spencer Klavan, author of How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crises discusses the West: why it's so important to preserve it, how its greatest ideas can still help us today, and the limits of science in addressing modern problems. Spencer Klavan received his PhD in Classics from Oxford and is Associate Editor of the Claremont Review of Books and Features Editor at the American Mind. His book, How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crises  His podcast, Young Heretics  "Hey hey ho ho Western Civ has got to go"  Spencer on C.S. Lewis's science fiction novel "That Hideous Strength  More on Plato's Timaeus  More on Lucretius, a prominent Epicurean philosopher More on Stoicism  C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image  Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood  Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices