The Archidamian War was in Thucydides’ view caused mainly by Sparta wanting to ‘take down’ the power of Athens, while its course was shaped largely by Sparta’s reliance on conventional tactics and limited resources, compounded by its ‘slowness’ to act. This notion of a mismatch between highly ambitious strategic objectives and deeply inadequate tactical means remains pervasive in scholarship on the war. However, Thucydides’ record of Spartan actions is open to a different interpretation: Sparta’s main strategic goal was merely to preserve its hegemony over its allies, and accordingly it needed to support the military ambitions of the latter, especially Corinth and Thebes on whose military resources Sparta was dependent. Sparta initially did the minimum necessary to keep Corinth and Thebes onside but, in the face of Athens’ refusal to compromise, gradually developed more ambitious strategic goals of its own. When Sparta applied conventional tactics and limited resources it was in pursuit of specific, restricted strategic aims, but when Sparta pursued more ambitious strategies it developed new, complex and often daring tactics to match. Their ultimate lack of success was largely the result of Sparta having to make concessions to the mutually incompatible strategic interests of Corinth and Thebes.

This chapter examines the urban evolution of cities in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, focusing on their transformation from classical urban centres to more utilitarian and fortified settlements. It argues that rather than experiencing outright decline, cities in the East adapted to changing political, economic and religious realities. Archaeological evidence demonstrates a marked shift from monumental civic spaces to structures that emphasised military defence, religious identity and practical urban needs. The author discusses key aspects of urban change, including the gradual abandonment of traditional agoras, the decline of monumental temples and the repurposing of public buildings for Christian churches and administrative centres. The chapter also explores the impact of imperial policies on urban planning in reshaping cityscapes through large-scale church construction, fortification efforts and infrastructure projects. The increased militarisation of cities, with the establishment of fortified kastra and urban defences, is another major theme. Regional variations are examined, showing that while some cities, such as Constantinople and Thessaloniki, thrived under imperial patronage, others faced economic stagnation and contraction. The chapter concludes that while Late Antiquity brought profound transformations to urban life, cities in the East remained resilient, adapting to new social and political realities rather than simply collapsing.

Given its heightened local significance, lyric poetry could feed into Aristides’ orations addressed to individual imperial communities. This chapter focuses on Or. 46, a speech performed at the Isthmian festival in praise of Poseidon and Corinth. Precisely when it comes to celebrating Corinth, Aristides builds on the praise of this city already found in Pindar’s Ol. 13. Although this lyric precedent was locally relevant, however, the imperial city was as removed as possible from that of Ol. 13: as a result of its destruction and re-foundation by Rome, imperial Corinth was far from a traditionally Greek community. Against this political and cultural background, Aristides’ choice of recalling Pindar’s praise appears as a strategy to create a sense of continuity in response to the rupture caused by Rome. For this strategy to work, however, Aristides had to recast Pindar’s praise so that his own celebration could strike a fine balance between the Greek and Roman elements of New Corinth.

Chapter 5 recounts the 2nd Texas’ first battle experience at Shiloh and the subsequent allegations of cowardice. It explains efforts by the men to defend themselves, as well as their supporters. Their Col. John C. Moore filed multiple reports to explain his unit’s actions the second day of the fight; their Lt. Col. William P. Rogers vowed to prove his men’s valor.

The Conclusion returns to the need for historians to recognize the topic of cowardice in combat in order to gain a fuller understanding of war. Recovering the complicated histories of the Fire Zouaves and the 2nd Texas further helps to disassemble the glorification of war-making.

Chapter 6 narrates the 2nd Texas’ post Shiloh service record, including the bloody battle of Corinth in October 1862, which resulted in the martyred death of Colonel Rogers. Although there were questions surrounding his death, a celebratory tale of him took shape, portraying him as a martyr for the Confederate cause. After Corinth, the 2nd Texas had transformed into an elite fighting unit, but the stigma of Shiloh seemed to linger. The chapter closes with their final days in Galveston, depleted and demoralized.

Horse hybrids reveal a wide range of meanings. Since riding requires control of an animal much more powerful than the rider, it was a psychologically charged experience that found expression in hybrid figures of riders fused to their horses. Pegasos, the horse with wings, is the hero Bellerophon’s companion and makes it possible for him to slay another hybrid, Chimaira. The best-known horse hybrid is the centaur, but centaurs come in different varieties. Some are human to their toes, with a horse’s rear end jutting out of the middle of the creature’s human back. Others exhibit a human head and torso rising from the horse’s withers. Since the centaur is frequently used as a symbol of unrestrained lust, the change in form forces the viewer to consider uncomfortable questions regarding sexuality and animality. Yet centaurs are more than the embodiment of rampant sex drives, since the opposite of licentious behaviour is embodied by another centaur: Cheiron, the tutor of heroes. The centaur expresses the kaleidoscopic nature of being and identity in the Archaic Greek world.

Since the work of Maurice Halbwachs, the spatial dimension and conditionality of memory – its connectedness and links to space and place – have been well known.1 Halbwachs asserts that collective memory is only possible if it is ‘localized’.2 Hence, the trope of a city or town as a landscape of memory has become fixed in memory studies and has even given rise to the term ‘urban memory’.3 Urban memory can refer to anthropomorphic phenomena (as when the city is said to have a memory of its own). More commonly, however, it points to the city’s status as a physical place and an ensemble of objects and practices which enables recollections of the past and embodies it through traces of successive building and rebuilding.4 The inhabitants of a city thus draw upon its image to identify with its past and present as a political, cultural, and social entity. In that sense, the urban landscape of Republican and Imperial Rome has thoroughly been investigated and reconstructed as a landscape of memory.

In 146 BCE, Rome destroyed the cities of Carthage and Corinth, and in 133 BCE the Spanish stronghold of Numantia. The destruction of a city in the Greco-Roman world was a deeply symbolic act, and these particular acts of ‘urbicide’ – as we now call the intentional destruction of a city – were viewed by Greco-Roman authors as pivotal moments in Roman the expansion of Rome’s power. All three acts can be understood through the prism of retributive ‘conspicuous destruction’, designed to deter others from revolting against Rome’s power. In each case, Rome effaced individual responsibility for any perceived acts of disloyalty, and collectively punished the community through its effective elimination: after many perished in the siege and or sack of the city, the surviving population was enslaved, and the city itself destroyed – not to be re-inhabited by the survivors. When viewed through the prism of the definition of ‘genocide’ in the ‘Genocide Convention’, these actions of Rome could be viewed as intentional acts to destroy these civic communities ‘as such’, and thus warrant consideration as genocide. Of the three, Carthage stands out in the predetermination on the part of some at Rome – fueled by existential anxieties - to destroy the city, before an actual pretext existed.

The sanctuary of Artemis on the island of Korkyra, modern Corfu, is presented as a case study of the relationship between the changing environment and the monumentalization of Greek sanctuaries through Doric stone architecture. Although the sculptural decoration of the Artemis temple, which is one of the earliest Doric temples known so far, is relatively well preserved, modern scholars disagree on the interpretation of the sculptures. The question of how the representations of Medusa and other mythological figures on the pediments and metopes related to the divinity worshipped in the sanctuary and to the local context are particularly controversial. However, as the chapter argues, the builders of the temple had no interest in highlighting this relationship in the first place. The temple and its sculptural decoration were meant to express Panhellenic values and standards rather than local traditions. Thus, the local elite of Korkyra presented themselves as part of a Panhellenic elite network. At the same time, the elite showed the local population that they were taking care of the religious landscape in an unstable and radically transformative situation.

This chapter combines all available evidence to reassess the archaeological signature of Corinth’s destruction by the Romans in 146 B.C. and its refoundation as a Roman colony.

This chapter discusses critical issues involved in the interpretation of the Corinthian correspondence, with special attention to various responses to Paul and his claims to apostolic authority, to different understandings of the resurrection in the early church, and to the collection for the saints in Jerusalem and its significance for interpreting Paul’s larger ministry.

These conclusions to the entire book begin by comparing ancient Near Eastern war memorials preserved in the archeological record, on the one hand, to biblical war commemoration that has been transmitted for millennia, on the other. Where one was carved in stone and displayed in competing palaces, the other was conducted in the framework of a single, yet composite, narrative (a “movable monument”). In contrast to what we encounter in ancient Egypt and Western Asia, the societies of the East Aegean produced forms of war commemoration that are much more similar to the biblical writings. After presenting a selection of this evidence from ancient Greece, the chapter examines some of factors that help explain the commonalities between “Athens and Jerusalem.” It then turns back to Wellhausen and reflects on the larger implications of the book for political theology.