HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing.' The epic poem The Iliad begins nine years after the beginning of the Trojan War and describes the great warrior Achilles and the battles and events that take place as he quarrels with the King Agamemnon. Attributed to Homer, The Iliad, along with The Odyssey, is still revered today as the oldest and finest example of Western Literature.

"The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a Modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!) and well worth the wait. These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological and literary importance, containing the lion's share of information that survives today about the gods and heroes of pre-Christian Scandinavians, their unique vision of the beginning and end of the world, etc. Jackson Crawford's modern versions of these poems are authoritative and fluent and often very gripping. With their individual headnotes and complementary general introduction, they supply today's readers with most of what they need to know in order to understand and appreciate the beliefs, motivations, and values of the Vikings." -Dick Ringler, Professor Emeritus of English and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin--Madison

The Athenian Isokrates (436-338 BC) is well-known for his long career as an educator and pundit; but originally he wrote 'forensic' speeches, i.e. for delivery in court. Six of them survive (five from Athens, one from Aigina), on issues including assault, fraud and inheritance. Here for the first time, after a General Introduction, they are presented and analysed in depth as a self-contained group. The Greek text and a facing English translation - both new - are augmented by commentaries which juxtapose this material with other surviving writers in the genre (and with Isocrates' own later output). In the process, too, the speeches' historical background, personnel, legal context, rhetorical strategies and all other relevant topics are explored.

This book is an edition of the Athenian Constitution, the only one to survive of 158 Constitutions written in the school of Aristotle in the fourth century B.C., of which a text on papyrus was found at the end of the nineteenth century. Based on an edition commissioned by the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla in Italy, it provides an introduction, a re-edited Greek text with a facing translation, and a commentary. The editor has been engaged with this text throughout his working life, and published a large commentary on it in 1981 and a Penguin Classics translation of it in 1984: since then scholarly advances have continued, and he has been able to take advantage of them to bring the material in this book up to date. The translation aims at an accurate rendering of the Greek text; the commentary is based on the translation, and should be accessible to readers with little or no knowledge of Greek.

Fernan Gonzalez lived from about AD 910 to 970. The popular image of him is of a fearsome warrior who gave his people protection from their enemies (both Muslim and Christian), and a wise and respected lord who enabled them to live in security and harmony. He was generally accepted to have played a strategic role in achieving independence for Castile and freeing it from dominance by the kingdom of Leon. The Poema de Fernan Gonzalez was composed (by an unknown author) in the mid-thirteenth century as an enduring celebration of his triumphs and account of his life and deeds. Fact and legend have become intertwined and there is much within its stanzas that is certainly not closely based on historic facts! This new translation is set against a detailed study of the historic context of the Castillian conflicts and a factual account of the life and achievements of Fernan Gonzalez. The political situation of the time in which the poem was composed is also considered, as is the manner in which the'history' it espouses came to be handed down over three centuries, the possibility of a pre-existing rich oral tradition surrounding this iconic figure, and the possible sources employed by the poet in constructing the poem.

Fernan Gonzalez lived from about AD 910 to 970. The popular image of him is of a fearsome warrior who gave his people protection from their enemies (both Muslim and Christian), and a wise and respected lord who enabled them to live in security and harmony. He was generally accepted to have played a strategic role in achieving independence for Castile and freeing it from dominance by the kingdom of Leon. The Poema de Fernan Gonzalez was composed (by an unknown author) in the mid-thirteenth century as an enduring celebration of his triumphs and account of his life and deeds. Fact and legend have become intertwined and there is much within its stanzas that is certainly not closely based on historic facts! This new translation is set against a detailed study of the historic context of the Castillian conflicts and a factual account of the life and achievements of Fernan Gonzalez. The political situation of the time in which the poem was composed is also considered, as is the manner in which the'history' it espouses came to be handed down over three centuries, the possibility of a pre-existing rich oral tradition surrounding this iconic figure, and the possible sources employed by the poet in constructing the poem.

A medieval Catalan verse fantasy by Bernat Metge, the most important Catalan writer of the fourteenth century, Written around 1381 by Bernat Metge, the most important Catalan writer of the fourteenth century, the Llibre de Fortuna i Prudencia is a fantasy in verse, drawing on learned sources, principally The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Early one morning, Bernat, the protagonist and narrator, decides to alleviate his sorrows by strolling around the harbour of Barcelona. He meets an old man, apparently a beggar, who tricks him into getting into a boat which, despite the absence of sails and oars, conveys him to an island where the goddess Fortuna appears to him. In a heated discussion, Bernat blames her for all his misfortunes. His next meeting is with Prudenciawho is accompanied by seven maidens representing the liberal arts. Prudencia is able to lessen his despair, and exhorts him to trust in providence and renounce material possessions. When she considers him cured, she and the maidens send him sailing back to Barcelona, where he quickly goes home to avoid gossiping townsfolk. Published in association with Editorial Barcino, Barcelona. DAVID BARNETT, whose doctorate is from Queen Mary, University of London, continues to be involved in research on medieval Catalan literature.

An acclaimed biography that recreates the cosmopolitan world in which a wine merchant's son became one of the most celebrated of all English writers Geoffrey Chaucer is often called the father of English literature, but this acclaimed biography reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer's travels, private life, and the circulation of his writings, Marion Turner reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer's adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. From the wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence, the book recounts Chaucer's experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter's nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer's writings. The result is a landmark biography and a fresh account of the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant's son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales.

This book offers an introduction to medieval English book-history through a sequence of exemplary analyses of commonplace book-historical problems. Rather than focus on bibliographical particulars, the volume considers a variety of ways in which scholars use manuscripts to discuss book culture, and it provides a wide-ranging introductory bibliography to aid in the study. All the essays try to suggest how the study of surviving medieval books might be useful in considering medieval literary culture more generally. Subjects covered include authorship, genre, discontinuous production, scribal individuality and community, the history of libraries and the history of book provenance.

Ovid's rarely studied Ibis is an elegiac companion-piece to the Tristia and Ex Ponto written after his banishment to the Black Sea in AD 8. Modelled on a poem of the same name by the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, Ibis stands out as an artistically contrived explosion of vitriol against an unnamed enemy who is characterised in terms of the Egyptian bird with its unprepossessing habits. Based in a tradition of curse-ritual, it is the most difficult of Ovid's poems to penetrate. Robinson Ellis's edition remains an indispensable - if typically eccentric - platform for the study of the poem's obscurities. Indeed Ellis deserves the primary credit for bringing Ibis back from obscurity into the light of day.This reissue of Ellis's 1881 edition includes a new introduction by Gareth Williams setting the edition in the context of earlier and later developments in scholarship. Ellis's edition not only made a significant contribution to research into the Ibis, it is an important representative of a particular vein of scholarship prevalent in nineteenth-century Latin study.

The Cambridge Greek Lexicon is based upon principles differing from those of existing Greek lexica. Entries are organised according to meaning, with a view to showing the developing senses of words and the relationships between those senses. Other contextual and explanatory information, all expressed in contemporary English, is included, such as the typical circumstances in which a word may be used, thus giving fresh insights into aspects of Greek language and culture. The editors have systematically re-examined the source material (including that which has been discovered since the end of the nineteenth century) and have made use of the most recent textual and philological scholarship. The Lexicon, which has been twenty years in the making, is written by an editorial team based in the Faculty of Classics in Cambridge, consisting of Professor James Diggle (Editor-in-Chief), Dr Bruce Fraser, Dr Patrick James, Dr Oliver Simkin, Dr Anne Thompson, and Mr Simon Westripp.

For a work written more than two thousand years ago, in a society in many ways quite alien to our own, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura contains much of striking, even startling, contemporary relevance. This is true, above all, of the fifth book, which begins by putting a strong case against what it has recently become fashionable to call 'intelligent design', and ends with an account of human evolution and the development of society in which the limitations of technological progress form a strong and occasionally explicit subtext. Along the way, the poet touches on many themes which may strike a chord with the twenty-first century reader: the fragility of our ecosystem, the corruption of political life, the futility of consumerism and the desirability of limiting our acquisitive instincts are all highly topical issues for us, as for the poem's original audience. Book V also offers a fascinating introduction to the world-view of the upper-class Roman of the first century BC. This edition (which complements existing Aris and Phillips commentaries on books 3, 4 and 6) will help to make Lucretius' urgent and impassioned argument, and something of his remarkable poetic style, accessible to a wider audience, including those with little or no knowledge of Latin. Both the translation and commentary aim to explain the scientific argument of the book as clearly as possible; and to convey at least some impression of the poetic texture of Lucretius' Latin.

Libanius of Antioch (AD 314-393) stands out as a fundamental source for the history of the Greek East in the 4th century AD. Nearly half the important figures in the Eastern empire of his day are known in part or in full through his works alone. Some 700 people, including many of the key players of the age, are known through his vast collection of letters, the largest to survive from antiquity. letters in this volume offer are addressed to a wide range of people, from family members to old schoolmates and pupils, from provincial governors to the most important officials of the imperial court.

From the translator of the bestselling Poetic Edda (Hackett, 2015) comes a gripping new rendering of two of the greatest sagas of Old Norse literature. Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members-including, among others, the dragon-slayer Sigurd, Brynhild the Valkyrie, and the Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok.

The Children of Heracles is a powerful and challenging tragedy of exile and supplication. Driven from their homeland by Eurystheus, king of Argos, the children of Heracles flee as fugitives throughout Greece until they are granted protection in Athens. However, their acceptance as political refugees threatens to cause civil revolt among the Athenians and hostile invasion from the Argives. The self-sacrifice of Heracles' daughter ensures a victory for Athens and the Heraclidae, but Heracles' mother Alcmene refuses to spare the life of Eurystheus, although he is a prisoner of war protected by Athenian law. The play shows the amorality of the powerful and the vulnerability of refugees in the most disturbing terms, making for a drama of continuing moral and political relevance to the modern world. Greek text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

A new and completely revised edition of this authoritative work, intended to encourage personal appreciation and independent appraisal by students of English. This is a stimulating introduction to the poetry composed in an age that witnessed fundamental cultural developments: the emergence of the English from among the warring tribes of Europe, their conversion to Christianity, the development of feudalism and the chivalric myth, the military adventure of the Crusades, and the growth of a vigorous citizen class in the burgeoning towns of England.

The three plays edited and translated in this volume are strongly linked to what we now think of as the Portuguese Discoveries. All three are fundamentally concerned with the expansion of Portugal in Africa and India through either crusade or commerce. In the introductions to the plays, the playwright's social role as a court dramatist is emphasized and his dramatic productions are set firmly within the political concerns of his time. Careful consideration is given to the involvement of both Gil Vicente and the Inquisition in the later emendation of the play's texts.

Knights was the first play to be produced by Aristophanes on his own behalf. In it, he launched a violent attack on Cleon, the leading politician of the day, on the whole style of leadership that he represented and on a system which seemed to guarantee that a bad leader could be displaced by a worse. This edition presents the Greek text with facing-page translation, introduction, commentary and notes.

Ramon LLull (1232-1316) was born the son of a prosperous Catalan merchant and spent his youth pursuing worldly pursuits, until a series of powerful visions of Christ moved him to devote his life entirely to serving God. One of his lifelong ambitions was to write a book to counter the "errors of the infidels," to which end he studied Arabic and immersed himself in whatever arabic texts he could obtain. The Book of the Lover is one of the most celebrated works of medieval mystical literature offering a uniquely expressed and moving testimony to the soul's quest for union with God. The 365 paragraphs of "moral metaphors" intended for daily meditation, are written in the style of the Muslim sufis who offer words of love and brief exampla that inspire great devotion. Professor Johnston concisely explains the peculiarities of Llull's idiosyncratic theological and philosophical system and offers the most comprehensive assessment to date of his debt to the Islamic tradition of devotional discourse. In addition, brief notes help to guide the reader's appreciation of the spiritual insight that Llull sought to stimulate with his text. Contains original Latin and Catalan text, translation and commentary.