Recreating Ancient History: Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and Literature of the Early Modern Period

This work offers examples of how historians, writers, playwrights, and painters in the early modern period used ancient history as a rich field of raw material that could be used, recycled, and adapted to new needs and purposes. They focused on classical antiquity as a source from which they could recreate the past as a way of understanding and legitimizing the present. The contributors to this volume have addressed a number of important, common issues that span a range of subjects from 15th-century Italian painting to the teaching of Greek history in 18th-century Germany.