Herodotus' Histories is a fascinating account of the interactions between the Greeks and their powerful Near-Eastern neighbours. In it he explores the long-term causes for the Persian invasions of Greece in the early fifth century BCE, a momentous event both for the development of Greek civilization and for the beginnings of historiography, and traces the rise of the Persians as rulers of a large multi-ethnic empire whose lands and cultures are vividly described. This first surviving history is a tapestry of brilliant and entertaining narratives, but it also addresses profoundly serious concerns, such as the advantages and failings of different forms of government, the role of religion and morality in public life, and encounters with different cultures. This collection - the first of two volumes - is dedicated to the historical component of the Histories and includes important previously published essays, some translated into English for the first time, which discuss Herodotus' historical method, sources, narrative art, literary antecedents, intellectual background, and political ideology. The introduction contains an account of Herodotus' life and times, as well as a survey of recent scholarship designed as a guide for contextualizing the selected articles according to the range of approaches they represent.

This anthology of sixteen seminal studies of Homer's Iliad offers essential insights into the poem's artistry and cultural background. Two of the contributions have been translated for this volume and others have been revised and updated. An authoritative introduction sets the papers in context and explores significant connections between them. All Greek is translated and a glossary of Greek terms is provided.

The mythical narratives of Stesichorus provide the earliest surviving examples of poetic production in the Greek West. This book illustrates how Stesichorus reshaped Greek epic to create a remarkably innovative type of lyric poetry - a literature that was particularly expressive in its handling of motifs associated with travel, such as the voyages of heroes, their returns home, and their escapes. This comprehensive survey of Stesichorus' treatment of myth discusses his engagement with Homer and Hesiod, his powerful and often moving means of characterisation, his subtle treatment of narrative, and his elaboration of emotional episodes unprecedented in archaic Greek lyric poetry. All Greek is translated, making the book accessible to anyone with an interest in one of the great poets of archaic Greece, whose work had such an impact on the later genre of tragedy.

This book examines the massively important contribution of Pliny the Elder (AD 23/4 - 79) to the physical and applied sciences in the early years of imperial Rome. It is based on the results of laboratory experiments which validate many of Pliny's observations, and on a new study of the technical language he created.

This book is about attribute mathematics, in which nothing ever gets bigger or smaller. More specifically, it is about some of what attribute mathematics can do toward the full digitalization of thought and language. The matter is relevant not only directly to linguistics and philosophy but also indirectly to electrical engineering and neuroscience. The twenty-first century will be that of the brain. Human existence will gradually be turned inside out as tools such as genetics and Boolean algebra allow us to see ourselves function on the smallest scale while it is happening.

This book looks at the stories told by the characters in the Iliad. All these stories are relevant to some aspect of the main narrative of the poem and they help us to understand it. Certain episodes narrated by the poet also reflect on the central issues of the poem, such as the dire consequences of rejecting prayers.

Canonisation is fundamental to the sustainability of cultures. This volume is meant as a (theoretical) exploration of the process, taking Eurasian societies from roughly the first millennium BCE (Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and Roman) as case studies. It focuses on canonisation as a form of cultural formation, asking why and how canonisation works in this particular way and explaining the importance of the first millennium BCE for these question and vice versa. As a result of this focus, notions like anchoring, cultural memory, embedding and innovation play an important role throughout the book.

This commentary discusses Aeschylus' play Agamemnon (458 BC), which is one of the most popular of the surviving ancient Greek tragedies, and is the first to be published in English since 1958. It is designed particularly to help students who are tackling Aeschylus in the original Greek for the first time, and includes a reprint of D. L. Page's Oxford Classical Text of the play.
The introduction defines the place of Agamemnon within the Oresteia trilogy as a whole, and the historical context in which the plays were produced. It discusses Aeschylus' handling of the traditional myth and the main ideas which underpin his overall design: such as the development of justice and the nature of human responsibility; and it emphasizes how the power of words, seen as ominous speech-acts which can determine future events, makes a central contribution to the play's dramatic momentum. Separate sections explore Aeschylus' use of theatrical resources, the role of the chorus, and the solo characters. Finally there is an analysis of Aeschylus' distinctive poetic style and use of imagery, and an outline of the transmission of the play from 458 BC to the first printed editions.

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.

This title presents an exploration of the life and philosophical reflections of this complex Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor. This book is a clear and concise introduction to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. His one major surviving work, often titled 'meditations' but literally translated simply as 'to himself', is a series of short, sometimes enigmatic reflections divided seemingly arbitrarily into twelve books and apparently written only to be read by him. For these reasons Marcus is a particularly difficult thinker to understand. His musings, framed as 'notes to self' or 'memoranda', are the exhortations of an earnest, conscientious Stoic burdened with the onerous responsibilities of ruling an entire empire. William O. Stephens lucidly sketches Marcus Aurelius' upbringing, family relations, rise to the throne, military campaigns, and legacy, situating his philosophy amidst his life and times, explicating the factors shaping Marcus' philosophy, and clarifying key themes in the Memoranda. Specifically designed to meet the needs of students seeking a thorough understanding of this key figure and his major work, "Marcus Aurelius: A Guide for the Perplexed" is the ideal guide for understanding this Stoic author - the only philosopher who was also an emperor. "Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

This book brings together case studies delving into different, unstudied aspects of the Nachleben of selected lost tragedies either in their once extant form or in their fragmentary state in later periods of time. It seeks to explore the ways in which the plays in question were reworked, discussed, represented or reperformed within varying frameworks. Notably enough, research on the reception of tragic fragments could yield insight not only into the receiving work, but also into the facets of the source text that have attracted attention in its subsequent refigurations. It could thus shed light on the ideological and cultural routes through which these fragmentary tragedies were received by the poet, the scholar, the artist, the viewer, the reader and the spectator in each case. The complex process of the refiguration of a fragmentarily preserved play within different contexts could form a yardstick of its cultural power and elucidate the dynamics of fragmentation in modern times. he volume is of particular interest to scholars in the fields of classics, reception, cultural and performance studies, as well as to readers fascinated by Greek tragedy and its vibrant afterlife.

This analysis explores select aspects of the extant fragmentary record of early Roman poetry from its earliest accessible moments through roughly the first hundred and twenty years of its traceable existence. Key questions include how ancient readers made sense of the record as then available to them and how the limitations of their accounts, assumptions, and working methods continue to define the contours of our understanding today. Both using and challenging the standard conceptual frameworks operative in the ancient world, the discussion details what we think we know of the best documented forms, practitioners, contexts, and reception of Roman drama (excluding comedy), epic, and satire in their early instantiations, with occasional glances at the further generic experimentation that accompanied the genesis of literary practice at Rome.

Written by eminent scholar David O. Ross, this guide helps readers to engage with the poetry, thought, and background of Virgil's great epic, suggesting both the depth and the beauty of Virgil's poetic images and the mental images with which the Romans lived.
Guides readers through the complexity of Virgil's poetic style and imagery
All extracts are translated, with original Latin given when necessary
Provides useful historical and social context in which to understand the poem as it was viewed in its time
Includes short introductions to important topics such as Roman religion and the Roman concept of 'character'
Features a helpful appendix which clarifies how to read and hear the poem's Latin hexameter

Book fourteen of the "Man y sh " ( Anthology of Myriad Leaves ) continues Alexander Vovin s new English translation of this 20-volume major work which was compiled between c.759 and 782 AD, making it the earliest and largest Japanese poetic anthology in existence and thus the most important compendium of Japanese culture of the Asuka and Nara periods. Book fourteen is the third volume of the "Man y sh " to be published to date (following books fifteen (2009) and five (2011)) and contains 230 tanka poems, together with a few significant variants, bringing the total to 249. This volume will be followed by publication of book twenty (2013) (instead of the previously announced book seventeen) on account of the fact that book twenty also contains many poems by Border Guards written in the same Eastern Old Japanese (EOJ) as do many of the Azuma-period poems that are contained in book fourteen. Each volume of this new translation contains the original text, kana transliteration, romanization, glossing and commentary.

The information overload produced by the printing press and the new forms of the structuring of knowledge are echoed in fictional works. The essays assembled in this book study the textualization of problematic forms of knowledge in medieval and early modern Spanish literature. Literary Works like the Libro buen amor, La Lozana Andaluza, or the Guzman de Alfarache are read against the backdrop of scientific developments of their times.

This book is the first collection of essays dedicated to the work of C. H. Sisson (1915-2003), a major English poet, critic and translator. The collection aims to offer an overall guide to his work for new readers, while also encouraging established readers of one aspect (such as his well-known classical translations) to explore others. It champions in particular the quality of his original poetry. The book brings together contributions from scholars and critics working in a wide range of fields, including classical reception, translation studies and early modern literature as well as modern English poetry, and concludes with a more personal essay on Sisson's work by Michael Schmidt, his publisher.

A fresh and sympathetic investigation of the depiction of wolves in early medieval literature, recuperating their reputation. The best-known wolves of Old English literature are the Beasts of Battle, alongside ravens and eagles as ravenous heralds of doom who haunt the battlefield in the hope of fresh meat plucked from still-warm bodies. Yet to reduce these animals to mere corpse-scavengers is to deny that they are frequently imbued with a variety of far more nuanced meanings elsewhere in the corpus. Two such meanings are inherited from ancient and medieval European lupine motifs: the superstition that the wolf could steal a person's speech, and the perceived contiguous natures of wolves and human outlaws. Tracing the history of these associations and the evidence to suggest that they were known to writers working in early medieval England, this book provides new, animal-centric readings of Wulf and Eadwacer, Abbo of Fleury and AElfric's Passiones Eadmundi, and Beowulf, placing these texts within a lupine literary network that transcends time and place. By exploring the intricate, contradictory, and even sympathetic depictions of the wolves and wolf-like entities found within these texts, this book banishes all notions of the medieval wolf as the one-dimensional, man-eating creature that it is so often understood to be.

This book opens up a neglected chapter in the reception of Athenian drama, especially comedy; and it gives stage-centre to a particularly attractive and entertaining series of vase-paintings, which have been generally regarded as marginal curiosities. These are the so-called `phlyax vases', nearly all painted in the Greek cities of South Italy in the period 400 t0 360 BC. Up till now, they have been taken to reflect some kind of local folk-theatre, but Oliver Taplin, prompted especially by three that have only been published in the last twelve years, argues that most, if not all, reflect Athenian comedy of the sort represented by Aristophanes. This bold thesis opens up questions of the relation of tragedy as well as comedy to vase-painting, the cultural climate of the Greek cities in Italy, and the extent to which Athenians were aware of drama as a potential `export'. It also enriches appreciation of many key aspects of Aristophanic comedy: its metatheatre and self-reference, its use of stage-action and stage-props, its unabashed indecency, and its polarised relationship, even rivalry, with tragedy. The book has assembled thirty-six photographs of vase-paintings. Many are printed here for the first time outside specialist publications that are not readily accessible.

This book contains a wide-ranging discussion of the literature of religious apologetic composed by pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Roman empire up to the time when Constantine declared himself a Christian. The contributors are distinguished specialists from the fields of ancient history, Jewish history, ancient philosophy, New Testament studies, and patristics. Each chapter is devoted to a particular text or group of texts with the aim of identifying the literary milieu and the circumstances that led to this form of writing. When appropriate, contributors have concentrated on whether the notional audience addressed in the text is the real one, and whether apologetics was regarded as a genre in its own right.

Seneca's Natural Questions is an eight-book disquisition on the nature of meteorological phenomena, ranging inter alia from rainbows to earthquakes, from comets to the winds, from the causes of snow and hail to the reasons why the Nile floods in summer. Much of this material had been treated in the earlier Greco-Roman meteorological tradition, but what notoriously sets Seneca's writing apart is his insertion of extended moralizing sections within his technical discourse. How, if at all, are these outbursts against the luxury and vice that are apparently rampant in Seneca's first-century CE Rome to be reconciled with his main meteorological agenda? In grappling with this familiar question, The Cosmic Viewpoint argues that Seneca is no blinkered or arid meteorological investigator, but a creative explorer into nature's workings who offers a highly idiosyncratic blend of physico-moral investigation across his eight books. At one level, his inquiry into nature impinges on human conduct and morality in its implicit propagation of the familiar Stoic ideal of living in accordance with nature: the moral deviants whom Seneca condemns in the course of the work offer egregious examples of living contrary to nature's balanced way. At a deeper level, however, The Cosmic Viewpoint stresses the literary qualities and complexities that are essential to Seneca's literary art of science: his technical enquiries initiate a form of engagement with nature which distances the reader from the ordinary involvements and fragmentations of everyday life, instead centering our existence in the cosmic whole. From a figurative standpoint, Seneca's meteorological theme raises our gaze from a terrestrial level of existence to a more intuitive plane where literal vision gives way to 'higher' conjecture and intuition: in striving to understand meteorological phenomena, we progress in an elevating direction - a conceptual climb that renders the Natural Questions no mere store of technical learning, but a work that actively promotes a change of perspective in its readership.

Owing to its relatedness to parchment as the primary writing matter of the Middle Ages, human skin was not only a topic to write about in medieval texts, it was also conceived of as an inscribable surface, both in the material and in the figurative sense. This volume explores the textuality of human skin as discussed by Geoffrey Chaucer and other writers (medical, religious, philosophical, and literary) of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. It presents four main aspects of the complex relations between text, parchment, and human skin as they have been discussed in recent scholarship. These four aspects are, first, the (mostly figurative) resonances between parchment-making and transformations of human skin, second, parchment as a space of contact between animal and human spheres, third, human skin and parchment as sites where (gender) identities are negotiated, and fourth, the place of medieval skin studies within cultural studies and its relationship to the major concerns of cultural studies: the difficult demarcation of skin from body, the instability of any inscription, and the skin's precarious state as an entity of its own.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is an annual publication which includes original articles, which may be of substantial length, on a wide range of topics in ancient philosophy, and review articles of major books. Contributors to this volume; Paul A. Vander Waerdt, Christopher Rowe, Rachel Rue, Paula Gottlieb, Robert Bolton, and John M. Cooper.

Seven centuries after the birth of Petrarch (1304-74) the nature and extent of his influence loom ever larger in the study of renaissance literature. In this revised and expanded edition of Petrarch's Canzoniere in the English Renaissance Anthony Mortimer presents a unique anthology of 136 English poems together with the specific Italian texts that they translate, adapt or exploit. The result, with its revealing juxtapositions of major and minor figures, makes fascinating reading for anyone who wants to get beyond broad generalizations about Petrarchism and see exactly what English poets made of Petrarch's celebrated sequence. Reviewing the first edition, Professor Brian Vickers wrote: An ideal text-book for university courses in English or Comparative Literature. The critical introduction is a fresh, independent and accurate survey of the role of Petrarchism in the English Renaissance ... our literary history is being rewritten, more accurately.

In recent decades literary approaches to drama have multiplied: new historical, intertextual, political, performative and metatheatrical, socio-linguistic, gender-driven, transgenre-driven. New information has been amassed, sometimes by re-examination of extant literary texts and material artifacts, at other times from new discoveries from the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, art history, and literary studies. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction to and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From the birth of comedy in Greece to its end in Rome, from the Hellenistic diffusion of performances after the death of Menander to its artistic, scholarly, and literary receptions in the later Roman Empire, no topic is neglected. 41 essays spread across Greek Comedy, Roman Comedy, and the transmission and reception of Ancient comedy by an international team of experts offer cutting-edge guides through the immense terrain of the field, while an expert introduction surveys the major trends and shifts in scholarly study of comedy from the 1960s to today. The Handbook includes two detailed appendices that provide invaluable research tools for both scholars and students. The result offers Hellenists an excellent overview of the earliest reception and creative reuse of Greek New Comedy, Latinists a broad perspective of the evolution of Roman Comedy, and scholars and students of classics an excellent resource and tipping point for future interdisciplinary research.