Studies on the Derveni Papyrus, volume II brings together two new editions of the first fragmentarily extant columns of the Derveni Papyrus and seven scholarly articles devoted to their interpretation. The Derveni Papyrus is by far the most important textual discovery of the 20th century regarding early Greek philosophy, religion, exegetical theory and practice, linguistic ideas, and a host of other areas and issues. But the editorial and interpretative history of this extraordinary document has been very checkered. While the interpretation of the better preserved later columns is still highly controversial in many regards, at least the text of those columns has by and large found a scholarly consensus; but the editorial and interpretative situation with the worse preserved first columns is quite different. This volume offers not one but two editions of the first columns, by Richard Janko and by Valeria Piano, given that it is not currently possible to agree upon a single edition; and it explains clearly and in detail the papyrological problems and doubts that lead to these two editions, making it possible for readers (even non-papyrologists) to form their own informed judgment about the most likely readings to be adopted. Furthermore, it contains a number of articles by leading scholars on the Derveni Papyrus, above all offering original solutions to the question of the relation between the earlier and the later columns, but also providing analysis and interpretation of other, related problems.

The story of our ongoing fascination with Homer, the man and the myth. Homer, the great poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is revered as a cultural icon of antiquity and a figure of lasting influence. But his identity is shrouded in questions about who he was, when he lived, and whether he was an actual person, a myth, or merely a shared idea. Rather than attempting to solve the mystery of this character, James I. Porter explores the sources of Homer's mystique and their impact since the first recorded mentions of Homer in ancient Greece. Homer: The Very Idea considers Homer not as a man, but as a cultural invention nearly as distinctive and important as the poems attributed to him, following the cultural history of an idea and of the obsession that is reborn every time Homer is imagined. Offering novel readings of texts and objects, the book follows the very idea of Homer from his earliest mentions to his most recent imaginings in literature, criticism, philosophy, visual art, and classical archaeology.

From archaic Sparta to classical Athens the chorus was a pervasive feature of Greek social and cultural life. Until now, however, its reception in Roman literature and culture has been little appreciated. This book examines how the chorus is reimagined in a brief but crucial period in the history of Latin literature, the early Augustan period from 30 to 10 BCE. It argues that in the work of Horace, Virgil, and Propertius, the language and imagery of the chorus articulate some of their most pressing concerns surrounding social and literary belonging in a rapidly changing Roman world. By re-examining seminal Roman texts such as Horace's Odes and Virgil's Aeneid from this fresh perspective, the book connects the history of musical culture with Augustan poetry's interrogation of fundamental questions surrounding the relationship between individual and community, poet and audience, performance and writing, Greek and Roman, and tradition and innovation.

This book is a study of twentieth century Polish literature in the contexts of queer theory, psychoanalysis and modernism studies. It presents readings of well-known authors such as Witold Gombrowicz or of authors gaining international fame such as Miron Bialoszewski, as well as essays on other important, but less known Polish writers. The book also offers theoretical ideas relevant outside the Polish context: the idea of "homoinfluence", the "enigmatic signifier" and its role in "paranoid cultures", the overlapping of Jewishness and queer, the discussion of queer fables for children, or the new approach to the idea of "camp" and its relation to commodity fetishism.

These delightful poems - by turns whimsical, beautiful, and vulgar - seem to have primarily survived because they were attributed to Virgil. But in David R. Slavitt's imaginative and appealing translations, they stand firmly on their own merits. Slavitt brings to this little-known body of verse a fresh voice, vividly capturing the tone and style of the originals while conveying a lively sense of fun.

'Yes, we did many things, then - all Beautiful ...' Lyrical, powerful poems about love, sexuality, sun-soaked Greece and the gods. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Sappho (c.630-570 BCE). Sappho's Stung with Love is available in Penguin Classics.

'You must be Odysseus, man of twists and turns...' The tales of Odysseus's struggle with a man-eating Cyclops and Circe, the beautiful enchantress who turns men into swine. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Next to nothing is known about Homer's life. His works available in Penguin Classics are The Homeric Hymns, The Iliad and The Odyssey.

'Never less than compelling ... She consistently succeeds in bringing what might otherwise seem dusty and remote to vivid life' Tom Holland, Literary Review 'Starts with an erupting volcano - and then gets more exciting ... Wonderfully rich, witty, insightful and wide-ranging' Sarah Bakewell In a dazzling, lively new literary biography, Daisy Dunn weaves together the lives of two Roman greats: Pliny the Elder, author of Natural History, and his nephew Pliny the Younger, who inherited his uncle's notebooks and intellectual legacy. Breathing vivid life back into the Plinys, Daisy Dunn charts the extraordinary lives of two outstanding minds and their lasting legacy on the world. 'A fascinating, compelling and excellent biography' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Immensely entertaining and readable ... Thoroughly recommended' Sunday Times

An exploration of how the image and idea of the dragon has evolved through history How did the dragon get its wings? Everyone in the modern West has a clear idea of what a dragon looks like and of the sorts of stories it inhabits, not least devotees of the fantasies of J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, and George R. R. Martin. A cross between a snake and some fearsome mammal, often sporting colossal wings, they live in caves, lie on treasure, maraud, and breathe fire. They are extraordinarily powerful, but even so, ultimately defeated in their battles with humans. What is the origin of this creature? The Dragon in the West is the first serious and substantial account in any language of the evolution of the modern dragon from its ancient forebears. Daniel Ogden's detailed exploration begins with the drakon of Greek myth and the draco of the dragon-loving Romans, and a look at the ancient world's female dragons. It brings the story forwards though Christian writings, medieval illustrated manuscripts, and the lives of dragon-duelling saints, before concluding with a study of dragons found in the medieval Germanic world, including those of the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf and the Norse sagas.

Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature introduces individual works of Greek and Latin literature to readers who are approaching them for the first time. Each volume sets the work in its literary and historical context and aims to offer a balanced and engaging assessment of its content, artistry, and purpose. A brief survey of the influence of the work upon subsequent generations is included to demonstrate its enduring relevance and power. All quotations from the original are translated into English. Horace's body of lyric poetry, the Odes, is one of the greatest achievements of Latin literature and a foundational text for the Western poetic tradition. These 103 exquisitely crafted poems speak in a distinctive voice - usually detached, often ironic, always humane - reflecting on the changing Roman world that Horace lived in and also on more universal themes of friendship, love, and mortality. In this book, Richard Tarrant introduces readers to the Odesby situating them in the context of Horace's career as a poet and by defining their relationship to earlier literature, Greek and Roman. Several poems have been freshly translated by the author; others appear in versions by Horace's best modern translators. A number of poems are analyzed in detail, illustrating Horace's range of subject matter and his characteristic techniques of form and structure. A substantial final chapter traces the reception of the Odes from Horace's own time to the present. Readers of this book will gain an appreciation for the artistry of one of the finest lyric poets of all time.

The series was founded in 1896. it is dedicated to rare Greek and Latin texts together with translations and commentaries, as well as detailed introductions, so rendering them more accessible to a broader readership. Since 2000 the series has concentrated on Homer's Iliad. A full commentary, presenting the text of the Iliad (by M. L. West), a translation (by J. Latacz) and a commentary in German. Since January 2007, the series is being published by de Gruyter. For backlist titles please visit http: //www.saur.de/index.cfm?lang=EN&ID=0000007757 .

Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature introduces individual works of Greek and Latin literature to readers who are approaching them for the first time. Each volume sets the work in its literary and historical context and aims to offer a balanced and engaging assessment of its content, artistry, and purpose. A brief survey of the influence of the work upon subsequent generations is included to demonstrate its enduring relevance and power. All quotations from the original are translated into English. Horace's body of lyric poetry, the Odes, is one of the greatest achievements of Latin literature and a foundational text for the Western poetic tradition. These 103 exquisitely crafted poems speak in a distinctive voice - usually detached, often ironic, always humane - reflecting on the changing Roman world that Horace lived in and also on more universal themes of friendship, love, and mortality. In this book, Richard Tarrant introduces readers to the Odesby situating them in the context of Horace's career as a poet and by defining their relationship to earlier literature, Greek and Roman. Several poems have been freshly translated by the author; others appear in versions by Horace's best modern translators. A number of poems are analyzed in detail, illustrating Horace's range of subject matter and his characteristic techniques of form and structure. A substantial final chapter traces the reception of the Odes from Horace's own time to the present. Readers of this book will gain an appreciation for the artistry of one of the finest lyric poets of all time.

Sixty years ago, the University of Chicago Press undertook a momentous project: a new translation of the Greek tragedies that would be the ultimate resource for teachers, students, and readers. They succeeded. Under the expert management of eminent classicists David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, those translations combined accuracy, poetic immediacy, and clarity of presentation to render the surviving masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in an English so lively and compelling that they remain the standard translations. Today, Chicago is taking pains to ensure that our Greek tragedies remain the leading English-language versions throughout the twenty-first century. In this highly anticipated third edition, Mark Griffith and Glenn W. Most have carefully updated the translations to bring them even closer to the ancient Greek while retaining the vibrancy for which our English versions are famous. This edition also includes brand-new translations of Euripides' "Medea", "The Children of Heracles", "Andromache", and "Iphigenia among the Taurians", fragments of lost plays by Aeschylus, and the surviving portion of Sophocles' satyr-drama "The Trackers". New introductions for each play offer essential information about its first production, plot, and reception in antiquity and beyond. In addition, each volume includes an introduction to the life and work of its tragedian, as well as notes addressing textual uncertainties and a glossary of names and places mentioned in the plays. In addition to the new content, the volumes have been reorganized both within and between volumes to reflect the most up-to-date scholarship on the order in which the plays were originally written. The result is a set of handsome paperbacks destined to introduce new generations of readers to these foundational works of Western drama, art, and life.

The Traffic Systems of Pompeii is the first sustained examination of the development of road infrastructure in Pompeii-from the archaic age to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE-and its implications for urbanism in the Roman empire. Eric E. Poehler, an authority on Pompeii's uniquely preserved urban structure, distills over five hundred instances of street-level "wear and tear" to reveal for the first time the rules of the ancient road. Through a thorough, yet lively, investigation of every facet of the infrastructure, from the city's urban grid and the shape of the streets to the treatment of their surfaces and the individual elements of construction, the intricacies of the Pompeian traffic system and the changes to its operation over time emerge in vivid detail. Though archaeological expertise forms the backbone of this book, its findings have equally important historical and architectural implications. Later chapters probe how the street design and infrastructure affected social roles and hierarchies among property owners in Pompeii, illuminating the economic forces that push and pull upon the shape of urban space. The final chapters set the road system into its broader context as one major infrastructural and administrative artifact of the Roman empire's deeply urban culture. Where does Pompeii's system fit within the history of Roman traffic control? Is it unique for its innovation, or only for the preservation that permitted its discovery? Poehler marshals evidence from across the Roman world to examine these questions. His measured and thoroughly researched answers make The Traffic Systems of Pompeii a critical step forward in our understanding of infrastructure in the ancient world.

Biography is one of the most widespread literary genres worldwide. Biographies and autobiographies of actors, politicians, Nobel Prize winners, and other famous figures have never been more prominent in book shops and publishers' catalogues. This Handbook offers a wide-ranging, multi-authored survey on biography in Antiquity from its earliest representatives to Late Antiquity. It aims to be a broad introduction and a reference tool on the one hand, and to move significantly beyond the state-of-the-art on the other. To this end, it addresses conceptual questions about this sprawling genre, offers both in-depth readings of key texts and diachronic studies, and deals with the reception of ancient biography across multiple eras up to the present day. In addition, it takes a wide approach to the concept of ancient biography by examining biographical depictions in different textual and visual media (epigraphy, sculpture, architecture) and by providing outlines of biographical developments in ancient and late antique cultures other than Graeco-Roman. Highly accessible, this book aims at a broad audience ranging from specialists to newcomers in the field. Chapters provide English translations of ancient (and modern) terminology and citations. In addition, all individual chapters are concluded by a section containing suggestions for further reading on their specific topic.

Anacreon is one of the most important of the Greek archaic lyric poets and has enjoyed a rich reception in both ancient and modern Europe, from Horace in Rome to the so-called Anacreontic poets in modern Europe (among them Abraham Cowley and Robert Herrick in England, and the young Goethe in Germany). However, despite his importance within the classical canon, there has been no full-scale commentary on the fragments of Anacreon in recent decades (with the exception of a single commentary in modern Greek). The two volumes seek to address this gap in scholarship by providing a detailed and up-to-date commentary on all the known fragments of Anacreon alongside a freshly edited text, critical apparatus, and a new translation. The commentary to reconstruct the context of the fragments, shedding light on Anacreon's relation to earlier poets and discussing a variety of aspects of his work, including language, style, narratological analysis, intertextuality, and performance. Close attention has been paid to Anacreon's elaborate poetic language and use of imagery, especially in the representation of paradoxical emotions: the analysis systematically applies the refined tools developed in recent studies on the language of archaic poetry in order to describe and explain these phenomena, while recent findings in the history of religion and classical archaeology have been brought to bear on his representation of the gods. Fresh interpretation of the papyrus fragments has been particularly fruitful as new material has come to light and fundamentally changed our perception of Anacreon: these show that besides familiar topics such as love, the symposium, and observations of everyday life, more unexpected themes such as the Demeter-cult numbered among his concerns and played a significant role in his poetry.