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.
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 Pers…
