In
Ancient Virtues and Vices in Modern Popular Culture, Eran Almagor and Lisa Maurice offer a comprehensive collection of chapters dealing with the reception of antiquity in popular media of the modern era (19th-21st centuries). These media include theatrical plays, cinematic representations, Television drama, popular newspapers or journals, poems and outdoor festivals. For the first time in Classical Reception Studies, ancient Jewish literature and imagery are included in the discussion. The focus of the volume is both the continuity and variance between ancient and modern sets of values, which appear in the new interpretations of the ancient stories, figures and protagonists.
Eran Almagor, Ph.D. (Hebrew University, 2007) is author of papers and chapters on the Achaemenid Empire, Ctesias, Plutarch, Strabo, Josephus, and the reception of antiquity in modern popular culture. Co-editor of
Ancient Ethnography: New Approaches (London, 2013).
Lisa Maurice, Ph.D. (2001) is senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She is the author of
The Teacher in Ancient Rome: The Magister and His World (Lexington 2013), the editor of
The Reception of Ancient Greece and Rome in Children’s Literature: Heroes and Eagles (Brill 2015),
Rewriting the Ancient World: Greeks, Romans, Jews and Christians in Modern Popular Fiction (Brill 2017), and has published many articles, both on Roman Comedy and on Classical Reception.
Contributors are: Eran Almagor, Luca Asmonti, Gabriel Danzig, Anna Foka, Ariadne Konstantinou, Anggeliki Koumanoudi, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Lisa Maurice, Panayiota Mini, Maria Pretzler, Hanna Roisman, David Schaps, Emma Southon, Emma Stafford, Haim Weiss
List of IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: Ancient Virtues and Vices in Modern Popular CultureEran Almagor and Lisa Maurice
Part 1: Re-enacting Ancient Virtues and Vices
Section 1: Staging Ancient Virtues and Vices
The House of Atreus as a Reflection of Contemporary Evil: Performance Reception and
The OresteiaLisa Maurice 2
Thornton Wilder’s The Alcestiad or A Life in the SunHanna Roisman 3
Herodotus on Stage: The Modern Greek Play “Candaules’ Wife” by Margarita LiberakiAriadne Konstantinou
Section 2: Screening Ancient Virtues and Vices
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Can You Dig It? Heroes and Villains from Xenophon’s Anabasis to Walter Hill’s The Warriors (1979)Eran Almagor 5
Hercules’ Choice: Virtue, Vice and the Hero of the Twentieth-century ScreenEmma Stafford 6
Deconstructing Oedipus: Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite and the Classical TraditionAnna Foka 7
Caligula and Drusilla in the Modern ImaginationEmma Southon 8
“Salome, Nice Girl”: Rita Hayworth and the Problem of the Hollywood Biblical VampLloyd Llewellyn-Jones 9
Representations of the Christian Female Virtue in Roman Film Epics: The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Quo Vadis (1951)Panayiota Mini
Part 2: Ancient Virtues and Vices in the Modern World
Section 2: Ancient Virtues and Vices in Modern Greece
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Philip, Alexander and Macedonia: Between Greek Virtue and Barbarian PleasureMaria Pretzler 11
From Giscard d’Estaing to Syntagma Square: The Use and Abuse of Ancient Greece in the Debate on Greece’s
eu
membershipLuca Asmonti 12
The Great God Pan Never Dies!Aggeliki Koumanoudi
Section 2: Ancient Virtues and Vices in Modern Jewish Existence
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In These Days, in That Season: The Nationalization of the MaccabeesDavid M. Schaps 14
A Double Edged Sword—The Power of Bar-Kosibah: From Rabbinic Literature to Popular CultureHaim Weiss 15 What Has Rome to Do with Jerusalem? The Reception of Turnus Rufus and Rabbi Akivah in the Talmud and in Contemporary Israel
Gabriel DanzigBibliographyIndex