A major new edition of the so-called Presocratics.

The fragments and testimonia of the early Greek philosophers (often labeled the ‘Presocratics’) have always been not only a fundamental source for understanding archaic Greek culture and ancient philosophy but also a perennially fresh resource that has stimulated Western thought until the present day. This new systematic conception and presentation of the evidence differs in three ways from Hermann Diels’s groundbreaking work, as well as from later editions: it renders explicit the material’s thematic organization; it includes a selection from such related bodies of evidence as archaic poetry, classical drama, and the Hippocratic corpus; and it presents an overview of the reception of these thinkers until the end of antiquity.

Volume I contains introductory and reference materials essential for using all other parts of the edition.
Volume II presents preliminary chapters on ancient doxography, the cosmological and moral background, and includes the early Ionian thinkers Pherecydes, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.
Volume III includes the early Ionian thinkers Xenophanes and Heraclitus.
Volume IV presents Pythagoras and the Pythagorean School, including Hippasus, Philolaus, Eurytus, Archytas, Hicetas, and Ecphantus, along with chapters on doctrines not attributed by name and reception.
Volume V includes the western Greek thinkers Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus, Empedocles, Alcmaeon, and Hippo.
Volume Vi includes the later Ionian and Athenian thinkers Anaxagoras, Archelaus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, along with chapters on early Greek medicine and the Derveni Papyrus.
Volume VII includes the atomists Leucippus and Democritus.
Volume VIII includes the so-called sophists Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Thrasymachus, and Hippias, along with testimonia relating to the life, views, and argumentative style of Socrates.
Volume IX includes the so-called sophists Antiphon, Lycophron, and Xeniades, along with the Anonymous of Iamblichus, the Dissoi Logoi, a chapter on characterizations of the ‘sophists’ as a group, and an appendix on philosophy and philosophers in Greek drama.

Abbatial annals of medieval England.

Bede “the Venerable,” English theologian and historian, was born in AD 672 or 673 in the territory of the single monastery at Wearmouth and Jarrow. He was ordained deacon (691–2) and priest (702–3) of the monastery, where his whole life was spent in devotion, choral singing, study, teaching, discussion, and writing. Besides Latin he knew Greek and possibly Hebrew.

Bede’s theological works were chiefly commentaries, mostly allegorical in method, based with acknowledgment on Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, and others, but bearing his own personality. In another class were works on grammar and one on natural phenomena; special interest in the vexed question of Easter led him to write about the calendar and chronology. But his most admired production is his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. Here a clear and simple style united with descriptive powers to produce an elegant work, and the facts diligently collected from good sources make it a valuable account. Historical also are his Lives of the Abbots of his monastery, the less successful accounts (in verse and prose) of Cuthbert, and the Letter (November 734) to Egbert his pupil, so important for our knowledge about the Church in Northumbria.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Bede’s historical works is in two volumes.

The first comprehensive history of early Christianity.

Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. AD 260–340), born in Palestine, was a student of the presbyter Pamphilus, whom he loyally supported during Diocletian’s persecution. He was himself imprisoned in Egypt, but became Bishop of Caesarea around 314. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 he sat by the emperor, led a party of moderates, and made the first draft of the famous creed.

Of Eusebius’ many learned publications we have the Martyrs of Palestine and the Life of Constantine; several apologetic and polemic works; parts of his commentaries on the Psalms and Isaiah; and the Chronographia, known chiefly in Armenian and Syriac versions of the original Greek. But Eusebius’ chief fame rests on the History of the Christian Church in ten books, published in 324–325, the most important ecclesiastical history of ancient times, a great treasury of knowledge about the early Church.

The first fruits of Greek botany.

Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.

In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.

In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.

Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.

Poetic concision in abundance.

It was to celebrate the opening of the Roman Colosseum in AD 80 that Martial published his first book of poems, “On the Spectacles.” Written with satiric wit and a talent for the memorable phrase, the poems in this collection record the broad spectacle of shows in the new arena. The great Latin epigrammist’s twelve subsequent books capture the spirit of Roman life—both public and private—in vivid detail. Fortune hunters and busybodies, orators and lawyers, schoolmasters and street hawkers, jugglers and acrobats, doctors and plagiarists, beautiful slaves, and generous hosts are among the diverse characters who populate his verses.

Martial is a keen and sharp-tongued observer of Roman society. His pen brings into crisp relief a wide variety of scenes and events: the theater and public games, life in the countryside, a rich debauchee’s banquet, lions in the amphitheater, the eruption of Vesuvius. The epigrams are sometimes obscene, in the tradition of the genre, sometimes warmly affectionate or amusing, and always pointed. Like his contemporary Statius, though, Martial shamelessly flatters his patron Domitian, one of Rome’s worst-reputed emperors.

D. R. Shackleton Bailey’s translation of Martial’s often difficult Latin eliminates many misunderstandings in previous versions. The text is mainly that of his highly praised Teubner edition of 1990.

Meditative missives.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) ca. 4 BC, of a prominent and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt’s care. He became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial service. After some disgrace during Claudius’ reign he became tutor and then, in AD 54, advising minister to Nero, some of whose worst misdeeds he did not prevent. Involved (innocently?) in a conspiracy, he killed himself by order in 65. Wealthy, he preached indifference to wealth; evader of pain and death, he preached scorn of both; and there were other contrasts between practice and principle.

We have Seneca’s philosophical or moral essays (ten of them traditionally called Dialogues)—on providence, steadfastness, the happy life, anger, leisure, tranquility, the brevity of life, gift-giving, forgiveness—and treatises on natural phenomena. Also extant are 124 epistles, in which he writes in a relaxed style about moral and ethical questions, relating them to personal experiences; a skit on the official deification of Claudius, Apocolocyntosis (in LCL 15); and nine rhetorical tragedies on ancient Greek themes. Many epistles and all his speeches are lost.

The 124 epistles are collected in Volumes IV–VI of the Loeb Classical Library’s ten-volume edition of Seneca.

A condensed Roman history of non-Roman civilizations.

To Justin (Marcus Junian(i)us Justinus), otherwise unknown, is attributed our abbreviated version of the lost Philippic History by (Gnaeus?) Pompeius Trogus, a massive account, in forty-four books, of the non-Roman world and its civilizations, from mythic beginnings through Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic kingdoms, and Parthia. Trogus’ work thus complemented the monumental history of Rome by his Augustan contemporary, Livy, and in high style traced similar moral themes: rulers and states that lack such virtues as moderation, justice, and piety bring harm or ruin on themselves, and often on their realms as well.

Justin, working at some time in the late second to the late fourth century AD, did not produce a strict epitome or summary but what he calls “a brief anthology”: not unlike Florus (LCL 231), who used Livy’s history as the primary source for a brief but original military history of Rome, Justin freely selected what suited his own purposes, favoring “what makes pleasurable reading or serves to provide a moral,” with an eye to the kind of emotive anecdotes that might be useful to orators. He also blends Trogus’ language with borrowings from literature of subsequent generations. Justin’s anthology became one of the most widely read and influential books in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, indeed the main authority on world history other than Roman, surviving in more than 200 manuscripts.

Also included in this edition are the “Prologues,” summaries of Trogus by some other compiler, which preserve many details that Justin omits or reports differently.