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An eye-opening publication that contrasts perceptions of luxury – together with its positive and negative connotations – in imperial Persia, democratic Athens and the Hellenistic world between 600 and 200 BCE.
‘Luxuriously illustrated’ – Asian Review of Books
Luxurious objects are celebrated for their exoticism, rarity and style, but also disparaged as indulgent, extravagant and corrupt. The ancient origins of these attitudes emerged at the boundary between the imperial Persian and democratic Athenian Greek worlds. Luxury was at the centre of the royal Persian court and behaviours of ostentatious display rippled through the imperial provinces, whose elite classes emulated luxury objects in lesser materials. But luxury is contrastingly depicted through Athenian eyes – within the philosophical context of early democratic codes and the historical context of the Greco-Persian Wars, which suddenly and spectacularly brought eastern luxuries into the imagination of the Athenian populace for the first time. While Greek writers rejected luxury as eastern, despotic and corrupt, the Athenian elite adopted Persian luxuries in imaginative ways to signal status, distinction and prestige. Under the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great and its subsequent kingdoms, royal Achaemenid luxury culture would later be adopted and displayed by the Macedonian and local elite across the Greek and Middle Eastern worlds: behaviours of ostentatious display were a means to seek advantage in the new Hellenistic world order. Ultimately, this publication demonstrates how competing political spins woven around 2,500 years ago still continue to shape modern perceptions of luxury today.
Author Biography
James Fraser is Curator: Ancient Levant and Anatolia, Department of the Middle East, British Museum and Curator of the exhibition Power and prestige: Cyrus to Alexander at the British Museum in 2023.
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor in Ancient History at Cardiff University and Director of the Ancient Iran Program for the British Institute of Persian Studies. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Persians: The Age of the Great Kings (2022).
Henry Bishop-Wright is Project Curator of the exhibition Power and prestige: Cyrus to Alexander at the British Museum in 2023.
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