Allegorical readings of literary or religious texts always begin as counterreadings, starting with denial or negation, challenging the literal sense: 'You have read the text this way, but I will read it differently.' David Dawson insists that ancient allegory is best understood not simply as a way o[...]

A lively and wide-ranging study of the men and ideas of late antique education, this book explores the intellectual and doctrinal milieux in the two great cities Athens and Alexandria from the second to the sixth century to shed new light on the interaction between the pagan cultural legacy and Chri[...]

This innovative study uses one well-documented moment of violence as a starting point for a wide-ranging examination of the ideas and interactions of pagan philosophers, Christian ascetics, and bishops from the fourth to the early seventh century. Edward J. Watts reconstructs a riot that erupted in [...]

Clement of Alexandria (150-215) lived and taught in the most lively intellectual centre of his day. This book offers a comprehensive account of how he joined the ideas of the New Testament to those of Plato and other classical thinkers. Clement taught that God was active from the beginning to the en[...]

Lawrence Durrell was one of the best-selling, most celebrated English novelists of the late 20th century. The Alexandria Quartet is unquestionably his most admired work, at heart a sensuous and brilliant evocation of wartime Alexandria. In this world of corrupt glamour, L. G. Darley attempts to reco[...]

Hypatia - mathematician, Neoplatonist, and a woman renowned for her beauty - was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians in Alexandria in 415. In this book, Maria Dzielska searches behind the legend to bring us the real story of Hypatia's life and death, and insight into her world. Historians and p[...]

How did second-century Christians vie with each other in seeking to produce an authoritative discourse of Christian identity? In this innovative book, Denise Buell argues that many early Christians deployed the metaphors of procreation and kinship in the struggle over claims to represent the truth o[...]

Imperialism, nationalism, religion and race: this narrative charts the tensions that destroyed Alexandria's ancient walls, leading to the loss of an entire classical heritage, and beginning a thousand-year rift between Christian Europe and the Islamic Middle East. In the fourth century AD Christian [...]

Second only to Rome in the ancient world, Alexandria was home to many of late antiquity's most brilliant writers, philosophers, and theologians-among them Philo, Origen, Arius, Athanasius, Hypatia, Cyril, and John Philoponus. Now, in Alexandria in Late Antiquity, Christopher Haas offers the first bo[...]

With history around every corner, Washington, D.C. is a city that magically blends yesterday and today. This updated guide---a strong domestic bestsellers---lets travelers discover the myriad, charms of the nation's capital, from its stately monuments to the trendiest restaurants.
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