Winner of the 2009 Single Volume Reference/HumanitiesSocial Sciences PROSE award granted by the Association of American Publishers. This authoritative Companion captures the vitality and diversity of scholarship that exists on the transformative time period known as late antiquity.[...]

In his Discourses (1755), Rousseau argues that inequalities of rank, wealth, and power are the inevitable result of the civilizing process. If inequality is intolerable - and Rousseau shows with unparalledled eloquence how it robs us not only of our material but also of our psychological independen[...]