Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World

Download Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110661772
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World by : George Kazantzidis

Download or read book Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World written by George Kazantzidis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume offers a systematic discussion of the complex relationship between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world. For a long time, the relationship between the two has been assumed to be virtually non-existent. Paradoxography is concerned with disclosing a world full of marvels and wondrous occurrences without providing an answer as to how these phenomena can be explained. Its main aim is to astonish and leave its readers bewildered and confused. By contrast, medicine is committed to the rational explanation of human phusis, which makes it, in a number of significant ways, incompatible with thauma. This volume moves beyond the binary opposition between ‘rational’ and ‘non-rational’ modes of thinking, by focusing on instances in which the paradox is construed with direct reference to established medical sources and beliefs or, inversely, on cases in which medical discourse allows space for wonder and admiration. Its aim is to show that thauma, rather than present a barrier, functions as a concept which effectively allows for the dialogue between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world.

The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science

Download The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1003850197
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (38 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science by : Arnaud Zucker

Download or read book The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science written by Arnaud Zucker and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first volume devoted to the sections of the Aristotelian Mirabilia on natural science, filling a significant gap in the history of the Aristotelian study of nature and especially of animals. The chapters in this volume explore the Mirabilia, or De mirabilibus auscultationibus (On Marvelous Things Heard), and its engagement with the natural sciences. The first two chapters deliver an introduction to this work: one a discussion of the history of the text and the other a discussion of Aristotelian epistemology and methodology, and the role of the Mirabilia in that context. This is followed by eight chapters that, together, are effectively a commentary on those sections of the Mirabilia with close connections to Aristotle’s Historia animalium and to a number of Theophrastus’ scientific treatises. Finally, the volume ends with two chapters on thematic topics connected to natural science running throughout the work, namely color and disease. The Aristotelian Mirabilia and Early Peripatetic Natural Science should prove invaluable to scholars and students interested in the ancient Greek study of nature, ancient philosophy, and Aristotelian science in particular.

The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture

Download The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009297333
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (92 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture by : Monika Amsler

Download or read book The Babylonian Talmud and Late Antique Book Culture written by Monika Amsler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-30 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new theory of the Talmud's formation based on comparison with late antique intellectual and material standards of book production.

Tacitus’ Wonders

Download Tacitus’ Wonders PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 135024175X
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (52 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Tacitus’ Wonders by : James McNamara

Download or read book Tacitus’ Wonders written by James McNamara and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume approaches the broad topic of wonder in the works of Tacitus, encompassing paradox, the marvellous and the admirable. Recent scholarship on these themes in Roman literature has tended to focus on poetic genres, with comparatively little attention paid to historiography: Tacitus, whose own judgments on what is worthy of note have often differed in interesting ways from the preoccupations of his readers, is a fascinating focal point for this complementary perspective. Scholarship on Tacitus has to date remained largely marked by a divide between the search for veracity – as validated by modern historiographical standards – and literary approaches, and as a result wonders have either been ignored as unfit for an account of history or have been deprived of their force by being interpreted as valid only within the text. While the modern ideal of historiographical objectivity tends to result in striving for consistent heuristic and methodological frameworks, works as varied as Tacitus' Histories, Annals and opera minora can hardly be prefaced with a statement of methodology broad enough to escape misrepresenting their diversity. In our age of specialization a streamlined methodological framework is a virtue, but it should not be assumed that Tacitus had similar priorities, and indeed the Histories and Annals deserve to be approached with openness towards the variety of perspectives that a tradition as rich as Latin historiographical prose can include within its scope. This collection proposes ways to reconcile the divide between history and historiography by exploring contestable moments in the text that challenge readers to judge and interpret for themselves, with individual chapters drawing on a range of interpretive approaches that mirror the wealth of authorial and reader-specific responses in play.

Disability Studies and the Classical Body

Download Disability Studies and the Classical Body PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000381382
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (3 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Disability Studies and the Classical Body by : Ellen Adams

Download or read book Disability Studies and the Classical Body written by Ellen Adams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By triangulating the Greco-Roman world, classical reception, and disability studies, this book presents a range of approaches that reassess and reimagine traditional themes, from the narrative voice to sensory studies. It argues that disability and disabled people are the ‘forgotten other’ of not just Classics, but also the Humanities more widely. Beyond the moral merits of rectifying this neglect, this book also provides a series of approaches and case studies that demonstrate the intellectual value of engaging with disability studies as classicists and exploring the classical legacy in the medical humanities. The book is presented in four parts: ‘Communicating and controlling impairment, illness and pain’; ‘Using, creating and showcasing disability supports and services’; ‘Real bodies and retrieving senses: disability in the ritual record’; and ‘Classical reception as the gateway between Classics and disability studies’. Chapters by scholars from different academic backgrounds are carefully paired in these sections in order to draw out further contrasts and nuances and produce a sum that is more than the parts. The volume also explores how the ancient world and its reception have influenced medical and disability literature, and how engagements with disabled people might lead to reinterpretations of familiar case studies, such as the Parthenon. This book is primarily intended for classicists interested in disabled people in the Greco-Roman past and in how modern disability studies may offer insights into and reinterpretations of historic case studies. It will also be of interest to those working in medical humanities, sensory studies, and museum studies, and those exploring the wider tension between representation and reality in ancient contexts. As such, it will appeal to people in the wider Humanities who, notwithstanding any interest in how disabled people are represented in literature, art, and cinema, have had less engagement with disability studies and the lived experience of people with impairments. FREE CHAPTER AVAILABLE! Please go to https://bit.ly/3pzpO7n to access the Introduction, which we have made freely available.

The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World

Download The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190878835
Total Pages : 1200 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World by : Paul Keyser

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World written by Paul Keyser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 1200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a focus on science in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome, including glimpses into Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World offers an in depth synthesis of science and medicine circa 650 BCE to 650 CE. The Handbook comprises five sections, each with a specific focus on ancient science and medicine. The second section covers the early Greek era, up through Plato and the mid-fourth century bce. The third section covers the long Hellenistic era, from Aristotle through the end of the Roman Republic, acknowledging that the political shift does not mark a sharp intellectual break. The fourth section covers the Roman era from the late Republic through the transition to Late Antiquity. The final section covers the era of Late Antiquity, including the early Byzantine centuries. The Handbook provides through each of its approximately four dozen essays, a synthesis and synopsis of the concepts and models of the various ancient natural sciences, covering the early Greek era through the fall of the Roman Republic, including essays that explore topics such as music theory, ancient philosophers, astrology, and alchemy. The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World guides the reader to further exploration of the concepts and models of the ancient sciences, how they evolved and changed over time, and how they relate to one another and to their antecedents. There are a total of four dozen or so topical essays in the five sections, each of which takes as its focus the primary texts, explaining what is now known as well as indicating what future generations of scholars may come to know. Contributors suggest the ranges of scholarly disagreements and have been free to advocate their own positions. Readers are led into further literature (both primary and secondary) through the comprehensive and extensive bibliographies provided with each chapter.

A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity

Download A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350091642
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity by : Douglas Cairns

Download or read book A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity written by Douglas Cairns and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-08-20 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides an overview of some of the salient aspects of emotions and their role in life and thought of the Greco-Roman world, from the beginnings of Greek literature and history to the height of the Roman Empire. This is a wide remit, dealing with a wide range of sources in two ancient languages, and in the full range of contexts that are covered by the format of this series. The volume's chapters survey the emotional worlds of the ancient Greeks and Romans from multiple perspectives – philosophical, scientific, medical, literary, musical, theatrical, religious, domestic, political, art-historical and historical. All chapters consider both Greek and Roman evidence, ranging from the Homeric poems to the Roman Imperial period and making extensive use of both elite and non-elite texts and documents, including those preserved on stone, papyrus and similar media, and in other forms of material culture. The volume is thus fully reflective of the latest research in the emerging discipline of ancient emotion history.

Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia

Download Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000986101
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia by : Stefan Schorn

Download or read book Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia written by Stefan Schorn and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full-length volume in English that focuses on the historiographical section of the Mirabilia or De mirabilibus auscultationibus (On Marvelous Things Heard), attributed to Aristotle but not in fact by him. The central section of the Mirabilia, namely §§ 78–151, for the most part deals with historiographical material, with many of its entries having some relationship to ancient Greek historians of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. The chapters in this volume discuss various aspects of this portion of the text, including textual issues involving toponyms; possible structural principles behind the organization of this section; the passages on Theopompus and Timaeus; mythography; the philosopher Heracleides of Pontos; Homeric exegesis; and the interrelationship between pseudo-Plutarch’s On Rivers, a section of the historian Stobaeus’ Geography, and the Mirabilia. Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of this text, and of Greek philosophy, historiography, and literature more broadly.

Ancient Medicine

Download Ancient Medicine PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0415520940
Total Pages : 506 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (155 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Ancient Medicine by : Vivian Nutton

Download or read book Ancient Medicine written by Vivian Nutton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining archaeological evidence with the witness of written texts, Vivian Nutton offers a detailed history of medicine & medical knowledge in the ancient world.

Lucretius on Disease

Download Lucretius on Disease PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110722763
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Lucretius on Disease by : George Kazantzidis

Download or read book Lucretius on Disease written by George Kazantzidis and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-04-19 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The standard view in scholarship is that disease in Lucretius' De rerum natura is mainly a problem to be solved and then dispensed with. However, a closer reading suggests that things are more layered and complex than they appear at first sight: just as morbus causes a radical rearrangement of atoms in the body and makes the patient engage with alternative and up to that point unknown dimensions of the sensible world, so does disease as a theme generate a multiplicity of meanings in the text. The present book argues for a reconsideration of morbus in De rerum natura along those lines: it invites the reader to revisit the topic of disease and reflect on the various, and often contrasting, discourses that unfold around it. More specifically, it illustrates how, apart from calling for therapy, disease, due to its dominant presence in the narrative, transforms at the same time into a concept that is integral both to the poem’s philosophical agenda but also to its wider aesthetic concerns as a literary product. The book thus sheds new light on De rerum natura's intense preoccupation with morbus by showing how disease is not exclusively conceived by Lucretius as a blind, obliterating force but is crucially linked to life and meaning—both inside and outside the text.

Homo Patiens - Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World

Download Homo Patiens - Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004305564
Total Pages : 564 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Homo Patiens - Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World by : Georgia Petridou

Download or read book Homo Patiens - Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World written by Georgia Petridou and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-16 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Homo Patiens - Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World is a collection of studies about the patients of the Graeco-Roman world, their role in the ancient medical encounters and their relationship to the health providers and medical practitioners of their time.

Medicine, Health, and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean (500 BCE-600 CE)

Download Medicine, Health, and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean (500 BCE-600 CE) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520299728
Total Pages : 445 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Medicine, Health, and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean (500 BCE-600 CE) by : Kristi Upson-Saia

Download or read book Medicine, Health, and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean (500 BCE-600 CE) written by Kristi Upson-Saia and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This sourcebook provides an expansive picture of medicine, health, and healing in ancient Greece and Rome. It includes a wide-ranging collection of textual sources - many hard to access, and some translated into English for the first time - as well as artistic, material, and scientific evidence. Introductory chapters and accompanying commentary provide substantial context, making the sourcebook accessible to readers at all levels. Readers will come away with a broad sense of the illnesses people in ancient Greece and Rome experienced, the range of healers from whom they sought help, and the various practices they employed to be healthy"--

Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity

Download Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350077607
Total Pages : 201 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity by : Maria Gerolemou

Download or read book Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity written by Maria Gerolemou and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technical automation – the ability of man-made (or god-made) objects to move and act autonomously – is not just the province of engineering or science fiction. In this book, Maria Gerolemou, by taking as her starting point the close semantic and linguistic relevance of technical automation to natural automatism, demonstrates how ancient literature, performance and engineering were often concerned with the way nature and artifice interacted. Moving across epic, didactic, tragedy, comedy, philosophy and ancient science, this is a brilliant assembly of evidence for the power of 'automatic theatre' in ancient literature. Gerolemou starts with the earliest Greek literature of Homer and Hesiod, where Hephaestus' self-moving artefacts in the Iliad reflect natural forces of motion and the manufactured Pandora becomes an autonomous woman. Her second chapter looks at Greek drama, where technical automation is used to augment and undermine nature not only through staging and costume but also in plot devices where statues come to life and humans behave as automatic devices. In the third chapter, Gerolemou considers how the philosophers of the 4th century BCE and the engineers of the Hellenistic period with their mechanical devices contributed to a growing dialogue around technical automation and how it could help its audience glance and marvel at the hidden mechanisms of self-motion. Finally, the book explores the ways technical automation is employed as an ekphrastic technique in late antiquity and early Byzantium.

Sex and the Ancient City

Download Sex and the Ancient City PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110695790
Total Pages : 551 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sex and the Ancient City by : Andreas Serafim

Download or read book Sex and the Ancient City written by Andreas Serafim and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-05-09 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume aims to revisit, further explore and tease out the textual, but also non-textual sources in an attempt to reconstruct a clearer picture of a particular aspect of sexuality, i.e. sexual practices, in Greco-Roman antiquity. Sexual practices refers to a part of the overarching notion of sexuality: specifically, the acts of sexual intercourse, the erogenous capacities and genital functions of male and female body, and any other physical or biological actions that define one’s sexual identity or orientation. This volume aims to approach not simply the acts of sexual intercourse themselves, but also their legal, social, political, religious, medical, cultural/moral and interdisciplinary (e.g. emotional, performative) perspectives, as manifested in a range of both textual and non-textual evidence (i.e. architecture, iconography, epigraphy, etc.). The insights taken from the contributions to this volume would enable researchers across a range of disciplines – e.g. sex/gender studies, comparative literature, psychology and cognitive neuroscience – to use theoretical perspectives, methodologies and conceptual tools to frame the sprawling examination of aspects of sexuality in broad terms, or sexual practices in particular.

Pseudo-Manetho, Apotelesmatica

Download Pseudo-Manetho, Apotelesmatica PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192868470
Total Pages : 1160 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (928 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Pseudo-Manetho, Apotelesmatica by : J. L. Lightfoot

Download or read book Pseudo-Manetho, Apotelesmatica written by J. L. Lightfoot and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-27 with total page 1160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The corpus of astrological material ascribed to the Egyptian priest Manetho consists of six books of poetry. This book serves as the companion to the one published by OUP in 2020, which was the first commentary in any language on the earliest three books of Manetho's poetry (two, three, and six as they appear in the manuscript). This volume supplies the remainder (books four, one, and five). Manetho was credited with a series of didactic poems which list outcomes for planetary set-ups in a birth chart. The books covered in this volume are not as easily dated as those in the first volume, but the most recent is probably no later than the fourth century and they are still Egyptian. As in the first volume, their descriptions of the kinds of person who are born under happy and unhappy configurations of stars speak to the lived realities, aspirations, and fears of the astrologer's clientele. Unlike in the first volume, however, the individual books treated here have different authors, and there is more emphasis on profiling individual poets in terms of style, metre, and mannerisms. As in the first volume, there is a Greek text with English translation and an apparatus with parallel material to enable comparison with related works. But this volume pays more attention to the transmission of traditional material from one author to another, and to the special approach required of an editor of material which, being in practical use, circulated in unstable and minutely-varying textual forms.

When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven

Download When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520391195
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (23 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven by : Rafael Rachel Neis

Download or read book When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven written by Rafael Rachel Neis and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book investigates rabbinic treatises relating to animals, humans, and other lifeforms. Through an original analysis of creaturely generation and species classification by late ancient Palestinian rabbis and other thinkers in the Roman empire, Rafael Rachel Neis shows how rabbis blurred the lines between the human and other beings. This they did even as they were intent on classifying creatures and delineating the contours of the human. Recognizing that life proliferates via multiple mechanisms beyond sexual copulation between two heterosexual 'male' and 'female' individuals of the same species, the rabbis produced intricate alternatives. This expansive view of generation included humans. Likewise, in parsing the variety of creatures, the rabbis attended to the overlaps and resemblances across seemingly distinct species, upsetting in turn unmitigated claims of human distinctiveness. Intervening in conversations in animal studies, queer theory, trans theory, and feminist science studies, When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven provincializes sacrosanct ideals of reproduction in favor of a broader range of generation, kinship, and species offering powerful historical alternatives to the paradigms associated with so-called traditional ideas"--

Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean

Download Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1782972358
Total Pages : 375 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (829 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean by : D. Michaelides

Download or read book Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean written by D. Michaelides and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2014-05-30 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many recoverable aspects and indications concerning medicine and healing in the ancient past Ð from the archaeological evidence of skeletal remains, grave-goods comprising medical and/or surgical equipment and visual representations in tombs and other monuments thorough to epigraphic and literary sources. The 42 papers presented here cover many aspects medicine in the Mediterranean world during Antiquity and early Byzantine times, bringing together both internationally established specialists on the history of medicine and researchers in the early stages of their career. The contributions are grouped under a series of headings: medicine and archaeology; media (online access to electronic corpus); the Aegean; medical authors/schools of medicine; surgery; medicaments and cures; skeletal remains; new research in Cyprus; Asklepios and incubation; and Byzantine, Arab and medieval sources. These subject areas are addressed through a combination of wide ranging archaeological and osteological data and the examination and interpretation of philosophical, literary and historiographical texts to provide a comprehensive suite of studies into early practices in this fundamental field of human experience.