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Lying less than half a mile north of the gates of the ancient city of Sirkap in the Punjab province
of Pakistan, the temple of Jandial overlooks one of the historic routes that connected the city to
Gandhāra in the Peshawar Valley. When the British archaeologist John H. Marshall excavated
the temple in 1912 its walls had partially collapsed and nothing of the roof survived. Two
capitals of Ionic type were retrieved from the floor of the temple, their shafts long gone. The

Upon seeing the frescoes uncovered at Pompei in the second half of the eighteenth century, Lady Miller was astounded ‘that these people should have any knowledge of the Chinese and their gardens, ornaments, &c. is surprising. I observed one representation of a Chinese temple built on piles over a piece of water.’ Others were not as impressed. ‘Much of the greatest part of them are but a very few degrees better than what you will upon an ale-house-wall...A vast deal of it looks like such Chinese border and ornaments, as we see painted upon skreens,’ observed Mr Freeman.

How to Write a Disabled God: Disability in Lucian of Samosata’s Dialogues

In 634 armies of the Rashidun Caliphate invaded Egypt under the commandment of general ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ; six years later, they conquered Alexandria, and new stage in the country’s history began. The first centuries of the Arab rule in Egypt are characterized by both continuity and innovation in the cultural, economic, and social spheres.

In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BCE), the titular character rallies the σπερμαγοραιολεκιθολαχανοπώλιδες, encompassing in one word the women who sold grain, pulses, and vegetables in the Athenian agora (Ar. Lys. 457). Female produce vendors appear in Old Comedy as interlocutors and instigators, and while such depictions played for laughs rather than accuracy, these women appear to have been a fixture of the classical marketplace (Ar. Ach. 478; Wasps 497-9; Thesm. 387, 456).

Like Neoplatonism, the philosophy of Kashmiri Shaivism (represented by e.g., Abhinavagupta, (950-1020 ce; Utpaladeva 909-950 ce, and Kṣemarāja 975-1125 CE) is graced with a complex metaphysics, imbued with indigenous mythologies, and rooted in traditions (Platonism and Pythagoreanism, Vedanta, Tantra, and Advaita) that spiral backwards in time. Comparative approaches to the systems of Abhinavagupta and Platonism are exceedingly rare (Just, 2013; earlier Stahl worked on Advaita but not Shaivism).

Ancient Mediterranean Platonists including Porphyry, Proclus, and Damascius encourage us to act virtuously in the world mediated by the senses, even as we contemplate the mentally mediated Forms described by Plato. They also appear to claim that we cannot attend simultaneously to Forms and sense-objects; but since sense-objects distort our perceptions and motivations, we should strive to attend to Forms.

How to conceptualize society in its core structure? I argue that, in their beginnings,

Indian and Greek philosophy did this in a strikingly similar way. More precisely, I argue

that there is a clear systematic parallel between the varṇa-scheme in Vedic thought and

Plato’s political system in the Republic. The paper therefore provides an analysis of a

This paper argues that 1) women working in domestic settings were predominantly responsible for the manufacture of the textiles and clothing traded and sold commercially for consumer use in classical Greek cities, including luxury products.

This paper will compare Abhinavagupta's theory of rasa, or aesthetic contemplation, and his notion of camatkāra, or aesthetic relishing, to Plotinus’s descriptions and explanations of the soul’s erotic responses to beauty. Abhinavagupta (ca. 950–1020) was one of the most influential masters of the Pratyabhijna School of nondual Saiva philosophy of Kashmir. He is famous for his synthesis of several schools of Indian tantric practice and philosophy, as well as for his writings on aesthetics, mostly concerning Indian literature and theater.