The Last Olympiad

The Serapeum destroyed, the emperor murdered, pagans raise a revolt!

The best-selling European author of books on Graeco-Roman antiquity paints a rich and highly readable panorama of the intellectual life of the Roman Empire of the period of the Last Olympic Games of Antiquity (AD389-AD393). Here they are, debating topics ranging from the moral consequences of bathing and chariot races to national character and demon possession:

• the zany, crafty, and weird doctors of the Church: Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine
• the caustic and dysphoric historian Ammianus Marcellinus
• three fanatic historians of the Church
• the grumpy rhetorician Libanius
• the blood-thirsty scholar-defenders of the Alexandrian Serapeum
• the author of a rabid anti-Christian diatribe which somehow miraculously survived to our times (The Lives of Sophists)
• and the quirky and mysterious figure of "Jorge Luis Borges of ancient Rome" (Authors of Imperial History)

Quoting richly from various curious, entertaining, and beautiful texts from the period, Professor Krawczuk gives us a broad intellectual survey of the Roman Empire and its leading personalities at the time of the last revolt of the ancient gods.

Aleksander Krawczuk (1922-2023) was a scholar, a professor at the Jagiellonian University, a minister of culture, and a best-selling European author of books on Graeco-Roman antiquity with an international cult following. His intimate and conversational style allowed him to talk about complicated subjects in an accessible way without dumbing them down in the process. His books remain in print in many languages across Europe. And now they finally appear in English.

"A classicist's delight!"

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