BiblioVault - Books by Thomas, Richard

The Aeneid

Virgil

University of Chicago Press, 2017

This volume represents the most ambitious project of distinguished poet David Ferry’s life: a complete translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Ferry has long been known as the foremost contemporary translator of Latin poetry, and his translations of Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics have become standards. He brings to the Aeneid the same genius, rendering Virgil’s formal, metrical lines into an English that is familiar, all while surrendering none of the poem’s original feel of the ancient world. In Ferry’s hands, the Aeneid becomes once more a lively, dramatic poem of daring and adventure, of love and loss, devotion and death.

The paperback and e-book editions include a new introduction by Richard F. Thomas, along with a new glossary of names that makes the book even more accessible for students and for general readers coming to the Aeneid for the first time who may need help acclimating to Virgil’s world.

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Cricketing Lives

A Characterful History from Pitch to Page

Richard H. Thomas

Reaktion Books, 2022

As famous for its complicated rules as it is for its contentious (and lengthy) matches, cricket is the quintessentially English sport. Or is it? From cricket in literature to sticky wickets, Cricketing Lives is a paean to the quirky characters and global phenomenon that are cricket.

Cricket is defined by the characters who have played it, watched it, reported it, ruled upon it, ruined it, and rejoiced in it. Humorous and deeply affectionate, Cricketing Lives tells the story of the world’s greatest and most incomprehensible game through those who have shaped it, from the rustic contests of eighteenth-century England to the spectacle of the Indian Premier League. It’s about W. G. Grace and his eye to his wallet; the invincible Viv Richards; and Sarah Taylor, “the best wicketkeeper in the world.” Richard H. Thomas steers a course through the despair of war, tactical controversies, and internecine politics, to reveal how cricket has always warmed our hearts as nothing else can.

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Detroit

Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide

Joe T. Darden and Richard Thomas

Michigan State University Press, 2013

Episodes of racial conflict in Detroit form just one facet of the city’s storied and legendary history, and they have sometimes overshadowed the less widely known but equally important occurrence of interracial cooperation in seeking solutions to the city’s problems. The conflicts also present many opportunities to analyze, learn from, and interrogate the past in order to help lay the groundwork for a stronger, more equitable future. This astute and prudent history poses a number of critical questions: Why and where have race riots occurred in Detroit? How has the racial climate changed or remained the same since the riots? What efforts have occurred since the riots to reduce racial inequality and conflicts, and to build bridges across racial divides? Unique among books on the subject, Detroit pays special attention to post-1967 social and political developments in the city, and expands upon the much-explored black-white dynamic to address the influx of more recent populations to Detroit: Middle Eastern Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans. Crucially, the book explores the role of place of residence, spatial mobility, and spatial inequality as key factors in determining access to opportunities such as housing, education, employment, and other amenities, both in the suburbs and in the city.

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Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Volume 108

Richard F. Thomas

Harvard University Press

This volume includes Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, “‘Trust the God’: Tharsein in Ancient Greek Religion”; Jordi Pàmias, “Acusilaus of Argos and the Bronze Tablets”; Karen Rosenbecker, “‘Just Desserts’: Reversals of Fortune, Feces, Flatus, and Food in Aristophanes’ Wealth”; Yosef Z. Liebersohn, “Crito’s Character in Plato’s Crito”; Alexandros Kampakoglou, “Staging the Divine: Epiphany and Apotheosis in Callimachus HE 1121–1124”; Christopher Eckerman, “Muses, Metaphor, and Metapoetics in Catullus 61”; Christopher P. Jones, “The Greek Letters Ascribed to Brutus”; Jefferds Huyck, “Another Sort of Misogyny: Aeneid 9.140–141”; Mark Heerink, “Hylas, Hercules, and Valerius Flaccus’ Metamorphosis of the Aeneid”; Lowell Edmunds, “Pliny the Younger on His Verse and Martial’s Non-Recognition of Pliny as a Poet”; Eleanor Cowan, “Caesar’s One Fatal Wound: Suetonius Divus Iulius 82.3”; Graeme Bourke, “Classical Sophism and Philosophy in Pseudo-Plutarch On the Training of Children”; Jarrett T. Welsh, “Verse Quotations from Festus”; Benjamin Garstad, “Rome in the Alexander Romance”; James N. Adams, “The Latin of the Magerius (Smirat) Mosaic”; Lucia Floridi, “The Construction of a Homoerotic Discourse in the Epigrams of Ausonius”; Massimilliano Vitiello, “Emperor Theodosius’ Liberty and the Roman Past”; and Thomas Keeline and Stuart M. McManus, “Benjamin Larnell, the Last Latin Poet at Harvard Indian College.”

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Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Volume 109

Richard F. Thomas

Harvard University Press

This volume includes: José Marcos Macedo, “Zeus as (Rider of) Thunderbolt”; Nikoloz Shamugia, “Bronze Relief with Caeneus and Centaurs from Olympia”; Hayden Pelliccia, “The Violation of Wackernagel’s Law at Pindar Pythian 3.1”; John Heath, “Corinna’s ‘Old Wives’ Tales’”; Maria Pavlou, “Lieux de Mémoire in the Plataean Speech (Thuc. 3.53–59)”; Robert Mayhew, “A Note on [Aristotle] Problemata 26.61”; Sam Hitchings, “The Date of [Demosthenes] XVII On the Treaty with Alexander”; John Walsh, “A Note on Diodorus 18.11.1, Arybbas, and the Lamian War”; Loukas Papadimitropoulos, “Charicleia’s Identity and the Structure of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica”; Ian Goh, “Kun-egonde”; Javier Uría, “Iulius Romanus’ Remark on Titinius (123 G.)”; Henry Spelman, “Borrowing Sappho’s Napkins”; Fabio Tutrone, “Granting Epicurean Wisdom at Rome”; Boris Kayachev, “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”; Florence Klein, “Vergil’s ‘Posidippeanism’?”; Gianpero Rosati, “Evander’s Curse and the ‘Long Death’ of Mezentius (Verg. Aen. 8.483–488, 10.845–850)”; Fiachra Mac Góráin, “The Poetics of Vision in Virgil’s Aeneid”; Ioannis Ziogas, “Singing for Octavia”; Benjamin Victor, “Four Passages in Propertius’ Last Book of Elegies”; and David Greenwood, “Julian and Asclepius.”

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Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Volume 110

Richard F. Thomas

Harvard University Press

This volume includes: Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, “Half Slave, Half Free: Partial Manumission in the Ancient Near East and Beyond”; Chris Eckerman, “I Weave a Variegated Headband: Metaphors for Song and Communication in Pindar’s Odes”; Alexander Nikolaev, “Through the Thicket: The Text of Pindar Olympian 6.54 (βατιᾶι τ’ ἐν ἀπειράτωι)”; Tobias Joho, “Alcibiadean Mysteries and Longing for ‘Absent’ and ‘Invisible Things’ in Thucydides’ Account of the Sicilian Expedition”; Peter Barrios Lech, “Menander and Catullus 8—Revisited: Menander Misoumenos and Catullus Carmen 8”; Katharina Volk, “Varro and the Disorder of Things”; John T. Ramsey, “The Date of the Consular Elections in 63 and the Inception of Catiline’s Conspiracy”; Brian D. McPhee, “Erulus and the Moliones: An Iliadic Intertext in Aeneid 8.560–567”; Julia Scarborough, “Eridanus in Elysium: The Underground Poetics of Virgil’s Violent River”; Geert Roskam, “Providential Gods and Social Justice: An Ancient Controversy on Theonomous Ethics”; Rafael J. Gallé Cejudo, “Progymnasmatic Alteration in the Love Letters of Philostratus”; Moysés Marcos, “Callidior ceteris persecutor: The Emperor Julian and His Place in Christian Historiography”; Valéry Berlincourt, “Dea Roma and Mars: Intertext and Structure in Claudian’s Panegyric for the Consuls Olybrius and Probinus”; Fabio Stok, “What is the Spangenberg Fragment?”; George M. Hollenback, “Do Not Steal Seed: An Overlooked Double Entendre in Oracula Sibyllina 2.71”; and Paolo Pellegrini, “R. A. B. Mynors and Harvard: An Unpublished Letter to E. K. Rand (10.10.1944).”

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Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Volume 111

Richard F. Thomas

Harvard University Press

This volume includes: Daniel Kölligen, “Ὄρθος, The Watchdog”; Richard L. Phillips, “Invisibility and Sight in Homer: Some Aspects of A. S. Pease Reconsidered”; Antonio Tibiletti, “Pondering Pindaric Superlatives in Context”; Matthew Hiscock, “Αὐθέντης: A ‘Mot Fort’ in the Discourse of Classical Athens”; James T. Clark, “Off-Stage Cries? The Performance of Sophocles’ Philoctetes 201–218, Trachiniae 863–870, and Euripides’ Electra 747–760”; Giuseppe Pezzini, “Terence and the Speculum Vitae: ‘Realism’ and (Roman) Comedy”; Neil O’Sullivan, “Quotations from Epicurean Philosophy and Greek Tragedy in Three Letters of Cicero”; Ernesto Paparazzo, “A Study of Varro’s Account of Roman Civil Theology in the Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum and Its Reception by Augustine and Modern Readers”; Joseph P. Dexter and Pramit Chaudhuri, “Dardanio Anchisae: Hiatus, Homer, and Intermetricality in the Aeneid”; Michael A. Tueller, “Dido the Author: Epigram and the Aeneid”; Benjamin Victor, Nancy Duval, and Isabelle Chouinard, “Subordinating si and ni in Virgil: Some Characteristic Uses, with Remarks on Aeneid 6.882–883”; Richard Gaskin, “On Being Pessimistic about the End of the Aeneid”; Gregory R. Mellen, “Num Delenda est Karthago? Metrical Wordplay and the Text of Horace Odes 4.8”; Kyle Gervais, “Dominoque legere superstes? Epic and Empire at the End of the Thebaid”; D. Clint Burnett, “Temple Sharing and Throne Sharing: A Reconsideration of Σύνναος and Σύνθρονος in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods”; Charles H. Cosgrove, “Semi-Lyrical Reading of Greek Poetry in Late Antiquity”; Byron MacDougall, “Better Recognize: Anagnorisis in Gregory of Nazianzus’s First Invective against Julian”; Alan Cameron, “Jerome and the Historia Augusta”; Jessica H. Clark, “Adfirmare and Appeals to Authority in Servius Danielis”; and Jarrett T. Welsh, “Nonius Marcellus and the Source Called ‘Gloss. i.’”

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Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Volume 98

Richard F. Thomas

Harvard University Press

Volume 98 of Harvard Studies in Classical Philology offers the following contributions: Leonard Muellner, “Glaucus Redivivus”; Michael Weiss, “Erotica: On the Prehistory of Greek Desire”; C. O. Pavese, “The Rhapsodic Epic Poems as Oral and Independent Poems”; Miles C. Beckwith, “The ‘Hanging of Hera’ and the Meaning of Greek ἄκμων”; Aryeh Finkelberg, “On the History of the Greek κοσμοσ”; Ruth Scodel, “The Captive’s Dilemma: Sexual Acquiescence in Euripides’ Hecuba and Troades”; Mary Depew, “Delian Hymns and Callimachean Allusion”; Joshua T. Katz, “Testimonia Ritus Italici: Male Genitalia, Solemn Declarations, and a New Latin Sound Law”; A. R. Dyck, “Narrative Obfuscation, Philosophical Topoi, and Tragic Patterning in Cicero’s Pro Milone”; Michael C. J. Putnam, “Dido’s Murals and Virgilian Ekphrasis”; Jeffrey Wills, “Divided Allusion: Virgil and the Coma Berenices”; Joseph Farrell, “Reading and Writing the Heroides”; and Rolando Ferri, “Octavia’s Heroines: Tacitus Annales 14.63–64 and the Praetexta Octavia.”

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James Loeb, Collector and Connoisseur

Proceedings of the Second James Loeb Biennial Conference, Munich and Murnau 6–8 June 2019

Jeffrey Henderson and Richard F. Thomas

Harvard University Press, 2022

James Loeb (1867–1933), one of the great patrons and philanthropists of his time, left many enduring legacies both to America, where he was born and educated, and to his ancestral Germany, where he spent the second half of his life. Organized in celebration of the sesquicentenary of his birth, the James Loeb Biennial Conferences were convened to commemorate his achievements in four areas: the Loeb Classical Library (2017), collection and connoisseurship (2019), and after pandemic postponement, psychology and medicine (2023), and music (2025).

The subject of the second conference was Loeb’s deep and multifaceted engagement with the material culture of the ancient world as a scholar, connoisseur, collector, and curator. The volume’s contributors range broadly over the manifold connections and contexts, both personal and institutional, of Loeb’s archaeological interests, and consider these in light of the long history of collection and connoisseurship from antiquity to the present. Their essays also reflect on the contemporary significance of Loeb’s work, as the collections he shaped continue to be curated and studied in today’s rapidly evolving environment for the arts.

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Labored in Papyrus Leaves

Perspectives on an Epigram Collection Attributed to Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309)

Benjamin Acosta-Hughes

Harvard University Press, 2004

This colloquium volume celebrates a new Hellenistic epigram collection attributed to the third-century B.C.E. poet Posidippus, one of the most significant literary finds in recent memory. Included in this collection are an unusual variety of voices and perspectives: papyrological, art historical, archaeological, historical, literary, and aesthetic. These texts are considered as individual poems and as collective artifact, an early poetry book. The volume will be of interest to readers of Greek and Latin epigram, students of the Hellenistic period, and all readers interested in the aesthetics of poetry collection and the evolution of the poetry book in antiquity.

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The Loeb Classical Library and Its Progeny

Proceedings of the First James Loeb Biennial Conference, Munich and Murnau 18–20 May 2017

Jeffrey Henderson and Richard F. Thomas

Harvard University Press, 2020

James Loeb (1867–1933), one of the great patrons and philanthropists of his time, left many enduring legacies both to America, where he was born and educated, and to his ancestral Germany, where he spent the second half of his life. Organized in celebration of the sesquicentenary of his birth, the James Loeb Biennial Conferences were convened to commemorate his achievements in four areas: the Loeb Classical Library (2017), collection and connoisseurship (2019), psychology and medicine (2021), and music (2023).

The subject of the inaugural conference was the legacy for which Loeb is best known and the only one to which he attached his name—the Loeb Classical Library, and the three series it has inspired: the I Tatti Renaissance Library, the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, and the Murty Classical Library of India. Including discussions by the four General Editors of each Library’s unique history, mission, operations, and challenges, the papers collected in The Loeb Classical Library and Its Progeny also take stock of these series in light of more general themes and questions bearing on translations of “classical” texts and their audiences in a variety of societies past, present, and future.

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Reading Virgil and His Texts

Studies in Intertextuality

Richard F. Thomas

University of Michigan Press, 2000

There has long been vital interest in the ways that texts affect each other--through translation, imitation, parody, and other forms of emulation and subversion. Throughout the last two millennia, the Virgilian text has created its own intertextual heritage, persisting in the works of Eliot, Frost, Lowell, and Heaney. Richard F. Thomas's new volume demonstrates that such control and manipulation of the inherited tradition is to be found with great intensity in the very author who, in turn, created his own complex tradition.
The articles and notes included in this volume have been selected for their diachronic aspect in addition to the synchronic status they had in their original context. Dealing with the intricate ways in which Virgil, and in the introductory chapter his predecessor Catullus, manipulated and appropriated their inherited Greek and Roman literary tradition, this book presents a coherent profile, through these detailed studies, of the mechanics of one of the most dynamic periods in the literary history of any culture.
Richard Thomas--one of the most important voices in Latin literary studies today--shows little anxiety about objections to authorial intentionality. Throughout there is a working assumption that intertextual connections can be established and, further, that functions and purposes, even intended ones, may be inferred from those connections.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Greek and Latin literature but will also be of great value to students of medieval, Renaissance, and early modern vernacular literatures, most of whose poets see themselves as closely connected to Virgil.
Richard F. Thomas is Professor of Greek and Latin, Harvard University.

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William Godwin

A Political Life

Richard Gough Thomas

Pluto Press, 2019

“Government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind”—William Godwin

William Godwin was the first major anarchist thinker in the Anglophone world, and his thought rocked the establishment at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Famously married to Mary Wollstonecraft, father to Mary Shelley, and inspiration to Lord Byron, he lived a life and created a body of work that lie at the heart of British radicalism and romanticism.
In this biography, Richard Gough Thomas reads Godwin afresh, drawing on newly discovered letters and journals. He situates Godwin’s early life in the counterculture of eighteenth-century religious dissent, before moving on to exploring the ideas of the French Revolution. As Godwin's groundbreaking works propelled him from Whig party hack to celebrity philosopher, his love affair with Mary Wollstonecraft saw him ostracized in both liberal and conservative circles.
Godwin's anarchism always remained at the center of his work, Thomas shows, inspiring libertarians, both left- and right-wing. This biography places Godwin alongside the other members of his famous family as a major political, ethical, and educational writer and shows why a reappraisal of his ideas is pertinent today.

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Working for Democracy

American Workers from the Revolution to the Present

Edited by Paul Buhle and Alan Dawley

University of Illinois Press, 1985

Written by some of our nation's top historians, Working for Democracy is the first book to examine the politics of American workers from the revolution to the present in terms of broad struggles for power in society at large. In more than a dozen chapters, the topics range from the committees of artisan "republicans" at the time of the American Revolution to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Whether the subject is the anti-slavery movement, the New Deal coalition, the Wobblies, or women workers, Working For Democracy is a testament to the struggles of workers everywhere in America.

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