Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire

Afbeeldingen

Artikel vergelijken

  • Engels
  • Paperback
  • 9780674271227
  • 22 maart 2022
  • 392 pagina's
Alle productspecificaties

Samenvatting

Under Seleucid rule, time no longer restarted with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years, identical to the system we use today, became the measure of historical duration. Paul Kosmin shows how this invention of a new kind of time—and resistance to it—transformed the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future.



Winner of the Runciman Award
Winner of the Charles J. Goodwin Award


“Tells the story of how the Seleucid Empire revolutionized chronology by picking a Year One and counting from there, rather than starting a new count, as other states did, each time a new monarch was crowned…Fascinating.”
—Harper’s

In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, his successors, the Seleucid kings, ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia and Anatolia to the Persian Gulf. In 305 BCE, in a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, Seleucus I introduced a linear conception of time. Time would no longer restart with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years—continuous and irreversible—became the de facto measure of historical duration. This new temporality, propagated throughout the empire and identical to the system we use today, changed how people did business, recorded events, and oriented themselves to the larger world.

Some rebellious subjects, eager to resurrect their pre-Hellenic past, rejected this new approach and created apocalyptic time frames, predicting the total end of history. In this magisterial work, Paul Kosmin shows how the Seleucid Empire’s invention of a new kind of time—and the rebellions against this worldview—had far reaching political and religious consequences, transforming the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future.

“Without Paul Kosmin’s meticulous investigation of what Seleucus achieved in creating his calendar without end we would never have been able to comprehend the traces of it that appear in late antiquity…A magisterial contribution to this hitherto obscure but clearly important restructuring of time in the ancient Mediterranean world.”
—G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books

“With erudition, theoretical sophistication, and meticulous discussion of the sources, Paul Kosmin sheds new light on the meaning of time, memory, and identity in a multicultural setting.”
—Angelos Chaniotis, author of Age of Conquests

Productspecificaties

Inhoud

Taal
en
Bindwijze
Paperback
Oorspronkelijke releasedatum
22 maart 2022
Aantal pagina's
392
Illustraties
Nee

Betrokkenen

Hoofdauteur
Paul J. Kosmin
Hoofduitgeverij
The Belknap Press

Overige kenmerken

Product breedte
156 mm
Product lengte
235 mm
Studieboek
Nee
Verpakking breedte
156 mm
Verpakking hoogte
235 mm
Verpakking lengte
235 mm

EAN

EAN
9780674271227
Nog geen reviews

Kies gewenste uitvoering

Prijsinformatie en bestellen

De prijs van dit product is 29 euro en 99 cent.
Uiterlijk 31 mei in huis
Verkoop door bol
  • Prijs inclusief verzendkosten, verstuurd door bol
  • Ophalen bij een bol afhaalpunt mogelijk
  • 30 dagen bedenktijd en gratis retourneren
  • Dag en nacht klantenservice