The Poems of Catullus describes the lifestyle of the Latin poet Catullus, his friends, and his lover, Lesbia. Catullus writes about each of his subjects in tones unique to them. With wild stories of the trouble and comradery shared by his friends, Catullus provides insight on more scandalous aspects of high society Roman culture. However, Catullus' most shocking and compelling subject is his lover, Lesbia, the wife of an aristocrat. The two share a secret and sensual love, taboo not just because of the infidelity, but because Lesbia is many years older than Catullus. Throughout his poems, Catullus depicts their complicated relationship, first in a tender, lustful way, detailing their affairs, then gradually becomes more heated with angst and confusion. In his exploration of their relationship, Catullus embodies the possibility of simultaneously loving and hating someone. With vivid emotion and imagery, The Poems of Catullus provide a clear picture of the poet, his friends, and his lover and invoke a strong impression on its audience. Because of the deep emotions infused with each word and the visceral depictions of ancient Roman life, this collection of poetry is relatable to a modern-day audience, and is an essential educational source. Catullus paved the way and inspired change in the art of poetry, influencing countless poets and poetry styles. The Poems of Catullus also helped create the idea of poetry as a profession. The Poems of Catullus serves a valuable and educational source, enlightening audiences on the culture of the upper-class of the late Roman Republic. However, because Catullus also explores the complex human emotions regarding friendship, sex, and love, The Poems of Catullus have proven to be a timeless testament to the duality of humankind, embracing emotions that lie between the extremes in the spectrum of feeling. Catering to a contemporary audience, this edition of The Poems of Catullus features a new, eye-catching cover design and is reprinted in a modern font to accompany the timeless exploration of human emotion and the humorous, exciting life events of the influential poet Catullus.

Noted medieval combat authorities Dierk Hagedorn and Christian Henry Tobler join forces to present a transcription, translation and analysis of the Peter von Danzig Fight Book, one of the finest manuscripts of the 15th century devoted to the fencing tradition of German grandmaster Johannes Liechtenauer. The codex features anonymous commentaries on Liechtenauer's own mnemonic verses, as well as treatises by other masters of his circle: Masters Lignitzer, Huntfelt, Ott and Peter von Danzig himself. A compendium of teachings for how to fight with the long sword, spear, sword and buckler, dagger, as well as unarmed grappling, both in and out of armour, this volume is a valuable resource for historical martial artists, historians and medieval re-enactors.

Meineck and Woodruff's new annotated translations of Sophocles' Ajax , Women of Trachis , Electra , and Philoctetes combine the same standards of accuracy, concision, clarity, and powerful speech that have so often made their Theban Plays a source of epiphany in the classroom and of understanding in the theatre. Woodruff's Introduction offers a brisk and stimulating discussion of central themes in Sophoclean drama, the life of the playwright, staging issues, and each of the four featured plays.

Oedipus the King is the best-known play we have from the pen of Sophocles and was recognized as a masterpiece in Aristotle's Poetics, which cites the play more often than any other as an example of how to write tragedy. The principal character is the king of a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, who consults Apollo at Delphi and is told that the plague will end only when those who killed the previous king, Laius, are found and punished. He launches an investigation, in the course of which he learns not only that he is himself the killer, but that Laius was his father and Laius' widow, whom he married, his own mother. As a result of this revelation Oedipus changes from being a respected king and conscientious investigator into a polluted and self-blinded outcast. This volume presents a highly-polished English verse translation of Sophocles' powerful play which renders both the beauty of his language and the horror of the events being dramatized. A detailed introduction and notes clearly elucidate how the plot is constructed and the meaning this construction implies, as well as how Sophocles ably concealed the fact that his characters act in ways which differ from what we expect in real life. It also addresses influential misinterpretations, thereby offering an accessible and authoritative introduction to the play that will be of benefit to a wide range of readers.

Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition begins with the recognition that modern culture emerged from a synthesis of the legacies of ancient Greek civilization and the theological perspectives of Jewish and Christian scriptures. Part of what made this synthesis possible was a shared outlook: a common aspiration toward wholeness of understanding that refused to separate knowledge from goodness, virtue from happiness, cosmos from polis, and divine authority from human responsibility. This wholeness of understanding, or wisdom, features prominently in both classical and biblical literatures as an ultimate good. Wisdom in Classical and Biblical Tradition has two central aims. The first is to explain in formal terms what wisdom is. Though wisdom involves matters of practical judgment affecting the life of the individual and the social sphere, it has also been identified with an understanding of the world and of the ultimate realities that give meaning to human thought and action. Michael Legaspi explains how, in its traditional form, wisdom was understood to govern intellectual, social, and ethical endeavors. Legaspi's second aim is to analyze figures and texts that have yielded and shaped the traditional understanding of wisdom. This book examines accounts of wisdom from foundational texts that range from the period of Homer to the destruction of the Second Temple, and explains why the search for wisdom remains an important but problematic endeavor today.

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. This five volume work is a new critical text edition of the only surviving ancient commentary on Plato's Timaeus, in which Proclus encompasses seven centuries of philosophical reflection on Plato's cosmology. For many authors belonging to the Platonic tradition, Proclus' commentary is the only extant source. For late Neoplatonic authors such as Proclus, writing commentaries on works by Plato and others was in fact a way to present their own highly original philosophical doctrines. Apart from being an important source text for the historiography of philosophy, this commentary on the Timaeus thus also provides a unique access way to Proclus' own Neoplatonic views on cosmology, theology, physics, and metaphysics. This new edition is based on a thorough re-examination of the entire manuscript tradition, which has led to a complete understanding of the relation between all extant manuscripts, including the Paris palimpsest BNF Supplement grec 921, belonging to the so-called 'collection philosophique' (9th century). On the basis of digitally enhanced UV photos, the scriptio inferior of this palimpsest (containing parts of books IV and V) was made nearly fully accessible. The study of the manuscript tradition and the apparatus fontium take stock of more than 100 years of study of this circumstantial text. The edition of the text is preceded by a substantial introduction, and followed, for each book, by the edition of the scholia to the text. The final volume also comprises an edition of the remaining fragments of the lost part of the text, including an Arabic fragment, edited by Rudiger Arnzen.

Textile imagery is pervasive in classical literature. An awareness of the craft and technology of weaving and spinning, of the production and consumption of clothing items, and of the social and religious significance of garments is key to the appreciation of how textile and cloth metaphors work as literary devices, their suitability to conceptualize human activities and represent cosmic realities, and their potential to evoke symbolic associations and generic expectations. Spanning mainly Greek and Latin poetic genres, yet encompassing comparative evidence from other Indo-European languages and literature, these 18 chapters draw a various yet consistent picture of the literary exploitation of the imagery, concepts and symbolism of ancient textiles and clothing. Topics include refreshing readings of tragic instances of deadly peploi and fatal fabrics situate them within a Near Eastern tradition of curse as garment, explore female agency in the narrative of their production, and argue for broader symbolic implications of textile-making within the sphere of natural wealth The concepts and technological principles of ancient weaving emerge as cognitive patterns that, by means of analogy rather than metaphor, are reflected in early Greek mathematic and logical thinking, and in archaic poetics. The significance of weaving technology in early philosophical conceptions of cosmic order is revived by Lucretius' account of atomic compound structure, where he makes extensive use of textile imagery, whilst clothing imagery is at the center of the sustained intertextual strategy built by Statius in his epic poem, where recurrent cloaks activate a multilayered poetic memory.

Ovid's Metamorphoses gains its ideal twenty-first-century herald in Stanley Lombardo's bracing translation of a wellspring of Western art and literature that is too often treated, even by poets, as a mere vehicle for the scores of myths it recasts and transmits rather than as a unified work of art with epic-scale ambitions of its own. Such misconceptions are unlikely to survive a reading of Lombardo's rendering, which vividly mirrors the brutality, sadness, comedy, irony, tenderness, and eeriness of Ovid's vast world as well as the poem's effortless pacing. Under Lombardo's spell, neither Argus nor anyone else need fear nodding off. The translation is accompanied by an exhilarating Introduction by W. R. Johnson that unweaves and reweaves many of the poem's most important themes while showing how the poet achieves some of his most brilliant effects. An analytical table of contents, a catalog of transformations, and a glossary are also included.

This book examines the textual representations of emotions, fear in particular, through the lens of Stoic thought and their impact on depictions of power, gender, and agency. It first draws attention to the role and significance of fear, and cognate emotions, in the tyrant's psyche, and then goes on to explore how these emotions, in turn, shape the wider narratives. The focus is on the lengthy epics of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, Statius' Thebaid, and Silius Italicus' Punica. All three poems are obsessed with men in power with no power over themselves, a marked concern that carries a strong Senecan fingerprint. Seneca's influence on post-Neronian epic can be felt beyond his plays. His Epistles and other prose works prove particularly illuminating for each of the poet's gendered treatment of the relationship between power and emotion. By adopting a Roman Stoic perspective, both philosophical and cultural, this study brings together a cluster of major ideas to draw meaningful connections and unlock new readings.

This collection offers a new collaborative reading of Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica: a major, fascinating Greek epic written at the height of the Roman Empire. Building on the surge of interest in imperial Greek poetry seen in the past decades, this volume applies multiple approaches literary, theoretical and historical to ask new questions about this mysterious, challenging poet and to re-evaluate his role in the cultural history of his time. Bringing together experienced imperial epic scholars and new voices in this growing field, the chapters reveal Quintus' crucial place within the inherited epic tradition and his role in shaping the literary politics of Late Antique society.

Trapp offers a new annotated translation of the philosophical orations of Maximus of Tyre. These orations cover a range of topics from Platonic theology to the proper attitude to pleasure. They open a window onto the second century's world of the Second Sophistic and Christian apologists, as well as on to that of the Florentine Platonists of the later fifteenth century who read, studied, and imitated the orations.

‘I long to reach my home and see the day of my return. It is my never-failing wish’

The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats – shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon – Odysseus must test his bravery and native cunning to the full if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him.

E. V. Rieu’s translation of the Odyssey was the very first Penguin Classic to be published, and has itself achieved classic status. For this edition, his text has been sensitively revised and a new introduction added to complement E. V. Rieu’s original introduction.

Homer and the Poetics of Gesture is the first book of its kind to consider the epic formula in terms that are gestural as well as verbal. Drawing on studies from multiple disciplines, including movement theory, dance studies, phenomenology, and early film, it suggests new approaches for interpreting the relationship between repetition and embodiment in Homer. Through a series of dynamic close readings, Purves argues that the deep-seated habits and gestures of epic bodies are instrumental to our understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey, especially insofar as they attune us to the kinetic structures and sensibilities that shape the meaning of the poems. Each of the chapters isolates a scene in which a specific action, posture, or gesture (falling, running, leaping, standing, and reaching) emerges from the background of its other iterations in order to make larger claims about its poetic significance within the epics as a whole. Beginning from the premise that gestures are shared between characters and often identically repeated within the poems' formulaic system, the book reconsiders long-standing arguments about Homeric agency and character by focusing on those moments when a gesture diverges from its expected course, redirecting the plot or drawing the poem in new and surprising directions. Homer and the Poetics of Gesture not only affords new insights into the nature of epic repetition and poetic originality but also reveals unnoticed connections between Homeric structure and technique and the embodied habits and movements of the characters within the poems.

"The Nicomachean Ethics", along with its sequel, "the Politics", is Aristotle's most widely read and influential work. Ideas central to ethics - that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence - found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called 'the Philosopher'. Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering. Aristotle is well known for the precision with which he chooses his words, and in this elegant translation his work has found its ideal match. Bartlett and Collins provide copious notes and a glossary, giving context and further explanation for students, as well as an introduction and a substantial interpretive essay that sketch central arguments of the work and the seminal place of Aristotle's Ethics in his political philosophy as a whole. "The Nicomachean Ethics" has engaged the serious interest of readers across centuries and civilizations - of people ancient, medieval, and modern; pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish - and this new edition will take its place as the standard English-language translation.

This is the first history of Oxford and Cambridge drama during the Tudor and Stuart period. It guides the reader through the theatrical worlds of Englands universities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early Modern Drama at the Universities opens up an exciting and challenging body of evidence and offers the reader a choice of three inroads into the corpus: institutions, intertexts, and individuals. How to get noticed at university? How to get into university in the first place, or a job afterwards? Sandis pinpoints the skills that were required for success and the role of playwriting and performance in the development of those skills. We follow Oxford and Cambridge students along their educational journeyfrom schoolboys to scholars to graduates in the workplace. For the first time, we see the extent to which institutional culture made the drama what it was: pedagogically-inspired, homosocial, and self-reflexive. It was primarily on a college level that students lived, worked, and proved themselves to the community. Therefore, this study argues, to understand university drama as a whole we must recreate it from the building blocks of individual college histories. The hundreds of plays that we have inherited from Oxford and Cambridge are steeped in Classical culture; many are written in Latin. Manuscript, not print, was the accepted medium for keeping records of student plays, and these handwritten copies were unique and personal. It is time to recognize these plays in the context of early modern English drama, to uncover the culture of drama at the universities where many leading playwrights of the age were trained.

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.

Horace's Odes enjoys a long tradition of translation into English, most famously in versions that seek to replicate the quantitative rhythms of the Latin verse in rhymed quatrains. Stanley Lombardo, one of our preeminent translators of classical literature, now gives us a Horace for our own day that focuses on the dynamics, sense, and tone of the Odes , while still respecting its architectonic qualities. In addition to notes on each of the odes, Anthony Corbeill offers an Introduction that sketches the poet's tumultuous political and literary careers, highlights the Odes ' intricate construction and thematic breadth, and identifies some qualities of this work that shed light on a disputed question in its reception: Are these poems or lyrics? This dual-language edition will prove a boon to students of classical civilization, Roman literature, and lovers of one of the great masters of Latin verse.

Eusebius of Caesarea s Onomasticon has been an essential source for the topography of the Holy Land. Based on Biblical texts and the works of ancient authors, the Onomasticon is still the starting point for establishing the localization of ancient cities. This new edition corrects many errors in the Klostermann edition (1902) and makes reference to new sources to establish the text."

Full Length, Tragedy

Characters: 7 male, 4 female

Various sets

This incisive translation of the classic drama is by the noted British playwright, translator and director.

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.

'Dreams are products of the mind, and do not come from any external source' Artemidorus' The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica) is the richest and most vivid pre-Freudian account of dream interpretation, and the only dream-book to have survived complete from Graeco-Roman times. Written in Greek around AD 200, when dreams were believed by many to offer insight into future events, the work is a compendium of interpretations of dreams on a wide range of subjects relating to the natural, human, and divine worlds. It includes the meanings of dreams about the body, sex, eating and drinking, dress, the weather, animals, the gods, and much else. Artemidorus' technique of dream interpretation stresses the need to know the background of the dreamer, such as occupation, health, status, habits, and age, and the work is a fascinating social history, revealing much about ancient life, culture, and beliefs, and attitudes to the dominant power of Imperial Rome. Martin Hammond's fine translation is accompanied by a lucid introduction and explanatory notes by Peter Thonemann, which assist the reader in understanding this important work, which was an influence on both Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault.

A bold reconception of ancient Greek drama by one of the most brilliant and original classical scholars of his generation When John Winkler died in 1990, he left an unpublished manuscript containing a highly original interpretation of the development and meaning of ancient Greek drama. Rehearsals of Manhood makes this groundbreaking work available for the first time, presenting an entirely novel picture of Greek tragedy and a vivid portrait of the cultural poetics of Athenian manhood. Ancient Athens was a military conclave as well as an urban capital, and male citizens were expected to embody the ideal of the Athenian citizen-soldier. Winkler understands Attic drama as a secular manhood ritual, a collaborative aesthetic and civic enterprise focused on the initiation of boys into manhood and the training, testing, and representation of young male warriors. Past efforts to discover the origins and development of Greek tragedy have largely treated drama as a literary genre, isolating it from other Athenian social practices. Winkler returns Greek tragedy to its social context, showing how it was one among many forms of display and performance cultivated by elite males in ancient Greece. The final work of a celebrated classical scholar, Rehearsals of Manhood highlights the civic function of the dramatic festivals at classical Athens as occasions for the examination and representation of boys on the verge of manhood, and offers a fresh explanation of how dramatic performance fit into the social life and gender politics of the Athenian state.