In this illuminating survey, Burn argues for a new appreciation of the advances and range of Hellenistic art and the influence it continued to exert on Mediterranean culture into the first centuries of the new millennium.

The Hellenistic Age was a new era of Greek civilization that began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. and lasted until the Roman emperor Octavian defeated the last independent Hellenistic monarch, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, in 31 B.C. Burn traces the development of a distinctive new Hellenistic culture that was shaped both by artists who spread innovations across the Mediterranean region and by rival monarchs who commissioned luxury articles and sponsored elaborate city developments.

This cross-pollination produced great diversity in artistic subjects, techniques, and materials. Alongside sculptures of mythic Greek figures appeared those of new gods, such as the Egyptian Serapis, as well as depictions of common people, such as fishermen and nursemaids. Artists produced works of widely varying sizes, from the colossal statue of Apollo at Rhodes to pocket-sized table decorations. Technical virtuosity flourished in the fields of pottery, glass, and jewelry.

Aram Yardumian is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania, USA.  He is the author of The Peopling of the Caucasus (Cambridge University Press, 2025) as well as several books on musicology, Listen (Errant Bodies, 2022), Persepolis (Bloomsbury, 2023), and Mesostructures (4th Dimension, forthcoming 2025).

Born in Kalmar in 1959, Tommie Haglund is a Swedish composer whose music has been praised for its "absolute honesty" and its being "the confession of a naked soul." Haglund studied classical guitar with John Mills in London from 1981-83, then at the Royal Academy of Music at Århus from 1983-85 but left without a degree to pursue composition full time. It was Mills who first introduced Haglund to the music of Frederick Delius, whose influence led to a meeting with Delius’ amanuensis, Eric Fenby, with whom Haglund later studied. He also studied composition with Sven-Eric Johanson from 1989-91. Haglund’s major works include Intensio Animi (commissioned by the Swedenborg Society to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Emanuel Swedenborg’s birth); Flaminis Aura; Hymnen An Die Nacht; and Symphony. Haglund has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Stora Christ Johnson Prize and the HMK’s medal for "significant contributions to Swedish music."  In 2013, a documentary about Haglund's life and work, Själens Musik, was broadcast on Swedish TV. The Tommie Haglund Festival, a biannual international classical music gala in Halmstad, is held in his honor.