Decapitation in Sources on Alexander the Great

Marc Mendoza (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

IX, 129 Seiten

2022
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-031-19173-2 (ISBN)

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This book explores cases of decapitation found in sources on the reign of Alexander the Great. Given the different cultural considerations surrounding decapitation in Greek and Roman culture, this book argues that representations of the practice can serve as an excellent example for the importance of critical source analysis.

This book explores cases of decapitation found in sources on the reign of Alexander the Great. Despite the enormous literature on the career of Alexander the Great, this is the first study on the characterisation of violent deaths during his hectic reign. This historiographical omission has involved the tacit and blind acceptance of the details found in the ancient sources. Therefore, this book seeks to illustrate how cultural expectations, literary models, and ideological taboos shaped these accounts and argues for a close and critical reading of the sources. Given the different cultural considerations surrounding decapitation in Greek and Roman cultures, this book illustrates how those biases could have differently shaped certain episodes depending on the ultimate writer.

This book, therefore, can be especially interesting for scholars focused on the career of Alexander the Great, but also valuable for other Classicists, philologists, and even for anthropologists because itrepresents a good case of study of cultural symbolism of violent death, semantics of power, imperial domination and the confrontation between opposite cultural appreciations of a practice.

Marc Mendoza is Associate Lecturer at the University of Lleida, Spain.

1. Introduction .- 2. Greeks, Romans and Decapitation .- 3. Non-Curtian Decapitations .- 4. Negotiating Heads .- 5. Punished Heads .- 6. Heads as Trophies .- 7. Conclusions .- 8. Appendices.

Erscheinungsdatum	19.12.2022
Zusatzinfo	IX, 129 p. 4 illus.
Verlagsort	Cham
Sprache	englisch
Maße	148 x 210 mm
Gewicht	288 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
Schlagworte	beheading • Curtius • Execution • livy • Plutarch • Polybius
ISBN-10	3-031-19173-0 / 3031191730
ISBN-13	978-3-031-19173-2 / 9783031191732
Zustand	Neuware