The Nile River was crucial to the growth of Egyptian civilization. Maps help illustrate the contrast between river and desert, and engaging text explains how geography influenced Egypt's settlement and migration patterns and even its religion. This book addresses people's relationship to their environment, a key social-studies concept.

"Gabriel Richardson Lear presents a bold new approach to one of the enduring debates about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: the controversy about whether it coherently argues that the best life for humans is one devoted to a single activity, namely philosophical contemplation. Many scholars oppose this reading because the bulk of the Ethics is devoted to various moral virtues - courage and generosity, for example - that are not in any obvious way either...

Gibbon's masterpiece, which narrates the history of the Roman Empire from the second century A.D. to its collapse in the west in the fifth century and in the east in the fifteenth century, is widely considered the greatest work of history ever written. This abridgment retains the scope of the original, but in a compass equivalent to a long novel. Casual readers now have access to the full sweep of Gibbon's narrative, while instructors and students...

Thirteen of Plato's most well-known dialogues are included in the collection "Essential Dialogues of Plato." Plato was a learned student of the early philosopher Socrates. Because Socrates did not write any works before his untimely death, Pluto took Socrates' beliefs and expressed them through imagined dialogues between the philosopher and his students. It was the first time in Western history that a philosophical dialectic between the teacher and...

Trade in ancient Greece occurred both among the Greek cities and with foreign lands. Readers will discover that Greece's trading was so influential that its pottery has been discovered in many different areas of the world. The various industries of ancient Greece, its monetary system, and its markets are discussed.

Locales like Mesopotamia or the Indus Valley, peoples like the Hittites or Assyrians, or rulers like Sargon, Hammurabi, and Darius are part of a long-dead antiquity, so shrouded with dust that we might be tempted to skip over them entirely, preferring to race forward along history's timeline in search of the riches we know will be found in our studies of Greece and Rome. But, according to Professor Harl, these civilizations, "act as the cultural

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"The Medea of Euripides is one of the greatest of all Greek tragedies, and arguably the one that has the most significance for us today. A barbarian woman brought to Corinth and there abandoned by her Greek husband, Medea seeks vengeance on Jason, and is willing to strike out against his new wife and family--even slaughtering the sons she has born him. From the very beginning of the play we are drawn into a world "torn asunder by blind, disruptive...

"A translation of Aristotle's "The Art of Rhetoric", which establishes the methods of informal reasoning and explores the link between character and emotion."--

Socrates' defense (Apology) / translated by Hugh Tredennick -- Crito / translated by Hugh Tredennick -- Phaedo / translated by Hugh Tredennick -- Charmides / translated by Benjamin Jowett -- Laches / translated by Benjamin Jowett -- Lysis / translated by J. Wright -- Euthyphro / translated by Lane Cooper -- Menexenus / translated by Benjamin Jowett -- Lesser Hippias / translated by Benjamin Jowett -- Ion / translated by Lane Cooper -- Gorgias / translated...

Written sometime in the 4th Century BC, Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is the definitive treatise on the art of persuasive public speaking. The art of oratorical persuasion was an essential skill for the successful politician during the days of ancient Greece and Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is considered one of the greatest works from antiquity on the subject. Like many of the surviving works attributable to Aristotle, "Rhetoric" was not intended for public dissemination,...