front cover of Accustomed to Obedience?
Accustomed to Obedience?
Classical Ionia and the Aegean World, 480–294 BCE
Joshua P. Nudell
University of Michigan Press, 2023
Many histories of Ancient Greece center their stories on Athens, but what would that history look like if they didn’t? There is another way to tell this story, one that situates Greek history in terms of the relationships between smaller Greek cities and in contact with the wider Mediterranean. In this book, author Joshua P. Nudell offers a new history of the period from the Persian wars to wars that followed the death of Alexander the Great, from the perspective of Ionia. While recent scholarship has increasingly treated Greece through the lenses of regional, polis, and local interaction, there has not yet been a dedicated study of Classical Ionia. This book fills this clear gap in the literature while offering Ionia as a prism through which to better understand Classical Greece.

This book offers a clear and accessible narrative of the period between the Persian Wars and the wars of the early Hellenistic period, two nominal liberations of the region. The volume complements existing histories of Classical Greece. Close inspection reveals that the Ionians were active partners in the imperial endeavor, even as imperial competition constrained local decision-making and exacerbated local and regional tensions. At the same time, the book offers interventions on critical issues related to Ionia such as the Athenian conquest of Samos, rhetoric about the freedom of the Greeks, the relationship between Ionian temple construction and economic activity, the status of the Panionion, Ionian poleis and their relationship with local communities beyond the circle of the dodecapolis, and the importance of historical memory to our understanding of ancient Greece. The result is a picture of an Aegean world that is more complex and less beholden narratives that give primacy to the imperial actors at the expense of local developments.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Acharnians. Knights
Aristophanes
Harvard University Press, 1998

The master of Old Comedy.

Aristophanes of Athens, one of the world’s greatest comic dramatists, has been admired since antiquity for his iridescent wit and beguiling fantasy, exuberant language, and brilliant satire of the social, intellectual, and political life of Athens at its height. The Loeb Classical Library edition of his plays is in four volumes.

The Introduction to the edition is in Volume I. Also in the first volume is Acharnians, in which a small landowner, tired of the Peloponnesian War, magically arranges a personal peace treaty; and Knights, perhaps the most biting satire of a political figure (Cleon) ever written.

Three plays are in Volume II. Socrates’ “Thinkery” is at the center of Clouds, which spoofs untraditional techniques for educating young men. Wasps satirizes Athenian enthusiasm for jury service. In Peace, a rollicking attack on war-makers, the hero travels to heaven on a dung beetle to discuss the issues with Zeus.

The enterprising protagonists of Birds create a utopian counter-Athens ruled by birds. Also in Volume III is Lysistrata, in which our first comic heroine organizes a conjugal strike of young wives until their husbands end the war between Athens and Sparta. Women again take center stage in Women at the Thesmophoria, this time to punish Euripides for portraying them as wicked.

Frogs, in Volume IV, features a contest between the traditional Aeschylus and the modern Euripides, yielding both sparkling comedy and insight on ancient literary taste. In Assemblywomen Athenian women plot to save Athens from male misgovernance—with raucously comical results. Here too is Wealth, whose gentle humor and straightforward morality made it the most popular of Aristophanes’ plays from classical times to the Renaissance.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Achilles Unbound
Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics
Casey Dué
Harvard University Press

Though Achilles the character is bound by fate and by narrative tradition, Achilles’s poem, the Iliad, was never fixed and monolithic in antiquity—it was multiform. And the wider epic tradition, from which the Iliad emerged, was yet more multiform. In Achilles Unbound, Casey Dué, building on nearly twenty years of work as coeditor of the Homer Multitext (www.homermultitext.org), explores both the traditionality and multiformity of the Iliad in a way that gives us a greater appreciation of the epic that has been handed down to us.

Dué argues that the attested multiforms of the Iliad—in ancient quotations, on papyrus, and in the scholia of medieval manuscripts—give us glimpses of the very long history of the text, access to even earlier Iliads, and a greater awareness of the mechanisms by which such a remarkable poem could be composed in performance. Using methodologies grounded in an understanding of Homeric poetry as a system, Achilles Unbound argues for nothing short of a paradigm shift in our approach to the Homeric epics, one that embraces their long evolution and the totality of the world of epic song, in which each performance was newly composed and received by its audience.

[more]

front cover of Action, Contemplation, and Happiness
Action, Contemplation, and Happiness
An Essay on Aristotle
C. D. C. Reeve
Harvard University Press, 2012

The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotle’s greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotle’s views on knowledge and reality.

That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotle’s metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotle’s writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotle’s philosophy as a whole.

[more]

front cover of The Activity of Being
The Activity of Being
An Essay on Aristotle’s Ontology
Aryeh Kosman
Harvard University Press, 2013

Understanding “what something is” is a project that has long occupied philosophers. Perhaps no thinker in the Western tradition has had more influence on how we approach this question than Aristotle, whose Metaphysics remains the locus classicus of rigorous examinations into the nature of being. Now, in an elegantly argued new study, Aryeh Kosman reinterprets Aristotle’s ontology and compels us to reexamine some of our most basic assumptions about the great philosopher’s thought.

For Aristotle, to ask “what something is” is to inquire into a specific mode of its being, something ordinarily regarded as its “substance.” But to understand substance, we need the concept of energeia—a Greek term usually translated as “actuality.” In a move of far-reaching consequence, Kosman explains that the correct translation of energeia is not “actuality” but “activity.” We have subtly misunderstood the Metaphysics on this crucial point, says Kosman. Aristotle conceives of substance as a kind of dynamic activity, not some inert quality. Substance is something actively being what it is.

Kosman demonstrates how this insight significantly alters our understanding of a number of important concepts in Aristotelian thought, from accounts of motion, consciousness, and essence to explanations of the nature of animal and divine being. Whether it is approached as an in-depth introduction to Aristotle’s metaphysics or as a highly original reassessment sure to spark debate, there can be no argument that The Activity of Being is a major contribution to our understanding of one of philosophy’s most important thinkers.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Actors in the Audience
Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian
Shadi Bartsch
Harvard University Press, 1994

When Nero took the stage, the audience played along--or else. The drama thus enacted, whether in the theater proper or in the political arena, unfolds in all its rich complexity in Actors in the Audience. This is a book about language, theatricality, and empire--about how the Roman emperor dramatized his rule and how his subordinates in turn staged their response. The focus is on Nero: his performances onstage spurred his contemporaries to reflect on the nature of power and representation, and to make the stage a paradigm for larger questions about the theatricality of power. Through these portrayals by ancient writers, Shadi Bartsch explores what happens to language and representation when all discourse is distorted by the pull of an autocratic authority.

Some Roman senators, forced to become actors and dissimulators under the scrutinizing eye of the ruler, portrayed themselves and their class as the victims of regimes that are, for us, redolent of Stalinism. Other writers claimed that doublespeak--saying one thing and meaning two--was the way one could, and did, undo the constraining effects of imperial oppression. Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal all figure in Bartsch's shrewd analysis of historical and literary responses to the brute facts of empire; even the Panegyricus of Pliny the Younger now appears as a reaction against the widespread awareness of dissimulation. Informed by theories of dramaturgy, sociology, new historicism, and cultural criticism, this close reading of literary and historical texts gives us a new perspective on the politics of the Roman empire--and on the languages and representation of power.

[more]

front cover of Aeneas
Aeneas
Lee T. Pearcy
University of Michigan Press, 2021
The central character of Vergil’s Aeneid seems to elude readers. To some, he is unlikable; to others, he seems unreal, a figure on which to hang a plot. Aeneas discovers a tragic figure whose defining virtue depends on a past that has been stripped from him, and whose destiny blocks him from the knowledge of the future that gives meaning to his life. His choices, silences, tears, and anger reflect an existential struggle that, in the end, he loses. Aeneas is a hero of the Trojan War, a time as distant from Vergil as Vergil is from us, but he is also a literary character created in response to political chaos and civil strife as the Roman Republic gave way to the Augustan empire. Lee T. Pearcy’s book creates an Aeneas for our time: an age of liquid modernity, when identities seem fungible and precarious, amid a moment of political conflict and collapsing institutions. This volume gives readers new translations and close readings of important passages, and it restores Aeneas to the center of Rome’s most important poem.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Aeneas Tacticus, Asclepiodotus, and Onasander
Aeneas Tacticus, Asclepiodotus, and Onasander
Harvard University Press

Three tactical treatises.

Aeneas was perhaps a general, and certainly author of several didactic military works of which the sole survivor is that on defense against siege. From it we can deduce that he was a Peloponnesian of the fourth century BC who served in the Aegean and in Asia Minor and composed the work from direct knowledge and from oral and some literary tradition, possibly in 357–6 BC. It is devoted entirely to defense of fortified places and deals specially with use of defending troops; defensive positions; morale; resistance to attacks and to actual assault; guards; obviation of treachery and revolution; and other subjects.

Asclepiodotus, philosopher and pupil of the Stoic Posidonius, wrote a rather dry but ordered work on tactics as if a subject of the lecture room, based not on personal experience but on earlier manuals. His main subjects were the branches of a military force; infantry; cavalry; chariots; elephants; arms; maneuvers; military evolutions; marching formation. The work ends with words of command.

Onasander (Onasandros), a Platonic philosopher, dedicated his work “The General” to the Roman Veranius, who was a consul in AD 49. The work deals in plain style with the sort of morals and social and military qualities and attitudes expected of a virtuous and militarily successful general. It is also concerned with such matters as his choice of staff; attitude to war; religious duties; military formations; conduct in allied and hostile lands; difficult terrains; camps; drill; spies; guards; deserters; battle formations and maneuvers; and other matters, ending with conduct after victory.

[more]

front cover of The Aeneid
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.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Aeneid, Books 7–12. Appendix Vergiliana
VirgilEdited and Translated by H. R. FaircloughRevised by G. P. Goold
Harvard University Press

“The classic of all Europe.” —T. S. Eliot

Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) was born in 70 BC near Mantua and was educated at Cremona, Milan, and Rome. Slow in speech, shy in manner, thoughtful in mind, weak in health, he went back north for a quiet life. Influenced by the group of poets there, he may have written some of the doubtful poems included in our Virgilian manuscripts. All his undoubted extant work is written in his perfect hexameters. Earliest comes the collection of ten pleasingly artificial bucolic poems, the Eclogues, which imitated freely Theocritus’ idylls. They deal with pastoral life and love. Before 29 BC came one of the best of all didactic works, the four books of Georgics on tillage, trees, cattle, and bees. Virgil’s remaining years were spent in composing his great, not wholly finished, epic the Aeneid, on the traditional theme of Rome’s origins through Aeneas of Troy. Inspired by the Emperor Augustus’ rule, the poem is Homeric in metre and method but influenced also by later Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and learning, and deeply Roman in spirit. Virgil died in 19 BC at Brundisium on his way home from Greece, where he had intended to round off the Aeneid. He had left in Rome a request that all its twelve books should be destroyed if he were to die then, but they were published by the executors of his will.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Virgil is in two volumes.

[more]

front cover of Aeschines
Aeschines
Translated by Chris Carey
University of Texas Press, 2000

This is the third volume in the Oratory of Classical Greece series. Published over several years, the series presents all of the surviving speeches from the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in new translations prepared by classical scholars who are at the forefront of the discipline. These translations are especially designed for the needs and interests of today's undergraduates, Greekless scholars in other disciplines, and the general public.

Classical oratory is an invaluable resource for the study of ancient Greek life and culture. The speeches offer evidence on Greek moral views, social and economic conditions, political and social ideology, and other aspects of Athenian culture that have been largely ignored: women and family life, slavery, and religion, to name just a few.

This volume contains the three surviving speeches of Aeschines (390-? B.C.). His speeches all revolve around political developments in Athens during the second half of the fourth century B.C. and reflect the internal political rivalries in an Athens overshadowed by the growing power of Macedonia in the north. The first speech was delivered when Aeschines successfully prosecuted Timarchus, a political opponent, for having allegedly prostituted himself as a young man. The other two speeches were delivered in the context of Aeschines' long-running political feud with Demosthenes. As a group, the speeches provide important information on Athenian law and politics, Demosthenes and his career, sexuality and social history, and the historical rivalry between Athens and Macedonia.

[more]

front cover of Aeschylus I
Aeschylus I
The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound
Edited and Translated by David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, Mark Griffith, and Glenn W. Most
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Aeschylus I contains “The Persians,” translated by Seth Benardete; “The Seven Against Thebes,” translated by David Grene; “The Suppliant Maidens,” translated by Seth Benardete; and “Prometheus Bound,” translated by David Grene.
 
Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. Today, Chicago is taking pains to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century.
 
In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides’ Medea, The Children of Heracles, Andromache, and Iphigenia among the Taurians, fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles’s satyr-drama The Trackers. New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays.
 
In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.
[more]

front cover of Aeschylus II
Aeschylus II
The Oresteia
Edited and Translated by David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, Mark Griffith, and Glenn W. Most
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Aeschylus II contains “The Oresteia,” translated by Richmond Lattimore, and fragments of “Proteus,” translated by Mark Griffith.
 
Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. Today, Chicago is taking pains to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century.
 
In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides’ Medea, The Children of Heracles, Andromache, and Iphigenia among the Taurians, fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles’s satyr-drama The Trackers. New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays.
 
In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.
[more]

front cover of Aeschylus’s Suppliant Women
Aeschylus’s Suppliant Women
The Tragedy of Immigration
Geoffrey W. Bakewell
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
This book offers a provocative interpretation of a relatively neglected tragedy, Aeschylus's Suppliant Women. Although the play's subject is a venerable myth, it frames the flight of the daughters of Danaus from Egypt to Greece in starkly contemporary terms, emphasizing the encounter between newcomers and natives. Some scholars read Suppliant Women as modeling successful social integration, but Geoffrey W. Bakewell argues that the play demonstrates, above all, the difficulties and dangers noncitizens brought to the polis.
            Bakewell's approach is rigorously historical, situating Suppliant Women in the context of the unprecedented immigration that Athens experienced in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The flow of foreigners to Attika increased under the Pisistratids but became a flood following liberation, Cleisthenes, and the Persian Wars. As Athenians of the classical era became increasingly aware of their own collective identity, they sought to define themselves and exclude others. They created a formal legal status to designate the free noncitizens living among them, calling them metics and calling their status metoikia. When Aeschylus dramatized the mythical flight of the Danaids from Egypt in his play Suppliant Women, he did so in light of his own time and place. Throughout the play, directly and indirectly, he casts the newcomers as metics and their stay in Greece as metoikia.
            Bakewell maps the manifold anxieties that metics created in classical Athens, showing that although citizens benefited from the many immigrants in their midst, they also feared the effects of immigration in political, sexual, and economic realms. Bakewell finds metoikia was a deeply flawed solution to the problem of large-scale immigration. Aeschylus's Argives accepted the Danaids as metics only under duress and as a temporary response to a crisis. Like the historical Athenians, they opted for metoikia because they lacked better alternatives.
[more]

front cover of Aesopica
Aesopica
A Series of Texts Relating to Aesop or Ascribed to Him
Edited by Ben Edwin Perry
University of Illinois Press, 1952
The most complete corpus of the proverbs and fables of Aesop ever assembled

Ben Edwin Perry's Aesopica remains the definitive edition of all fables reputed to be by Aesop. The volume begins traditionally with a life of Aesop, but in two different and previously unedited Greek versions, with collations that record variations in the major recensions. It includes 179 proverbs attributed to Aesop and 725 carefully organized fables, for which Perry also provides their eldest known sources. To better evaluate the place of Aesop in literary history, Perry includes testimonies about Aesop made by Greek and Latin authors, from Herodotus to Maximus Planudes.

[more]

front cover of Aesop's Human Zoo
Aesop's Human Zoo
Roman Stories about Our Bodies
Phaedrus
University of Chicago Press, 2004
Most of us grew up with Aesop's Fables—tales of talking animals, with morals attached. In fact, the familiar versions of the stories attributed to this enigmatic and astute storyteller are based on adaptations of Aesop by the liberated Roman slave Phaedrus. In turn, Phaedrus's renderings have been rewritten so extensively over the centuries that they do not do justice to the originals. In Aesop's Human Zoo, legendary Cambridge classicist John Henderson puts together a surprising set of up-front translations—fifty sharp, raw, and sometimes bawdy, fables by Phaedrus into the tersest colloquial English verse.

Providing unusual insights into the heart of Roman culture, these clever poems open up odd avenues of ancient lore and life as they explore social types and physical aspects of the body, regularly mocking the limitations of human nature and offering vulgar or promiscuous interpretations of the stuff of social life.

Featuring folksy proverbs and satirical anecdotes, filled with saucy naughtiness and awful puns, Aesop's Human Zoo will amuse you with its eccentricities and hit home with its shrewdly candid and red raw messages. The entertainment offered in this volume of impeccably accurate translations is truly a novelty—a good-hearted and knowing laugh courtesy of classical poetry. Beginning to advanced classicists and Latin scholars will appreciate the original Latin text provided in this bilingual edition. The splash of classic Thomas Bewick wood engravings to accompany the fables renders the collection complete.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Aetia, Iambi, Hecale and Other Fragments. Hero and Leander
Callimachus and Musaeus
Harvard University Press, 1975

Callimachus of Cyrene, born ca. 310 BCE, after studying philosophy at Athens, became a teacher of grammar and poetry at Alexandria. Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt (reigned 285–247) made him when still young a librarian in the new library at Alexandria; he prepared a great catalogue of its books.

Callimachus was author of much poetry and many works in prose, but not much survives. His hymns and epigrams are given with works by Aratus and Lycophron in another volume (no. 129) of the Loeb Classical Library. In the present volume are included fragments of the Aetia (Causes), aetiological legends concerning Greek history and customs; fragments of a book of Iambi; 147 fragments of the epic poem Hecale, which described Theseus’s victory over the bull which infested Marathon; and other fragments.

We have no explicit information about the poet Musaeus, author of the short epic poem on Hero and Leander, except that he is given in some manuscripts the title Grammatikos, a teacher learned in the rhetoric, poetry and philosophy of his time. He was obviously a follower of the Egyptian poet Nonnus of Panopolis, of the fifth century AD, and his poem seems also to presuppose the Paraphrase of the Psalms of Pseudo-Apollinarius which can be dated to the period 460–470.

Musaeus takes up a subject whose first detailed treatment is preserved in Ovid’s Heroides (Epistles 18 and 19), but he presents it in a quite different manner. Among the literary antecedents to which this learned grammatikos expressly alludes, the most prominent are Books 5 and 6 of the Odyssey and Plato’s Phaedrus. He draws too on the Hymns of Proclus and the Metaphrasis of the Gospel of St. John by Nonnus. He was most probably a Christian Neoplatonist writing a Christian allegory.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Aetia. Iambi. Lyric Poems
Callimachus
Harvard University Press, 2022

The premier scholar-poet of the Hellenistic age.

Callimachus (ca. 303–ca. 235 BC), a proud and well-born native of Cyrene in Libya, came as a young man to the court of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, where he composed poetry for the royal family; helped establish the Library and Museum as a world center of literature, science, and scholarship; and wrote an estimated 800 volumes of poetry and prose on an astounding variety of subjects, including the Pinakes, a descriptive bibliography of the Library’s holdings in 120 volumes. Callimachus’ vast learning richly informs his poetry, which ranges broadly and reworks the language and generic properties of his predecessors in inventive, refined, and expressive ways. The “Callimachean” style, combining learning, elegance, and innovation and prizing brevity, clarity, lightness, and charm, served as an important model for later poets, not least at Rome for Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and the elegists, among others.

This edition, which replaces the earlier Loeb editions by A. W. Mair (1921) and C. A. Trypanis (1954, 1958), presents all that currently survives of and about Callimachus and his works, including the ancient commentaries (Diegeseis) and scholia. Volume I contains Aetia, Iambi, and lyric poems; Volume II Hecale, Hymns, and Epigrams; and Volume III miscellaneous epics and elegies, other fragments, and testimonia, together with concordances and a general index. The Greek text is based mainly on Pfeiffer’s but enriched by subsequently published papyri and the judgment of later editors, and its notes and annotation are fully informed by current scholarship.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Affections. Diseases 1–2
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 1923

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

Hippocrates, said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BC, learned medicine and philosophy; traveled widely as a medical doctor and teacher; was consulted by King Perdiccas of Macedon and Artaxerxes of Persia; and died perhaps at Larissa. Apparently he rejected superstition in favor of inductive reasoning and the study of real medicine as subject to natural laws, in general and in individual people as patients for treatment by medicines and surgery. Of the roughly seventy works in the “Hippocratic Collection” many are not by Hippocrates; even the famous oath may not be his. But he was undeniably the “Father of Medicine.”

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

[more]

front cover of African American Writers and Classical Tradition
African American Writers and Classical Tradition
William W. Cook and James Tatum
University of Chicago Press, 2010

Constraints on freedom, education, and individual dignity have always been fundamental in determining who is able to write, when, and where. Considering the singular experience of the African American writer, William W. Cook and James Tatum here argue that African American literature did not develop apart from canonical Western literary traditions but instead grew out of those literatures, even as it adapted and transformed the cultural traditions and religions of Africa and the African diaspora along the way.
Tracing the interaction between African American writers and the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, from the time of slavery and its aftermath to the civil rights era and on into the present, the authors offer a sustained and lively discussion of the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Rita Dove, among other highly acclaimed poets, novelists, and scholars. Assembling this brilliant and diverse group of African American writers at a moment when our understanding of classical literature is ripe for change, the authors paint an unforgettable portrait of our own reception of “classic” writing, especially as it was inflected by American racial politics.
[more]

front cover of African Renaissance
African Renaissance
M Okediji
University Press of Colorado, 2002

African Renaissance: New Forms, Old Images in Yoruba Art describes, analyzes, and interprets the historical and cultural contexts of an African art renaissance using the twentieth- and twenty-first-century transformation of ancient Yoruba artistic heritage. Juxtaposing ancient and contemporary Yoruba art, Moyo Okediji defines this art history through the lens of colonialism, an experience that served to both destroy ancient art traditions and revive Yoruba art in the twentieth century.
With vivid reproductions of paintings, prints, and drawings, Okediji describes how Yoruba art has replenished and redefined itself. Okediji groups the text into several broadly overlapping periods that intricately detail the journey of Yoruba art and artists: first through oppression by European colonialism, then the attainment of Nigeria’s independence and the new nation’s subsequent military coup, and ending with present-day native Yoruban artists fleeing their homeland.

[more]

front cover of The Afterlife of Apuleius
The Afterlife of Apuleius
Edited by F. Bistagne, C. Boidin, and R. Mouren
University of London Press, 2020
Apuleius’ literary and philosophical fortune has been considerable since antiquity, mostly through the reception of The Golden Ass. The aim of this collection of essays is to highlight a few major aspects of this afterlife, from the High Middle Ages to early Romanticism, in the fields of literature, linguistics and philology, within a wide geographical scope.

The volume gathers the proceedings of an international conference held in March 2016 at the Warburg Institute in London, in association with the Institute of Classical Studies. It includes both diachronic overviews and specific case-studies. A first series of papers focuses on The Golden Ass and its historical and geographical diffusion, from High Medieval Europe to early modern Mexico. The oriental connections of the book are also taken into account. The second part of the book examines the textual and visual destiny of Psyche’s story from the Apuleian fabula to allegorical retellings, in poetical or philosophical books and on stage. As the third series of essays indicates, the fortunes of the book led many ancient and early modern writers and translators to use it as a canonical model for reflections about the status of fiction. It also became, mostly around the beginning of the fifteenth century, a major linguistic and stylistic reference for lexicographers and neo-Latin writers. The last papers of the book deal with Renaissance polemics about "‘Apuleianism" and the role of editors and commentators.

This is the sixth and last of the volumes in the series of ‘Afterlives’ of the Classics, which is being produced jointly by the Institute of Classical Studies and the Warburg Institute.
[more]

front cover of The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture
The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture
Late Antique Responses and Practices
Troels Myrup Kristensen and Lea Stirling, editors
University of Michigan Press, 2016
For centuries, statuary décor was a main characteristic of any city, sanctuary, or villa in the Roman world. However, from the third century CE onward, the prevalence of statues across the Roman Empire declined dramatically. By the end of the sixth century, statues were no longer a defining characteristic of the imperial landscape. Further, changing religious practices cast pagan sculpture in a threatening light. Statuary production ceased, and extant statuary was either harvested for use in construction or abandoned in place.

The Afterlife of Greek and Roman Sculpture is the first volume to approach systematically the antique destruction and reuse of statuary, investigating key responses to statuary across most regions of the Roman world. The volume opens with a discussion of the complexity of the archaeological record and a preliminary chronology of the fate of statues across both the eastern and western imperial landscape. Contributors to the volume address questions of definition, identification, and interpretation for particular treatments of statuary, including metal statuary and the systematic reuse of villa materials. They consider factors such as earthquake damage, late antique views on civic versus “private” uses of art, urban construction, and deeper causes underlying the end of the statuary habit, including a new explanation for the decline of imperial portraiture. The themes explored resonate with contemporary concerns related to urban decline, as evident in post-industrial cities, and the destruction of cultural heritage, such as in the Middle East.
 

[more]

logo for University of London Press
The afterlife of Ovid
Edited by Peter Mack and John North
University of London Press, 2015
Ovid was the most influential and widely imitated of all classical Latin poets. This volume publishes papers delivered at a conference on the Reception of Ovid in March 2013, jointly organised by the Institute of Classical Studies and the Warburg Institute, University of London.   It presents studies of the impact of Ovid’s work on Renaissance commentators, on neo-Latin poetry and epistolography, on Renaissance engravers, on poets like Dante, Mantuan, Pontano, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Lodge, Weever, Milton and Cowley and on artists including Correggio and Rubens.   The main focus of the volume is inevitably the afterlife of the Metamorphoses but it also includes discussions of the impact of Heroides, Fasti, and Ibis, and publishes for the first time a Latin verse life of Ovid composed around 1460 by Bernardo Moretti.   Contributors are Hélène Casanova-Robin, Frank T. Coulson, Fátima Diez-Plazas, Ingo Gildenhard, Philip Hardie, Maggie Kilgour, Gesine Manuwald, Elizabeth McGrath, John Miller, Victoria Moul, Caroline Stark, and Hérica Valladares.
[more]

logo for University of London Press
The Afterlife of Plutarch
Edited by John North and Peter Mack
University of London Press, 2018
Plutarch’s writings have had a varied reception history from when he was writing in the second century BCE down to today. This volume starts from what may be a translation into the Syriac dialect of a lost Plutarch essay; continues with a tribute from a leading scholar of the later Byzantine period; and follows the centuries of sustained enthusiasm from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. This period started once a translation into Latin had become available, and ended when scholars in the nineteenth century lowered Plutarch’s reputation as historian, biographer, philosopher, and stylist. By the end of the century, he came to symbolize in the eyes of Tolstoy precisely what history should not be. Both the causes of the decline and the later recovery of interest raise important new questions about how Plutarch should be assessed in the twenty-first century. This is one of the early volumes in the series of ‘Afterlives’ of the Classics, being produced jointly by the Institute of Classical Studies and the Warburg.  
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Against Logicians
Sextus Empiricus
Harvard University Press

A suspicious mind.

Sextus Empiricus (ca. AD 160–210), exponent of scepticism and critic of the Dogmatists, was a Greek physician and philosopher, pupil and successor of the medical sceptic Herodotus (not the historian) of Tarsus. He probably lived for years in Rome and possibly also in Alexandria and Athens. His three surviving works are Outlines of Pyrrhonism (three books on the practical and ethical scepticism of Pyrrho of Elis, ca. 360–275 BC, as developed later, presenting also a case against the Dogmatists); Against the Dogmatists (five books dealing with the Logicians, the Physicists, and the Ethicists); and Against the Professors (six books: Grammarians, Rhetors, Geometers, Arithmeticians, Astrologers, and Musicians). These two latter works might be called a general criticism of professors of all arts and sciences. Sextus’ work is a valuable source for the history of thought especially because of his development and formulation of former sceptic doctrines.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Sextus Empiricus is in four volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Against Physicists. Against Ethicists
Sextus Empiricus
Harvard University Press

A suspicious mind.

Sextus Empiricus (ca. AD 160–210), exponent of scepticism and critic of the Dogmatists, was a Greek physician and philosopher, pupil and successor of the medical sceptic Herodotus (not the historian) of Tarsus. He probably lived for years in Rome and possibly also in Alexandria and Athens. His three surviving works are Outlines of Pyrrhonism (three books on the practical and ethical scepticism of Pyrrho of Elis, ca. 360–275 BC, as developed later, presenting also a case against the Dogmatists); Against the Dogmatists (five books dealing with the Logicians, the Physicists, and the Ethicists); and Against the Professors (six books: Grammarians, Rhetors, Geometers, Arithmeticians, Astrologers, and Musicians). These two latter works might be called a general criticism of professors of all arts and sciences. Sextus’ work is a valuable source for the history of thought especially because of his development and formulation of former sceptic doctrines.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Sextus Empiricus is in four volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Against Professors
Sextus Empiricus
Harvard University Press

A suspicious mind.

Sextus Empiricus (ca. AD 160–210), exponent of scepticism and critic of the Dogmatists, was a Greek physician and philosopher, pupil and successor of the medical sceptic Herodotus (not the historian) of Tarsus. He probably lived for years in Rome and possibly also in Alexandria and Athens. His three surviving works are Outlines of Pyrrhonism (three books on the practical and ethical scepticism of Pyrrho of Elis, ca. 360–275 BC, as developed later, presenting also a case against the Dogmatists); Against the Dogmatists (five books dealing with the Logicians, the Physicists, and the Ethicists); and Against the Professors (six books: Grammarians, Rhetors, Geometers, Arithmeticians, Astrologers, and Musicians). These two latter works might be called a general criticism of professors of all arts and sciences. Sextus’ work is a valuable source for the history of thought especially because of his development and formulation of former sceptic doctrines.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Sextus Empiricus is in four volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Against Symmachus 2. Crowns of Martyrdom. Scenes From History. Epilogue
Prudentius
Harvard University Press

Spirited verse.

Prudentius (Aurelius Prudentius Clemens) was born in AD 348 probably at Caesaraugusta (Saragossa) and lived mostly in northeastern Spain, but visited Rome between 400 and 405. His parents, presumably Christian, had him educated in literature and rhetoric. He became a barrister and at least once later on an administrator; he afterwards received some high honor from Emperor Theodosius. Prudentius was a strong Christian who admired the old pagan literature and art, especially the great Latin poets whose forms he used. He looked on the Roman achievement in history as a preparation for the coming of Christ and the triumph of a spiritual empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the poems of Prudentius is in two volumes. Volume I presents: “Preface” (Praefatio); “The Daily Round” (Liber Cathemerinon); twelve literary and attractive hymns, parts of which have been included in the Breviary and in modern hymnals; “The Divinity of Christ” (Apotheosis), which maintains the Trinity and attacks those who denied the distinct personal being of Christ; “The Origin of Sin” (Hamartigenia) attacking the separation of the “strict” God of the Old Testament from the “good” God revealed by Christ; “Fight for Mansoul” (Psychomachia), which describes the struggle between (Christian) Virtues and (Pagan) Vices; and the first book of “Against the Address of Symmachus” (Contra Orationem Symmachi), in which pagan gods are assailed.

The second volume contains the second book of “Against the Address of Symmachus,” opposing a petition for the replacement of an altar and statue of Victory; “Crowns of Martyrdom” (Peristephanon Liber), fourteen hymns to martyrs mostly of Spain; “Lines To Be Inscribed under Scenes from History” (Tituli Historiarum), forty-nine four-line stanzas that are inscriptions for scenes from the Bible depicted on the walls of a church; and an Epilogue.

[more]

front cover of Agamemnon
Agamemnon
Aeschylus, A verse translation by David Mulroy, with introduction and notes
University of Wisconsin Press, 2015
Agamemnon, King of Argos, returns to Greece a victor in the Trojan War. He has brought with him the seer Cassandra as his war-prize and concubine. Awaiting him is his vengeful wife Clytemnestra, who is angry at Agamemnon's sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia to the gods, jealous of Cassandra, and guilty of taking a lover herself. The events that unfold catch everyone in a bloody net, including their absent son Orestes.

Aeschylus (525/4–456/5 B.C.E.) was the first of the three great tragic dramatists of ancient Greece, a forerunner of Sophocles and Euripides. His early tragedies were largely choral pageants with minimal plots. In Agamemnon, choral songs still predominate, but Aeschylus infuses them with such dramatic feeling that the spectator or reader is constantly spellbound.

Translator David Mulroy brings this ancient tragedy to life for modern readers and audiences. Using end rhyme and strict metrics, he combines the buoyant lyricism of the Greek text with a faithful rendering of its meaning in lucid English.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Agamemnon. Libation-Bearers. Eumenides. Fragments
Aeschylus
Harvard University Press

Aeschylus (ca. 525–456 BCE), author of the first tragedies existing in European literature, was an Athenian born at Eleusis. He served at Marathon against Darius in 490, and again during Xerxes' invasion, 480–479. Between 478 and 467 he visited Sicily, there composing by request Women of Aetna. At Athens he competed in production of plays more than twenty times, and was rewarded on at least thirteen occasions, becoming dominant between 500 and 458 through the splendour of his language and his dramatic conceptions and technique.

Of his total of 80–90 plays seven survive complete. The Persians (472), the only surviving Greek historical drama, presents the failure of Xerxes to conquer Greece. Seven against Thebes (467) was the second play of its trilogy of related plays on the evil fate of the Theban House. Polyneices tries to regain Thebes from his brother Eteocles; both are killed. In Suppliant Maidens, the first in a trilogy, the daughters of Danaus arrive with him at Argos, whose King and people save them from the wooing of the sons of their uncle Aegyptus. In Prometheus Bound, first or second play of its trilogy about Prometheus, he is nailed to a crag, by order of Zeus, for stealing fire from heaven for men. Defiant after visitors' sympathy and despite advice, he descends in lightning and thunder to Hell. The Oresteia (458), on the House of Atreus, is the only Greek trilogy surviving complete. In Agamemnon, the King returns from Troy, and is murdered by his wife Clytaemnestra. In Libation-Bearers, Orestes with his sister avenges their father Agamemnon's death by counter-murder. In Eumenides, Orestes, harassed by avenging Furies, is arraigned by them at Athens for matricide. Tried by a court set up by Athena, he is absolved, but the Furies are pacified.

We publish in Volume I four plays; and in Volume II the Oresteia and some fragments of lost plays.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Agamemnon, the Pathetic Despot
Reading Characterization in Homer
Andrew Porter
Harvard University Press, 2019

Agamemnon led a ten-year-long struggle at Troy only to return home and die a pathetic death at his wife’s hands. Yet while Agamemnon’s story exerts an outsize influence—rivalled by few epic personalities—on the poetic narratives of the Iliad and Odyssey, scholars have not adequately considered his full portrait. What was Agamemnon like as a character for Homer and his audience? More fundamentally, how should we approach the topic of characterization itself, following the discoveries of Milman Parry, Albert Lord, and their successors?

Andrew Porter explains the expression of characterization in Homer’s works, from an oral-traditional point of view, and through the resonance of words, themes, and “back stories” from both the past and future. He analyzes Agamemnon’s character traits in the Iliad, including his qualities as a leader, against events such as his tragic homecoming narrative in the Odyssey. Porter’s findings demonstrate that there is a traditional depth of characterization embedded in the written pages of these once-oral epics, providing a shared connection between the ancient singer and his listeners.

[more]

front cover of The Agon in Classical Literature
The Agon in Classical Literature
Studies in Honour of Professor Chris Carey
Edited by Michael Edwards, Athanasios Efstathiou, Ioanna Karamanou, and Eleni Volonaki
University of London Press, 2022
A collection of essays on the topical concept of agon in Greek literature.

The papers collected in this volume are offered by colleagues and former students in honor of Chris Carey, emeritus professor of Greek at University College London. The multifaceted topic of the agon, or contest of word, and its varying representations in Greek literature aptly corresponds to the outstanding variety of Carey’s research interests, which include the works of Homer, lyric poetry, drama, law, rhetoric, and historiography. This volume sets out to reflect on facets of the agon across these literary genres and the pivotal role of competition in ancient Greek thought. It aims to explore the wide range of agonal dynamics, and their generic and cultural value, as well as stimulating fresh discussions under a broad spectrum of theoretical and methodological approaches.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Agricola. Germania. Dialogue on Oratory
Tacitus
Harvard University Press

The paramount historian of the early Roman empire.

Tacitus (Cornelius), famous Roman historian, was born in AD 55, 56 or 57 and lived to about 120. He became an orator, married in 77 a daughter of Julius Agricola before Agricola went to Britain, was quaestor in 81 or 82, a senator under the Flavian emperors, and a praetor in 88. After four years' absence he experienced the terrors of Emperor Domitian's last years and turned to historical writing. He was a consul in 97. Close friend of the younger Pliny, with him he successfully prosecuted Marius Priscus.

Works: (i) Life and Character of Agricola, written in 97–98, specially interesting because of Agricola's career in Britain. (ii) Germania (98–99), an equally important description of the geography, anthropology, products, institutions, and social life and the tribes of the Germans as known to the Romans. (iii) Dialogue on Oratory (Dialogus), of unknown date; a lively conversation about the decline of oratory and education. (iv) Histories (probably issued in parts from 105 onwards), a great work originally consisting of at least twelve books covering the period AD 69–96, but only Books 1–4 and part of Book 5 survive, dealing in detail with the dramatic years 69–70. (v) Annals, Tacitus's other great work, originally covering the period AD 14–68 (Emperors Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero) and published between 115 and about 120. Of sixteen books at least, there survive Books 1–4 (covering the years 14–28); a bit of Book 5 and all Book 6 (31–37); part of Book 11 (from 47); Books 12–15 and part of Book 16 (to 66).

Tacitus is renowned for his development of a pregnant concise style, character study, and psychological analysis, and for the often terrible story which he brilliantly tells. As a historian of the early Roman empire he is paramount.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Tacitus is in five volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Ajax. Electra. Oedipus Tyrannus
Sophocles
Harvard University Press, 1994

Ancient Athens’ most successful tragedian.

Sophocles (497/6–406 BC), with Aeschylus and Euripides, was one of the three great tragic poets of Athens, and is considered one of the world's greatest poets. The subjects of his plays were drawn from mythology and legend. Each play contains at least one heroic figure, a character whose strength, courage, or intelligence exceeds the human norm—but who also has more than ordinary pride and self-assurance. These qualities combine to lead to a tragic end.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones gives us, in two volumes, a new translation of the seven surviving plays. Volume I contains Oedipus Tyrannus (which tells the famous Oedipus story), Ajax (a heroic tragedy of wounded self-esteem), and Electra (the story of siblings who seek revenge on their mother and her lover for killing their father). Volume II contains Oedipus at Colonus (the climax of the fallen hero's life), Antigone (a conflict between public authority and an individual woman's conscience), The Women of Trachis (a fatal attempt by Heracles' wife to regain her husband's love), and Philoctetes (Odysseus' intrigue to bring an unwilling hero to the Trojan War).

Of his other plays, only fragments remain; but from these much can be learned about Sophocles' language and dramatic art. The major fragments—ranging in length from two lines to a very substantial portion of the satyr play The Searchers—are collected in Volume III of this edition. In prefatory notes Lloyd-Jones provides frameworks for the fragments of known plays.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Albert’s Anthology
Kathleen M. Coleman
Harvard University Press
Albert’s Anthology comprises 76 brief and informal reflections on a line or two of Greek or Latin poetry—and a few prose quotations and artistic objects—composed by colleagues and students of Albert Henrichs on the occasion of his retirement in Spring 2017. Appointed Professor of Greek and Latin at Harvard University at the age of thirty in 1973 and Eliot Professor of Greek in 1984, Professor Henrichs has devoted his scholarly career to Greek literature and religion—especially his favorite Greek god, Dionysos—and to incomparably enthusiastic teaching of countless students at both the graduate and undergraduate level. His scholarship and dedication are legendary. This volume is offered to a brilliant and beloved scholar with gratitude, affection, and respect.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Alciphron. Aelian. Philostratus
The Letters
Alciphron. Aelian. Philostratus
Harvard University Press

Epistolary fictions.

The Letters of Alciphron (second century AD) constitute one of the most attractive products of the Second Sophistic. They are fictitious compositions based on an astonishingly wide variety of circumstances, though the theme of erotic love is constantly sounded. The imagination shown by the author and his convincing realism win him a place of distinction in the early development of romantic prose. The letters, which are highly literary, owing much to the New Comedy of Menander, purport to give us a sketch of the social life of Athens in the fourth century BC. The collection is arranged in four divisions: Letters of Fishermen; Farmers; Parasites; Courtesans. Senders and addressees are mostly invented characters, but in the last section Alciphron presents us with several attempts at historical fiction, the most engaging being an exchange of letters between Menander and Glycera.

This volume also includes twenty Letters of Farmers ascribed to Aelian (ca. AD 170–235) and a collection of seventy-three Erotic Epistles of Philostratus (probably Flavius of that name, also born ca. AD 170). In style and subject matter these resemble those of Alciphron, by whom they may have been influenced.

[more]

front cover of Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta
Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta
Gloria Ferrari
University of Chicago Press, 2008
The Partheneion, or “maiden song,” composed in the seventh century BCE by the SpartanpoetAlcman, is the earliest substantial example of a choral lyric. A provocative reinterpretation of the Partheneion and its broader context, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta excavates the poem’s invocations of widespread and long-lived cosmological ideas that cast the universe as perfectly harmonious and invested its workings with an ethical dimension.

Moving far beyond standard literary interpretations, Gloria Ferrari uncovers this astral symbolism by approaching the poem from several angles to brilliantly reconstruct the web of ancient drama, music, religion, painting, and material culture in which it is enmeshed. She shows, for example, that by stringing together images of horses, stars, and birds, the poem evokes classical antiquity’s beloved dance of the constellations. Instrumental in shaping the structure of the lyric, this dance symbolizes the cosmic order reflected in the order of the state, which the chorus would have enacted in a ritual performance of the song.

With broad implications for archaeology, art history, and ancient science, Ferrari’s bold new analysis dramatically deepens our understanding of Greek poetry and the rich culture of archaic Sparta.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Alexandrian War. African War. Spanish War
Caesar
Harvard University Press

Arrivals, inspections, victories.

In this volume are three works concerning the campaigns engaged in by the great Roman statesman Julius Caesar (100–44 BC), but not written by him. The Alexandrian War, which deals with troubles elsewhere also, may have been written by Aulus Hirtius (ca. 90–43 BC, friend and military subordinate of Caesar), who is generally regarded as the author of the last book of Caesar’s Gallic War. The African War and the Spanish War are detailed accounts clearly by officers who had shared in the campaigns. All three works are important sources of our knowledge of Caesar’s career.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Caesar is in three volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Allegories of the Odyssey
John Tzetzes
Harvard University Press, 2019
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were central to the educational system of Byzantium, yet the religion and culture of the Homeric epics—even the ancient Greek language itself—had become almost unrecognizable to Byzantine Greek readers coming to the texts nearly two millennia later. The scholar, poet, and teacher John Tzetzes (ca. 1110–1180) joined the extensive tradition of interpreting Homer by producing his Allegories of the Iliad, dedicated to the foreign-born empress Eirene. Tzetzes later composed the Allegories of the Odyssey, a more advanced verse commentary, to explain Odysseus’s journey and the pagan gods and marvels he encountered. Through historical allegory, the gods become ancient kings deified by the pagan poet; through astrological interpretation, they become planets whose positions and movements affect human life; through moral allegory Athena represents wisdom, Aphrodite desire. This edition presents the first translation of the Allegories of the Odyssey into any language.
[more]

logo for Reaktion Books
Amaravati
Art and Buddhism in Ancient India
Jas Elsner
Reaktion Books
A visual exploration of the Buddhist stupa or reliquary mounds at one of ancient India’s most remarkable monuments at Amarāvatī.
 
In this book, Jaś Elsner presents a fresh perspective on the rich visual culture of ancient South Asia, connecting the stupa’s artistic innovations with advancements in Buddhist philosophy and practice. He offers new insights into early Buddhist art in South India, as well as a new understanding of the relationship between early Buddhism and its material culture. The photographs collected here, particularly those featuring objects from the British Museum in London, reveal in detail how the stupa communicated Buddhist teachings and practices to its followers, making this book an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike.
[more]

front cover of Amor Belli
Amor Belli
Love and Strife in Lucan's Bellum Civile
Giulio Celotto
University of Michigan Press, 2022

Compelled by the emperor Nero to commit suicide at age 25 after writing uncomplimentary poems, Latin poet Lucan nevertheless left behind a significant body of work, including the Bellum Civile (Civil War).  Sometimes also called the Pharsalia, this epic describes the war between Julius Caesar and Pompey.Author Giulio Celotto provides an interpretation of this civil war based on the examination of an aspect completely neglected by previous scholarship: Lucan’s literary adaptation of the cosmological dialectic of Love and Strife.

According to a reading that has found favor over the last three decades, the poem is an unconventional epic that does not conform to Aristotelian norms: Lucan composes a poem characterized by fragmentation and disorder, lacking a conventional teleology, and whose narrative flow is constantly delayed. Celotto’s study challenges this interpretation by illustrating how Lucan invokes imagery of cosmic dissolution,  but without altogether obliterating epic norms. The poem transforms them from within, condemning the establishment of the Principate and the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

[more]

front cover of Amorous Games
Amorous Games
A Critical Edition of Les adevineaux amoureux
By James Woodrow Hassell
University of Texas Press, 1974

Among the more interesting incunabula preserved in the Salle de la Réserve of the Bibliothèque National in Paris are the apparently unique copies of two editions, very similar in content, of a work entitled Les Adevineaux amoureux. In much more comprehensive form Les Adevineaux amoureux is preserved in a manuscript belonging to the Musée Conde at Chantilly. All three texts, in medieval French, appear to date from the 1470s. The present work, Amorous Games, is a critical edition of Les Adevineaux amoureux.

Amorous Games is a miscellany whose principal unifying force is the compiler's aim to provide a manual of conversation and entertainment for polite society. Included are series of questions and answers belonging to the well-established medieval tradition of the "Demandes amoureuses"; a very large number of riddles, mainly folk riddles; and "venditions en amours," little poems that apparently came into bing as part of a social game.

Students of medieval French literature, particularly those with a penchant for some of the minor genres, will find new material in the Amorous Games. Folklorists will discover what is probably the largest collection of riddles bequeathed to us by medieval France and also much that is of value to specialists in the proverb and folk tale.

For this critical edition of Les Adevineaux amoureux Professor Hassell has selected the Chantilly manuscript, because it is the most complete and also because it had not yet been published. The Appendix contains the text of the more complete of the two incunabula and the significant variants appearing in the other fifteenth-century printed edition. The manuscript text has been collated with that of the incunabula, and copious notes and an index to the riddles have been supplied. In his introduction Professor Hassell discusses in detail the major classes and subclasses of the riddle, drawing on the work of Petsch, Taylor, Abrahams, and other scholars of the genre.

[more]

front cover of Amphion
Amphion
Lyre, Poetry, and Politics in Modernity
Leah Middlebrook
University of Chicago Press
A reintroduction to the myth of Amphion, recovering an overlooked sphere of lyric tradition.

Amphion is the figure in Greek mythology who played so skillfully on a lyre that stones moved of their own accord to build walls for Thebes. While Amphion still presides over music and architecture, he was once fundamental to the concept of lyric poetry. Amphion figured the human power to inspire action, creating and undoing polities by means of language. In contrast to the individual inspiration we associate with the better-known Orpheus, Amphion represents the relentless, often violent, play of order and disorder in human social life. His lyre was a powerful metaphor in the age of European imperial expansion.

In this wide-ranging study, Leah Middlebrook introduces readers to Amphion-inspired poetics and lyrics and traces the tradition of the Amphionic from the Renaissance through modernist and postmodern poetry and translation from the Hispanic, Anglophone, French, Italian, and ancient Roman worlds. Amphion makes a significant contribution to scholarship on the connection between poetry and politics and the history of the lyric, offering an account well-suited to our times.
[more]

front cover of Amphitryon. The Comedy of Asses. The Pot of Gold. The Two Bacchises. The Captives
Amphitryon. The Comedy of Asses. The Pot of Gold. The Two Bacchises. The Captives
Plautus
Harvard University Press, 2011

Funny happenings.

The rollicking comedies of Plautus, who brilliantly adapted Greek plays for Roman audiences ca. 205–184 BC, are the earliest Latin works to survive complete and are cornerstones of the European theatrical tradition from Shakespeare and Molière to modern times. This first volume of a new Loeb edition of all twenty-one of Plautus’ extant comedies presents Amphitruo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, and Captivi with freshly edited texts, lively modern translations, and ample explanatory notes. Accompanying the plays is a detailed introduction to Plautus’ œuvre as a whole, discussing his techniques of translation and adaptation, his use of Roman humor, stage conventions, language and meter, and his impact on the Greco-Roman comedic theater and beyond.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Amphitryon. The Comedy of Asses. The Pot of Gold. The Two Bacchises. The Captives
Plautus
Harvard University Press

Plautus (Titus Maccius), born about 254 BCE at Sarsina in Umbria, went to Rome, engaged in work connected with the stage, lost his money in commerce, then turned to writing comedies.

Twenty-one plays by Plautus have survived (one is incomplete). The basis of all is a free translation from comedies by such writers as Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon. So we have Greek manners of Athens about 300–250 BCE transferred to the Roman stage of about 225–185, with Greek places, people, and customs, for popular amusement in a Latin city whose own culture was not yet developed and whose manners were more severe. To make his plays live for his audience, Plautus included many Roman details, especially concerning slavery, military affairs, and law, with some invention of his own, notably in management of metres. The resulting mixture is lively, genial and humorous, with good dialogue and vivid style. There are plays of intrigue (Two Bacchises, The Haunted House, Pseudolus); of intrigue with a recognition theme (The Captives, The Carthaginian, Curculio); plays which develop character (The Pot of Gold, Miles Gloriosus); others which turn on mistaken identity (accidental as in the Menaechmi; caused on purpose as in Amphitryon); plays of domestic life (The Merchant, Casina, both unpleasant; Trinummus, Stichus, both pleasant).

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Plautus is in five volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Amphoteroglossia
A Poetics of the Twelfth-Century Medieval Greek Novel
Panagiotis Roilos
Harvard University Press, 2005
This work offers the first systematic and interdisciplinary study of the poetics of the twelfth-century medieval Greek novel. This book investigates the complex ways in which rhetorical theory and practice constructed the overarching cultural aesthetics that conditioned the production and reception of the genre of the novel in twelfth-century Byzantine society. By examining the indigenous rhetorical concept of amphoteroglossia, this book probes unexplored aspects of the re-inscription of inherited allegorical, comic, and rhetorical modes in the Komnenian novels, and offers new methodological directions for the study of Byzantine secular literature in its cultural complexities. The creative re-appropriation of the established generic conventions of the ancient Greek novel by the medieval Greek novelists, it is argued in this wide-ranging study, has invested these works with a dynamic dialogism. In this book, Roilos shows that this interdiscursivity functions on two pivotal axes: on the paradigmatic axis of previously sanctioned ancient Greek and—less evidently but equally significantly—Christian literature, and on the syntagmatic axis of allusions to the broader twelfth-century Byzantine cultural context.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Anabasis
Xenophon
Harvard University Press, 1998

Greek mercenaries on the march.

Xenophon (ca. 430 to ca. 354 BC) was a wealthy Athenian and friend of Socrates. He left Athens in 401 and joined an expedition including ten thousand Greeks led by the Persian governor Cyrus against the Persian king. After the defeat of Cyrus, it fell to Xenophon to lead the Greeks from the gates of Babylon back to the coast through inhospitable lands. Later he wrote the famous vivid account of this “March Up-Country” (Anabasis); but meanwhile he entered service under the Spartans against the Persian king, married happily, and joined the staff of the Spartan king, Agesilaus. But Athens was at war with Sparta in 394 and so exiled Xenophon. The Spartans gave him an estate near Elis where he lived for years writing and hunting and educating his sons. Reconciled to Sparta, Athens restored Xenophon to honor, but he preferred to retire to Corinth.

Xenophon’s Anabasis is a true story of remarkable adventures. Hellenica, a history of Greek affairs from 411 to 362, begins as a continuation of Thucydides’ account. There are four works on Socrates (collected in LCL 168). In Memorabilia Xenophon adds to Plato’s picture of Socrates from a different viewpoint. The Apology is an interesting complement to Plato’s account of Socrates’ defense at his trial. Xenophon’s Symposium portrays a dinner party at which Socrates speaks of love; and Oeconomicus has him giving advice on household management and married life. Cyropaedia, a historical romance on the education of Cyrus (the Elder), reflects Xenophon’s ideas about rulers and government; the Loeb edition is in two volumes.

We also have his Hiero, a dialogue on government; Agesilaus, in praise of that king; Constitution of Lacedaemon (on the Spartan system); Ways and Means (on the finances of Athens); Manual for a Cavalry Commander; a good manual of Horsemanship; and a lively Hunting with Hounds. The Constitution of the Athenians, though clearly not by Xenophon, is an interesting document on politics at Athens. These eight books are collected in the last of the seven volumes of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Xenophon.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Anabasis of Alexander, Volume I
Books 1–4
Arrian
Harvard University Press, 1976

On the march to greatness.

Arrian (Flavius Arrianus), of the period ca. AD 95–175, was a Greek historian and philosopher of Nicomedia in Bithynia. Both a Roman and an Athenian citizen, he was governor of the Roman province of Cappadocia 132–137, and repelled an invasion of the Alani in 134. He retired then to Athens (where he was archon in 148–149) and later to Nicomedia.

Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander in seven books is the best account we have of Alexander’s adult life. Indica (a description of India and of Nearchus’ voyage therefrom) was to be a supplement.

A student of Epictetus, Arrian took notes at his lectures and published them (in eight books, of which we have four, The Discourses) and also the Encheiridion or Manual of Epictetus. Both works are available in the Loeb edition of Epictetus (LCL 131, 218).

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Arrian is in two volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Anabasis of Alexander, Volume II
Books 5–7. Indica
Arrian
Harvard University Press, 1976

On the march to greatness.

Arrian (Flavius Arrianus), of the period ca. AD 95–175, was a Greek historian and philosopher of Nicomedia in Bithynia. Both a Roman and an Athenian citizen, he was governor of the Roman province of Cappadocia 132–137, and repelled an invasion of the Alani in 134. He retired then to Athens (where he was archon in 148–149) and later to Nicomedia.

Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander in seven books is the best account we have of Alexander’s adult life. Indica (a description of India and of Nearchus’ voyage therefrom) was to be a supplement.

A student of Epictetus, Arrian took notes at his lectures and published them (in eight books, of which we have four, The Discourses) and also the Encheiridion or Manual of Epictetus. Both works are available in the Loeb edition of Epictetus (LCL 131, 218).

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Arrian is in two volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Anacharsis or Athletics. Menippus or The Descent into Hades. On Funerals. A Professor of Public Speaking. Alexander the False Prophet. Essays in Portraiture. Essays in Portraiture Defended. The Goddesse of Surrye
Lucian
Harvard University Press

Antiquity’s satirist supreme.

Lucian (ca. AD 120–190), the satirist from Samosata on the Euphrates, started as an apprentice sculptor, turned to rhetoric and visited Italy and Gaul as a successful traveling lecturer before settling in Athens and developing his original brand of satire. Late in life he fell on hard times and accepted an official post in Egypt.

Although notable for the Attic purity and elegance of his Greek and his literary versatility, Lucian is chiefly famed for the lively, cynical wit of the humorous dialogues in which he satirizes human folly, superstition, and hypocrisy. His aim was to amuse rather than to instruct. Among his best works are A True Story (the tallest of tall tales about a voyage to the moon), Dialogues of the Gods (a "reductio ad absurdum" of traditional mythology), Dialogues of the Dead (on the vanity of human wishes), Philosophies for Sale (great philosophers of the past are auctioned off as slaves), The Fisherman (the degeneracy of modern philosophers), The Carousal or Symposium (philosophers misbehave at a party), Timon (the problems of being rich), Twice Accused (Lucian's defense of his literary career) and (if by Lucian) The Ass (the amusing adventures of a man who is turned into an ass).

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Lucian is in eight volumes.

[more]

front cover of Anatomizing Civil War
Anatomizing Civil War
Studies in Lucan's Epic Technique
Martin T. Dinter
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Imperial Latin epic has seen a renaissance of scholarly interest. This book illuminates the work of the poet Lucan, a contemporary of the emperor Nero who as nephew of the imperial adviser Seneca moved in the upper echelons of Neronian society. This young and maverick poet, whom Nero commanded to commit suicide at the age of 26, left an epic poem on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey that epitomizes the exuberance and stylistic experimentation of Neronian culture. This study focuses on Lucan's epic technique and traces his influence through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Martin T. Dinter's newest volume engages with Lucan's use of body imagery, sententiae, Fama (rumor), and open-endedness throughout his civil war epic. Although Lucan's Bellum Civile is frequently decried as a fragmented as well as fragmentary epic, this study demonstrates how Lucan uses devices other than teleology and cohesive narrative structure to bind together the many parts of his epic body.

Anatomizing Civil War places at center stage characteristics of Lucan's work that have so far been interpreted as excessive, or as symptoms of an overly rhetorical culture indicating a lack of substance. By demonstrating that they all contribute to Lucan's poetic technique, Martin T. Dinter shows how they play a fundamental role in shaping and connecting the many episodes of the Bellum Civile that constitute Lucan's epic body. This important volume will be of interest to students of classics and comparative literature as well as literary scholars. All Greek and Latin passages have been translated.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Ancient American Art in Detail
Colin McEwan
Harvard University Press, 2009

This latest title in a strikingly beautiful series of collectable books turns our attention to the rich variety of art from the Ancient Americas. We gain fascinating insights into the design and production of a wide range of objects from Mexico and Central and South America. Enlarged details chosen to inspire, illuminate, and surprise bring us close to the world of the Olmecs, Mayans, Mixtecs, Aztecs, and Incans.

Beginning by asking what constitutes Ancient American art, Colin McEwan contextualizes this art in its complexity of form and meaning. The close-ups provide the reader with insights that even a behind-the-scenes museum tour cannot offer. As we move across a range of cultures and media, we understand larger issues within which these works of art are embedded: What is the relationship between art and nature in the Ancient Americas? How were these objects used in ritual and religious practices? What is the role of masks? How do the practices of ancestor deification, sacrifice, and rituals related to fertility and procreation shape the visual and material culture of the Ancient Americas?

Jade, turquoise, featherwork, metalwork, wood, stone, ceramics, textiles, and illustrations—each beautifully photographed object is part of the extraordinary Ancient American collection of the British Museum. The beauty of the smallest details is magnified and contextualized through accompanying essays written by experts in Ancient American art.

[more]

front cover of Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Faya Causey
J. Paul Getty Trust, The
First published in 2012, this catalogue presents fifty-six Etruscan, Greek, and Italic carved ambers from the Getty Museum's collection—the second largest body of this material in the United States and one of the most important in the world. The ambers date from about 650 to 300 BC. The catalogue offers full description of the pieces, including typology, style, chronology, condition, and iconography. Each piece is illustrated.
 
The catalogue is preceded by a general introduction to ancient amber (which was also published in 2012 as a stand-alone print volume titled Amber and the Ancient World). Through exquisite visual examples and vivid classical texts, this book examines the myths and legends woven around amber—its employment in magic and medicine, its transport and carving, and its incorporation into jewelry, amulets, and other objects of prestige. This publication highlights a group of remarkable amber carvings at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

This catalogue was first published in 2012 at museumcatalogues.getty.edu/amber/. The present online edition of this open-access publication was migrated in 2019 to www.getty.edu/publications/ambers/; it features zoomable, high-resolution photography; free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book; and JPG downloads of the catalogue images.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Ancient Cyprus
Veronica Tatton-Brown
Harvard University Press, 1988
This concise survey is an introduction to the art and culture of ancient Cyprus, from the time of the first settlers around 7000 B.C. to the end of the Roman period in the late fourth century A.D..
[more]

front cover of The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
James P. Allen
SBL Press, 2005
The Pyramid Texts are the oldest body of extant literature from ancient Egypt. First carved on the walls of the burial chambers in the pyramids of kings and queens of the Old Kingdom, they provide the earliest comprehensive view of the way in which the ancient Egyptians understood the structure of the universe, the role of the gods, and the fate of human beings after death. Their importance lies in their antiquity and in their endurance throughout the entire intellectual history of ancient Egypt. This volume contains the complete translation of the Pyramid Texts, including new texts recently discovered and published. It incorporates full restorations and readings indicated by post-Old Kingdom copies of the texts and is the first translation that presents the texts in the order in which they were meant to be read in each of the original sources.
[more]

front cover of The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Second Edition
The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Second Edition
James P. Allen
SBL Press, 2015

Completely revised and updated

James P. Allen provides a translation of the oldest corpus of ancient Egyptian religious texts from the six royal pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (ca. 2350–2150 BCE). Allen’s revisions take into account recent advances in the understanding of Egyptian grammar.

Features:

  • Sequential translations based on all available sources, including texts newly discovered in the last decade
  • Texts numbered according to the most widely used numbering system with new numbers from the latest 2013 concordance
  • Translations reflect the primarily atemporal verbal system of Old Egyptian, which conveys the timeless quality that the text’s authors understood the texts to have
[more]

front cover of The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours
The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours
Gregory Nagy
Harvard University Press, 2019

What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized.

“Fascinating, often ingenious… A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.”
Times Literary Supplement

“Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and…against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature… [He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.”
—Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly

[more]

front cover of The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours
The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours
Gregory Nagy
Harvard University Press, 2013

The ancient Greeks’ concept of “the hero” was very different from what we understand by the term today, Gregory Nagy argues—and it is only through analyzing their historical contexts that we can truly understand Achilles, Odysseus, Oedipus, and Herakles.

In Greek tradition, a hero was a human, male or female, of the remote past, who was endowed with superhuman abilities by virtue of being descended from an immortal god. Despite their mortality, heroes, like the gods, were objects of cult worship. Nagy examines this distinctively religious notion of the hero in its many dimensions, in texts spanning the eighth to fourth centuries bce: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey; tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; songs of Sappho and Pindar; and dialogues of Plato. All works are presented in English translation, with attention to the subtleties of the original Greek, and are often further illuminated by illustrations taken from Athenian vase paintings.

The fifth-century bce historian Herodotus said that to read Homer is to be a civilized person. In twenty-four installments, based on the Harvard University course Nagy has taught and refined since the late 1970s, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours offers an exploration of civilization’s roots in the Homeric epics and other Classical literature, a lineage that continues to challenge and inspire us today.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Ancient Greek Heroes, Athletes, Poetry
Gregory Nagy
Harvard University Press
In Ancient Greek Heroes, Athletes, Poetry, Gregory Nagy continues where The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours left off. This book is also centered on some of the greatest masterpieces of ancient Greek literature—including the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey and seven tragedies stemming from the grand masters of the Classical Age of Athens. It returns to the same grand era and then moves beyond, in both time and space, with a new emphasis: how did the heroes of ancient Greek poetry relate to athletes, female as well as male, who competed in the athletic festivals of ancient Greece? A primary point of interest here is the seasonally recurring festival of the ancient Olympics, notionally founded by the hero Herakles.
[more]

front cover of Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Jean Bussière
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2017
In the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum are more than six hundred ancient lamps that span the sixth century BCE to the seventh century CE, most from the Roman Imperial period and largely created in Asia Minor or North Africa. These lamps have much to reveal about life, religion, pottery, and trade in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Most of the Museum’s lamps have never before been published, and this extensive typological catalogue will thus be an invaluable scholarly resource for art historians, archaeologists, and those interested in the ancient world.
 
The free online edition of this open-access catalogue, available at www.getty.edu/publications/ancientlamps/ includes zoomable high-resolution photography, multiple object views, and an interactive map. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBi downloads of the book, CSV and JSON downloads of the object data from the catalogue, and JPG downloads of the main catalogue images.
[more]

front cover of Ancient Latin Poetry Books
Ancient Latin Poetry Books
Materiality and Context
Gabriel Nocchi Macedo
University of Michigan Press, 2021

Before the invention of printing, all forms of writing were done by hand. For a literary text to circulate among readers, and to be transmitted from one period in time to another, it had to be copied by scribes. As a result, two copies of an ancient book were different from one another, and each individual book or manuscript has its own history. The oldest of these books, those that are the closest to the time in which the texts were composed, are few, usually damaged, and have been often neglected in the scholarship. Ancient Latin Poetry Books presents a detailed study of the oldest manuscripts still extant that contain texts by Latin poets, such as Virgil, Terence, and Ovid. Analyzing their physical characteristics, their script, and the historical contexts in which they were produced and used, this volume shows how manuscripts can help us gain a better understanding of the history of texts, as well as of reading habits over the centuries. Since the manuscripts originated in various places of the Latin-speaking world, Ancient Latin Poetry Books investigates the readership and reception of Latin poetry in many different contexts, such schools in the Egyptian desert, aristocratic circles in southern Italy, and the Christian élite in late antique Rome. The research also contributes to our knowledge about the use of writing and the importance of the written text in antiquity. This is an innovative approach to the study of ancient literature, one that takes the materiality of texts into consideration.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press, 2022

The definitive English edition of the “Father of Medicine.”

This is the first volume in the Loeb Classical Library’s complete edition of Hippocrates’ invaluable texts, which provide essential information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. Here, Paul Potter presents the Greek text with facing English translation of five treatises that showcase the range of Hippocratic theory, philosophy, and practice: Ancient Medicine; Airs, Waters, Places; Epidemics 1 and 3; Precepts; and Nutriment. Also included is the famous Hippocratic Oath.

This Loeb edition replaces the original by W. H. S. Jones.

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humors. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment
Hippocrates
Harvard University Press

Hippocrates, said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BCE, learned medicine and philosophy; travelled widely as a medical doctor and teacher; was consulted by King Perdiccas of Macedon and Artaxerxes of Persia; and died perhaps at Larissa. Apparently he rejected superstition in favour of inductive reasoning and the study of real medicine as subject to natural laws, in general and in individual people as patients for treatment by medicines and surgery. Of the roughly 70 works in the “Hippocratic Collection,” many are not by Hippocrates; even the famous oath may not be his. But he was undeniably the “Father of Medicine.”

The works available in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hippocrates are:

Volume I: Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment.
Volume II: Prognostic. Regimen in Acute Diseases. The Sacred Disease. The Art. Breaths. Law. Decorum. Physician (Ch. 1). Dentition.
Volume III: On Wounds in the Head. In the Surgery. On Fractures. On Joints. Mochlicon.
Volume IV: Nature of Man. Regimen in Health. Humours. Aphorisms. Regimen 1–3. Dreams.
Volume V: Affections. Diseases 1–2.
Volume VI: Diseases 3. Internal Affections. Regimen in Acute Diseases.
Volume VII: Epidemics 2 and 4–7.
Volume VIII: Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1–2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas.
Volume IX: Anatomy. Nature of Bones. Heart. Eight Months’ Child. Coan Prenotions. Crises. Critical Days. Superfetation. Girls. Excision of the Fetus. Sight.
Volume X: Generation. Nature of the Child. Diseases 4. Nature of Women. Barrenness.
Volume XI: Diseases of Women 1–2.

(Volume IV also contains the fragments of Heracleitus’ On the Universe.)

[more]

front cover of The Ancient Middle Classes
The Ancient Middle Classes
Urban Life and Aesthetics in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE–250 CE
Ernst Emanuel Mayer
Harvard University Press, 2012

Our image of the Roman world is shaped by the writings of Roman statesmen and upper class intellectuals. Yet most of the material evidence we have from Roman times—art, architecture, and household artifacts from Pompeii and elsewhere—belonged to, and was made for, artisans, merchants, and professionals. Roman culture as we have seen it with our own eyes, Emanuel Mayer boldly argues, turns out to be distinctly middle class and requires a radically new framework of analysis.

Starting in the first century bce, ancient communities, largely shaped by farmers living within city walls, were transformed into vibrant urban centers where wealth could be quickly acquired through commercial success. From 100 bce to 250 ce, the archaeological record details the growth of a cosmopolitan empire and a prosperous new class rising along with it. Not as keen as statesmen and intellectuals to show off their status and refinement, members of this new middle class found novel ways to create pleasure and meaning. In the décor of their houses and tombs, Mayer finds evidence that middle-class Romans took pride in their work and commemorated familial love and affection in ways that departed from the tastes and practices of social elites.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Ancient Rhetorical Theories of Simile and Comparison
Marsh H. McCall Jr.
Harvard University Press, 1969

front cover of Ancient Sex
Ancient Sex
New Essays
Ruby Blondell and Kirk Ormand
The Ohio State University Press, 2015
Ancient Sex: New Essays presents groundbreaking work in a post-Foucauldian mode on sexuality, sexual identities, and gender identities in ancient Greece and Rome. Since the production of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, the field of classics has been caught in a recursive loop of argument regarding the existence—or lack thereof—of "sexuality" (particularly "homosexuality") as a meaningful cultural concept for ancient Greece and Rome. Much of the argument concerning these issues, however, has failed to engage with the central argument of Foucault’s work, namely, the assertion that sexuality as we understand it is the correlative of a historically specific form of medical and legal discourse that emerged only in the late nineteenth century.

Rather than reopening old debates, Ancient Sex takes up Foucault’s call for discursive analysis and elucidates some of the ways that ancient Greek and Roman texts and visual arts articulate a culturally specific discourse about sexual matters. Each contributor presupposes that sexual and gendered identities are discursively produced, and teases out some of the ways that the Greeks and Romans spoke and thought about these issues. Comprising essays by emerging and established scholars, this volume emphasizes in particular: sexual discourses about women; the interaction between sexual identities and class status; gender as an unstable discursive category (even in antiquity); and the relationships between ancient and modern sexual categories.
[more]

front cover of Ancient Terracottas from South Italy and Sicily in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Ancient Terracottas from South Italy and Sicily in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Maria Lucia Ferruzza
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 2016
In the ancient world, terracotta sculpture was ubiquitous. Readily available and economical—unlike stone suitable for carving—clay allowed artisans to craft figures of remarkable variety and expressiveness. Terracottas from South Italy and Sicily attest to the prolific coroplastic workshops that supplied sacred and decorative images for sanctuaries, settlements, and cemeteries. Sixty terracottas are investigated here by noted scholar Maria Lucia Ferruzza, comprising a selection of significant types from the Getty’s larger collection—life-size sculptures, statuettes, heads and busts, altars, and decorative appliqués. In addition to the comprehensive catalogue entries, the publication includes a guide to the full collection of over one thousand other figurines and molds from the region by Getty curator of antiquities Claire L. Lyons.

The free online edition of this open-access catalogue, available at www.getty.edu/publications/terracottas/ includes zoomable high-resolution photography and a select number of 360° rotations; the ability to filter the catalogue by location, typology, and date; and an interactive map drawn from the Ancient World Mapping Center and linked to the Getty's Thesaurus of Geographic Names and Pleiades. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book; CSV and JSON downloads of the object data from the catalogue and the accompanying Guide to the Collection; and JPG and PPT downloads of the main catalogue images.
[more]

front cover of Ancient Weeds
Ancient Weeds
Contours of Popular and Trash Literature in Ancient and Medieval Times
Edited by Sylva Fischerová and Jirí Starý
Karolinum Press, 2023
This book blurs the line between high and low culture throughout literary history.

The common story in literary studies is that the emergence of popular and junk literature is related to the emergence of modern society due to the rise of literacy and the shortening of workdays. Ancient Weeds upends this misconception by demonstrating that antiquity had its fair share of literary pieces that fit the definition of popular, trivial, and junk literature. The authors analyze artifacts such as the ancient Egyptian Turin Papyrus, ancient love novels, Christian hagiographies and passion plays, lives of Jesus and Marian hymns, Byzantine parodies of liturgical procedure, Old Norse tales and lying sagas, Arabic maqams, and Spanish blind romances. Through numerous excerpts, it becomes clear that the line between junk and high literature is thinner than it seems. They reveal how seemingly low themes such as sex and violence often overlap with the themes of high literature. In many cases, low literature is more imaginative and subversive than canonical texts, and bizarreness and non-conformity do not necessarily equate to the ephemerality of a work. As Ancient Weeds shows, thousands of years after it was written, low literature can still be a great source of entertainment today.
 
[more]

front cover of Ancients and Moderns
Ancients and Moderns
John K. Ryan
Catholic University of America Press, 2018
This volume is a collection of works by international scholars on Aristotle, Plato, Duns Scotus, Plotinus and Moritz Schlick.
[more]

front cover of Ancilla to Pre-Socratic Philosophers
Ancilla to Pre-Socratic Philosophers
A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
Kathleen Freeman
Harvard University Press, 1948
This book is a complete translation of the fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophers given in the fifth edition of Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.
[more]

front cover of Anger, Mercy, Revenge
Anger, Mercy, Revenge
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
University of Chicago Press, 2010

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities.

Anger, Mercy, Revenge comprises three key writings: the moral essays On Anger and On Clemency—which were penned as advice for the then young emperor, Nero—and the Apocolocyntosis, a brilliant satire lampooning the end of the reign of Claudius. Friend and tutor, as well as philosopher, Seneca welcomed the age of Nero in tones alternately serious, poetic, and comic—making Anger, Mercy, Revenge a work just as complicated, astute, and ambitious as its author.

[more]

front cover of The Animal Part
The Animal Part
Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination
Mark Payne
University of Chicago Press, 2010

How can literary imagination help us engage with the lives of other animals? The question represents one of the liveliest areas of inquiry in the humanities, and Mark Payne seeks to answer it by exploring the relationship between human beings and other animals in writings from antiquity to the present. Ranging from ancient Greek poets to modernists like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, Payne considers how writers have used verse to communicate the experience of animal suffering, created analogies between human and animal societies, and imagined the kind of knowledge that would be possible if human beings could see themselves as animals see them.

The Animal Part
also makes substantial contributions to the emerging discourse of the posthumanities. Payne offers detailed accounts of the tenuousness of the idea of the human in ancient literature and philosophy and then goes on to argue that close reading must remain a central practice of literary study if posthumanism is to articulate its own prehistory. For it is only through fine-grained literary interpretation that we can recover the poetic thinking about animals that has always existed alongside philosophical constructions of the human.  In sum, The Animal Part marks a breakthrough in animal studies and offers a significant contribution to comparative poetics.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Annals
Books 13–16
Tacitus
Harvard University Press

The paramount historian of the early Roman empire.

Tacitus (Cornelius), famous Roman historian, was born in AD 55, 56 or 57 and lived to about 120. He became an orator, married in 77 a daughter of Julius Agricola before Agricola went to Britain, was quaestor in 81 or 82, a senator under the Flavian emperors, and a praetor in 88. After four years' absence he experienced the terrors of Emperor Domitian's last years and turned to historical writing. He was a consul in 97. Close friend of the younger Pliny, with him he successfully prosecuted Marius Priscus.

Works: (i) Life and Character of Agricola, written in 97–98, specially interesting because of Agricola's career in Britain. (ii) Germania (98–99), an equally important description of the geography, anthropology, products, institutions, and social life and the tribes of the Germans as known to the Romans. (iii) Dialogue on Oratory (Dialogus), of unknown date; a lively conversation about the decline of oratory and education. (iv) Histories (probably issued in parts from 105 onwards), a great work originally consisting of at least twelve books covering the period AD 69–96, but only Books 1–4 and part of Book 5 survive, dealing in detail with the dramatic years 69–70. (v) Annals, Tacitus's other great work, originally covering the period AD 14–68 (Emperors Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero) and published between 115 and about 120. Of sixteen books at least, there survive Books 1–4 (covering the years 14–28); a bit of Book 5 and all Book 6 (31–37); part of Book 11 (from 47); Books 12–15 and part of Book 16 (to 66).

Tacitus is renowned for his development of a pregnant concise style, character study, and psychological analysis, and for the often terrible story which he brilliantly tells. As a historian of the early Roman empire he is paramount.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Tacitus is in five volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Annals
Books 4–6, 11–12
Tacitus
Harvard University Press

The paramount historian of the early Roman empire.

Tacitus (Cornelius), famous Roman historian, was born in AD 55, 56 or 57 and lived to about 120. He became an orator, married in 77 a daughter of Julius Agricola before Agricola went to Britain, was quaestor in 81 or 82, a senator under the Flavian emperors, and a praetor in 88. After four years' absence he experienced the terrors of Emperor Domitian's last years and turned to historical writing. He was a consul in 97. Close friend of the younger Pliny, with him he successfully prosecuted Marius Priscus.

Works: (i) Life and Character of Agricola, written in 97–98, specially interesting because of Agricola's career in Britain. (ii) Germania (98–99), an equally important description of the geography, anthropology, products, institutions, and social life and the tribes of the Germans as known to the Romans. (iii) Dialogue on Oratory (Dialogus), of unknown date; a lively conversation about the decline of oratory and education. (iv) Histories (probably issued in parts from 105 onwards), a great work originally consisting of at least twelve books covering the period AD 69–96, but only Books 1–4 and part of Book 5 survive, dealing in detail with the dramatic years 69–70. (v) Annals, Tacitus's other great work, originally covering the period AD 14–68 (Emperors Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero) and published between 115 and about 120. Of sixteen books at least, there survive Books 1–4 (covering the years 14–28); a bit of Book 5 and all Book 6 (31–37); part of Book 11 (from 47); Books 12–15 and part of Book 16 (to 66).

Tacitus is renowned for his development of a pregnant concise style, character study, and psychological analysis, and for the often terrible story which he brilliantly tells. As a historian of the early Roman empire he is paramount.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Tacitus is in five volumes.

[more]

front cover of Antigone
Antigone
Sophocles; A verse translation by David Mulroy, with introduction and notes
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
Sophocles’ Antigone ranks with his Oedipus Rex as one of world literature’s most compelling dramas. The action is taut, and the characters embody universal tensions: the conflict of youth with age, male with female, the state with the family. Plot and character come wrapped in exquisite language. Antagonists trade polished speeches, sardonic jibes and epigrammatic truisms and break into song at the height of passion.
    David Mulroy’s translation of Antigone faithfully reproduces the literal meaning of Sophocles’ words while also reflecting his verbal pyrotechnics. Using fluid iambic pentameters for the spoken passages and rhyming stanzas for the songs, it is true to the letter and the spirit of the great Greek original.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Antigone. The Women of Trachis. Philoctetes. Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles
Harvard University Press, 1994

Ancient Athens’ most successful tragedian.

Sophocles (497/6–406 BC), with Aeschylus and Euripides, was one of the three great tragic poets of Athens, and is considered one of the world's greatest poets. The subjects of his plays were drawn from mythology and legend. Each play contains at least one heroic figure, a character whose strength, courage, or intelligence exceeds the human norm—but who also has more than ordinary pride and self-assurance. These qualities combine to lead to a tragic end.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones gives us, in two volumes, a new translation of the seven surviving plays. Volume I contains Oedipus Tyrannus (which tells the famous Oedipus story), Ajax (a heroic tragedy of wounded self-esteem), and Electra (the story of siblings who seek revenge on their mother and her lover for killing their father). Volume II contains Oedipus at Colonus (the climax of the fallen hero's life), Antigone (a conflict between public authority and an individual woman's conscience), The Women of Trachis (a fatal attempt by Heracles' wife to regain her husband's love), and Philoctetes (Odysseus' intrigue to bring an unwilling hero to the Trojan War).

Of his other plays, only fragments remain; but from these much can be learned about Sophocles' language and dramatic art. The major fragments—ranging in length from two lines to a very substantial portion of the satyr play The Searchers—are collected in Volume III of this edition. In prefatory notes Lloyd-Jones provides frameworks for the fragments of known plays.

[more]

front cover of Antiphon and Andocides
Antiphon and Andocides
Translated by Michael Gagarin and Douglas M. MacDowell
University of Texas Press, 1998

Classical oratory is an invaluable resource for the study of ancient Greek life and culture. The speeches offer evidence on Greek moral views, social and economic conditions, political and social ideology, and other aspects of Athenian culture that have been largely ignored: women and family life, slavery, and religion, to name just a few.

This volume contains the works of the two earliest surviving orators, Antiphon and Andocides. Antiphon (ca. 480-411) was a leading Athenian intellectual and creator of the profession of logography ("speech writing"), whose special interest was law and justice. His six surviving works all concern homicide cases. Andocides (ca. 440-390) was involved in two religious scandals—the mutilation of the Herms (busts of Hermes) and the revelation of the Eleusinian Mysteries—on the eve of the fateful Athenian expedition to Sicily in 415. His speeches are a defense against charges relating to those events.

[more]

front cover of Antiquarian Voices
Antiquarian Voices
The Roman Academy and the Commentary Tradition on Ovid's Fasti
Angela Fritsen
The Ohio State University Press, 2015
Ovid’s Fasti, his poem on the Roman calendar, became especially influential during the fifteenth century as a guide to classical Roman culture. Ovid’s treatment of mythological and astronomical lore, his investigation of anniversaries and customs, and his charting of monuments and history offered humanist poets and intellectuals an abundance of material to unravel. They could identify with Ovid as vates operosus, or hard-working seer–poet, suggesting both researcher and inspired authority.
 
Angela Fritsen’s Antiquarian Voices:The Roman Academy and the Commentary Tradition on Ovid’s Fasti offers the first study of the Renaissance exegesis and imitation of Ovid as antiquarian. Fritsen analyzes the Fasti commentaries by Paolo Marsi (1440–1484) and Antonio Costanzi (1436–1490) as well as the connections between the two works. It situates Ovidian Fasti studies in the Roman Academy under the mentorship of Pomponio Leto. Nowhere could the investigation of the Fasti be carried out better than in Rome. The humanists had a guide to the City in Ovid. They also regarded the Fasti as well suited to the ideology of the ancient Roman imperium’s renewal in modern papal Rome.
 
Antiquarian Voices illustrates how in reviving the Fasti, the humanists returned Rome to its original splendor. The book demonstrates that the humanists were eager to relate the Fasti to their antiquarian pursuits—as well as to their rising personal fame.
 
[more]

front cover of Antisthenes of Athens
Antisthenes of Athens
Texts, Translations, and Commentary
Susan H. Prince
University of Michigan Press, 2015
Antisthenes of Athens (c. 445-365 BCE) was a famous ancient disciple of Socrates, senior to Plato by fifteen years and inspirational to Xenophon. He is relevant to two of the greatest turning points in ancient intellectual history, from pre-Socraticism to Socraticism, and from classical Athens to the Hellenistic period. A better understanding of Antisthenes leads to a better understanding of the intellectual culture of Athens that shaped Plato and laid the foundations for Hellenistic philosophy and literature as well. Antisthenes wrote prolifically, but little of this text remains today. Susan Prince has collected all the surviving passages that pertain most closely to Antisthenes’ ancient reputation and literary production, translates them into English for the first time, and sets out the parameters for their interpretation, with close attention to the role Antisthenes likely played in the literary agenda of each ancient author who cited him.

This is the first translation of Antisthenes’ remains into English. Chapters present the ancient source, the original Greek passage, and necessary critical apparatus. The author then adds the modern English translation and notes on the context of the preservation, the significance of the testimonium, and on the Greek. Several new readings are proposed.

Antisthenes of Athens will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand Antisthenes and his intellectual context, as well as his contributions to ancient literary criticism, views on discourse, and ethics.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Apollonius of Tyana, Volume I
Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Books 1–4
Philostratus
Harvard University Press, 2005

The life and miracles of a pagan holy man.

This biography of a first-century AD holy man has become one of the most widely discussed literary works of later antiquity. In a grandly baroque style style Philostratus portrays a charismatic teacher and religious reformer from Tyana in Cappadocia (modern central Turkey) who travels the length of the known world, from the Atlantic to the river Ganges. His miracles, which include extraordinary cures and mysterious disappearances, together with his apparent triumph over death, caused pagans to make Apollonius a rival to Jesus of Nazareth.

In his three-volume Loeb edition of this third-century work, Christopher Jones gives a much improved Greek text and an elegant translation with full explanatory notes. The Life of Apollonius is formally a biography (by far the longest that survives from antiquity), but in reality a combination of travel narrative, rhetorical showpiece, and much else. In the introduction, Jones addresses the question of how far the Life is history and how far fiction. He also discusses the survival and reception of the work through Late Antiquity and up to modern times, and the role that it continues to play in controversies about Christianity.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Apollonius of Tyana, Volume II
Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Books 5–8
Philostratus
Harvard University Press, 2005

The life and miracles of a pagan holy man.

This biography of a first-century AD holy man has become one of the most widely discussed literary works of later antiquity. In a grandly baroque style style Philostratus portrays a charismatic teacher and religious reformer from Tyana in Cappadocia (modern central Turkey) who travels the length of the known world, from the Atlantic to the river Ganges. His miracles, which include extraordinary cures and mysterious disappearances, together with his apparent triumph over death, caused pagans to make Apollonius a rival to Jesus of Nazareth.

In his three-volume Loeb edition of this third-century work, Christopher Jones gives a much improved Greek text and an elegant translation with full explanatory notes. The Life of Apollonius is formally a biography (by far the longest that survives from antiquity), but in reality a combination of travel narrative, rhetorical showpiece, and much else. In the introduction, Jones addresses the question of how far the Life is history and how far fiction. He also discusses the survival and reception of the work through Late Antiquity and up to modern times, and the role that it continues to play in controversies about Christianity.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Apollonius of Tyana, Volume III
Letters of Apollonius. Ancient Testimonia. Eusebius’s Reply to Hierocles
Philostratus
Harvard University Press, 2005

The life and miracles of a pagan holy man.

Philostratus' colorful biography of Apollonius of Tyana, recounting the sayings and miracles of a Pythagorean sage, incidentally provoked a long-lasting debate between pagans and Christians. This volume, which completes the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, provides full context for that much discussed third-century portrayal of a charismatic religious teacher.

Here is a new translation of the surviving letters of Apollonius, augmented and illuminated by recent discoveries. These letters reveal Apollonius' personality and his religious and philosophical ideas. New for this edition is a selection of ancient reports about Apollonius from authors such as St. Jerome and St. Augustine.

Philostratus' biography was quickly caught up in the religious struggles that marked the rise of Christianity. An official in Diocletian's empire named Hierocles used it as ammunition in an anti-Christian polemic, initiating a controversy that lasted well into modern times. The reply by Eusebius, the fourth-century bishop of Caesarea, was originally included in editions of the Life of Apollonius in order to serve as a spiritual antidote and to provide cover for the publishers; today it is an essential chapter in the history of Philostratus' masterpiece.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Apologia. Florida. De Deo Socratis
Apuleius
Harvard University Press, 2017

Oratory and philosophy from a Latin novelist.

Apuleius, one of the great stylists of Latin literature, was born ca. AD 125 in Madauros to a politically prominent family and received an elite education in the provincial capital Carthage and at Athens, where he began a lifelong allegiance to Platonic philosophy. In the later 150s, he married Pudentilla of Oea, a wealthy widow, and seems to have enjoyed a distinguished public career in Africa and perhaps as an advocate in Rome.

Although Apuleius is best known for his picaresque novel Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass (LCL 44, 453), he also wrote and declaimed on a wide variety of subjects. This edition contains the other surviving works of Apuleius that are considered genuine. Apologia is a speech delivered probably in 158/59 in which Apuleius defends himself against in-laws who had accused him of having used sinister means, including magic, to induce Pudentilla to marry him. The Florida is a collection of twenty-three excerpts from speeches by Apuleius, probably all of them delivered in Africa; the title refers either to their florid style or to their resemblance to an anthology, perhaps both. De Deo Socratis (On Socrates’ God) takes the form of a speech addressed to a cultured, nonspecialist Latin-speaking audience that locates Socrates’ invisible guide and protector (daimonion) within the more general concept of daimones as forces intermediary between gods and humans.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Apuleius is in three volumes.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Apology. De Spectaculis. Minucius Felix
Octavius
Tertullian and Minucius Felix
Harvard University Press

Austere apologetics.

Q. Septimus Florens Tertullianus (ca. AD 150–222) was born a soldier’s son at Carthage, educated in Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and medicine, and later studied law to became a pleader, remaining a clever and often tortuous arguer. At Rome he became a learned and militant Christian. After visiting churches in Greece (and Asia Minor?) he returned to Carthage and in his writings there founded a Christian Latin language and literature, toiling to fuse enthusiasm with reason; to unite the demands of the Bible with the practice of the Church; and to continue to vindicate the Church’s possession of the true doctrine in the face of unbelievers, Jews, Gnostics, and others. In some of his many works he defended Christianity, in others he attacked heretical people and beliefs; in others he dealt with morals. In this volume are his Apologeticus and De Spectaculis.

Of Minucius, an early Christian writer of unknown date, we have only Octavius, a vigorous and readable debate between an unbeliever and a Christian friend of Minucius, the lawyer Octavius Ianuarius. Minucius himself acts as presiding judge. Octavius wins the argument. The whole work presents a picture of social and religious conditions in Rome, apparently about the end of the second century.

[more]

front cover of The Apostolic Fathers, Volume I
The Apostolic Fathers, Volume I
I Clement. II Clement. Ignatius. Polycarp. Didache
Bart D. Ehrman
Harvard University Press, 2003

Enduring and influential early Christian texts.

The writings of the Apostolic Fathers give a rich and diverse picture of Christian life and thought in the period immediately after New Testament times. Some of them were accorded almost Scriptural authority in the early Church. This new Loeb edition of these essential texts reflects current idiom and the latest scholarship.

Here are the Letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, among the most famous documents of early Christianity; these letters, addressing core theological questions, were written to a half dozen different congregations while Ignatius was en route to Rome as a prisoner, condemned to die in the wild-beast arena. Also in this collection is a letter to the Philippian church by Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and friend of Ignatius, as well as an account of Polycarp’s martyrdom. There are several kinds of texts in the Apostolic Fathers collection, representing different religious outlooks. The manual called the Didache sets forth precepts for religious instruction, worship, and ministry. The Epistle of Barnabas searches the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, for testimony in support of Christianity and against Judaism. Probably the most widely read in the early Christian centuries was The Shepherd of Hermas, a book of revelations that develops a doctrine of repentance.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Apostolic Fathers, Volume I
I Clement, II Clement, Ignatius. Polycarp. Didache. Barnabas
Kirsopp Lake
Harvard University Press

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION.

The writings of the Apostolic Fathers give a picture of Christian life and thought in the period immediately after New Testament times. Some of them were accorded almost Scriptural authority in the early Church. The nine texts subsumed under this title include the epistles of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, which were written while Ignatius was en route to Rome as a prisoner, condemned to die in the wild-beast arena. Here too is the "Didache," a book of precepts in religious instruction, worship, and ministry; and the "Epistle of Barnabas," which attempts to sever the connection between Judaism and the Old Testament. "The Shepherd of Hermas" is a book of revelations and a doctrine of repentance; and the "Martyrdom of Polycarp" gives an account of the persecution of Christians at Smyrna.

[more]

front cover of The Apostolic Fathers, Volume II
The Apostolic Fathers, Volume II
Epistle of Barnabas. Papias and Quadratus. Epistle to Diognetus. The Shepherd of Hermas
Bart D. Ehrman
Harvard University Press, 2003

Enduring and influential early Christian texts.

The writings of the Apostolic Fathers give a rich and diverse picture of Christian life and thought in the period immediately after New Testament times. Some of them were accorded almost Scriptural authority in the early Church. This new Loeb edition of these essential texts reflects current idiom and the latest scholarship.

Here are the Letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, among the most famous documents of early Christianity; these letters, addressing core theological questions, were written to a half dozen different congregations while Ignatius was en route to Rome as a prisoner, condemned to die in the wild-beast arena. Also in this collection is a letter to the Philippian church by Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and friend of Ignatius, as well as an account of Polycarp’s martyrdom. There are several kinds of texts in the Apostolic Fathers collection, representing different religious outlooks. The manual called the Didache sets forth precepts for religious instruction, worship, and ministry. The Epistle of Barnabas searches the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, for testimony in support of Christianity and against Judaism. Probably the most widely read in the early Christian centuries was The Shepherd of Hermas, a book of revelations that develops a doctrine of repentance.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Apostolic Fathers, Volume II
Sheperd of Hermas. Martyrdom of Polycarp. Epistle to Diognetus
Kirsopp Lake
Harvard University Press
THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION.
[more]

front cover of Approaches to Homer
Approaches to Homer
Edited by Carl A. Rubino and Cynthia W. Shelmerdine
University of Texas Press, 1983

Modern Homeric scholarship is distinguished by a dazzling diversity of approaches. That diversity is brilliantly displayed in this volume, in which nine well-known classicists approach the Homeric poems from the various perspectives of archaeology, economic history, philosophy, literary criticism, linguistics, and Byzantine history.

Several essays are primarily concerned with what the Homeric poems teach us about the past. Richard Hope Simpson, for example, reviews the controversy sparked by his and John F. Lazenby's 1970 argument that the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad accurately reflects the geography of Mycenean Greece. Using archaeology as just one of his starting points, Gregory Nagy reflects upon the death and funeral of Sarpedon as described in the Iliad. Our understanding of the word áté is enhanced by E. D. Francis, who closely examines its prehistory.

Norman Austin's elegant and original discussion of tone in the Odyssey's Cyclops tale is animated by both psychoanalytic theory and his work with two practitioners of optometric visual training. Writing of Odysseus, James M. Redfield dubs that hero "the economic man" and links certain tensions in the Odyssey to the actual economic concerns of Greece in the late eighth century BC. Both Ann L. T. Bergren and Mabel L. Lang concern themselves with problems of narrative in the Homeric epics.

Like Hope Simpson, C. J. Rowe updates a controversy—in this instance, the many objections raised to Arthur Adkins' influential 1960 study of moral values in Homer. Gareth Morgan provides a fascinating glimpse of the Homeric scholarship of another day by focusing on the work of the astonishing John Tzetzes in twelfth-century Byzantium.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Archaeology of Mural Painting at Pañamarca, Peru
Lisa Trever
Harvard University Press

The archaeological site of Pañamarca was once a vibrant center of religious performance and artistic practice within the ancient Moche world. During the seventh and eighth centuries CE, architects and mural painters created lofty temples and broad-walled plazas that were brilliantly arrayed with images of mythological heroes, monstrous creatures, winged warriors in combat, ritual processions, and sacrificial offerings.

This richly illustrated volume offers a nuanced account of the modern history of exploration, archaeology, and image making at Pañamarca; it also offers detailed documentation of the new fieldwork carried out by the authors at the site. That fieldwork led to the discoveries of 1,200-year-old mural paintings, presented here in detail for the first time. Created in a cultural context a thousand years before the use of written scripts, the art and architecture of Pañamarca cannot be studied via ancient histories or commentaries, but only through layers of physical evidence from archaeological excavations and documentation. This volume will serve as a definitive reference work on mural painting at Pañamarca, as well as a new primary resource for Pre-Columbian studies and for studies in global ancient art, architecture, and archaeology more broadly.

[more]

front cover of Archaic Greek Poetry
Archaic Greek Poetry
An Anthology
Selected and translated by Barbara Hughes Fowler
University of Wisconsin Press, 1992
     With this anthology, Barbara Hughes Fowler presents the most comprehensive selection of Greek poetry of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. ever published in English.  Fowler’s brilliant translations provide access to six Homeric Hymns, eight selections from Bakchylides, twelve odes of Pindar, selections from the iambicists and elegists, virtually all of Archilochos and of the surviving lyricists, including Sappho, and a number of anonymous poems about work, play, and politics.  Archaic poets delighted in all that was radiant and delicate, and their poems should be read for their narrative charm, celebration of nature, and playful sensuality.  There are tantalizing fragments of fables here, as well as poems of friendship and warfare, love and  colonization.  Along with her notes and bibliography, Fowler has provided a biographical list of poets and a glossary of proper names. 
     In addition to its breadth, Archaic Greek Poetry stands alone as the only volume of its kind translated by a contemporary published poet.  Perhaps the most elegant translator of ancient Greek poetry into modern English, Barbara Hughes Fowler offers translations true to the original Greek while providing modern readers with superb examples of the beauty of lyric poetry.  Students and scholars of classical and comparative literature, ancient history, and art history, as well as lovers of lyric poetry, will enthusiastically welcome this volume.
[more]

front cover of Architecture of Minoan Crete
Architecture of Minoan Crete
Constructing Identity in the Aegean Bronze Age
By John C. McEnroe
University of Texas Press, 2010

Ever since Sir Arthur Evans first excavated at the site of the Palace at Knossos in the early twentieth century, scholars and visitors have been drawn to the architecture of Bronze Age Crete. Much of the attraction comes from the geographical and historical uniqueness of the island. Equidistant from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Minoan Crete is on the shifting conceptual border between East and West, and chronologically suspended between history and prehistory. In this culturally dynamic context, architecture provided more than physical shelter; it embodied meaning. Architecture was a medium through which Minoans constructed their notions of social, ethnic, and historical identity: the buildings tell us about how the Minoans saw themselves, and how they wanted to be seen by others.

Architecture of Minoan Crete is the first comprehensive study of the entire range of Minoan architecture—including houses, palaces, tombs, and cities—from 7000 BC to 1100 BC. John C. McEnroe synthesizes the vast literature on Minoan Crete, with particular emphasis on the important discoveries of the past twenty years, to provide an up-to-date account of Minoan architecture. His accessible writing style, skillful architectural drawings of houses and palaces, site maps, and color photographs make this book inviting for general readers and visitors to Crete, as well as scholars.

[more]

front cover of Archive Feelings
Archive Feelings
A Theory of Greek Tragedy
Mario Telò
The Ohio State University Press, 2020
Do we take pleasure in reading ancient Greek tragedy despite the unsettling content or because of it? Does a safe aesthetic distance protect us from tragic suffering, or does the proximity to death tap into something more primal? Aristotle proposed catharsis, an emotional cleansing—or, in later interpretations, a sense of equilibrium—as tragedy’s outcome, and Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, grand theorists of the forces of anti-mastery in human and nonhuman existence, surprisingly agreed. Notwithstanding this deferral to Aristotle, their theorizations of the death drive—together with Jacques Derrida’s notion of the archive as a place of conservation that inevitably fails—provide the groundwork for a radically new way of understanding tragic aesthetics.
 
With bold readings of thirteen plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, including the Oedipus cycle, the Oresteia, Medea, and Bacchae; an eclectic synthesis of Freud, Lacan, Derrida, Žižek, Deleuze, and other critical theorists; and an engagement with art, architecture, and film, Mario Telò’s Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy locates Greek tragedy’s aesthetic allure beyond catharsis in a vertiginous sense of giddy suspension, in a spiral of life and death that resists equilibrium, stabilization, and all forms of normativity. In so doing, Telò forges a new model of tragic aesthetics.
 
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Argonautica
Apollonius Rhodius
Harvard University Press, 2008

The Greek epic account of the quest for the golden fleece.

Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, composed in the 3rd century BC, is the epic retelling of Jason’s quest for the golden fleece. Along with his contemporaries Callimachus and Theocritus, Apollonius refashioned Greek poetry to meet the interests and aesthetics of a Hellenistic audience, especially that of Alexandria in the Ptolemaic period following Alexander’s death. In this carefully crafted work of 5,835 hexameter verses in four books, the author draws on the preceding literary traditions of epic (Homer), lyric (Pindar), and tragedy (especially Euripides) but creates an innovative and complex narrative that includes geography, religion, ethnography, mythology, adventure, exploration, human psychology, and, most of all, the coming of age and love affair of Jason and Medea. It greatly influenced Roman authors such as Catullus, Virgil, and Ovid, and was imitated by Valerius Flaccus.

This new edition of the first volume in the Loeb Classical Library offers a fresh translation and improved text.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Argonautica
Valerius Flaccus
Harvard University Press

The Roman epic retelling of the quest for the golden fleece.

Valerius Flaccus, Gaius, Latin poet who flourished in the period ca. AD 70–90, composed in smooth and sometimes obscure style an incomplete epic Argonautica in eight books, on the auest for the golden fleece. The poem is typical of his age, being a free re-handling of the story already told by Apollonius Rhodius, to whom he is superior in arrangement, vividness, and description of character. Valerius’ poem shows much imitation of the language and thought of Virgil, and much learning. The chief interest of the epic lies in the relationship between Medea and Jason, especially the growth of Medea’s love, where Valerius is at his best. The long series of adventures and various Roman allusions suggest that the poet meant to do honor to Vespasian (to whom the epic is dedicated) with special reference to that emperor’s ships in waters around Britain.

[more]

front cover of Argonautika
Argonautika
The Voyage of Jason and the Argonauts
Mary Zimmerman
Northwestern University Press, 2013

As in her Tony Award–winning Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman transforms Greek mythology—here the story of Jason and the Argonauts—into a mesmerizing piece of theater. Encountering an array of daunting challenges in their “first voyage of the world,” Jason and his crew illus­trate the essence of all such journeys to follow—their un­predictability, their inspiring and overwhelming breadth of emotion, their lessons in the inevitability of failure and loss. Bursts of humor and fantastical creatures enrich a story whose characters reveal remarkable complexity. Medea is profoundly sympathetic even as the seeds are sown for the monstrous life ahead of her, and the brute strength of Hercules leaves him no less vulnerable to the vicissitudes of love. Zimmerman brings to Argonautika her trademark ability to encompass the full range of human experience in a work as entertaining as it is enlightening.

[more]

front cover of The Argument of the Action
The Argument of the Action
Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy
Seth Benardete
University of Chicago Press, 2000

This volume brings together Seth Benardete’s studies of Hesiod, Homer, and Greek tragedy, eleven Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

The Argument of the Action spans four decades of Seth Benardete’s work, documenting its impressive range. Benardete’s philosophic reading of the poets and his poetic reading of the philosophers share a common ground, guided by the key he found in the Platonic dialogue: probing the meaning of speeches embedded in deeds, he uncovers the unifying intention of the work by tracing the way it unfolds through a movement of its own. Benardete’s original interpretations of the classics are the fruit of this discovery of the “argument of the action.”

[more]

front cover of Arguments with Silence
Arguments with Silence
Writing the History of Roman Women
Amy Richlin
University of Michigan Press, 2014

Women in ancient Rome challenge the historian. Widely represented in literature and art, they rarely speak for themselves. Amy Richlin, among the foremost pioneers in ancient studies, gives voice to these women through scholarship that scours sources from high art to gutter invective.

In Arguments with Silence, Richlin presents a linked selection of her essays on Roman women’s history, originally published between 1981 and 2001 as the field of “women in antiquity” took shape, and here substantially rewritten and updated. The new introduction to the volume lays out the historical methodologies these essays developed, places this process in its own historical setting, and reviews work on Roman women since 2001, along with persistent silences. Individual chapter introductions locate each piece in the social context of Second Wave feminism in Classics and the academy, explaining why each mattered as an intervention then and still does now.

Inhabiting these pages are the women whose lives were shaped by great art, dirty jokes, slavery, and the definition of adultery as a wife’s crime; Julia, Augustus’ daughter, who died, as her daughter would, exiled to a desert island; women wearing makeup, safeguarding babies with amulets, practicing their religion at home and in public ceremonies; the satirist Sulpicia, flaunting her sexuality; and the praefica, leading the lament for the dead.

Amy Richlin is one of a small handful of modern thinkers in a position to consider these questions, and this guided journey with her brings surprise, delight, and entertainment, as well as a fresh look at important questions.

[more]

front cover of Aristaenetus, Erotic Letters
Aristaenetus, Erotic Letters
Peter Bing
SBL Press, 2014

The first complete English translation of Aristaenetus in nearly three centuries

Through allusion and adaption of earlier authors, Aristaenetus recounts tales that are the stuff of comedy, erotic poetry, and ancient novel. Here we read of lovers who use every trope of erotic literature to praise their beloveds in over-the-top speeches. Aristaenetus amazes us with tales of paramours hatching complicated schemes to achieve their desires, while wily go-betweens help smooth their way. He presents us with accounts of unfaithful spouses who barely avoid capture in the midst of hair-raising and amusing infidelities. This sixth century collection is perfect for anyone interested in classical and postclassical literature.

Features:

  • English translation and Greek text on facing pages
  • Introduction with history of the text
  • Discussion of intertextual connections with Greco-Roman authors
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter