The centuries after the so-called collapse of the Mycenaean palace administration from the twelfth to the eighth centuries BCE saw several transformations of social and economic structures. These had an impact on the economic performance in the period. It is also significant that during this period there was no attempt to restore palatial administration, but instead Early Iron Age communities built new social and economic relationships on household units that could be understood as adaptable social-political organisations with fluid boundaries. Moreover, the Early Iron Age should not be seen as a period of stagnation but one characterised by adaptive and resilient features. These led to the well-documented visibility of the archaeological record of the eighth century BCE.

Babylonia held a crucial position in a network of overland and naval routes, connecting Arabia, India, and the Graeco-Bactrian empire with the Levant, Syria, and Anatolia via the Fertile Crescent in the west. This network enabled the royal administration to combine the functions of trade and communication with settlement politics, the melioration of agriculture, and the supply of war zones. In this latter role, the Babylonian economy might have played an important part in Seleucid warfare, despite Babylonians never being actively involved in military campaigns. A new Graeco-Babylonian elite with particular demands, the dynamic development of settlements, the network of trade routes, communication, mobility connecting the western parts of the empire in the Aegean with the east, and increased monetization may have provided the conditions for some economic growth in Hellenistic Babylonia. Nevertheless, Babylonia had already been a very productive and economically dynamic region in the Achaemenid period. There were certainly great continuities from the Persian and Seleucid empires, and one may wonder whether the efforts of the early Seleucid kings to improve lines of communication, temple economies, and monetary exchange aimed at regaining the levels of prosperity that had already been achieved before Alexander’s conquests.

The chapter surveys the economy of Asia Minor from the late archaic period to the end of the Hellenistic era. Asia Minor forms the largest land mass in the northern Mediterranean and is characterized by a diverse geography with different levels of integration into the Greek world and its economy. Throughout time, urbanization significantly intensified; nevertheless, many regions preserved a rural character. Agriculture was most important, in both the land of the poleis and land controlled by the Achaemenid and Hellenistic kings. Production was directed to local needs, but some agrarian products also served as exports; non-agrarian production was less significant. Asia Minor was rich in natural resources, and fishing was important in a few coastal cities. The birthplace of coinage in the late seventh century, Asia Minor saw the circulation of many coinages over time and was highly monetarized at least by the end of the Hellenistic period. These coinages mirror the frequent changes in a political landscape that was characterized by different strata of authority, from the royal administration down to the city-states and villages. Through taxation, public expenditures, and by securing an institutional framework, these authorities shaped the complex conglomerate of Asia Minor’s economy.

In the Meno, Socrates considers, and replies to, Meno’s paradox. According to the paradox, whether or not one knows something, one can’t inquire into it. The paradox has been understood in a variety of ways: some think it is invalid; others think it is valid but unsound; those who favor the second option disagree about what the false premise is. I argue that, as Socrates understands the paradox (but not, perhaps, as Meno does), it is valid but unsound: not knowing doesn’t preclude inquiry, since one can inquire on the basis of true beliefs that fall short of knowledge. Socrates develops this theme in the geometrical discussion with one of Meno’s slaves. Another part of his reply is the theory of recollection, which is often thought to posit innate knowledge. I argue, however, that, though the theory of recollection posits prenatal knowledge, it doesn’t posit innate knowledge. I also set the paradox in a broader context, exploring the Meno’s views on inquiry, definition, knowledge, and belief.

This chapter explores the intersection between American horror and religion and how our understanding can benefit from an approach that recognizes how both subjects wrestle with what happens when human experience goes sideways, how people attempt to understand things beyond their experience, and how they address questions pertaining to why they are here and where they think they are going. While both clearly confront such key questions of human existence, religion frequently addresses them within expectations tied to core doctrines, beliefs, and practices, while horror more often reaches beyond those limits. And yet there are moments in which both kinds of texts overlap in that they share an interest in the kinds of overwhelming questions people ask in times of concern or crisis. This chapter explores several of those moments in a survey that ranges from American Puritan literature to Spiritualism, and then to the rise of modern Pentecostalism.

This chapter investigates Plato’s thoughts on poetic creativity by tracing a path from a traditional divine inspiration view to a new kind of inspiration, which transforms the poet into a philosopher. The path begins with divine inspiration in the Ion, then turns to the power of public poetry in the Gorgias. Next is the beginning of a new conception of poetic creativity in the Symposium. By considering poetry as a kind of communication between a lover and the beloved, Plato views poetry as a basis for a philosophical ascent to the Form of Beauty. In the Republic, Plato emphasizes further the power of poetry by classifying traditional poetry as a degraded kind of imitation. He highlights its power to corrupt the listener by strengthening irrational emotions. In the Phaedrus, Plato extends his notion of poetic creativity to linguistic communication in general, thereby developing further his notion of philosophical communication as a creative force generated by love. In the end, Plato pulls together both his denunciation of traditional poetry and his new conception of poetic creativity by offering a new type of public poetry in the Laws, consisting ultimately of his own body of laws.

This chapter examines the networks within which ancient Greek coins were produced and circulated from the perspective of formal network analysis, a methodological tool that is becoming increasingly widespread within ancient studies. In particular this chapter considers the problems of the object biographies as they pertain to networks, the agents involved in various networks, the process of network evolution and devolution, and network scale.

Although significant progress has been made in dealing with ancient economies through the establishing of new methodological approaches (like the New Institutional Economics), old-school Political Economy still plays an important role. It endeavours among other things to describe and evaluate the causes which lead to economic growth, thereby including factors which cannot be subsumed under the category of ‘institutions’ (exclusively focused on by the NIE) like demography or climate. Recently, this traditional approach has been intensively adopted to explain and measure the growth of ancient Greek economies between the ninth and fourth centuries, today viewed as an established fact in contrast to the older consensus, which was characterised by scepticism regarding the capability of ancient societies to generate sustainable growth. This chapter presents the most important factors that were (supposedly) conducive to growth and describes and their mutual interplay and interferences. In a further section, some methodological and empirical problems of the way 'ancient growth' is quantified in contemporary research are discussed. In a final section, some thoughts are offered on geo-economic factors, assumed by the author to have had a decisive impact in bringing about 'growth' or concentrations of wealth in some areas and milieus.

This chapter examines the role of competition in Rara celebrations in Haiti. Rara, a Lenten religious festival that features marching bands and Vodou rituals, has a complex relationship with competition, which is unpacked in this chapter. As is argued, by investigating conflict and cooperation as dimensions of competition, it is possible to understand how Haitians navigate the complex social terrain of Rara using both confrontational and collaborative techniques.

This chapter addresses Plato’s conception of philosophy by examining how the Apology of Socrates represents Socrates as a model lover of wisdom. This Socrates loves expertise about how to live well, and he does so in three ways: (i) by examining others to test them for this expertise and to confirm that only the gods possess it, (ii) by pursuing the expertise, nonetheless, to improve his beliefs about how to live well, and (iii) by exhorting others to examine themselves and to pursue wisdom. The chapter pays special attention to Socrates’ conceptions of knowledge, living well, and teaching, and it suggests briefly how Plato tweaks or transforms this Socratic model in other dialogues.

The chapter asks if the first part of the Parmenides (including the “Third Man”) shows that Plato abandoned Platonic forms, and argues instead that Plato’s “Third Man” passage is not an indirect proof of anything: it simply shows the youthful Socrates not able to defend his views on forms. The exercise Parmenides then prescribes and demonstrates is the way forward Plato provided. It leads us to distinguish two kinds of predication, corresponding to two kinds of facts about forms. Better-organized thinking about forms lets us reject the notion that to perform their work in Plato’s theory, they must be perfect exemplars along the lines of “the Platonic ideal of the banana split.” This dispels the underlying problem which led to confusion over the “Third Man.” We can face down analogues of that argument for any form, from the Fox and Triangularity to Likeness and the Beautiful. This interpretation emerges from detailed construal of the text, taking account of both its literary and overtly philosophical aspects; the chapter brings together background for Plato’s agenda in his previous works, in the works of Anaxagoras and the historical Parmenides, and in Greek usage.

Disenchantment is doubtless a serious part of a modern attitude to nature. Even Lucretius’ ancient materialism gave good reasons for celebrating nature as a random interplay of forces without seeking a deeper meaning within. In addition, experiences of a silent nature and personal accounts by the deaf have become common. Nevertheless, human consciousness exhibits phenomena that allow us to speak of a voice of nature; closer examination of these phenomena of resonance and empathy provides good reasons for an idealistic understanding of the enchantment of nature. In the human mind, the spirit of the universe awakens unto itself.

In this chapter, I emphasise and try to explain the importance of historical demography for economic history, but also its relative neglect by ancient historians until very recently. Demography involves a range of quantitative measures that are useful both as proxies for economic performance and in comparison. Population sizes and trends also have explanatory power for past economic changes. Some general points about the relationship between population and economy, and what changed and what stayed the same over the last millennium BCE are followed by some more specific observations about the major periods of Greek history. The importance of environmental factors is particularly emphasised, and urbanization is a persistent theme.

This chapter discusses the economic developments occurring within the Ptolemaic empire (323–30 BCE), of which Egypt was the core province. It explores how state formation affected economic development and how Ptolemaic imperialism, demography, and the interaction between Egyptian and Greek social networks were factors of economic change and economic exploitation. After an overview of past and current approaches to the economy of the Ptolemaic empire and of the geography of the empire, it assesses the cost and benefits of military conquests and the management of migrations patterns and new settlements by the Ptolemies, who increased their revenues and reduced the cost of their army through land allotments to cleruchs. The political economy of the Ptolemies relied on a complex tax system, with some documents pointing to a centralized taxation of the provinces, and innovative but also unusual monetary policies, such as closed-currency system based on a lower weight standard than the Attic standard in Egypt, Cyprus, and Syria-Phoenicia. The chapter concludes with examples of the synergistic relationship between empire, warfare, and trade and between the public and private spheres of the economy, and sketches the purchasing power of different economic groups in Egypt.

In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates calls things like justice, piety, and largeness “forms.” In several of these dialogues, he makes clear that forms are very different from familiar objects like tables and trees. Why, exactly, does he think that they differ and how are they supposed to do so? This chapter argues that in the Phaedo Socrates does not assume that they are different, but rather, over five stages of the dialogue, provides an account of how and why they do so. To fully understand the claims made in the first stage, one must look to the next stage, and so on until the final stage. Socrates' ultimate reason for distinguishing forms from ordinary objects does not depend on our intuitions about things like justice and largeness, nor on the distinction between universals and particulars. Ultimately, forms cannot be ordinary objects because the form of f-ness must cause every f-thing to be f, but no ordinary object could serve as such a cause. They cannot do so because they have multiple parts and are receptive of opposites; by contrast, the form of f-ness must be simple and unchanging, since it causes every f-thing to be f.

This chapter introduces the Tambú, from Curaçao, and follows its resettlement in the Netherlands, where it is celebrated as a party attended a variety of immigrants, each searching for a sense of community; a space for sharing common experiences of marginalisation and discrimination. Through the theory of ‘interpretive diasporas’, the chapter insists on the necessity for a plurality of approaches to thinking about diaspora and belonging.

This chapter examines the queer Gothicism of American horror to consider the ways in which marginalized genders and sexualities have been either condemned or covertly endorsed through horror’s textual and visual mediums. In mainstream cis-heteronormative society, queer genders and sexualities have been an abjectified, “horrific” presence, and these mainstream investments represented via horror, as a mode of expression devoted to irruptions of the body, means that the presence of queerness is often registered as an a priori spoliation of bodily norms. Like the term “queer” itself, audiences have often reappropriated the Gothic figures that appear in horror, and some queer creators have intentionally deployed such Gothicisms for the sake of representing queerness. This chapter explores the conflicting purposes of horror’s depiction of queerness by reviewing several Gothic tropes as they appear in American horror texts, focusing specifically on monstrosity, vampirism, the asylum, medical body horror, and haunting.