Maximus the Confessor and his Companions provides the first English translations of seven documents from the seventh century which recount the legal trials, banishment, and deaths of the monk Maximus the Confessor, his disciples and friends, and Pope Martin I. The background to these documents is formed by Byzantine imperial religious policy, radical change in the Byzantine empire, Arab and Persian attacks, and the close ties which existed between Maximus and his followers and the West.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History, from first-century Rome, is the most important surviving encyclopedia of the ancient world. As a guide to the cultural meanings of everyday things in ancient Rome it is unparalleled. Concentrating on Pliny's accounts of foreign lands and peoples, monsters, and barbarians, Trevor Murphy demonstrates the political significance of this reference book as a monument to the power of Roman imperial society.

Fragmented, buried, and largely lost, the classical past presents formidable obstacles to anyone who would seek to know it. 'Deep Classics' is the study of these obstacles and, in particular, of the way in which the contemplation of the classical past resembles - and has even provided a model for - other kinds of human endeavor. This volume offers a new way to understand the modalities and aims of Classics itself, through the ages. Its individual chapters draw fruitful connections between the reception of the classical and current concerns in philosophy of mind, cognitive theory, epistemology, media studies, sense studies, aesthetics, queer theory and eco-criticism. What does the study of the ancient past teach us about our encounters with our own more recent but still elusive memories? What do our always partial reconstructions of ancient sites tell us about the limits of our ability to know our own world, or to imagine our future? What does the reader of the lacunose and corrupted literatures of antiquity learn thereby about literature and language themselves? What does a shattered statue reveal about art, matter, sensation, experience, life? Does the way in which these vestiges of the past are encountered - sitting in a library, standing in a gallery, moving through a ruin - condition our responses to them and alter their significance? And finally, how has the contemplation of antiquity helped to shape seemingly unrelated disciplines, including not only other humanistic and scientific epistemologies but also non-scholarly modes and practices? In asking these and similar questions, Deep Classics makes a pointed intervention in the study of the classical tradition, now more widely known as 'reception studies'.

This multiauthored volume, as well as bringing into clearer focus the notion of drama and oratory as important media of public inquiry and critique, aims to generate significant attention to the unified intentions of the dramatist and the orator to establish favourable conditions of internal stability in democratic Athens. We hope that readers both enjoy and find valuable their engagement with these ideas and beliefs regarding the indissoluble bond between oratorical expertise and dramatic artistry. This exciting collection of studies by worldwide acclaimed classicists and acute younger Hellenists is envisaged as part of the general effort, almost unanimously acknowledged as valid and productive, to explore the impact of formalized speech in particular and craftsmanship rhetoric in general upon Attic drama as a moral and educational force in the Athenian city-state. Both poet and orator seek to deepen the central tensions of their work and to enlarge the main themes of their texts to even broader terms by investing in the art of rhetoric, whilst at the same time, through a skillful handling of events, evaluating the past and establishing standards or ideology.

Panegyric poetry, in both Arabic and Persian, was one of the most important genres of literature in the medieval Middle East and Central Asia. Jocelyn Sharlet argues that panegyric poetry is important not only because it provides a commentary on society and culture in the medieval Middle East, but also because panegyric writing was one of the key means for individuals to gain social mobility and standing during this period. This is particularly so within the context of patronage, a central feature of social order during these times. Sharlet places the medieval Arabic and Persian panegyric firmly within its cultural context, and identifies it as a crucial way of gaining entry to and movement within this patronage network. This is an important contribution to the fields of pre-modern Middle Eastern and Central Asian literature and culture.

Augustine and the Disciplines takes its cue from Augustine's theory of the liberal arts to explore the larger question of how the Bible became the focus of medieval culture in the West. Augustine himself became increasingly aware that an ambivalent attitude towards knowledge and learning was inherent in Christianity. By facing the intellectual challenge posed by this tension he arrived at a new theory of how to interpret the Bible correctly. The topics investigated here include: Augustine's changing relationship with the 'disciplines', as he moved from an attempt at their Christianization (in the philosophical dialogues of Cassiciacum) to a radical reshaping of them within a Christian world-view (in the De Doctrina Christiana and Confessiones); the factors that prompted and facilitated his change of perspective; and the ways in which Augustine's evolving theory reflected contemporary trends in Christian pedagogy.

This volume collects the most recent essays of Richard Hunter, one of the world's leading experts in the field of Greek and Latin literature. The essays range across all periods of ancient literature from Homer to late antiquity, with a particular focus not just on the texts in their original contexts, but also on how they were interpreted and exploited for both literary and more broadly cultural purposes later in antiquity. Taken together, the essays sketch a picture of a continuous tradition of critical and historical engagement with the literature of the past from the period of Aristophanes and then Plato and Aristotle in classical Athens to the rich prose literature of the Second Sophistic. Richard Hunter's earlier essays are collected in On Coming After (Berlin 2008).

This book is the first full-scale edition of the so-called Liber spectaculorum by Martial. A comprehensive introduction addresses the role of epigram in commemorating monuments and occasions, the connection between spectacle and imperial panegyric in Martial's oeuvre, characteristics of the collection, possible circumstances of composition and "publication," transmission of the text, and related issues. Each epigram is followed by an apparatus criticus, an English translation, and a detailed commentary on linguistic, literary, and historical matters, adducing extensive evidence from epigraphy and art as well as literary sources. The book is accompanied by four concordances, five tables, two maps, 30 plates, and an appendix.

In the Roman republic, only the People could pass laws, only the People could elect politicians to office, and the very word republica meant 'the People's business'. So why is it always assumed that the republic was an oligarchy? The main reason is that most of what we know about it we know from Cicero, a great man and a great writer, but also an active right-wing politician who took it for granted that what was good for a small minority of self-styled 'best people' (optimates) was good for the republic as a whole. T. P. Wiseman interprets the last century of the republic on the assumption that the People had a coherent political ideology of its own, and that the optimates, with their belief in justified murder, were responsible for the breakdown of the republic in civil war.

Exploration of the reception of Ovid's myth thorughout history in fiction, film and television. Why has the myth of Pygmalion and his ivory statue proved so inspirational for writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and directors and creators of films and television series? The 'authorised' version of the story appears in the epic poem of transformations, "Metamorphoses", by the first-century CE Latin poet Ovid; in which the bard Orpheus narrates the legend of the sculptor king of Cyprus whose beautiful carved woman was brought to life by the goddess Venus. Focusing on screen storylines with a "Pygmalion" subtext, from silent cinema to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Lars and the Real Girl", this book looks at why and how the made-over or manufactured woman has survived through the centuries and what we can learn about this problematic model of 'perfection' from the perspective of the past and the present. Given the myriad representations of Ovid's myth, can we really make a modern text a tool of interpretation for an ancient poem? This book answers with a resounding 'yes' and explains why it is so important to give antiquity back its future. "Continuum Studies in Classical Reception" presents scholarly monographs offering new and innovative research and debate to students and scholars in the reception of 'Classical Studies'. Each volume will explore the appropriation, reconceptualization and recontextualization of various aspects of the Graeco-Roman world and its culture, looking at the impact of the ancient world on modernity. Research will also cover reception within antiquity, the theory and practice of translation, and reception theory.

The medical literature of ancient Greece has been much studied during the 20th century, particularly from the 1970s on. In spite of this intense activity, the search for manuscripts still relies on the catalogue compiled in the early 1900s by a group of philologists led by the German historian of Greek philosophy and medicine Hermann Diels. However useful the so-called Diels has been and still is, it is now in need of a thorough revision. The present five-tome set is a first step in that direction. Tome 1 offers a reproduction of Diels' catalogue with an index of the manuscripts. The following three tomes provide a reconstruction of the texts contained in the manuscripts listed in Diels on the basis of Diels' catalogue. Proceeding as Diels did, these three tomes distinguish the manuscripts containing texts by (or attributed to) Hippocrates (tome 2), Galen (tome 3), and the other authors considered by Diels (tome 4). Tome 5 will list all the texts listed in Diels for each manuscript in the catalogue. The present work will be a reference for all scholars interested in Greek medical literature and manuscripts, in addition to historians of medicine, medical book, medical tradition, and medical culture.

This collective volume contains thirty six original studies on various aspects of Ancient Greek language, linguistics and philology written by an international group of leading authorities in the field. The essays are organized in five thematic groups covering a wide variety of issues of ancient Greek linguistics, ranging from epigraphy and the study of individual dialects to various other aspects of the structure of the language, such as phonetics and phonology, morphology, lexicon and word formation, etymology, metrics as well as many syntactic matters and problems of pragmatics and stylistics of the language; a number of essays move in the middle ground where language, linguistics and philology crosscut and cross-fertilize each other with the application of linguistic theory to the study of classical texts. The work is of special relevance to scholars interested in Greek linguistics in general and in particular aspects of the Greek language.

Anonymous' and Stephanus' commentaries, written in the 12th century AD, are the first surviving commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Their study, including the environment in which they were written and the philosophical ideas expressed in them, provides a better understanding of the reception of Aristotle's Rhetoric in Byzantium, the Byzantine practice of commenting on classical texts, and what can be called "Byzantine philosophy". For the first time, this book explores the context of production of the commentaries, discusses the identity and features of their authors, and reveals their philosophical and philological significance. In particular, I examine the main topics discussed by Aristotle in the Rhetoric as contributing to persuasion, namely valid and fallacious rhetorical arguments, ethical notions, emotional response and style, and I analyse the commentators' interpretations of these topics. In this analysis, I focus on highlighting the value of the philosophical views expressed, and on creating a discussion between the Byzantine and the modern interpretations of the treatise. Conclusively, the two commentators need to be considered as independent thinkers, who aimed primarily at integrating the treatise within the Aristotelian philosophical system.

Philippe de Commynes, a diplomat who specialized in clandestine operations, served King Louis XI during his campaign to undermine aristocratic resistance and consolidate the sovereignty of the French throne. He is credited with inventing the political memoir, but his reminiscence has also been described as 'the confessions of a traitor': Commynes had abandoned Louis' rival, the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold, before joining forces with the king. This study provides a literary re-evaluation of Commynes' text - a perennial subject of scandal and fascination - while questioning what the terms 'traitor' or 'betrayed' meant in the context of fifteenth-century France. Drawing on diplomatic letters and court transcripts, Irit Kleiman examines the mutual connections between writing and betrayal in Commynes' representation of Louis' reign, the relationship between the author and the king, and the emergence of the memoir as an autobiographical genre. This study significantly deepens our understanding of how historical narrative and diplomatic activities are intertwined in the work of this iconic, iconoclastic figure.

This collection of papers by an international team of contributors seeks to examine the various ways in which ancient authors and modern readers respond to the interrelations of Greek and Latin texts. The works studied in individual chapters vary widely in genre and historical period, with Plato and Cicero taking their places alongside Homer and Catullus.

Building upon the explosion of recent work on mythography, contributions to this volume direct attention to less frequently explored questions of how ancient poets, historians, and philosophers themselves adopted and adapted the work of mythographers. Study of the way that mythographers and their contemporaries take on positions of, alternately, "host" or "parasite" in relation to the other exposes the richness mythographic practice and the roles that mythographers played in the evolving Greco-Roman discourse of myth. From, among others, the seeds of mythographic discourse in Pindar and Plato, to the mythography of the Peripatics, the in-between mythography of Diodorus Siculus, and the "mythographic topography" of Pausanias, this volume invites a reappraisal of the role that mythography played at every stage of Greek thought about myth. Through contributions that explore both mythographers' distinctive style of studying myth to other contributions that focus primarily on the how and why of non-mythographers' use of mythographic techniques, what emerges is a picture of mythography that broadens our conception of mythography while at the same time inviting scholars to seek out more such echoes of mythographic discourse in the work of poets, historians, philosophers at large.

Ancient Greek culture is pervaded by a profound ambivalence regarding female beauty. It is an awe-inspiring, supremely desirable gift from the gods, essential to the perpetuation of a man's name through reproduction; yet it also grants women terrifying power over men, posing a threat inseparable from its allure. The myth of Helen is the central site in which the ancient Greeks expressed and reworked their culture's anxieties about erotic desire. Despite the passage of three millennia, contemporary culture remains almost obsessively preoccupied with all the power and danger of female beauty and sexuality that Helen still represents. Yet Helen, the embodiment of these concerns for our purported cultural ancestors, has been little studied from this perspective. Such issues are also central to contemporary feminist thought. Helen of Troy engages with the ancient origins of the persistent anxiety about female beauty, focusing on this key figure from ancient Greek culture in a way that both extends our understanding of that culture and provides a useful perspective for reconsidering aspects of our own. Moving from Homer and Hesiod to Sappho, Aeschylus, and Euripides, Ruby Blondell offers a fresh examination of the paradoxes and ambiguities that Helen embodies. In addition to literary sources, Blondell considers the archaeological record, which contains evidence of Helen's role as a cult figure, worshipped by maidens and newlyweds. The result is a compelling new interpretation of this alluring figure.

The purpose of this volume is to investigate the crucial role played by the return of knowledge of Greek in the transformation of European culture, both through the translation of texts, and through the direct study of the language. It aims to collect and organize in one database all the digitalised versions of the first editions of Greek grammars, lexica and school texts available in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, between two crucial dates: the start of Chrysoloras's teaching in Florence (c. 1397) and the end of the activity of Aldo Manuzio and Andrea Asolano in Venice (c. 1529). This is the first step in a major investigation into the knowledge of Greek and its dissemination in Western Europe: the selection of the texts and the first milestones in teaching methods were put together in that period, through the work of scholars like Chrysoloras, Guarino and many others. A remarkable role was played also by the men involved in the Council of Ferrara (1438-39), where there was a large circulation of Greek books and ideas. About ten years later, Giovanni Tortelli, together with Pope Nicholas V, took the first steps in founding the Vatican Library. Research into the return of the knowledge of Greek to Western Europe has suffered for a long time from the lack of intersection of skills and fields of research: to fully understand this phenomenon, one has to go back a very long way through the tradition of the texts and their reception in contexts as different as the Middle Ages and the beginning of Renaissance humanism. However, over the past thirty years, scholars have demonstrated the crucial role played by the return of knowledge of Greek in the transformation of European culture, both through the translation of texts, and through the direct study of the language. In addition, the actual translations from Greek into Latin remain poorly studied and a clear understanding of the intellectual and cultural contexts that produced them is lacking. In the Middle Ages the knowledge of Greek was limited to isolated areas that had no reciprocal links. As had happened to many Latin authors, all Greek literature was rather neglected, perhaps because a number of philosophical texts had already been available in translation from the seventh century AD, or because of a sense of mistrust, due to their ethnic and religious differences. Between the 12th and 14th century AD, a change is perceptible: the sharp decrease in Greek texts and knowledge in the South of Italy, once a reference-point for this kind of study, was perhaps an important reason prompting Italian humanists to go and study Greek in Constantinople. Over the past thirty years it has become evident to scholars that humanism, through the re-appreciation of classical antiquity, created a bridge to the modern era, which also includes the Middle Ages. The criticism by the humanists of medieval authors did not prevent them from using a number of tools that the Middle Ages had developed or synthesized: glossaries, epitomes, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, translations, commentaries. At present one thing that is missing, however, is a systematic study of the tools used for the study of Greek between the 15th and 16th century; this is truly important, because, in the following centuries, Greek culture provided the basis of European thought in all the most important fields of knowledge. This volume seeks to supply that gap.

This casebook presents representative texts from Roman legal sources that introduce the basic problems arising in Roman families, including marriage and divorce, the pattern of authority within households, the transmission of property between generations, and the supervision of orphans.

Many cultures, including Greeks, Romans, French, and British, have taken great pride in legends that recount the foundation of their society. This book demonstrates the contexts in which a medieval British matriarchal legend, the Albina narrative, was paired over time with a patriarchal narrative, which was already widely disseminated, leading to the attribution of British origins to the warrior Brutus. By the close of the Middle Ages, the Albina tale had appeared in multiple versions in French, Latin, English, Welsh, and Dutch. This study investigates the classical roots of the narrative and the ways it was manipulated in the Middle Ages to function as a national foundation legend. Of especial interest are the dynamic qualities of the text: how it was adapted over the span of two centuries to meet the changing needs of medieval writers and audiences. The currency in the Middle Ages of the Albina narrative is attested to by its inclusion in nearly all the extant manuscripts of the Middle English Prose Brut, many of the French and Latin Bruts, and in a variety of other chronicles and romances. In total, there are over 230 manuscripts surviving today that contain versions of the Albina tale. Despite this, however, relatively little modern scholarship has focused on this widely disseminated and adapted legend. This book provides the first-ever overview of the entire Albina tradition, from its roots to its eventual demise as a popularly accepted narrative. The Classical basis of the narrative in the Hypermnestra story and the ways it was manipulated in the medieval era to function as a national foundation legend are considered. Folkloric, biblical, and legal influences on the development of the tradition are addressed. The tale is viewed through a variety of lenses to suggest ways it may have functioned or was put to use in the Middle Ages. The study concludes with an overview of the narrative's demise in the Renaissance. This is a useful reference source for medievalists and other scholars interested in chronicle studies, literature, folklore, foundation narratives, manuscript studies, and historiography. It will also be useful to art historians who wish to study the various depictions of the Albina narrative in illuminated texts. The tale's emphasis on matriarchy and its subversion of the accepted societal norm will attract the interest of scholars in feminist studies. As the first analysis of the Albina tradition as a whole, it will be a valuable cornerstone for later studies.

Jerome's Epitaph on Saint Paula (Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae) is one of the most famous writings by one of the most prolific authors in all of Latin antiquity. Composed in 404, it is an elaborate eulogy commemorating the life of Paula (347-404), a wealthy Christian widow from Rome who renounced her senatorial status and embraced a lifestyle of ascetic self-discipline and voluntary poverty. She used her vast inherited fortune to fund various charitable causes and to co-found with Jerome, in 386, a monastic complex in Bethlehem which was equipped with a hostelry for Christian pilgrims. The Epitaphium is one of the core primary texts on female spirituality (both real and idealized) in Late Antiquity, and it also is one of Jerome's crowning literary achievements, yet until now it has not received the depth of scholarly analysis that only a proper commentary can afford. This book presents the first full-scale commentary on this monumental work in any language. Cain accesses a very extensive array of ancient sources to fully contextualize the Epitaphium and he comprehensively addresses stylistic, literary, historical, topographical, theological, text-critical and other issues of interpretive interest, including relevant matters of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin philology. Considerable effort also is expended on extricating the elusive Paula of history from the sticky web of Jerome's idealized hagiographic construct of her. Accompanying the commentary is an introduction which situates the Epitaphium in the broader context of its author's life and work and exposes its various propagandistic dimensions. The critical Latin text and the facing-page translation will make the Epitaphium more accessible than ever before and will provide a reliable textual apparatus for future scholarship on this key Hieronymian writing.

The perception of demons in late antiquity was determined by the cultural and religious contexts. Therefore the authors of this volume take into consideration a wide variety of texts stemming from different religious milieus ranging from spells, apocalypses, martyrdom literature to hagiography and focus specifically on the literary aspects of the transformation of the demonic in this period of transition.

Did you know King Arthur had many other children besides Mordred?
Depending on which version of the legend you read, he had both sons and daughters, some of whom even survived him. From the ancient tale of Gwydre, the son who was gored to death by a boar, to Scottish traditions of Mordred as a beloved king, Tyler R. Tichelaar has studied all the references to King Arthur's children to show how they shed light upon a legend that has intrigued us for fifteen centuries.
"King Arthur's Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition" is the first full-length analysis of every known treatment of King Arthur's children, from Welsh legends and French romances, to Scottish genealogies and modern novels by such authors as Parke Godwin, Stephen Lawhead, Debra Kemp, and Elizabeth Wein. "King Arthur's Children" explores an often overlooked theme in Arthurian literature and reveals King Arthur's bloodline may still exist today.
Arthurian Authors Praise "King Arthur's Children"
"Author Tyler R. Tichelaar has performed impeccable research into the Arthurian legend, fi nding neglected details in early sources and reigniting their significance. Great brainstorming fun I am proud to add this to my personal collection of Arthurian non-fiction."
--Debra Kemp, author of The House of Pendragon series
"Tyler R. Tichelaar's in-depth analysis of the plausibility of King Arthur's children reaffirms the importance the King Arthur legacy continues to have for society and the need of people all over the world to be able to connect to and believe in King Arthur and Camelot."
--Cheryl Carpinello, author of Guinevere: On the Eve of Legend
About the Author
Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D., is the author of several historical novels, most notably "The Marquette Trilogy" and the award-winning "Narrow Lives." King Arthur's Children reveals his findings into the Arthurian legend as a precursor to his upcoming novel "King Arthur's Legacy."
Learn more at www.ChildrenOfArthur.com
from the "Reflections of Camelot" Series at Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com