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Reproduction<\/span><\/a> Cover for the book’s 50th<\/sup> anniversary issueReproduction<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n The idea of composing the work arose from needs Pinsky perceived during his teaching practice, and from hearing of the difficulties other professors also had obtaining historical documents that could supplement their Antiquities teaching and research activities. \u201cWorking as a professor of ancient history wasn’t easy in the 1960s. Although the subject was part of the mandatory curriculum for a history degree, there were few professors prepared to offer it. As an improvised solution, priests, Latinists, people from the legal fields, and lovers of classical culture and biblical studies ended up responsible for the discipline at many schools,\u201d says Pinsky in a text about the commemorative edition launched this year. Added to this situation was the requirement that students have a command of languages such as Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. \u201cThese were, and continue to be, attributes that only an elite group of students might have,\u201d he observes. \u201cSuch a requirement wasn’t consistent with the idea of expanding access to Brazilian universities, which, at that time, had just begun to receive students from the working class,\u201d says Pinsky. Students who spoke English or French were able to access some of these writings, which had previously been translated into one of those languages, but most of the texts remained inaccessible.<\/p>\n Pinsky began the task encouraged by his doctoral advisor, Eur\u00edpedes Sim\u00f5es de Paula (1910\u20131977), who in the 1930s was part of the first generation of historians trained at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) and in 1961 was one of the founders of the National Association of University History Professors (ANPUH). After making known his intention to produce the work, Pinsky discussed the idea with other professors and interviewed students from the history and letters programs at the Assis College. \u201cI selected the students taking into account their knowledge of classical languages,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/a> An illustration by Hermann Vogel, from 1882, of the death of Spartacus during the slave revolt in RomeWikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n The work of translating and proofreading the texts began in the mid-1970s, and included discussions on the spellings of names and concepts, especially those in Greek, a language with which Pinsky was less familiar. \u201cAt the school we had experts in linguistics, historical grammar, and classical literature, as well as an excellent library,\u201d recalls Pinsky. For a full year he and his group worked on selecting, translating, and revising the material to be included in the book, bringing together authors such as the philosopher Aristotle (384 BCE\u2013322 BCE), with historians Plutarch (c.46\u2013c.120 CE), Herodotus (485 BCE\u2013425 BCE), Arrian (c. 92\u2013c. 175 CE), Titus Livio (c. 59 BCE\u201317 CE) and Julius Caesar (100\u201344 BCE). Also included were excerpts from the Bible, such as Exodus and Genesis, and selections from the Code of Hammurabi, a set of laws created by the sixth king of Sumeria in Mesopotamia during the eighteenth century BCE.<\/p>\n Pinsky also used texts from the collection Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament <\/em>(ANET), edited by the American archaeologist James Bennett Pritchard (1909\u20131997), published in 1950 by Princeton University Press in the United States. The collection is composed of mythological, liturgical, legal, and secular texts from the Ancient Near East. \u201cANET became a reference by bringing texts originally written in Mesopotamian languages into English. With the documents extracted from this collection, we only worked on translating from English into Portuguese,\u201d explains Pinsky, who, by the end of the team’s work, had in hand 97 translated texts, rigorously verified with his collaborators on the project. The result of their effort was received by Eur\u00edpedes Sim\u00f5es de Paula with a new challenge. \u201cWhy 97?\u201d he asked. \u201cGet three more good texts and the book will be called ‘100 texts of ancient history,\u2019\u201d the historian advised, in effect giving the work its name.<\/p>\n