Scrinium Classical Antiquity

BROUWER, R., Lucanus' Bellum Civile uitgelezen. Primavera Pers, Leiden, 2006. 236p. Paperback. Lower corner front cover slightly bumped. Signature on half title. Else fine. De weergave in vrije Nederlandse hexameters door Dante-vertaler Rob Brouwer omvat ruim de helft van het hele epos en is aangevuld met verbindende parafrases en commentaren die het geheel als een aaneengesloten, grotendeels bloedstollend verhaal laten lezen. (Publisher's information). € 17.50 (Antiquarian)

BROUWERS, J., Henchmen of Ares. Warriors and Warfare in Early Greece. Karwansaray, Amersfoort, 2013. 254p. ills. Hard bound. Much has already been written on warfare in ancient Greece. Yet there are a number of factors that nevertheless warrant the publication of yet another book on this topic. Firstly, this book provides a detailed, diachronic treatment of a dynamic and formative period of Greek history, from the Mycenaean Bronze Age down to the Persian Wars. Secondly, it offers an up-to-date and detailed treatment of the archaeological evidence in addition to the ancient texts. Thirdly, it places the military developments into their proper cultural and historical contexts: warfare was not merely an activity that ancient peoples frequently engaged in, but served a much broader function as a constituent element of their cultural identities. Using the Homeric epics as a guide, the reader is presented with a cultural history of warriors and warfare in Early Greece: from the chariot-borne soldiers of the Mycenaean palaces to the seaborne raiders of women and cattle of the Dark Age; from the men of bronze who helped liberate Egypt from the Assyrian yoke down to the Battles of Thermopylae and Salamis. Along the way, a number of detailed issues are considered, including the proper place of the Greek hoplite in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean, the possible origins of the Argive shield, developments in naval warfare, and the activities of Greek mercenaries. This book is an expanded and revised version of the doctoral dissertation on Early Greek warfare by Mediterranean archaeologist Josho Brouwers, editor of 'Ancient Warfare magazine'. It has been completely restructured and reworked to make the text accessible to a general audience, while also offering a detailed treatment of the relevant sources and a further reading section for more serious students and specialists alike. (Publisher's information). € 29.95 (New)

BROUWERS, J.H., Horatius en Propertius over Epiek en Lyriek. Janssen, Nijmegen, 1967. 180p. Sewn. Theses. Diss. Katholieke Universiteit van Nijmegen. € 8.00 (Antiquarian)

BROWN, Chr., '... niet ledighs of ydels...' Nederlandse genreschilders uit de 17e eeuw. J.H. de Bussy, Amsterdam, 1984. 240p. Richly ills. (B&W/full colour). Cloth wrps. € 18.50 (Antiquarian)

BROWN, Fr., Roman Architecture. Studio Vista, London, 1968. 125p. ills. Paperback. € 13.50 (Antiquarian)

BROWN, P., Lichaam en maatschappij. Man, vrouw en seksuele onthouding in het vroege christendom, 50 na C. - 450 na C. Agon, n.p., 1990. 489p. Cloth wrps. Nice copy.Uit het Engels vertaald door Karin van Dorsselaer en Carla Verheijen. 'Het christendom van de laat-antieke oudheid beschouwde duurzame seksuele onthouding als de hoogste vorm van menselijk leven. Tegenwoordig vindt men dat niet meer en de zin en samenhang van zo'n gestorven ideaal laten zien is een van de grootste opgaven die het historisch ambacht kent. Peter Brown vervult haar schijnbaar moeiteloos. Hij schildert al de verschillende manieren waarop de christenen aan de hand van de onthouding hun plaats in de wereld en houding tegenover de samenleving tot uitdrukking brachten. Het boek loopt over van ideeën en vervalt nergens in de bij het onderwerp zo voor de hand liggende stijlfout van het voyeurisme. Het is in tegendeel diep humaan. Brown neemt de keuzes van de laat-antieke christenen volstrekt serieus.' (PETER van ROODEN in NRC/Handelsblad 11.2.1989). € 21.50 (Antiquarian)

BROWN, P., The Cult of the Saints. Its rise and Function in Latin Christianity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London, n.d.(>1982). Paperback. Signature on half title. € 14.00 (Antiquarian)

BROWN, P., Authority and the Sacred. Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997. 91p. Paperback. Pages a bit yellowed, due to paper quality. Series: Canto.‘The first chapter is devoted to an analysis of the dominant narrative of Christianization that circulated widely in Christian circles in the fourth and fifth centuries and that has been repeated, mutatatis mutantis, by many modern historians. (…) Yet, in the Western parts of the empire an alternative narrative was in the process of being constructed by Augustine and a generation of mainly Latin writers; ‘the dark counterpoint to the triumphant narrative that circulated in other circles’ (pp.22-23). A myth of the ‘decline of the Church’ was created and employed by these Christian critics (….). In the second (…) essay Brown seeks to weaken the persuasive power of the narrative of Christianization generated by Christians and pagans alike, to wit, the unholy alliance between authoritarian legislation and a triumphant groundswell of Christian intolerance. (…) In the final essay, Brown revisits familial territory - the ‘Lives' of the Christian holy men (…). Here Brown seeks to explain their overall significance for contemporaries and their relative importance in relation to other forms of religious activity. Once again Brown places the evidence in a bride social and religious frame, to recover the story that the ‘Lives’ were written, in large part, to eclipse. The holy men emerged not as champions of a triumphant and intransigent faith, but as brokers of religious authority, ‘arbiters of the holy’, and as low-key facilitators for the creation of new religious allegiances and of new religious patterns of observance. (…) specific aspects of Brown’s analysis might be challenged (…) or pursued further, but the broad outline is persuasive.’ (A.J. DROGE in History of Religions, 1998, pp.275-77). From the library of Professor Carl Deroux. € 17.50 (Antiquarian)

BROWN, P., The Ransom of the Soul. Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) / London, 2018. 1st paperback ed. XIX,262p. Paperback. ‘This book is about Christian attitudes toward the religious use of wealth within the context of interaction between the living and the dead between the time of Tertullian (ca. 160-240) and Julian of Toledo (late seventh century). The result is a stimulating, evocative, though sometimes impressionistic, study of the ways that late antique and early medieval Christians deployed their wealth through charitable giving for the benefit of their own souls and the souls of their loved ones, living and deceased. The book’s five chapters and long epilogue proceed chronologically, but all fall neatly into two parts. The first half of the book is a Mediterranean enterprise. (…) The second half of the book plants itself firmly in early medieval Gaul, where with and sixth-century authors provide the clearest guide to the reception of Augustine’s ideas about the human should and the use of world wealth. (…) Over time, Augustine’s ideas about the importance of Christian charity to the poor “hardened … into a full-blown ideology of church property” (130). Yet, despite all (…) changes, Brown sees a thread of continuity: “in sixth-century Gaul, gifts for the soul continued to be seen to operate through the poor” (173). In a long epilogue, he argues that the association between Christian charity to the poor and the fate of the human soul only changed in the seventh century, when the followers to the Irish monk columbines attracted wealth in exchange for prayers in a new equation of medieval piety from which the poor were conspicuously absent. Like so many of Brown’s books, Ransom of the Soul ranges widely across time and comfortably across diverse genres of evidence, from learned treatises too hastily scrawled graffiti. (…) One of the most striking features of this book (…) is the reminder that the mighty bishop of Hippo was not the unassailable authority that we often think he was. As Brown clearly shows, “Augustine’s extreme views were often treated with misgivings or quietly abandoned by a later generation of spiritual guides and preachers” (74).' (SCOTT G. BRUCE in Mediaevistik, 2015, pp.467-468). € 15.00 (New)

BROWN, S.A., and C. SILVERSTONE, (eds.), Tragedy in Transition. Blackwell Publishing, Malden / Oxford / Carlton, 2007. XII,315p. ills.(B&W photographs). Hard bound with dust wrps. Nice copy. 'This collection of essays is bold and unashamedly far-reaching in its approach to the subject of tragedy, a topic that has enjoyed a high status in the history of literary criticism and aesthetics. (...) Although the discourses on the death of tragedy have shadowed most thinking about tragedy from the end of the Greek model to Georg Steiner's twentieth-century aphorisms, the impressive essays in this volume testify to the genre's enduring persistence and ability to address notions of loss and mourning, death and resurrection, history and transition. Indeed, the term transition, as it appears in the title, proves central for the understanding of tragedy as a genre whose form and content are particularly sensitive to notions of the boundary (individual/collective, past/present, history/ metaphysics, life/death) and exhibit a level of adaptability that adds an intertextual quality, which throughout time has become constitutive of the form. S.A. Brown in her illuminating introduction calls this quality tragedy's 'capacity to be adapted and transformed' (p.1). And it is this quality that the authors pick up on as they draw a number of dazzling connections between texts and periods. (...) The collection is framed by two insightful essays, one by each Editor. The Introduction by S.A. Brown helpfully sets out the methodological parameters of the project, where the interdisciplinary dimension (...) gives way to the trans-historical (which indeed may be a trope to which humanities can have a particular claim). (...) The Afterword by C. Silverstone does not simply summarise the concerns of the volume; it also points towards future areas of research: the interface between tragedy and trauma, tragedy and mourning; readership and spectatorship; the possibility or impossibility of tragedy after Auschwitz; the centrality of the tragic mode in contemporary philosophical reflection (...). These two chapters hold together an impressive range of essays by an equally impressive line-up of contemporary scholars, mainly from the filed of English Literature and Classics.' (OLGA TAXIDOU in The Classical Review (New Series), 2009, pp.354-55). € 32.50 (Antiquarian)