In this intriguing blend of the commonplace and the ancient, Jean Bottéro presents the first extensive look at the delectable secrets of Mesopotamia. Bottéro’s broad perspective takes us inside the religious rites, everyday rituals, attitudes and taboos, and even the detailed preparation techniques involving food and drink in Mesopotamian high culture during the second and third millennia BCE, as the Mesopotamians recorded them. 

Offering everything from translated recipes for pigeon and gazelle stews, the contents of medicinal teas and broths, and the origins of ingredients native to the region, this book reveals the cuisine of one of history’s most fascinating societies. Links to the modern world, along with incredible recreations of a rich, ancient culture through its cuisine, make Bottéro’s guide an entertaining and mesmerizing read.

The preeminent lyric poet of ancient Greece.

Of the Greek lyric poets, Pindar (ca. 518–438 BC) was “by far the greatest for the magnificence of his inspiration” in Quintilian’s view; Horace judged him “sure to win Apollo’s laurels.” The esteem of the ancients may help explain why a good portion of his work was carefully preserved. Most of the Greek lyric poets come down to us only in bits and pieces, but nearly a quarter of Pindar’s poems survive complete. William H. Race now brings us, in two volumes, a new edition and translation of the four books of victory odes, along with surviving fragments of Pindar’s other poems.

Like Simonides and Bacchylides, Pindar wrote elaborate odes in honor of prize-winning athletes for public performance by singers, dancers, and musicians. His forty-five victory odes celebrate triumphs in athletic contests at the four great Panhellenic festivals: the Olympic, Pythian (at Delphi), Nemean, and Isthmian games. In these complex poems, Pindar commemorates the achievement of athletes and powerful rulers against the backdrop of divine favor, human failure, heroic legend, and the moral ideals of aristocratic Greek society. Readers have long savored them for their rich poetic language and imagery, moral maxims, and vivid portrayals of sacred myths.

Race provides brief introductions to each ode and full explanatory footnotes, offering the reader invaluable guidance to these often difficult poems. His Loeb Pindar also contains a helpfully annotated edition and translation of significant fragments, including hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, maiden songs, and dirges.

Cultivated farming advice.

Cato (M. Porcius Cato) the elder (234–149 BC) of Tusculum, statesman and soldier, was the first important writer in Latin prose. His speeches, works on jurisprudence and the art of war, his precepts to his son on various subjects, and his great historical work on Rome and Italy are lost. But we have his De Agricultura; terse, severely wise, grimly humorous, it gives rules in various aspects of a farmer’s economy, including even medical and cooking recipes, and reveals interesting details of domestic life.

Varro (M. Terentius) of Reate (116–27 BC), renowned for his vast learning, was an antiquarian, historian, philologist, student of science, agriculturist, and poet. He was a republican who was reconciled to Julius Caesar and was marked out by him to supervise an intended national library. Of Varro’s more than seventy works involving hundreds of volumes we have only one on agriculture and country affairs (Rerum Rusticarum) and part of his work on the Latin language (De Lingua Latina; LCL 333, 334), though we know much about his Satires. Each of the three books on country affairs begins with an effective mise en scene and uses dialogue. The first book deals with agriculture and farm management, the second with sheep and oxen, the third with poultry and the keeping of other animals large and small, including bees and fish ponds. There are lively interludes and a graphic background of political events.

A Roman farmer on farming.

Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about AD 70. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum.

Columella’s On Agriculture (De re rustica) is the most comprehensive, systematic, and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book 1 covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. 2: Plowing; fertilizing; care of crops. 3–5: Cultivation, grafting, and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. 6: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. 7: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. 8: Poultry; fish ponds. 9: Bee-keeping. 10 (in hexameter poetry): Gardening. 11: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening. 12: Duties of the overseer’s wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving. There is also a separate treatise, Trees (De arboribus), on vines and olives and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before On Agriculture.

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

A Roman farmer on farming.

Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about AD 70. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum.

Columella’s On Agriculture (De re rustica) is the most comprehensive, systematic, and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book 1 covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. 2: Plowing; fertilizing; care of crops. 3–5: Cultivation, grafting, and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. 6: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. 7: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. 8: Poultry; fish ponds. 9: Bee-keeping. 10 (in hexameter poetry): Gardening. 11: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening. 12: Duties of the overseer’s wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving. There is also a separate treatise, Trees (De arboribus), on vines and olives and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before On Agriculture.

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

A Roman farmer on farming.

Columella (Lucius Iunius Moderatus) of Gades (Cadiz) lived in the reigns of the first emperors to about AD 70. He moved early in life to Italy where he owned farms and lived near Rome. It is probable that he did military service in Syria and Cilicia and that he died at Tarentum.

Columella’s On Agriculture (De re rustica) is the most comprehensive, systematic, and detailed of Roman agricultural works. Book 1 covers choice of farming site; water supply; buildings; staff. 2: Plowing; fertilizing; care of crops. 3–5: Cultivation, grafting, and pruning of fruit trees, vines, and olives. 6: Acquisition, breeding, and rearing of oxen, horses, and mules; veterinary medicine. 7: Sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs. 8: Poultry; fish ponds. 9: Bee-keeping. 10 (in hexameter poetry): Gardening. 11: Duties of the overseer of a farm; calendar for farm work; more on gardening. 12: Duties of the overseer’s wife; manufacture of wines; pickling; preserving. There is also a separate treatise, Trees (De arboribus), on vines and olives and various trees, perhaps part of an otherwise lost work written before On Agriculture.

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

Late antique architecture.

Procopius, born at Caesarea in Palestine late in the fifth century, became a lawyer. In AD 527 he was made legal adviser and secretary of Belisarius, commander against the Persians, and went with Belisarius again in 533 against the Vandals and in 535 against the Ostrogoths. Sometime after 540 he returned to Constantinople. He may have been that Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562, but the date of his death (after 558) is unknown.

Procopius’ History of the Wars in 8 books recounts the Persian Wars of emperors Justinus and Justinian down to 550 (2 books); the Vandalic War and after-events in Africa 532–546 (2 books); the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Sicily and Italy 536–552 (3 books); and a sketch of events to 554 (1 book). The whole consists largely of military history, with much information about peoples and places as well, and about special events. He was a diligent, careful, judicious narrator of facts and developments and shows good powers of description. He is just to the empire’s enemies and boldly criticizes emperor Justinian. Other works by Procopius are the Anecdota or Secret History—vehement attacks on Justinian, Theodora, and others; and the Buildings of Justinian (down to AD 558) including roads and bridges as well as churches, forts, hospitals, and so on in various parts of the empire.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Procopius is in seven volumes.

Roman biographies of foreign commanders.

Cornelius Nepos was born in Cisalpine Gaul but lived in Rome and was a friend of Cicero, Atticus, and Catullus. Most of his writings, which included poems, moral examples from history, a chronological sketch of general history, a geographical work, Lives of Cato the Elder and Cicero, and other biographies, are lost. Extant is a portion of his De viris illustribus: (i) part of his parallel Lives of Roman and non-Roman famous men, namely the portion containing Lives of non-Roman generals (all Greeks except three) and a chapter on kings; and (ii) two Lives from the class of historians. The Lives are short popular biographies of various kinds, written in a usually plain readable style, of value today because of Nepos’ use of many good sources.

A Roman layman’s account of medicine in his time.

A. Cornelius Celsus was author, probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD 14–37), of a general encyclopedia of agriculture, medicine, military arts, rhetoric, philosophy, and jurisprudence, in that order of subjects. Of all this great work there survives only the eight books on medicine (De Medicina).

In Book I, after an excellent survey of Greek schools (Dogmatic, Methodic, Empiric) of medicine come sensible dietetics that will always be applicable. Book II deals with prognosis, diagnosis of symptoms (which he stresses strongly), and general therapeutics. Book III addresses internal ailments, fevers, and general diseases. Book IV treats local bodily diseases. Next come two pharmacological books, Book V on treatment by drugs of general diseases, and Book VI on local diseases. Books VII and VIII deal with surgery; these books contain accounts of many operations, including amputation.

Celsus was not a professional doctor of medicine or a surgeon, but a practical layman whose On Medicine, written in a clear and neat style for lay readers, is partly a result of his medical treatment of his household (slaves included), and partly a presentation of information gained from many Greek authorities. From no other source can we learn so much of the condition of medical science up to his own time.

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

A Roman layman’s account of medicine in his time.

A. Cornelius Celsus was author, probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD 14–37), of a general encyclopedia of agriculture, medicine, military arts, rhetoric, philosophy, and jurisprudence, in that order of subjects. Of all this great work there survives only the eight books on medicine (De Medicina).

In Book I, after an excellent survey of Greek schools (Dogmatic, Methodic, Empiric) of medicine come sensible dietetics that will always be applicable. Book II deals with prognosis, diagnosis of symptoms (which he stresses strongly), and general therapeutics. Book III addresses internal ailments, fevers, and general diseases. Book IV treats local bodily diseases. Next come two pharmacological books, Book V on treatment by drugs of general diseases, and Book VI on local diseases. Books VII and VIII deal with surgery; these books contain accounts of many operations, including amputation.

Celsus was not a professional doctor of medicine or a surgeon, but a practical layman whose On Medicine, written in a clear and neat style for lay readers, is partly a result of his medical treatment of his household (slaves included), and partly a presentation of information gained from many Greek authorities. From no other source can we learn so much of the condition of medical science up to his own time.

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

A Roman layman’s account of medicine in his time.

A. Cornelius Celsus was author, probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD 14–37), of a general encyclopedia of agriculture, medicine, military arts, rhetoric, philosophy, and jurisprudence, in that order of subjects. Of all this great work there survives only the eight books on medicine (De Medicina).

In Book I, after an excellent survey of Greek schools (Dogmatic, Methodic, Empiric) of medicine come sensible dietetics that will always be applicable. Book II deals with prognosis, diagnosis of symptoms (which he stresses strongly), and general therapeutics. Book III addresses internal ailments, fevers, and general diseases. Book IV treats local bodily diseases. Next come two pharmacological books, Book V on treatment by drugs of general diseases, and Book VI on local diseases. Books VII and VIII deal with surgery; these books contain accounts of many operations, including amputation.

Celsus was not a professional doctor of medicine or a surgeon, but a practical layman whose On Medicine, written in a clear and neat style for lay readers, is partly a result of his medical treatment of his household (slaves included), and partly a presentation of information gained from many Greek authorities. From no other source can we learn so much of the condition of medical science up to his own time.

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

Three late dialogues.

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, fifty-eight survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

Antiquity’s most prolific and influential medical writer and practitioner.

Galen of Pergamum (129–?199/216), physician to the court of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, was a philosopher, scientist, medical historian, theoretician, and practitioner who wrote forcefully and prolifically on an astonishing range of subjects and whose impact on later eras rivaled that of Aristotle. Galen synthesized the entirety of Greek medicine as a basis for his own doctrines and practice, which comprehensively embraced theory, practical knowledge, experiment, logic, and a deep understanding of human life and society.

This volume presents three works of the greatest importance to Galen’s theory and practice of medicine. On Temperaments sets out Galen’s concept of the combination (krasis) of the four elemental qualities (hot, cold, wet, and dry), which is fundamental to his account of the structure and function of the human body and of animal and plant bodies generally, and is in turn essential to his theory of medical practice. The two related works, On Non-Uniform Distemperment and The Soul’s Traits Depend on Bodily Temperament, deal with specific aspects of dyskrasia, which is a disturbance in the combination of these qualities. Appended are two related short treatises, On the Best Constitution of Our Body and On Good Bodily State.

Ancient Roman word lore.

Varro (M. Terentius), 116–27 BC, of Reate, renowned for his vast learning, was an antiquarian, historian, philologist, student of science, agriculturist, and poet. He was a republican who was reconciled to Julius Caesar and was marked out by him to supervise an intended national library.

Of Varro’s more than seventy works involving hundreds of volumes we have only his treatise On Agriculture (in LCL 283) and part of his monumental achievement De Lingua Latina (On the Latin Language), a work typical of its author’s interest not only in antiquarian matters but also in the collection of scientific facts. Originally it consisted of twenty-five books in three parts: etymology of Latin words (Books 1–7); their inflections and other changes (Books 8–13); and syntax (Books 14–25). Of the whole work survive (somewhat imperfectly) Books 5–10. These are from the section (Books 4–6) that applied etymology to words of time and place and to poetic expressions; the section (Books 7–9) on analogy as it occurs in word formation; and the section (Books 10–12) that applied analogy to word derivation. Varro’s work contains much that is of very great value to the study of the Latin language.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of On the Latin Language is in two volumes.

Ancient Roman word lore.

Varro (M. Terentius), 116–27 BC, of Reate, renowned for his vast learning, was an antiquarian, historian, philologist, student of science, agriculturist, and poet. He was a republican who was reconciled to Julius Caesar and was marked out by him to supervise an intended national library.

Of Varro’s more than seventy works involving hundreds of volumes we have only his treatise On Agriculture (in LCL 283) and part of his monumental achievement De Lingua Latina (On the Latin Language), a work typical of its author’s interest not only in antiquarian matters but also in the collection of scientific facts. Originally it consisted of twenty-five books in three parts: etymology of Latin words (Books 1–7); their inflections and other changes (Books 8–13); and syntax (Books 14–25). Of the whole work survive (somewhat imperfectly) Books 5–10. These are from the section (Books 4–6) that applied etymology to words of time and place and to poetic expressions; the section (Books 7–9) on analogy as it occurs in word formation; and the section (Books 10–12) that applied analogy to word derivation. Varro’s work contains much that is of very great value to the study of the Latin language.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of On the Latin Language is in two volumes.

Antiquity’s most prolific and influential medical writer and practitioner.

If the work of Hippocrates is taken as representing the foundation upon which the edifice of historical Greek medicine was raised, then the work of Galen, who lived some six hundred years later, may be looked upon as the summit of the same edifice.

He was born in Pergamum AD 129, and both there and in other academic centers of the Aegean pursued his medical studies before being appointed physician to the Pergamene gladiators in 157. Becoming dissatisfied with this type of practice he emigrated to Rome, where he soon won acknowledgement as the foremost medical authority of his time and where, with one brief interruption, he remained until his death in 199.

Galen’s merit is to have crystallized or brought into focus all the best work of the Greek medical schools which had preceded his own time. It is essentially in the form of Galenism that Greek medicine was transmitted to after ages.

The philosopher-statesman on theology and epistemology.

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician, and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension, and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, fifty-eight survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

The statesman on statecraft.

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician, and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension, and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, fifty-eight survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

This festschrift honors the work of Stanley K. Stowers, a renowned specialist in the field of Pauline studies and early Christianity, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday and retirement from Brown University. The collection includes twenty-eight essays on theory and history of interpretation, Israelite religion and ancient Judaism, the Greco-Roman world, and early Christinity, a preface honoring Stowers, and a select bibliography of his publications.

Contributors include: Adriana Destro, John T. Fitzgerald, John G. Gager, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Ross S. Kraemer, Saul M. Olyan, Mauro Pesce, Daniel Ullucci, Debra Scoggins Ballentine, William K. Gilders, David Konstan, Nathaniel B. Levtow, Jordan D. Rosenblum, Michael L. Satlow, Karen B. Stern, Emma Wasserman, Nathaniel DesRosiers, John S. Kloppenborg, Luther H. Martin, Arthur P. Urbano, L. Michael White, William Arnal, Pamela Eisenbaum, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Karen L. King, Christopher R. Matthews, Erin Roberts, and Richard Wright.

Imperial Greek epos.

Oppian of Cilicia flourished in the latter half of the second century, and dedicated his Fishing (in five books) to Antoninus, presumably Marcus Aurelius. It deals with the habits and characteristics of fish as well as giving instructions for fishing: if not exactly poetical, it contains a great deal of curious information. The Chase, dedicated to Caracalla, is an inferior composition and may even be the work of a Syrian imitator. The first book gives an appreciation of the huntsman’s horses and hounds, the three remaining being devoted to the hunting of wild animals, from the lion to the hare. This edition is equipped with extensive zoological and ichthyological notes.

This volume also includes the extant work of two epic poets of Egypt who wrote in the second half of the fifth century under the influence of Nonnus. The Rape of Helen of Colluthus in 394 lines is a pleasant account of the Judgement of Paris and Helen’s elopement with him; Tryphiodorus (papyri reveal the correct spelling to be Triphiodorus) deals with The Taking of Troy in 691 lines, beginning with the Wooden Horse and ending with the sacrifice of Polyxena.

Ancient Rome’s original archconservative.

M. Porcius Cato (234–149 BC), one of the best-known figures of the middle Roman Republic, remains legendary for his political and military career, especially his staunch opposition to Carthage; his modest way of life; his integrity of character and austere morality; his literary works, composed in a style at once sophisticated and down-to-earth; his pithy sayings; and his drive to define and to champion Roman national character and traditions in the face of challenges from Greek culture. Cato’s legend derived to no small degree from his own distinctive and compelling self-presentation, which established a model later developed and elaborated by Cicero and by subsequent literary and historical authors for centuries to come.

This volume and its companion (LCL 551) join the Loeb edition of Cato’s only extant work, On Agriculture (LCL 283), by supplying all testimonia about, and all fragments by or attributed to Cato. Highlights are Origines, the first historical work attested in Latin, a history of Rome from its founding to the onset of the first Punic War, as well as the origins of major Italian cities; his orations, regarded as the beginning of Roman oratory; To His Son Marcus, which inaugurated a Roman tradition of didactic pieces addressed by fathers to their sons; Military Matters; the Poem on Morals; letters; commentaries on civil law; and memorable sayings.

Meticulous eloquence.

Publius Aelius Aristides Theodorus was among the most celebrated, versatile, and influential authors of the Second Sophistic era and an important figure in the transmission of Hellenism. Born to wealthy landowners in Mysia in AD 117, he studied in Athens and Pergamum and had begun a promising oratorical career when in the early 140s he fell chronically ill and retreated to the healing shrine of Asclepius in Pergamum. There he began to follow a lifelong series of dream revelations and instructions from the god that inspired the six autobiographical books of Sacred Tales, an invaluable record of both temple therapy and personal religious experience published in the 170s. By 147 Aristides was able to resume his public activities as a member of the landed and gubernatorial elite and to pursue a successful oratorical career. Based at his family estate in Smyrna, he traveled between bouts of illness and produced speeches and lectures for both public and private occasions, declamations on historical themes, polemical works, prose hymns, and essays on a wide variety of subjects, all of it displaying deep and creative familiarity with the classical literary heritage. He died between 180 and 185.

This edition of Aristides’ complete works offers fresh translations and texts based on the critical editions of Lenz-Behr (Orations 1–16) and Keil (Orations 17–53). Volume I contains the Panathenaic Oration, a historical appreciation of classical Athens and Aristides’ most influential work, and A Reply to Plato, the first of three essays taking issue with the attack on orators and oratory delivered in Plato’s Gorgias.

The preeminent orator of ancient Athens.

Demosthenes (384–322 BC), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to Philip of Macedon’s rise to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

Meticulous eloquence.

Publius Aelius Aristides Theodorus was among the most celebrated, versatile, and influential authors of the Second Sophistic era and an important figure in the transmission of Hellenism. Born to wealthy landowners in Mysia in AD 117, he studied in Athens and Pergamum and had begun a promising oratorical career when in the early 140s he fell chronically ill and retreated to the healing shrine of Asclepius in Pergamum. There he began to follow a lifelong series of dream revelations and instructions from the god that inspired the six autobiographical books of Sacred Tales, an invaluable record of both temple therapy and personal religious experience published in the 170s. By 147 Aristides was able to resume his public activities as a member of the landed and gubernatorial elite and to pursue a successful oratorical career. Based at his family estate in Smyrna, he traveled between bouts of illness and produced speeches and lectures for both public and private occasions, declamations on historical themes, polemical works, prose hymns, and essays on a wide variety of subjects, all of it displaying deep and creative familiarity with the classical literary heritage. He died between 180 and 185.

This edition of Aristides’ complete works offers fresh translations and texts based on the critical editions of Lenz-Behr (Orations 1–16) and Keil (Orations 17–53). Volume II contains Oration 3 (In Defense of the Four) and Oration 4, (A Reply to Capito), which along with Oration 2 take issue with the attack on orators and oratory delivered in Plato’s Gorgias.

The preeminent orator of ancient Athens.

Demosthenes (384–322 BC), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to Philip of Macedon’s rise to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

The preeminent orator of ancient Athens.

Demosthenes (384–322 BC), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to Philip of Macedon’s rise to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

The preeminent orator of ancient Athens.

Demosthenes (384–322 BC), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to Philip of Macedon’s rise to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

The preeminent orator of ancient Athens.

Demosthenes (384–322 BC), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to Philip of Macedon’s rise to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

The preeminent orator of ancient Athens.

Demosthenes (384–322 BC), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to Philip of Macedon’s rise to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

The preeminent orator of ancient Athens.

Demosthenes (384–322 BC), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to Philip of Macedon’s rise to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

Beginning with the Roman army’s first foray beyond its borders and concluding with the death of Hadrian in 138 CE, this panoramic history of the early Roman Empire recounts the wars, leaders, and social transformations that lay the foundations of imperial success.

Between 264 BCE, when the Roman army crossed into Sicily, and the death of Hadrian nearly three hundred years later, Rome became one of the most successful multicultural empires in history. In this vivid guide to a fascinating period, David Potter explores the transformations that occurred along the way, as Rome went from republic to mercenary state to bureaucratic empire, from that initial step across the Straits of Messina to the peak of territorial expansion.

Rome was shaped by endless political and diplomatic jockeying. As other Italian city-states relinquished sovereignty in exchange for an ironclad guarantee of protection, Rome did not simply dominate its potential rivals—it absorbed them by selectively offering citizenship and constructing a tiered membership scheme that allowed Roman citizens to maintain political control without excluding noncitizens from the state’s success. Potter attributes the empire’s ethnic harmony to its relative openness.

This imperial policy adapted and persisted over centuries of internal discord. The fall of the republican aristocracy led to the growth of mercenary armies and to the creation of a privatized and militarized state that reached full expression under Julius Caesar. Subsequently, Augustus built a mighty bureaucracy, which went on to manage an empire ruled by a series of inattentive, intemperate, and bullying chief executives. As contemporary parallels become hard to ignore, The Origin of Empire makes clear that the Romans still have much to teach us about power, governance, and leadership.

The Murghad River delta, the site of ancient Margiana, was extensively settled during at least part of the Bronze Age, between 2200 and 1750 B.C. Oases in an otherwise desert region, settlements were situated along deltaic branches of the river or canals dug from those branches. Excavations at one of the largest and most complex of these sites, Gonur depe, have been ongoing for many years under the direction of Victor Sarianidi. During the 1988–89 field season, Fred Hiebert excavated part of Gonur in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of Turkmenistan and the Institute of Archaeology in Moscow.

Published here, the results provide a key to understanding the large corpus of material of the Bactro-Margiana Archaeological Complex extracted over the past 30 years from this and neighboring sites of the Oxus civilization.

Huseyn Efendi, a scribe in the Treasury of Ottoman Egypt who put his service at the disposal of Napoleon Bonaparte during the French expedition to Egypt (1798–1801), wrote his account of Ottoman Egypt in the form of answers to questions posed by the French administrative and financial experts.

Stanford Shaw’s translation is supplemented by an introduction describing the French expedition, and by detailed notes based on material found in the Ottoman archives of Istanbul and Cairo.

What if you were to discover that you were not entirely you, but rather one half of a whole, that you had, in other words, a divine double? In the second and third centuries CE, this idea gripped the religious imagination of the Eastern Mediterranean, providing a distinctive understanding of the self that has survived in various forms throughout the centuries, down to the present. Our Divine Double traces the rise of this ancient idea that each person has a divine counterpart, twin, or alter-ego, and the eventual eclipse of this idea with the rise of Christian conciliar orthodoxy.

Charles Stang marshals an array of ancient sources: from early Christianity, especially texts associated with the apostle Thomas “the twin”; from Manichaeism, a missionary religion based on the teachings of the “apostle of light” that had spread from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean; and from Neoplatonism, a name given to the renaissance of Platonism associated with the third-century philosopher Plotinus. Each of these traditions offers an understanding of the self as an irreducible unity-in-duality. To encounter one’s divine double is to embark on a path of deification that closes the gap between image and archetype, human and divine.

While the figure of the divine double receded from the history of Christianity with the rise of conciliar orthodoxy, it survives in two important discourses from late antiquity: theodicy, or the problem of evil; and Christology, the exploration of how the Incarnate Christ is both human and divine.

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.