Long a master of the crafts of Homeric translation and of rhapsodic performance, Stanley Lombardo now turns to the quintessential epic of Roman antiquity, a work with deep roots in the Homeric tradition. With characteristic virtuosity, he delivers a rendering of the Aeneid as compelling as his groundbreaking translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey , yet one that--like the Aeneid itself--conveys a unique epic sensibility and a haunting artistry all its own. W. R. Johnson's Introduction makes an ideal companion to the translation, offering brilliant insight into the legend of Aeneas; the contrasting roles of the gods, fate, and fortune in Homeric versus Virgilian epic; the character of Aeneas as both wanderer and warrior; Aeneas' relationship to both his enemy Turnus and his lover Dido; the theme of doomed youths in the epic; and Virgil's relationship to the brutal history of Rome that he memorializes in his poem. A map, a Glossary of Names, a Translator's Preface, and Suggestions for Further Reading are also included.

This volume provides readers with a new translation and up to date historical and rhetorical commentary on the only extant speech of the Athenian leader Lycurgus (390s/380s-324 BCE), one of Athens' most influential statesman and orators. His prosecutorial speech, Against Leocrates, delivered in 330 BCE, indicted his compatriot for treason, claiming that he fled Athens after the battle of Chaeronea when the city was under threat of attack by Philip II of Macedonia, though this attack never materialized. Although Leocrates was acquitted after the evenly split jury ultimately came down in favour of the defence, the speech is much more than a condemnation of an alleged misconduct: it provides valuable information on the historical and political events around Chaeronea and offers Lycurgus' vision of what Athens could and should do in those circumstances, in light of models which he fashioned from Athenian and other Greek mythical and historical pasts. Not only his legal and rhetorical strategies and the merits of the case are examined here, but also what the speech tells us about his and his contemporaries' perceptions of patriotism, their religious beliefs, views of desirable citizenship, and the tensions between the individual and the state. A detailed introduction complements the new English translation of the speech with an authoritative account of its history and manuscript tradition, as well as an overview of the trial's procedure, Lycurgus' motives for initiating it, and Leocrates' defence. It also provides a survey of Athenian democracy and judicial system in the late fourth century BCE which will be invaluable for readers new to the text, covering Lycurgus' career, his ideology and program for Athens, and what these meant to individual Athenians and democracy, while the in-depth commentary analysing the historical, legal, and rhetorical facets of this multi-layered and unique oration will be of use to both students and advanced scholars of ancient Greek history and rhetoric.

This interdisciplinary and archival study explores the reception of ancient Rome in the artistic, literary, and philosophical works of David Jones (1895-1974)-the Anglo-Welsh, Roman Catholic, First World War veteran. For Jones, the twentieth century was a period of crisis, an age of conflict, disillusionment and cultural decay, all of which he saw as evidence of the decline of Western civilisation. Across his lifetime, Jones would create a dynamic vision of ancient Rome in an attempt both to understand and to challenge this situation. His reimagining of Rome was not founded on a classical education. Instead, it was fashioned from his lived experience, extensive reading, and-most importantly-his engagement with four areas of contemporary discourse that were themselves built upon intricate and conflicting representations of Rome: British political rhetoric, cyclical history, the Catholic cultural revival, and the Welsh nationalist movement. Tracing Jones's developing approach to Rome across these contexts can provide a way into his art and thought. Whether in his poetic fragments, watercolours, essays, letters, marginalia or unique painted inscriptions, Jones strove to question, complicate and remake Rome's relationship with modernity. In this way, Rome appears in Jones's works both as a symbol of transhistorical imperialism, totalitarianism, and the mechanisation of life, and simultaneously as the cultural and religious progenitor of the West, and in particular, of Wales, with which artists must creatively reconnect if decline was to be avoided.

No modern, well-versed literature lover can call their education complete without having read Augustine's Confessions. One of the most original works of world literature, it is the first autobiography ever written, influencing writers from Montaigne to Rousseau, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Greenblatt. It is here that we learn how one of the greatest saints in Christendom overcame a wild and reckless past. Yet English translators have emphasised the ecclesiastical virtues of this masterpiece, at the expense of its passion and literary vigour. Restoring the lyricism of Augustine's original language, Peter Constantine offers a masterful and elegant translation of Confessions.

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374) worked over many years on his long historical text about the Lives of ancient Roman military heroes, De viris illustribus (On Famous Men). Left unfinished at his death, the text was completed by 1379 by Petrarch's colleague, Lombardo della Seta. Within a decade, De viris illustribus was translated into Italian; and in 1476 the Libro degli uomini famosi was printed in Poiano outside of Verona by the eccentric humanist and scribe, Felice Feliciano (1433-1479/1480). The edition includes a peculiar feature: preceding each of the Lives is a page on which is printed an interlace woodcut border within which, however, no image appears. The present book surveys the hand-illumination of twenty surviving copies of Felice's edition in order to investigate: the Renaissance fascination with the classical past; the artistic traditions of representing Uomini famosi; the technical problems of illustrating books with woodcuts; and the fortuna of the 1476 edition. Two copies contain sequences of heroes painted within the woodcut borders; these heroes provide evidence for reconstructing the appearance of the `lost' frescoes of famous men painted at the end of Petrarch's lifetime in the Carrara palace in Padua. The hand-illumination of other copies can be assigned to miniaturists working in Venice, Verona, Ferrara, Florence, Rome and elsewhere, suggesting Felice Feliciano's wide-reaching efforts to market the volume. The importance of studying copy-specific features in Renaissance printed books is further documented by the thirty-two colour plates and over ninety black-and-white figures.

Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae holds a prominent position in modern studies of the emperor Julian as the fullest extant narrative of the reign of the last 'pagan' emperor. Ammianus' Julian: Narrative and Genre in the Res Gestae offers a major reinterpretation of the work, which is one of the main narrative sources for the political history of the later Roman Empire, and argues for a re-examination of Ammianus' agenda and methods in narrating the reign of Julian. Building on recent developments in the application of literary approaches and critical theories to historical texts, Ammianus' presentation of Julian is evaluated by considering the Res Gestae within three interrelated contexts: as a work of Latin historiography, which consciously sets itself within a classical and classicizing generic tradition; in a more immediate literary and political context, as the final contribution by a member of an 'eyewitness' generation to a quarter century of intense debate over Julian's legacy by several authors who had lived through his reign and had been in varying degrees of proximity to Julian himself; and as a narrative text, in which narratorial authority is closely associated with the persona of the narrator, both as an external narrating agent and an occasional participant in the events he relates. This is complemented by a literary survey and a re-analysis of Ammianus' depiction of several key moments in Julian's reign, such as his appointment as Caesar, the battle of Strasbourg in 357AD, his acclamation as Augustus, and the disastrous invasion of Persia in 363AD. It suggests that the Res Gestae presents a Latin-speaking, western audience with an idiosyncratic and 'Romanized' depiction of the philhellene emperor and that, consciously exploiting his position as a Greek writing in Latin and as a contemporary of Julian, Ammianus wished his work to be considered a culminating and definitive account of the man and his life.

Oxford Classical Texts, also known as Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, provide authoritative, clear, and reliable editions of ancient texts, with apparatus criticus on each page. In this volume, Briscoe provides readers with a revised critical edition of the original Latin text of books 21 to 25 of Livy's history of Rome-which cover the first eight years (218-211 BC) of Rome's war with Hannibal-and with the key information required to understand and appreciate the depth and historical relevance of these important writings. Commencing with a substantial English preface, the volume assembles a large number of conjectures, both within the detailed critical apparatus which accompanies the Latin text, and within an extensive appendix. Briscoe draws on the body of research which has accumulated since the previous edition, and utilizes a broad range of manuscripts - some unknown to most or all previous editors of the text - which are organized into designated groups through the use of Greek sigla, enabling the reader to easily identify the stage at which a reading entered the tradition. The volume also includes a comprehensive list of editions and other sources of conjectures, and an extensive index nominum, featuring personal, ethnic, and geographical names.

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, during a fifty-year stretch sometimes dubbed a Pauline "renaissance" of the western church, six different authors produced over four dozen commentaries in Latin on Paul's epistles. Among them was Jerome, who commented on four epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon) in 386 after recently having relocated to Bethlehem from Rome. His commentaries occupy a time-honored place in the centuries-long tradition of Latin-language commenting on Paul's writings. They also constitute his first foray into the systematic exposition of whole biblical books (and his only experiment with Pauline interpretation on this scale), and so they provide precious insight into his intellectual development at a critical stage of his early career before he would go on to become the most prolific biblical scholar of Late Antiquity. This monograph provides the first book-length treatment of Jerome's opus Paulinum in any language. Adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, Cain comprehensively analyzes the commentaries' most salient aspects-from the inner workings of Jerome's philological method and engagement with his Greek exegetical sources, to his recruitment of Paul as an anachronistic surrogate for his own theological and ascetic special interests. One of the over-arching concerns of this book is to explore and to answer, from multiple vantage points, a question that was absolutely fundamental to Jerome in his fourth-century context: what are the sophisticated mechanisms by which he legitimized himself as a Pauline commentator, not only on his own terms but also vis-a-vis contemporary western commentators?

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.

Livy (Titus Livius), the great Roman historian, was born at Patavium (Padua) in 64 or 59 BC where after years in Rome he died in AD 12 or 17. Livy's history, composed as the imperial autocracy of Augustus was replacing the republican system that had stood for over 500 years, presents in splendid style a vivid narrative of Rome's rise from the traditional foundation of the city in 753 or 751 BC to 9 BC and illustrates the collective and individual virtues necessary to achieve and maintain such greatness. Of its 142 books, conventionally divided into pentads and decads, we have 1-10 and 21-45 complete, and short summaries (periochae) of all the rest except 41 and 43-45; 11-20 are lost, and of the rest only fragments and the summaries remain. The third decad constitutes our fullest surviving account of the momentous Second Punic (or Hannibalic) War, and comprises two recognizable pentads: Books 21-25 narrate the run-up to conflict and Rome's struggles in its first phase, with Hannibal dominant; Books 26-30 relate Rome's revival and final victory, as the focus shifts to Scipio Africanus. This edition replaces the original Loeb edition by Frank Gardner Moore.

Composed at the end of the first century CE, Statius' Thebaid recounts the civil war in Thebes between the two sons of Oedipus, Polynices and Eteocles, and the horrific events that take place on the battlefield. Its author, the Roman poet Statius, employed a wide variety of Greco-Roman sources in order to narrate the Argive expedition against Thebes and the fratricidal war. Book 8 opens with the descent of the Argive seer Amphiaraus to the Underworld through a chasm of the earth; the soldiers mourn their seer's loss and elect a successor, Thiodamas, who placates Earth (Tellus) through a prayer, before the opening of the second day of hostilities. The book reaches its climax when fierce Tydeus is mortally wounded and dies having committed an act of cannibalism by eating his opponent's brains; Minerva leaves the battlefield in disgust, taking away from her protege the intended gift of immortality. In this volume, Augoustakis presents the first full-length edition of Thebaid 8, with text and apparatus criticus, and an English translation. A detailed introduction discusses the Argive/Theban myth in the Greek and Roman literary tradition and art, as well as the reception of the book in subsequent centuries, especially in Dante's Divine Comedy. The accompanying commentary provides useful notes which explore questions of interpretation and Statius' language and literary craft, with particular emphasis on the exploitation of various Greek and Latin intertexts in Statius' poetry.

In antiquity Archilochus of Paros was considered a poet rivalled only by Homer and Hesiod, yet he has been relatively neglected by modern scholarship. This is largely due to the fragmentary state of his surviving poetry, though our knowledge has expanded significantly since the middle of the twentieth century as new papyrological finds continue to augment the corpus and our understanding of the poet and his work evolves. This volume is the first ever complete commentary on Archilochus, filling a substantial gap in scholarship on archaic Greek poetry and playing an important and timely role in re-establishing him as a major author and in locating the recent discoveries in the broader context of his oeuvre. Presenting the fragmentary texts alongside brand new translations, the volume also contains a comprehensive introduction offering an accessible guide to Archilochus' work and context, and a detailed commentary providing textual, literary, and historical analysis of all of his surviving poetry and discussing broader questions of performance and genre in early Greek poetic culture. The scope and depth of the analysis not only highlights the diversity and sophistication of Archilochus' work, but also sheds new light on our understanding of Greek iambus and elegy, while his influence on later writers means that the commentary will be of significance to scholars and students of Hellenistic and Roman literature, and the later lyric tradition, as well as archaic and classical Greek literature.

Oxford Classical Texts, also known as Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, provide authoritative, clear, and reliable editions of ancient texts, with apparatus criticus on each page. In this revised critical edition of Caesar's account of his civil war against Pompey during 49-48 BC, Damon allows readers to get closer to the renowned author's original writings than ever before. Based on a new collation of the ancient manuscripts and on a stemma that permits the reconstruction of the archetype more frequently than has previously been possible, the text is suitable for classroom use in upper-level Latin classes, as well as for reading and research purposes. A comprehensive English preface is followed by a conspectus editionum, which lists the 300+ places where modern editions of the text differ from each other, while the Latin text is complemented by an expanded and up-to-date critical apparatus. Also included are an appendix critica which allows readers to gauge the character of the manuscript witnesses to the text, and an appendix orthographica which explains the orthographical principles underlying the printed text. This Oxford Classical Text is also accompanied by a companion volume, Studies on the Text of Caesar's Bellum civile, which presents the detailed philological arguments underpinning this revised edition.

This is an English translation of Sophocles' tragedy of Electra, and the vengeance that she and her brother Orestes take on their mother and step father for the murder of their father. This edition also includes an "afterlife" essay that discusses adaptations of the play, as well as touches on other ways Electra has had influence (Jung's identification of the Electra Complex, O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra"). Focus Classical Library provides close translations with notes and essays to provide access to understanding Greek culture.

Plato of Athens, who laid the foundations of the Western philosophical tradition and in range and depth ranks among its greatest practitioners, was born to a prosperous and politically active family circa 427 BC. In early life an admirer of Socrates, Plato later founded the first institution of higher learning in the West, the Academy, among whose many notable alumni was Aristotle. Traditionally ascribed to Plato are thirty-five dialogues developing Socrates' dialectic method and composed with great stylistic virtuosity, together with the Apology and thirteen letters. The three works in this volume, though written at different stages of Plato's career, are set toward the end of Socrates' life (from 416) and explore the relationship between two people known as love (eros) or friendship (philia). In Lysis, Socrates meets two young men exercising in a wrestling school during a religious festival. In Symposium, Socrates attends a drinking party along with several accomplished friends to celebrate the young tragedian Agathon's victory in the Lenaia festival of 416: the topic of conversation is love. And in Phaedrus, Socrates and his eponymous interlocutor escape the midsummer heat of the city to the banks of the river Ilissus, where speeches by both on the subject of love lead to a critical discussion of the current state of the theory and practice of rhetoric. This edition, which replaces the original Loeb editions by Sir Walter R. M. Lamb and by Harold North Fowler, offers text, translation, and annotation that are fully current with modern scholarship.

Dieses Lehrbuch versteht sich als eine fachubergreifende Literaturgeschichte und stellt in den mehr als acht Jahrhunderten, die es umspannt - von den biblischen Apokryphen bis zu Isidor von Sevilla, Johannes von Damaskus und den orientalischen christlichen Literaturen - alle Literaturgattungen samtlicher grossen Autoren der Periode vor, eingebettet in ihren literarischen, historischen, kirchlichen und theologischen Kontext. Es bietet dem Studierenden eine erste Einfuhrung in alle wichtigen Phanomene der fruhchristlichen Literatur sowie dem Fachgelehrten ein erstes Referenz- und Nachschlagewerk. Die zu jedem Autor und Werk nach Bibliographien, Texteditionen, UEbersetzungen, Hilfsmitteln und Studien gegliederten Spezialbibliographien sind grundlegend fur ein vertieftes Weiterstudium. Karten und Tafeln erganzen den didaktischen Aufbau des Buches.

Electra is a unique, complex, and fascinating Greek tragic heroine, who became a source of inspiration for countless playwrights, artists, musicians and filmmakers. The daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra she famously supported her brother's quest to avenge their father's murder even at the cost of matricide. Her passion for justice and her desire for vengeance have echoed down the centuries to the modern era. Enshrined as the mourner of Greek tragedy par excellence Electra has enjoyed a long and rich reception history. Electra, ancient and modern, examines the treatment of Electra by all three ancient tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and their dialogue with the mythical tradition that preceded them. The focus then shifts forward in time to case studies of her reception in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Gradually Electra's dark desires re-emerge over the course of these three centuries until her passionate cries for vengeance are heard once again. Through its detailed analysis of Electra, this book also provides a helpful introduction to the study of Classical Reception, its ambitions and methods.

Like the constellations in the sky, words such as aphrodisiac, hubris, museum, galaxy and mentor each contain within them a story, if only you knew to look closely. This collection retells the myths behind common words and expressions in English, bringing to life the heroes, monsters and gods whose deeds and battles have left a hidden mark on our language. Compiling more than seventy-five myths, the stories in this book feature well-known figures such as Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Hercules, Achilles, the Amazons, Medusa and the Minotaur. The entries are supplemented with original illustration reproductions of scenes from ancient pottery, and include translations from Ancient Greek epics such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Argonautica and Theogony.

Until now, the image of the Amazons that prevailed in classical antiquity has been predominantly interpreted within the framework of gender discourse. However, Amazons have been paradigmatic in all literary and pictorial genres and through all epochs of antiquity as representatives of various contrast in myth and history, including the familiar and alien, self and other, as well as settled and nomadic. As such, they are a part of very generalized alternative worlds in which constructions of the self and images of the other are co-mingled

This textbook provides a comprehensive scholarly introduction to Classical Chinese and its texts. Classical Chinese is the language of Confucius and Mencius and their contemporaries, who wrote the seminal texts of Chinese philosophy more than 2,000 years ago. Although it was used as a living language for only a relatively short time, it was the foundation of Chinese education throughout the Imperial age, and formed the basis of a literary tradition that continues to the present day. This book offers students all the necessary tools to read, understand, and analyse Classical Chinese texts, including: step-by-step clearly illustrated descriptions of syntactic features; core vocabulary lists; introductions to relevant historical and cultural topics; selected readings from classical literature with original commentaries and in-depth explanations; introductions to dictionaries and other reference works on the study of ancient China; and a guide to philological methods used in the critical analysis of Classical Chinese texts. The extensive glossary provides phonological reconstructions, word classes, English translations, and citations to illustrate usage, while the up-to-date bibliography serves as a valuable starting point for further research.