Great Cities of the Ancient World
Great Cities of the Ancient World is history book by American writer and essayist L. Sprague de Camp, published by Doubleday in 1972.[1][2] It was reissued by Dorset Press in 1990.[2] It has also been translated into German.[1]
Content
The work is a study of the ethnology, history, geography, and everyday life of fourteen famous ancient capital cities; Thebes, Jerusalem, Nineveh, Tyre, Babylon, Memphis, Athens, Syracuse, Carthage, Alexandria, Anurâdhapura, Rome, Pâṭaliputra, and Constantinople. The narrative is enlivened by personal observation, the author having personally traveled to each of the sites treated. New World sites are not treated.
The author's treatment of Athens is typical of the rest. He starts the book off with a narrative of daily life in the city in 433/432 BC, the narrative following several slaves just after they wake up and walk to work conversing through busy polluted streets and hear a herald summon citizens to the assembly. After this dramatic entrance, he dives into a survey of Athenian history. On reaching the fifth century he diverts his attention to the city walls and Themistocles. The treatment of the Peloponnesian War stresses the contrast between Sparta and Athens, with the obligatory quote from the Funeral Oration and a long passage from Thucydides' reflections of the moral damage done by the war. As Athens' political power wanes in the fourth century he emphasizes the nature of the Polis and developments in art and literature.[3]
Reception
John E. Stambaugh stated "[t]he book is full of interesting digressions: travel reminiscences, a marvelously malicious account of Israelite history, a sketch history of archaeology in Iraq. Throughout, de Camp exhibits skepticism about the sincerity of much Judaeo-Christian morality, interest in the technological and linguistic aspects of the civilizations discussed, determination to combat the notion that 'during the golden age of Greece... the Greeks were the only people in the world who were really alive,' and eagerness to draw modern parallels." He notes that it "contains a map and an 'imaginative sketch' for most of the cities, and many photographs: these are of disparate quality, and few of them are helpful in suggesting how these cities really looked. There is no general map. The notes are mostly devoted to variant spellings of names; documentation of facts and interpretations is uneven. The life of the ancient cities is conveyed through quotations from ancient authors and from the modern accounts: on Carthage, for instance, de camp quotes his own The Arrows of Hercules and Flaubert's Salammbo." Summing up, Stambaugh tells the reader "A beginner, then, should not count on finding here the current state of scholarly opinion, but he will not be seriously misled by de Camp's treatment. A lively encounter with a variety of ancient civilizations is highly desirable, and this book will certainly set a tone of enthusiasm and verve in the student's perception of the ancient world."[3]
References
- ^ a b Laughlin, Charlotte; Daniel J. H. Levack (1983). De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography. San Francisco: Underwood/Miller. pp. 60–61.
- ^ a b Great Cities of the Ancient World title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- ^ a b Stambaugh, John E. (1 January 1974). "Review of Great Cities of the Ancient World". The Classical World. 68 (3): 205–207. doi:10.2307/4348167. JSTOR 4348167.
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Interplanetarias
Krishna |
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Kukulkan |
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Other |
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- "The Roaring Trumpet" (1940)
- "The Mathematics of Magic" (1940)
- The Castle of Iron (1941/50)
- The Wall of Serpents (1953)
- The Green Magician (1954)
- Sir Harold and the Gnome King (1990)
- Sir Harold of Zodanga (1995)
- The Tritonian Ring (1951)
- "The Eye of Tandyla" (1951)
- "The Owl and the Ape" (1951)
- "The Hungry Hercynian" (1953)
- "The Stronger Spell" (1953)
- "Ka the Appalling" (1958)
- "The Rug and the Bull" (1974)
- "The Stone of the Witch Queen" (1977)
- The Goblin Tower (1968)
- The Clocks of Iraz (1971)
- "The Emperor's Fan" (1973)
- The Fallible Fiend (1973)
- The Unbeheaded King (1983)
- The Honorable Barbarian (1989)
- The Incorporated Knight (1987)
- The Pixilated Peeress (1991)
speculative
fiction
Novels |
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Short stories |
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- The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate (1961)
- The Arrows of Hercules (1965)
- An Elephant for Aristotle (1958)
- The Bronze God of Rhodes (1960)
- The Golden Wind (1969)
- The Wolf Leader (1950)
- Swords and Sorcery (1963)
- The Spell of Seven (1965)
- Conan the Warrior (1967)
- The Fantastic Swordsmen (1967)
- Conan the Conqueror (1967)
- Warlocks and Warriors (1970)
- 3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1972)
- Tales Beyond Time (1973)
Science and history |
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Lit crit and biography |
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- The Conan Swordbook (1969)
- The Conan Grimoire (1972)
- To Quebec and the Stars (1976)
- The Blade of Conan (1979)
- The Spell of Conan (1980)
- Demons and Dinosaurs (1970)
- Heroes and Hobgoblins (1981)
- Phantoms and Fancies (1972)
- The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953)
- The Virgin of Zesh & The Tower of Zanid (1983)
- The Incomplete Enchanter (1941)
- Wall of Serpents (1960)
- The Compleat Enchanter (1975)
- The Complete Compleat Enchanter (1989)
- The Enchanter Reborn (1992)
- The Exotic Enchanter (1995)
- The Mathematics of Magic (2007)
- The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales (1953)
- The Reluctant King (1985)
- Conan (1967)
- The Conan Chronicles (1989)
- The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990)
- Conan of Aquilonia (1977)
- Conan of Cimmeria (1969)
- Conan the Adventurer (1966)
- Conan the Avenger (1968)
- Conan the Freebooter (1968)
- Conan the Swordsman (1978)
- Conan the Usurper (1967)
- Conan the Wanderer (1968)
- Sagas of Conan (2004)
- Tales of Conan (1955)
- The Treasure of Tranicos (1980)
- Aristotle and the Gun (2002)
- The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (1978)
- Divide and Rule (1948)
- Footprints on Sand (1981)
- A Gun for Dinosaur (1963)
- The Purple Pterodactyls (1980)
- The Reluctant Shaman (1970)
- Rivers of Time (1993)
- Scribblings (1972)
- Sprague de Camp's New Anthology (1953)
- Tales from Gavagan's Bar (1953/78)
- The Undesired Princess (1951)
- The Virgin & the Wheels (1976)
- The Wheels of If (1948)
- Years in the Making (2005)
- GURPS Planet Krishna (1997)
- The Enchanter Completed (2005)