'Tell me, Muse, of the man of many turns, who was driven far and wide after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy' Twenty years after setting out to fight in the Trojan War, Odysseus is yet to return home to Ithaca. His household is in disarray: a horde of over 100 disorderly and arrogant suitors are vying to claim Odysseus' wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus is powerless to stop them. Meanwhile, Odysseus is driven beyond the limits of the known world, encountering countless divine and earthly challenges. But Odysseus is 'of many wiles' and his cunning and bravery eventually lead him home, to reclaim both his family and his kingdom. The Odyssey rivals the Iliad as the greatest poem of Western culture and is perhaps the most influential text of classical literature. This elegant and compelling new translation is accompanied by a full introduction and notes that guide the reader in understanding the poem and the many different contexts in which it was performed and read.

Nemesianus s didactic poem about hunting, written in 283-84 AD, is based in its structure and conception on Vergil s Georgics, the classical model for the genre. In its presentation of hunting as a leisure sport, the Cynegetica provides an un-heroic counterpoint to earlier hunting poems. This new critical edition includes extensive and detailed philological commentary. It also considers broader questions, such as the relationship to cynegetic literature, genre-related elements, and the author s self-perception."

Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff's collaboration on this new translation combines the strengths that have recently distinguished both as translators of Greek tragedy: expert knowledge of the Greek and of the needs of the teaching classicist, intimate knowledge of theatre, and an excellent ear for the spoken word. Their Oedipus Tyrannus features foot-of-the-page notes, an Introduction, stage directions and a translation characterized by its clarity, accuracy, and power.

In this volume, Mirko Canevaro studies the 'state' documents (laws and decrees) preserved in the public speeches of the Demosthenic corpus. These documents purport to be Athenian statutes and, if authentic, provide invaluable information about Athenian history, law, and institutions. Offering a comprehensive account of the presence of the documents in the corpora of the orators and in the manuscript tradition, this volume summarizes previous scholarship and delineates a new methodology for analyzing the documents. Examining the documents found in Demosthenes' On the Crown, Against Meidias, Against Aristocrates, Against Timocrates, and Apollodorus' Against Neaera, the core of the volume, which includes a chapter by Edward M. Harris, provides a guide for the reliability of the individual documents, and advances new interpretations of important Athenian laws, such as homicide regulations, legislative procedures, laws on theft, seduction, naturalization, and outlawry. Canevaro argues that some of the documents have been inserted into the speeches in an Athenian environment at the beginning of the third century BC and are therefore reliable, while many others are later forgeries. These forgeries are early products of the tradition of historical declamations and progymnasmata, and could be used as evidence of Hellenistic oratory and rhetorical education.

Lusitanian playwrights who wrote comedias during and after the Dual Monarchy (1580-1640), when the Portuguese and Spanish thrones were united under Habsburg rule, continue to be largely unexplored. This edition highlights the contributions of one of this group's most successful and celebrated members, Jacinto Cordeiro. It describes the sparse critical attention that Cordeiro has received as well as his life, literary career, and historical context. Most importantly, it provides a modern critical edition of Cordeiro's most enduring play, El juramento ante Dios, y lealtad contra el amor, based on a collation of the twenty-one extant witnesses that comprise its textual tradition. Additionally, it includes an in-depth account of the transmission of the play with a stemma that documents the genealogical relationships between extant versions. It also provides an analysis of how Juramento may have been performed for seventeenth-century theatergoers, based on stage directions and performance cues written into the dialogue. In short, this edition introduces modern readers to both Jacinto Cordeiro, a bilingual author who successfully competed in a second language with the giants of Spain's Golden Age, and El juramento ante Dios, a play whose popularity lasted two centuries.

Stories about dragons, serpents, and their slayers make up a rich and varied tradition within ancient mythology and folklore. In this sourcebook, Daniel Ogden presents a comprehensive and easily accessible collection of dragon myths from Greek, Roman, and early Christian sources. Some of the dragons featured are well known: the Hydra, slain by Heracles; the Dragon of Colchis, the guardian of the golden fleece overcome by Jason and Medea; and the great sea-serpent from which Perseus rescues Andromeda. But the less well known dragons are often equally enthralling, like the Dragon of Thespiae, which Menestratus slays by feeding himself to it in armor covered in fish-hooks, or the lamias of Libya, who entice young men into their striking-range by wiggling their tails, shaped like beautiful women, at them. The texts are arranged in such a way as to allow readers to witness the continuity of and evolution in dragon stories between the Classical and Christian worlds, and to understand the genesis of saintly dragon-slaying stories of the sort now characteristically associated with St George, whose earliest dragon-fight concludes the volume. All texts, a considerable number of which have not previously been available in English, are offered in new translations and accompanied by lucid commentaries that place the source-passages into their mythical, folkloric, literary, and cultural contexts. A sampling of the ancient iconography of dragons and an appendix on dragon slaying myths from the ancient Near East and India, particularly those with a bearing upon the Greco-Roman material, are also included. This volume promises to be the most authoritative sourcebook on this perennially fascinating and influential body of ancient myth.

How is the history of antiquity told, and what is the role of narrativity in transforming the image of antiquity? This volume addresses the highly charged intersection between experience, narrative, and history that may be apprehended when we consider the great diversity of narrative practices in literature, the visual arts, and historiography. Individual chapters explore transformations in the imagery, content, stories, and narrative modes of antiquity as they were appropriated in medieval and early modern chronicles, images, and epics.

This collection of essays analyzes the construction of the fall of Rome from a range of perspectives native to different disciplines. Subjects addressed include comparable discourses dating from the earlier history of Rome, the perception of this historical moment by writers living at the time it occurred, and its reception in Byzantium and Western Europe during the Middle Ages."

Plutarch's Lives have been popular reading from antiquity to the present day, combining engaging biographical detail with a strong underlying moral purpose. The Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero are an unusual pair in that they are about unmilitary men who, while superb technically as orators, were both in the end political failures, crushed by the military power which dominated their world. In these two Lives, Plutarch is not so much interested in Demosthenes' and Cicero's rhetorical technique as in their ability to persuade an audience to vote for the right course of action, even if that action was prima facie unpopular. In Plutarch's own time, when the empire of the Caesars had been established for over a century, liberty was of necessity limited, but still an issue, for both Greeks and Romans. His home, Chaeroneia, was a provincial town in Greece, but he travelled regularly to Italy where he met Romans from the elite that ruled the empire. He wrote both for his fellow imperial subjects who still sought to enjoy what freedom they could obtain from the ruling power, and for the Romans who exercised that power but were always subject to the ultimate authority of the emperor. Along with the translations and commentaries, Lintott provides a detailed introduction which discusses the background and context of these two Lives, essential information about the author and the periods in which these two orators lived, and the philosophy which underlies Plutarch's presentation of the two personalities.

A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts provides an introduction to the language and concepts employed in bibliographical studies and textual scholarship as they pertain to early modern manuscripts and printed texts * Winner, Honourable Mention for Literature, Language and Linguistics, American Publishers Prose Awards, 2010 * Based almost exclusively on new primary research * Explains the complex process of viewing documents as artefacts, showing readers how to describe documents properly and how to read their physical properties * Demonstrates how to use the information gleaned as a tool for studying the transmission of literary documents * Makes clear why such matters are important and the purposes to which such information is put * Features illustrations that are carefully chosen for their unfamiliarity in order to keep the discussion fresh

In nineteenth-century Italy, a woman's place was considered to be in the domestic sphere, devoted to family life. But during the Risorgimento and the years following Unification, economic, political and social changes enabled women progressively to engage in pursuits that had previously been the exclusive domain of men. This book traces some of the steps of this shift in cultural perception. Covering the period from the Unification of Italy in 1861 to the First World War, the volume brings together new perspectives on women, culture and gender in ten original interdisciplinary chapters that explore a variety of subjects, including motherhood and spinsterhood, women's relationship with the Italian language, emigration and brigantaggio, patriotism and travel writing, acting and theatre management, film-making, and political ideas and female solidarity.

This collection of essays is a seminal contribution to the establishment of translation theory within the field of Russian literature and culture. It brings together the work of established academics and younger scholars from the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, Sweden and France in an area of academic study that has been largely neglected in the Anglophone world. The essays in the volume are linked by the conviction that the introduction of any new text into a host culture should always be considered in conjunction with adjustments to prevailing conventions within that culture. The case studies in the collection, which cover literary translation in Russia from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, demonstrate how Russian culture has interpreted and accommodated translated texts, and how translators and publishers have used translation as a means of responding to the literary, social and political conditions of their times. In integrating research in the area of translated works more closely into the study of Russian literature and culture generally, this publication represents an important development in current research.

This Norton Critical Edition includes: - Sheila Murnaghan's new translation of the great Greek tragedy of betrayal, revenge, and murder, set in Corinth in the fifth-century B.C.E. - A full introduction and explanatory annotations by Sheila Murnaghan. - Ancient perspectives on the unforgettable plot from Xenophon, Apollonius of Rhodes, and Seneca. - Seminal essays on Medea by P. E. Easterling, Helene P. Foley, and Edith Hall. - A Selected Bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format--annotated text, contexts, and criticism--helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

Written shortly after the capture of the Inca Atahualpa at Cajamarca, Peru, True Account of the Conquest of Peru by Francisco de Jerez, Francisco Pizarro's secretary and notary, is the most influential of the early accounts of the conquest of the Andean region. This fascinating text brings to life Pizarro and his men's arrival in the central Andes of South America and their capture of Inca Atahualpa, the ruler of one of the continent's largest and most powerful civilizations. Injured during the massacre that took place immediately after the capture of Atahualpa but wealthy thanks to his share of the ransom offered by Atahualpa for his freedom, Jerez published his account of the events just months after arriving in Seville in 1534. The present edition is based on the English translation Reports on the Discovery of Peru published by Clement Markham in London in 1872 and also includes his translations of the Letter from Hernando Pizarro to the Royal Audience of Santo Domingo and the Report on the Distribution of the Ransom of Atahualpa by Pedro Sancho. This volume is an invaluable tool for scholars, professors, and students of Latin American studies and students of history and literature interested in the history of the conuest of the Andean region as well as a must read for those fascinated by the history, civilization, and culture of Peru and the Andean region in particular and the Americas in general.

Grattius' Cynegetica, a Roman didactic poem on hunting with dogs, is the author's only surviving work, though it reaches us now in an incomplete form. Thanks to a passing reference by Ovid in his Epistulae ex Ponto it can confidently be dated to the Augustan period, and yet while his literary contemporaries have been and continue to be subjects of academic scrutiny, Grattius is seldom read and remains almost completely unappreciated in classical and literary scholarship. This volume is the first book-length study of Grattius in English or any other language and sets out to rehabilitate the neglected poet by making him and his work accessible to a wide audience. Prefaced by an introduction to the poet and his work, as well as the Latin text of Cynegetica and a new English translation, it presents a broad collection of interpretive essays from an international team of scholars. These essays explore the poem within its literary, intellectual, and socio-political contexts and look forward to Grattius' (more charitable) posthumous reception in Europe in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. As a whole they aim to reveal his enduring relevance for the tradition of didactic poetry and the study of other Augustan poetry and culture, and to provide an impetus for future discussions.

This collection of papers contains some 60 articles selected from the works of the philologist Ernst Vogt. They dealwith a variety of very different aspects of the study of ancient languages, for example the history of literary forms and genres, Greek literature of the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods, the history of transmission and reception, or the history of classical philology. All of the texts have been checked and additions or amendments made.