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J. A. S. Evans

J.A.S. Evans is Professor emeritus in the Department of Classical Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia.

Author

Rome’s Gladiatorial Games

Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome. Edited by Eckart Köhne and Cornelia Ewigleben; English version edited by Ralph Jackson. University of California Press. $29.95. The Museo Nazionale in Rome, which occupies part of [...]

Greek Letter

The summer after I passed my preliminary examinations for a doctorate at Yale, I sailed for Greece. I had written the examination for the Seymour Fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and won it. The year was 1954, I was 2 [...]

Life In Late Antiquity

Alexandria in Late Antiquity. By Christopher Haas. Johns Hopkins. $45. 00. The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity. By Kate Cooper. Harvard. $37. 50. "Late Antiquity" is that slice of history filling the space between the [...]

The Present State of Canada

The night of Oct. 30, 1995, was one of high drama across Canada. The referendum on Quebec secession that day attracted an enormous voter turnout in the province. Ninety-three per cent of eligible Quebec voters cast their ballots. The question whic [...]

The Fascination of Thucydides

The Humanity of Thucydides.> By Clifford Orwin. Princeton. $35.00. Thucydides continues to fascinate. The old Athenian historian, who died before he could finish his one masterwork, was a pioneer in a remarkable number of academic fields which hav [...]

The Hellenistic Age

Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. By Peter Green. California. $65.00. The Hellenistic Age began in June, 323 B. C. , when Alexander the Great lay dying in Babylon, and on being asked to whom he left his conquest [...]

Corrupters of Power

Caligula: The Corruption of Power. By Anthony A. Barrett. Yale. $27. 50. Claudius. By Barbara Levick. Yale. $25.00. It is hard to like the Roman emperor Gaius Caligula. His uncle and successor, Claudius, found a defender in Robert Graves, who publ [...]

The Father of Oral History

Herodotean Narrative and Discourse. By Mabel L. Lang. Harvard. $20.00. Herodotus was the "Father of History." The title was given to him by Cicero, who lived in the first century before Christ, four centuries after Herodotus published his Histories [...]

Myth, Art, and Conceptual Models In Greece

Cupid and Psyche: Apuleius and the Monuments. By Carl C. Schlam. Scholars Press. $4.50. Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age. By John Onians. Thames and Hudson. $19.95. Persephone's Cave. By Howard Baker. Georgia. $18.00. "A king and queen used [...]

The Glory That Was Greece

Economy and Society in Ancient Greece. By M. I. Finley. Viking. $22.50. All my life," the nonagenarian Bernard Berenson wrote in 1957 in a letter to the Swedish archaeologist, Axel Bolthius, "I have been reading about Homer, philological, historic [...]

Diaspora In Antiquity

Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks and Romans. By Erich Gruen. Harvard University Press. $39.95 There are two delightful and unexpected chapters in Erich Gruen's Diaspora, which deals with the mindset and the social condition of the Jews who dwelt out [...]