G. W. Bowersock

Author of Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World

27+ Works 1,057 Members 14 Reviews 1 Favorited

About the Author

G. W. Bowersock is professor emeritus of ancient history at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His most recent book is From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition.

Includes the names: GW Bowerstock, Bowersock. Glen, G. W. Bowersock, Glen W. Bowersock, ed. G. W. Bowersock, G.W. Bowersock (ed.), Glen Warren Bowersock, Glenn Warren Bowersock, G.W. (Glen Warren) Bowersock, 1936- , ed.

Works by G. W. Bowersock

Popular Recent

Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (1999) — Editor — 264 copies

Julian the Apostate (1978) 114 copies

Roman Arabia (1983) 100 copies

The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam (2013) 84 copies

Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (1994) 75 copies

The Crucible of Islam (2017) 66 copies

Hellenism in Late Antiquity (1990) 58 copies

Interpreting Late Antiquity: Essays on the Postclassical World (2001) — Editor — 52 copies

Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam (2006) 52 copies

From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition (2009) 44 copies

Martyrdom and Rome (1995) 35 copies

Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity (2012) 30 copies

Augustus and the Greek World (1965) 25 copies

Daedalus, Summer 1976: Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1977) — Editor — 20 copies

Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (1969) 20 copies

Approaches to the Second Sophistic: Papers presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Philological… (1974) — Editor — 5 copies

Colloque genèvoi sur Symmaque : àholoccasion du mille six centième anniversaire du conflit de l'autel de la Victoire… (1986) 2 copies

Saggi sulla tradizione classica dal Settecento al Novecento (2007) 2 copies

'Well occupied' in TLS 5382, 26 May 2006 [review of Hutton's 'Describing Greece', Konig's 'Athletics & literature in… 1 copy

'Rootless Cosmopolitans : Reviewed: In Search of the Phoenicians by Josephine Crawley Quinn' (The New York Review of… 1 copy

'From the Craze of Achilles to the Wisdom of Xenophon' in NYRB 57/7, 29 April 2010 [review of Caroline Alexander's 'The… 1 copy

Selected papers on late antiquity (2000) 1 copy

'Apocalypse Then' in NYRB 59/6, 5 April 2012 [review of Pagels' 'Revelations: visions, prophecy, and politics in the… 1 copy

'The Rise of 'Decline and Fall'' in NYRB 57/18, 25 Nov 2010 [review of Trevor-Roper's 'History & the Enlightenment'] 1 copy

'Men and Boys' in NYRB 56/14, 24 Sept 2009 [review of James Davidson's 'Greeks & Greek Love' & Lear & Cantarella's… 1 copy

Vol. 07 (1973) 'Review: Auckland Classical Essays' 1 copy

Pseudo-Xenophon 1 copy

Work Explorer

Associated Works

Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (1988) — Contributor — 191 copies

The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: I - Greek Literature (1985) — Contributor, some editions — 60 copies

Philo and Paul Among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a Julio-Claudian Movement (1997) — Foreword — 53 copies

Petra Rediscovered: The Lost City of the Nabataean Kingdom (2003) — Contributor — 47 copies

Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate (1990) — Contributor — 43 copies

The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations (1988) — Contributor — 39 copies

Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (Clarendon Paperbacks) (1984) — Contributor — 31 copies

Rethinking the Mediterranean (2005) — Contributor — 18 copies

Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity (The Transformation of the Classical Heritage) (2000) — Contributor — 14 copies

Tacitus and the Tacitean tradition (1993) — Contributor — 11 copies

The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (1986) — Contributor — 11 copies

Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome (2005) — Contributor — 10 copies

Augustus (Edinburgh Readings on the Ancient World) (2009) — Contributor — 8 copies

Athenaeus and his world : reading Greek culture in the Roman Empire (2000) — Foreword — 8 copies

Transformations of late antiquity : essays for Peter Brown (2009) — Contributor — 6 copies

Paideia : the world of the second sophistic (2004) — Contributor — 5 copies

Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome, and the Gods (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition) (2008) — Contributor — 5 copies

The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power (Interdisciplinary… (2008) — Contributor — 4 copies

Religious and ethnic communities in later Roman Palestine (2018) — Contributor — 4 copies

Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World: Essays in Honour of Miriam Griffin (2002) — Contributor — 3 copies

Studies In The Dionysiaca Of Nonnus (Supplementary Volume No.17 of the Cambridge Philological Society) (1994) — Contributor — 2 copies

Transactions of the American Philological Association. Volume 127 (1997) — Contributor — 2 copies

The ||Petra church (2001) — Contributor — 2 copies

Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Volume 75 (1971) — Contributor — 1 copy

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Common Knowledge

Canonical name: Bowersock, G. W.
Birthdate: 1936-01-12
Gender: male
Nationality: USA
Places of residence: Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Education: Harvard University (AB, 1957)
Oxford University (BA, 1959)
Oxford University (D.Phil, 1962)
Organizations: Institute for Advanced Study (1980-2006)

Members

Reviews

Julian the Apostate (Classical life and letters) by G. W. Bowersock

The book is set out more or less as a chronological biography from Julian's birth to his accession to the throne as sole Augustus in 361. From there, it takes on a more thematic aspect as it describes his policies and movements throughout his time in Naissus, Constantinople and then on to Antioch, where the narrative picks up again and swiftly carries the emperor to his greatest triumph - against the Sassanid Persians at their own capital of Ctesiphon - and his final end on the return journey.

The major downside to this work is Bowersock's clear, at times vitriolic disdain for the Emperor Julian and many of his policies. In the early part of the book, he writes seemingly as an apologist for Constantius II, portraying him in a far more favourable light than most other historians of the period. He castes Julian in the mold of a zealot and a bigot, and eventually as a persecutor of Christians, something which most historians stop short of. This is not the book one should read first on Julian, as I can imagine it would colour one's views irrevocably against the man.

Despite this, however, Bowersock's writing is clear, his style engaging, and his research clearly meticulous. If one is able to see beyond the surface layer of strongly opinionated commentary, an incredible amount of knowledge in a short run of pages (only 119 for the main section) is revealed. For that reason, this is a must-read for anyone with a solid background knowledge of Julian, looking to learn more.… (more)

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KatherineJaneWright | 3 other reviews | Jul 17, 2022 |

The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of… by G. W. Bowersock

Oxford University Press as publisher was already a good hint that this wouldn't be an easy read, but I love to learn completely random facts about the world that are thoroughly reviewed and that I'll never need again, so I'm fine with that.

The topic itself is pretty obscure: A pre-islamic conflict between jewish Arabs in the territory of today's Yemen and christian Ethiopians at the other side of the Red Sea that is in the end not much more than a proxy war between the Byzantine and the Persian empires.

Bowerstock analyses and explains meticulously the body of source material, the power structure in the region, the influence of outside and historical powers like the Roman, Meroitic and Egyptian empires and the development of the conflict.

The lessons? Propaganda is everything, it's not about religion, and every aggressor always has good reasons.… (more)

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DeusXMachina | 1 other review | Mar 2, 2020 |

Die Wiege des Islam : Mohammed, der Koran und die… by G. W. Bowersock

This is not a history of early Islam so much as an attempt to position early Islam in the surrounding cultures. I found it quite interesting.

I read this in German. The translation reads smoothly.

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MarthaJeanne | 1 other review | May 5, 2019 |

Fiction as History: Nero to Julian by G. W. Bowersock

The core thread of these lectures is an argument that the Greek novel,which flourished from the late first century to the fourth, draws themes and ideas from then-nascent Christianity. It can get useful to have a reference to the novels themselves on hand (such as Reardon's). Overall, an interesting if shortish book, covering texts which are not part of the most common classical education (with the one exception of the Philoctetes).

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jsburbidge | 1 other review | Nov 9, 2018 |

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