Read more
Explores the creative potential of juxtaposing the cultural foundations of the Mediterranean world and ancient China. Embarking from the observation that Greek, Roman, and Han-Chinese societies were governed by comparable features, the contributors to this volume explain the dynamic interplay between political rulers and the ruled masses.
About the author
Hans Beck is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Münster and Adjunct Professor at McGill University, Montréal. He has published widely in the field of ancient Mediterranean history, including Consuls and Res Publica (edited with Antonio Duplá, Martin Jehne and Francisco Pina Polo, Cambridge, 2011) and Federalism in Greek Antiquity (edited with Peter Funke, Cambridge, 2015). His recent work on localism in the pre-modern world, including Localism and the Ancient Greek City-State (2020), has garnered significant global attention. He has won the Anneliese Maier Award of the German Humboldt Foundation and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a Co-Director, with Griet Vankeerberghen, of Global Antiquities, a research network dedicated to the study of ancient Greece, Rome, and China.Griet Vankeerberghen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies of McGill University, Montréal. She has published on several Western Han texts and their social, political and material contexts, including the Huainanzi, Shiji, and the Four Lost Classics. She co-edited Chang'an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China with Michael Nylan (2015). She is currently engaged in a research project on the nobles of Western Han, sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is a Co-Director, with Hans Beck, of Global Antiquities, a research network dedicated to the study of ancient Greece, Rome, and China.
Summary
Explores the creative potential of juxtaposing the cultural foundations of the Mediterranean world and ancient China. Embarking from the observation that Greek, Roman, and Han-Chinese societies were governed by comparable features, the contributors to this volume explain the dynamic interplay between political rulers and the ruled masses.
