The Last Olympiad: Twilight of Antiquity: eBook
$9.99
The Serapeum destroyed, the emperor murdered, pagans raise a revolt!
The six years 389-395 AD were a turning point in the Mediterranean world. They saw many dramatic historical developments:
the destruction of the temple of Serapis in Alexandria
the first excommunication of an emperor ever (many more to come)
the first murder of an emperor at the hands of his Germanic bodyguards (many more to come)
an imperial edict prohibiting all practice of any and all pagan rites
the last significant rebellion of pagans against Christian rule
the end of the 1200-year tradition of the Olympic Games
The best-selling European author of books on Greaco-Roman antiquity paints a rich and highly readable panorama of the intellectual life of the Roman Empire of the period. Here they are, debating topics ranging from the moral consequences of bathing and chariot races to national character and demon possession:
the zany, crafty, and weird doctors of the Church: Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine
the dyspeptic historian Ammianus Marcellinus
three fanatic historians of the Church
the grumpy rhetorician Libanius
the blood-thirsty pagan scholar-defenders of the Alexandrian Serapeum
the author of a rabid anti-Christian diatribe which somehow miraculously survived to our times (The Lives of Sophists)
and the quirky and mysterious figure of "Jorge Luis Borges of ancient Rome" (Authors of Imperial History)
Aleksander Krawczuk (1922-2023) was a scholar, a professor at the Jagiellonian University, a minister of culture, and a best-selling European author of books on Graeco-Roman antiquity with an international cult following. His intimate and conversational style allowed him to talk about complicated subjects in an accessible way without dumbing them down in the process. His books remain in print in many languages across Europe. And now they finally appear in English.
Pick up this gem today.
