ancient

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press , 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclpped dust jacket. The hideously disfigured body was found in the atrium. The only clues are a blood-soaked cloak, and, carved into the stone at the corpse's feet, the word Sparta. The murdered man was the overseer of Marcus Crassus's estate, apparently killed by two runaway slaves bent on joining Spartacus's revolt. In response to the murder, the wealthy, powerful Crassus vows to honor an ancient law and kill his ninety-nine remaining slaves in three days. Now Gordianus the Finder has been summoned from Rome by a mysterious client to find out the truth about the murder before the three days are up.

Softcover. London, The Trustees of the British Museum / British Museum Press Ltd., 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 224 brilliant pages, laden with illustrations of Assyrian art and artifacts from The British Museum collection. 215 color and 33 black and white illustrations in addition to one map. Beautiful full-color cover with minor wear at corners only. Illustrated title page and half-title page. Crisp text pairs nicely with this rich visual collection. In very good condition overall.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1970, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, b&w illustrations, 257 pages. Praised for its scope and depth, Asia in the Making of Europe is the first comprehensive study of Asian influences on Western culture. This is the second volume in a series that traces, century by century, the role of Asia in the making of Europe. The rise to world dominance of the Western nations in modern times and the rapid industrial growth of the West, which outpaced the East in technical and military achievements, have led to a historical eclipse of the ancient and brilliant cultures of Asia. Light foxing to dust jacket, edge of text block. No markings.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, reprint, 1851, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon boards with brown calf spine, title label on front cover. 21 double-page maps detailing the geography of ancient nations, featuring color country borders, extensive index. Maps include: Orbis Veteribus Notus; Britannia; Hispania; Gallia; Germania; Vindelicia; Italia, Pars I; Italia, Pars II; Macedonia; Graecia extra Pelo; Peloponnesus; Insulae Maris Aegaei; Asia Minor; Oriens; Syria; Palaestina; Armenia; Africa; Mauritania, Numidia and Africa Propria; and Aegyptus. Spine neatly re-inforced with clear tape, clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st US, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 224 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Sun fading to dust jacket spine. Light foxing to top edge of text block. An otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Beardsley's work is looked at alongside the work of contemporaries such as Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm and W.B. Yeats and against the backdrop of the artistic, literary and social life of fin-de-siecle London, Dieppe and Paris. In addition to the drawings, the book includes examples of Beardsley's innovative book binding, prints and posters, revealing a gallery of portraits and photographs from that decadent period, the "Naughty Nineties." It also explores the diverse influences, such as ancient Greek vase painting and Japanese prints, upon which the young artist freely drew in the formation of his own style.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan Company, 1st, 1898, Book: Very Good, A two-volume set, taupe-colored cloth boards with gilt decorated illustration of Rome on front cover. Top edge gilt. Vol I: Fold-out map of Rome as frontis., 332 pages, 14 photogravure plates with tissue guards, numerous line illustrations in the text. Vol II: Photo of St. Peters Square as frontis., 344 pages, 13 photogravure plates with tissue guards, numerous line illustrations in the text. Light soil to covers, both volumes with mild residue to inside covers where bookplate may have been removed. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York , Dodd, Mead & Company, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 55 pages. Green cloth cover with gilt lettering and design. Some wear to edges and spine. Dust jacket has some wear to edges and spine, with very slight foxing in one corner. Endpages are green paper with illustrations. Includes a notes section, explaining the importance of the ancient Latin poem "Batrachomuomachia," which, when translated into English, also reads "The Battle of the Frogs and Mice," and was a parody on "The Iliad," estimated to be written nearly 300 years after Homer's lifetime. An interesting combination of an ancient text and a children's tale. Inside is nice and bright, clean, and contains many beautiful b&w illustrations drawn by Fred Gwynne throughout.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Candlewick Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, color throughout. This exhilarating graphic-novel edition of an ancient classic honors the spirit of the original as it attracts modern readers. The epic tale of the great warrior Beowulf has thrilled readers through the ages - and has been reinvented for a new generation with Gareth Hinds's masterful illustrations. Grendel's black blood runs thick as Beowulf defeats the monster and his hideous mother, while somber hues overcast the hero's final, fatal battle against a raging dragon. Speeches filled with courage and sadness, lightning-paced contests of muscle and will, and funeral boats burning on the fjords are all rendered in glorious and gruesome detail. Told for more than a thousand years, Beowulf's heroic saga finds a true home in this graphic-novel edition. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 129 pages. Anthology of 20 stories gathered from 16th Century chronicles of missionaries. Illustrated by Bierhorst, Jane Byers. Clean copy. Dust jacket price-clipped.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 407 pages. This book delves beneath the chaos and brutality of the Norse world to discover a complex interplay of ordering and disordering impulses. Miller's unique and engaging readings of ancient Iceland's sagas and extensive legal code reconstruct and illuminate the society that produced them. People in the saga world negotiated a maze of violent possibility, with strategies that frequently put life and limb in the balance. But there was a paradox in striking the balance--one could not get even without going one better. Miller shows how blood vengeance, law, and peacemaking were inextricably bound together in the feuding process. This book offers fascinating insights into the politics of a stateless society, its methods of social control, and the role that a uniquely sophisticated and self-conscious law played in the construction of Icelandic society. Clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 839 pages. Traces the history of bribery from ancient Egypt to ABSCAM, examines changing perceptions of bribery, and discusses the legal, ethical and religious injunctions against bribes. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Richmond VA, Dietz Press, 1st, 1946, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth, 190 pages, b&w illustrations, plates, portraits, maps, facsimile, genealogical tables. Internally very good, clean, but the rear cover has some of the top edge chewed away. Dust jacket present in name only with major loss to rear panel.

Hardcover. Calcutta, Sanskrit College, reprint, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in lightly worn dust jacket. 290 pages, no marking. Originally printed in 1969.

New York, Brockhampton/William R. Scott, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 40 pages. Many black & white and color detailed illustrations of buildings by the Leacrofts. Dust jacket with mild wear. Clean copy.

Hardcover. UK, Oxford University Press, reprint, 2003, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 309 pages. Byzantine philosophy is an almost unexplored field. Being regarded either as mere scholars or as primarily religious thinkers, Byzantine philosophers have not been studied on their own philosophical merit. The eleven contributions in this volume, which cover most periods of Byzantine culture from the 4th to the 15th century, for the first time systematically investigate the attitude the Byzantines took towards the views of ancient philosophers, to uncover the distinctive character of Byzantine thought. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Clarendon Press, 1st, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers with gilt lettering on the spine, 436 pages plus 48 b&w plates and 3 fold-out maps in rear. The publication of this introduction to east Roman civilization has been described as a major event in the history of Byzantine studies in England. The book contains chapters by authorities of international reputation on all aspects of Byzantine culture, and Professor Baynes's short introduction brilliantly sums up the essence of Byzantium and describes what it gave to the world. Gutter cracked at title page, still solid, clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, reprint, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 868 pages, terra-cotta cloth covers, b&w illustrations, maps tables. Clean, tight copy.

Cambridge England, Cambridge University Press, 2nd, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Volume Four in 2 parts (2 separate books). Volume one: Byzantium and its Neigbours, Volume two: Government, Church & Civilization. Contains numerous foldout maps. Dust jacket price clipped, edgewear.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 205 pages, large color photographs throughout. Minor dust jacket edge wear, small remainder dot on top edge, otherwise, clean, bright and tight copy. The Campidoglio, the Roman Capitol, stands on the peak of the smallest of Rome's seven hills. The epicenter of the Roman Empire, it was transformed by Michelangelo into one of the most imposing architectural compositions of all time, grand environment for the political life of a great city. Michelangelo's design for the Piazza del Campidoglio was one of the first efforts to make a public space in which all the elements function as a whole. At the center of a trapezoidal area, flanked by three palaces, was the ancient Roman equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the second-century ruler who presided over the waning clays of the empire. Alexander Liberman has photographed the statue and its environs in all kinds of light and from all angles over a period of years. The result is a stunning photographic essay on one of the most dramatic monuments ever constructed.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to covers. The third volume in Fantagraphics' ongoing reprint of Roy Crane's legendary comedy-action series features what many consider the absolute peak of the series: "Temple of the Swinks," in which Wash and Easy discover an ancient temple with statues of an unknown animal called a swink... a real-life specimen of which shows up! In other stories, Wash and Easy sail for Singapore with a cargo of wild animals, crash land a plane on an island inhabited by (inevitably) pirates and (just as inevitably) beautiful women, and sail the South Seas in a schooner whose villainous captain plans to rob them. When they return to America, Wash Tubbs' pet swink draws huge crowds and a reputation for being worth a million dollars. Then Wash and Easy travel to Peru to rescue an American lost in the jungle and, in the cover-featured story, Easy goes deep sea diving in search of a beautiful girl's lost diamond.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, chipped dust jacket. 214 pages. An angry young man uses the powers of an ancient cat cult to possess the children of a lethargic English village. Clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Clarendon Press, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 499 pages. R. J. Hankinson traces the history of ancient Greek thinking about causation and explanation, from its earliest beginnings through more than a thousand years to the middle of the first millennium of the Christian era. He examines ways in which the Ancient Greeks dealt with questions about how and why things happen as and when they do, about the basic constitution and structure of things, about function and purpose, laws of nature, chance, coincidence, and responsibility. Clean copy.

Hardcover. San Diego, Sunbelt Publications, Revised Ed., 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 246 pages, color photographs and illustrations throughout, illustrated end paper. The Great Murals of Mexico's Baja California are one of the five greatest sites in the world for primitive rock art. They rank with those of southern France, northern Spain, northwest Africa, and outback Australia. These Great Murals, created by an unknown people, are without doubt the most distinctive trove of rock art in the Western Hemisphere. The site was unveiled to the modern world in the 1960s by adventure/mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner who brought in UCLA archaeologist Clement Meighan to validate the importance of his find. But it was not until the 1970s, when author/photographer Harry W. Crosby undertook a systematic search for the largely unknown works hidden in the mountains of central Baja that the scope and significance of the find became known. He documented his search and discovery of over 200 previously unreported rock art sites leading to the original publication of The Cave Paintings of Baja California by Copley Books in 1975 which first introduced this cave art to the general public. Since that time, Baja California's Great Murals have been designated a United Nations Heritage Site. This lavishly illustrated full-color account is greatly revised and expanded from the original edition and offers Crosby's unique perspective on the painted sites and painting styles found in different parts of the Great Mural area. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, Art Media Resources, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 305 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light edgewear to cover boards, otherwise clean bright copy. Color pictures throughout. 12x12x1 dimensions. Numbering over 250 works spanning nearly 1500 years, the Dewey collection of ancient Chinese tomb sculpture is exceptional for its breadth and outstanding quality. Representing nearly all figural types, stylistic traditions and themes, it provides a comprehensive visual record with fascinating insights into the customs and fashions, inventions and superstitions of ancient China's ruling elite during the golden age of the Great Silk Road.