Books about Antonines from Amazon.com

The Antonines--Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Veras and Commodus--played a crucial part in the development of the Roman empire, controlling its huge machine for half a century of its most testing period. Edward Gibbon observed that the epoch of the Antonines, the 2nd century A.D., was the happiest period the world has ever known.

In this lucid, authoritative survey, Michael Grant re-examines Gibbons's statement, and gives his own magisterial account of how the lives of the emperors and the art, literature, architecture and overall social condition under the Antonines represented an "age of transition." The Antonines is essential reading for anyone who is interested in ancient history, as well as for all students and teachers of the subject..
Price: $22.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1979, the legendary Acadian novelist Antonine Maillet won France’s most coveted literary award, the Prix Goncourt, for the original version of this novel, Pélagie-la-Charette. In her acceptance speech, she said, "I have avenged my ancestors." Goose Lane Editions is proud to re-issue this classic of Acadian literature to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of Acadie and the début of the novel’s musical adaptation, Pélagie: An Acadian Odyssey. This funny, lyrical account of a daring Acadian widow’s journey home from exile is the Mother Courage of Acadian literature. At thirty-five, Pélagie is a survivor of the Great Disruption of 1755, when British soldiers deported Acadians who had farmed along the Bay of Fundy for generations. Splitting up families, the soldiers tossed men, women, and children pell-mell into ships and dispatched them to ports all along the eastern seaboard of the US and to Louisiana. When it was heard years later that the British would tolerate their return to Acadie, thousands loaded possessions and children onto handcarts and set out on foot. After fifteen years of working as a slave in the cotton fields of Georgia, Pélagie, too, has had enough. Drawn home as if by a magnet, inspired by her love of her family and of Beausoleil, a heroic sea captain, and determined to outrace the “Wagon of Death,” Pélagie sets off to take her people on a 3,000-mile trek back to their homeland. Her single cart, pulled by six oxen, soon attracts scattered Cormiers and LeBlancs, Landrys and Poiriers, Maillets and Légers. Together, this caravan of colourful Acadians undertakes a ten-year journey up the Atlantic coast to their childhood homes.
Price: $13.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This classic book brings to life imperial Rome as it was during the second century A.D., the time of Trajan and Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus It was a period marked by lavish displays of wealth, a dazzling cultural mix, and the advent of Christianity. The splendor and squalor of the city, the spectacles, and the day's routines are reconstructed from an immense fund of archaeological evidence and from vivid descriptions by ancient poets, satirists, letter-writers, and novelists-from Petronius to Pliny the Younger. In a new Introduction, the eminent classicist Mary Beard appraises the book's enduring-and sometimes surprising-influence and its value for general readers and students. She also provides an up-to-date bibliographic essay..
Price: $9.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The premise is deceptively simple: a dirt-poor charwoman and former prostitute leans on her mop and tells her life story. But what a story! As she reminisces and rants, telling stories about herself, her friends and neighbours, the priest and his church, and every other aspect of life in her village, she is actually telling the story of Acadie. More than 25 years after its first publication in English, La Saguoine is available once again, this time in a new translation. Wayne Grady, one of Canada's most distinguised translators, faithfully recreates Acadian speech for an English readership in this new edition, bringing out the cultural richness of the language as well as La Saguoine's strength of character and irrepressible humour. La Saguoine launched the careers of both Antonine Maillet and the actress Viola Léger. with sales of ver 100,000 copies, it brought the existence of Acadian literature to a wide and admiring audience. This new edition will introduce it once again to a new generation of English readers..
Price: $10.04 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is a study of a man who was the presiding genius of Latin letters in the second century, the leading orator and lawyer of his day, a prominent senator and consul, the close friend of four emperors and the teacher of two, including the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is a history that tells as much about the age as the man.

The book begins in Roman North Africa, with an account of Fronto's family and education and the province's influence on his career. After a brief glance at his Italian milieu, Champlin examines Fronto's letters for what they reveal about Fronto and about literary life in the second century. Next come portrayals of Fronto as lawyer, as senator, and as courtier--chapters in Fronto's life that yield a full picture of Antonine society. A final chapter discusses what Marcus Aurelius learned from the orator.

The fragmentary nature of Fronto's letters has seriously hampered their use as a historical source. By close analysis of many of the letters and by the deployment of formidable prosopographical skills, Champlin has coaxed information out of this rich material, and he weaves it into a clear social history.

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Price: $34.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The quality of "monumentality" is attributed to the buildings of few historical epochs or cultures more frequently or consistently than to those of the Roman Empire. It is this quality that has helped to make them enduring models for builders of later periods. This extensively illustrated book, the first full-length study of the concept of monumentality in Classical Antiquity, asks what it is that the notion encompasses and how significant it was for the Romans themselves in molding their individual or collective aspirations and identities. Although no single word existed in antiquity for the qualities that modern authors regard as making up that term, its Latin derivation--from monumentum, "a monument"--attests plainly to the presence of the concept in the mentalities of ancient Romans, and the development of that notion through the Roman era laid the foundation for the classical ideal of monumentality, which reached a height in early modern Europe. This book is also the first full-length study of architecture in the Antonine Age--when it is generally agreed the Roman Empire was at its height. By exploring the public architecture of Roman Italy and both Western and Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire from the point of view of the benefactors who funded such buildings, the architects who designed them, and the public who used and experienced them, Edmund Thomas analyzes the reasons why Roman builders sought to construct monumental buildings and uncovers the close link between architectural monumentality and the identity and ideology of the Roman Empire itself..
Price: $205.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is Volume 2 of a four volume set

This incredible set begins with Napoleon's birth in Corsica in 1769 and ends with his entombment in the Invalides in Paris in 1840, further set off by an additional section back of Volume IV, Napoleon's Will. (And, no, he didn't leave it all to Josephine. They divorced in 1809. Four months later, he married Archduchess Marie Louise. She didn't get anything either.) That aside, these four illustrated volumes include chronologies, text, letters, and many many insights, both personal and professional, into the life and mind of a titan in world history..
Price: $35.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]