A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities
Summary
The feel-good place to buy books
A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities by Anthony Kaldellis
Byzantium has long been regarded by many as one big curiosity -- decadent, degenerate, superstitious, theocratic, effeminate. With its tales and trivia - ranging across religion, bureaucracy, food, theatre, medicine, xenophobia, warfare - this book will confirm some of these prejudices, but also open eyes to the life of this extraordinarily interesting civilization.
"If the Holy Spirit was not ashamed to tell this story, how much less should we place it under a shadow" --John Chrysostom, Homily on the Gospel of Matthew "I rarely ever finish, or even read, books, but I finished this one!" --Anonymous "Pray for the author, pray for him, for he is wretched and unworthy." (ms. colophon) "If I had to burn all other books, I would keep Plato's Timaeus and this one." --Proklos, from Marinos' Life of Proklos "Not even the most philosophic, the most piercing, the most curious intellect has, or can ever have, a more exalted object." --Gregory of Nazianzos, patriarch of Constantinople and saint, Oration on Saint Athanasios of Alexandria "All the wasteful expenses of mortals and their luxurious fare are poured out here without any of their previous charm. Too late a man realizes that he has spent gold on what was nothing but dust." --Agathias, Epigram on the public latrines "This book is crammed full of childish and implausible things, it is badly written, false, and idiotic. He tells absurd and infantile stories about the resurrection of dead men and cows. His tales are, moreover, contradictory to each other, impious, and irreligious. If you were to call it the source and mother of all heresy, you would not be far from the truth." --Photios, Ten Thousand Books
Anthony Kaldellis is Professor of Greek and Latin at The Ohio State University. Author of The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (CUP 2009) and Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (CUP, 2007), among numerous others (including two in progress with OUP).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780190625948 |
| ISBN 10 | 0190625945 |
| Title | A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities |
| Author | Anthony Kaldellis |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 2017-11-23 |
| Number of pages | 248 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |