Mock trial—Roman style.

The Major Declamations stand out for their unique contribution to our understanding of the final stage in Greco-Roman rhetorical training. These exercises, in which students learned how to compose and deliver speeches on behalf of either the prosecution or the defense at imaginary trials, demonstrate how standard themes, recurring situations and arguments, and technical rules were to be handled by the aspiring orator. And what is more, they lay bare the mistakes that students often made in this process.

Declamation was practiced in the ancient world from as early as the fifth century BC, but most of its vast tradition has disappeared. The surviving material is mainly in Greek, from the second century AD onward. In Latin the nineteen declamations in the present anthology are by far the most important evidence. In antiquity they were attributed to Quintilian, but they are now thought to be the work of several authors and to date from around AD 100 to the mid- or late third century.

A wide variety of fascinating ethical, social, and legal details animates the fictional world conjured up by these oratorical exercises, and although the themes of declamation can be unrealistic and even absurd (often reminiscent of ancient novel and tragedy), they seem to provide a safe space in which a student could confront a range of complex issues, so as to attain both the technical knowledge necessary to speak persuasively and the soft skills needed to manage the challenges of adult life under the Roman empire.

Mock trial—Roman style.

The Major Declamations stand out for their unique contribution to our understanding of the final stage in Greco-Roman rhetorical training. These exercises, in which students learned how to compose and deliver speeches on behalf of either the prosecution or the defense at imaginary trials, demonstrate how standard themes, recurring situations and arguments, and technical rules were to be handled by the aspiring orator. And what is more, they lay bare the mistakes that students often made in this process.

Declamation was practiced in the ancient world from as early as the fifth century BC, but most of its vast tradition has disappeared. The surviving material is mainly in Greek, from the second century AD onward. In Latin the nineteen declamations in the present anthology are by far the most important evidence. In antiquity they were attributed to Quintilian, but they are now thought to be the work of several authors and to date from around AD 100 to the mid- or late third century.

A wide variety of fascinating ethical, social, and legal details animates the fictional world conjured up by these oratorical exercises, and although the themes of declamation can be unrealistic and even absurd (often reminiscent of ancient novel and tragedy), they seem to provide a safe space in which a student could confront a range of complex issues, so as to attain both the technical knowledge necessary to speak persuasively and the soft skills needed to manage the challenges of adult life under the Roman empire.

Mock trial—Roman style.

The Major Declamations stand out for their unique contribution to our understanding of the final stage in Greco-Roman rhetorical training. These exercises, in which students learned how to compose and deliver speeches on behalf of either the prosecution or the defense at imaginary trials, demonstrate how standard themes, recurring situations and arguments, and technical rules were to be handled by the aspiring orator. And what is more, they lay bare the mistakes that students often made in this process.

Declamation was practiced in the ancient world from as early as the fifth century BC, but most of its vast tradition has disappeared. The surviving material is mainly in Greek, from the second century AD onward. In Latin the nineteen declamations in the present anthology are by far the most important evidence. In antiquity they were attributed to Quintilian, but they are now thought to be the work of several authors and to date from around AD 100 to the mid- or late third century.

A wide variety of fascinating ethical, social, and legal details animates the fictional world conjured up by these oratorical exercises, and although the themes of declamation can be unrealistic and even absurd (often reminiscent of ancient novel and tragedy), they seem to provide a safe space in which a student could confront a range of complex issues, so as to attain both the technical knowledge necessary to speak persuasively and the soft skills needed to manage the challenges of adult life under the Roman empire.

Exemplary wisdom from ancient Rome.

Valerius Maximus compiled his handbook of notable deeds and sayings during the reign of Tiberius (AD 14–37). The collection was admired in antiquity and has recently been attracting renewed scholarly attention. Yet to date there has been no modern English translation of Memorable Doings and Sayings. This work is now added to the Loeb Classical Library, in two volumes, a freshly edited Latin text facing D. R. Shackleton Bailey’s pleasing and authoritative translation.

Valerius arranges his instructive examples in short chapters, each focused on a particular virtue, vice, religious practice, or traditional custom—including Omens, Dreams, Anger, Cruelty, Bravery, Fidelity, Gratitude, Friendship, Parental Love. The moral undercurrent of this collection is readily apparent. But Valerius tells us that the book’s purpose is simply practical: he decided to select worthwhile material from famous writers so that people looking for illustrative examples might be spared the trouble of research. Whatever the author’s intention, his book is an interesting source of information on Roman attitudes toward religion and moral values in the first century.

Exemplary wisdom from ancient Rome.

Valerius Maximus compiled his handbook of notable deeds and sayings during the reign of Tiberius (AD 14–37). The collection was admired in antiquity and has recently been attracting renewed scholarly attention. Yet to date there has been no modern English translation of Memorable Doings and Sayings. This work is now added to the Loeb Classical Library, in two volumes, a freshly edited Latin text facing D. R. Shackleton Bailey’s pleasing and authoritative translation.

Valerius arranges his instructive examples in short chapters, each focused on a particular virtue, vice, religious practice, or traditional custom—including Omens, Dreams, Anger, Cruelty, Bravery, Fidelity, Gratitude, Friendship, Parental Love. The moral undercurrent of this collection is readily apparent. But Valerius tells us that the book’s purpose is simply practical: he decided to select worthwhile material from famous writers so that people looking for illustrative examples might be spared the trouble of research. Whatever the author’s intention, his book is an interesting source of information on Roman attitudes toward religion and moral values in the first century.

The master of New Comedy.

Menander (?344/3–292/1 BC) of Athens, the leading playwright of the New Comedy, wrote more than 100 plays. Many of his comedies were adapted by Roman dramatists. By the middle ages, however, his works were lost. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, papyrus texts, preserved from antiquity by the dry heat of Egypt, began to be discovered. These have yielded so far one play virtually complete (Dyskolos), large continuous portions of four more (Aspis, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, Samia), and sizable chunks of many others. Menander remains a paradox: artificial plots based on unlikely but conventional coincidences, enlivened by individualized characters, realistic situations, and at times deeply moving dialogue.

Volume I of Geoffrey Arnott’s three-volume edition of Menander contains six plays, including Dyskolos (The Peevish Fellow), which won first prize in Athens in 317 BC, and Dis Exapaton (Twice a Swindler), the original of Plautus’ Two Bacchises. Ten plays are in Volume II, among them the recently published fragments of Misoumenos (The Man She Hated), which sympathetically presents the flawed relationship of a soldier and a captive girl; and the surviving half of Perikeiromene (The Girl with Her Hair Cut Short), a comedy of mistaken identity and lovers’ quarrel. Volume III begins with Samia (The Woman from Samos), which has come down to us nearly complete. Here too are the very substantial extant portions of Sikyonioi (The Sicyonians) and Phasma (The Apparition), as well as Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together), on which Plautus’ Cistellaria was based.

The master of New Comedy.

Menander (?344/3–292/1 BC) of Athens, the leading playwright of the New Comedy, wrote more than 100 plays. Many of his comedies were adapted by Roman dramatists. By the middle ages, however, his works were lost. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, papyrus texts, preserved from antiquity by the dry heat of Egypt, began to be discovered. These have yielded so far one play virtually complete (Dyskolos), large continuous portions of four more (Aspis, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, Samia), and sizable chunks of many others. Menander remains a paradox: artificial plots based on unlikely but conventional coincidences, enlivened by individualized characters, realistic situations, and at times deeply moving dialogue.

Volume I of Geoffrey Arnott’s three-volume edition of Menander contains six plays, including Dyskolos (The Peevish Fellow), which won first prize in Athens in 317 BC, and Dis Exapaton (Twice a Swindler), the original of Plautus’ Two Bacchises. Ten plays are in Volume II, among them the recently published fragments of Misoumenos (The Man She Hated), which sympathetically presents the flawed relationship of a soldier and a captive girl; and the surviving half of Perikeiromene (The Girl with Her Hair Cut Short), a comedy of mistaken identity and lovers’ quarrel. Volume III begins with Samia (The Woman from Samos), which has come down to us nearly complete. Here too are the very substantial extant portions of Sikyonioi (The Sicyonians) and Phasma (The Apparition), as well as Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together), on which Plautus’ Cistellaria was based.

The master of New Comedy.

Menander (?344/3–292/1 BC) of Athens, the leading playwright of the New Comedy, wrote more than 100 plays. Many of his comedies were adapted by Roman dramatists. By the middle ages, however, his works were lost. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, papyrus texts, preserved from antiquity by the dry heat of Egypt, began to be discovered. These have yielded so far one play virtually complete (Dyskolos), large continuous portions of four more (Aspis, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, Samia), and sizable chunks of many others. Menander remains a paradox: artificial plots based on unlikely but conventional coincidences, enlivened by individualized characters, realistic situations, and at times deeply moving dialogue.

Volume I of Geoffrey Arnott’s three-volume edition of Menander contains six plays, including Dyskolos (The Peevish Fellow), which won first prize in Athens in 317 BC, and Dis Exapaton (Twice a Swindler), the original of Plautus’ Two Bacchises. Ten plays are in Volume II, among them the recently published fragments of Misoumenos (The Man She Hated), which sympathetically presents the flawed relationship of a soldier and a captive girl; and the surviving half of Perikeiromene (The Girl with Her Hair Cut Short), a comedy of mistaken identity and lovers’ quarrel. Volume III begins with Samia (The Woman from Samos), which has come down to us nearly complete. Here too are the very substantial extant portions of Sikyonioi (The Sicyonians) and Phasma (The Apparition), as well as Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together), on which Plautus’ Cistellaria was based.

A beguiling tale of mistaken transformation.

In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, also known as The Golden Ass, we have the only Latin novel which survives entire. It is truly enchanting: a delightful romance combining realism and magic.

The hero, Lucius, eager to experience the sensations of a bird, resorts to witchcraft but by an unfortunate pharmaceutical error finds himself transformed into an ass. He knows he can revert to his own body by eating rose-petals, but these prove singularly elusive; and the bulk of the work describes his adventures as an animal. He also retails many stories that he overheard, the most charming being that of Cupid and Psyche (beginning, in true fairy-tale fashion, ‘Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina’). Some of the stories are as indecent as they are witty, and two in the ninth book were deemed by Boccaccio worthy of inclusion in the Decameron. At last the goddess Isis takes pity on Lucius. In a surprising denouement, he is restored to human shape and, now spiritually regenerated, is initiated into her mysteries. The author’s baroque Latin style nicely matches his fantastic narrative and is guaranteed to hold a reader's attention from beginning to end.

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

A beguiling tale of mistaken transformation.

In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, also known as The Golden Ass, we have the only Latin novel which survives entire. It is truly enchanting: a delightful romance combining realism and magic.

The hero, Lucius, eager to experience the sensations of a bird, resorts to witchcraft but by an unfortunate pharmaceutical error finds himself transformed into an ass. He knows he can revert to his own body by eating rose-petals, but these prove singularly elusive; and the bulk of the work describes his adventures as an animal. He also retails many stories that he overheard, the most charming being that of Cupid and Psyche (beginning, in true fairy-tale fashion, ‘Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina’). Some of the stories are as indecent as they are witty, and two in the ninth book were deemed by Boccaccio worthy of inclusion in the Decameron. At last the goddess Isis takes pity on Lucius. In a surprising denouement, he is restored to human shape and, now spiritually regenerated, is initiated into her mysteries. The author’s baroque Latin style nicely matches his fantastic narrative and is guaranteed to hold a reader's attention from beginning to end.

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

Five medieval German legends, freshly translated with accessible reading guides.

This volume collects five medieval German legends—the story of Veronica, Vespasian, Theophilus, Mary Magdalene, and the True Cross—in both the Middle High German original and modern English translation alongside unique guides to the relevant Germanic research and the principal themes of each text.
 

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.

Born in Ferrara, Lilio Gregorio Giraldi (1479–1552) received an excellent classical education at the world-famous humanist schools of his native city. On his various travels in search of a patron, he visited Naples, frequenting the Academy there; Mirandola, where he entered the service of Gianfrancesco Pico; Milan, where he studied Greek under Demetrius Chalcondyles; and Rome, where he enjoyed the munificence of Pope Leo X. Following the sack of Rome in 1527, Giraldi eventually made his way back to Ferrara, where he spent the last years of his life.

Giraldi was the author of many works on literary history, mythology, and antiquities. Among the most famous are his dialogues, translated here into English for the first time. Modeled on Cicero’s Brutus, the work discusses hundreds of contemporary neo-Latin and vernacular poets, giving a panoramic view of European poetry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century from Great Britain to Greece, but concentrating above all on Italy.

The twenty-three discourses presented in this volume have a long textual history that ascribes them to St. Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia (d. 328), a prevalent view that lasted through the nineteenth century. Armenian scholarship through the last century has tended to ascribe them to St. Mashtots‘, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet (d. 440). In his critical introduction to this first-ever English translation of the discourses, Terian presents them as an ascetic text by an anonymous abbot writing near the end of the sixth century. The very title in Armenian, Yačaxapatum Čaŕk‘, literally, “Oft-Repeated Discourses,” further validates their ascetic environment, where they were repeatedly related to novices. For want of answers to introductory questions regarding authorship and date, and because of the pervasive grammatical difficulties of the text, the document has remained largely unknown in scholarship. The discourses include many of the Eastern Fathers’ favorite theological themes. They are heavily punctuated with biblical quotations and laced with recurring biblical images and phraseology; the doctrinal and functional centrality of the Scriptures is emphasized throughout. They are replete with traditional Christian moral teachings that have acquired elements of moral philosophy transmitted through Late Antiquity. Echoes of St. Basil’s thought are heard in several of them, and some evidence of the author’s dependence on the Armenian version of the saint’s Rules, translated around the turn of the sixth century, is apparent. On the whole they show how Christians were driven by the Johannine love-command and the Pauline Spirit-guided practice of virtuous living, ever maturing in the ethos of an in-group solidarity culminating in monasticism.

Emma Dante’s passionate and brutal plays stem from a need to confront important familial and societal realities in contemporary southern Italy. Her twenty-first century tales challenge stereotypes of the country and stage acts of resistance against the social, political, and economic conditions of Sicily. The seven works in this anthology paint a complex image of the peninsula through stories of disenfranchisement, misogyny, deep-set bigotry, and religious hypocrisy that reveal economic disparities between the north and south of the country, oppressive gender relations, and deep rooted mafioso-like attitudes. Dante’s lyrical and visceral storytelling oscillates between the humorous and the tragic aspects of everyday life, undertaking an irreverent subversion of the status quo with its extreme physicality and unsettling imagery.

My Heart Became a Bomb is the first collection of poetry by Syrian-Palestinian poet Ramy al-Asheq to be translated into English. Poignant and raw, these poems take the reader along a path of forced emigration from Bashar al-Assad’s prisons in Syria to Amsterdam to Auschwitz to Berlin, Germany, where Al-Asheq is now creating a new home. By turns melancholy and reflective, celebratory and hopeful, Al-Asheq’s newly translated poems offer the English-reading audience a contemporary perspective on the experience of exile in a world facing the phenomeno of mass migration, whether for political or environmental reasons. The translations are the result of a long collaboration between Al-Asheq and Thompson (who also edited this collection). Raising questions about the nature of love, identity, and the role of poetry in the face of constant flux and great uncertainty, My Heart Became a Bomb introduces an important new voice to the world of contemporary poetry.