Greek and Roman stories of origin, or aetia, provide a fascinating window onto ancient conceptions of time. Aetia pervade ancient literature at all its stages, and connect the past with the present by telling us which aspects of the past survive "even now" or "ever since then". Yet, while the standard aetiological formulae remain surprisingly stable over time, the understanding of time that lies behind stories of origin undergoes profound changes. By studying a broad range of texts and by closely examining select stories of origin from archaic Greece, Hellenistic Greece, Augustan Rome, and early Christian literature, Time in Ancient Stories of Origin traces the changing forms of stories of origin and the underlying changing attitudes to time: to the interaction of the time of gods and men, to historical time, to change and continuity, as well as to a time beyond the present one. Walter provides a model of how to analyse the temporal construction of aetia, by combining close attention to detail with a view towards the larger temporal agenda of each work. In the process, new insights are provided both into some of the best-known aetiological works of antiquity (e.g. by Hesiod, Callimachus, Vergil, Ovid) and lesser-known works (e.g. Ephorus, Prudentius, Orosius). This volume shows that aetia do not merely convey factual information about the continuity of the past, but implicate the present in ever new complex messages about time.

Did the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) influence the art of his time? Art historians have been fiercely debating this question for decades. This book starts with Ficino's views on the imagination as a faculty of the soul, and shows how these ideas were part of a long philosophical tradition and inspired fresh insights. This approach, combined with little known historical material, offers a new understanding of whether, how and why Ficino's Platonic conceptions of the imagination may have been received in the art of the Italian Renaissance. The discussion explores Ficino's possible influence on the work of Botticelli and Michelangelo, and examines the appropriation of Ficino's ideas by early modern art theorists.

This book uses the mythological hero Heracles as a lens for investigating the nature of heroic violence in Archaic and Classical Greek literature, from Homer through to Aristophanes. Heracles was famous for his great victories as much as for his notorious failures. Driving each of these acts is his heroic violence, an ambivalent force that can offer communal protection as well as cause grievous harm. Drawing on evidence from epic, lyric poetry, tragedy, and comedy, this work illuminates the strategies used to justify and deflate the threatening aspects of violence. The mixed results of these strategies also demonstrate how the figure of Heracles inherently - and stubbornly - resists reform. The diverse character of Heracles' violent acts reveals an enduring tension in understanding violence: is violence a negative individual trait, that is to say the manifestation of an internal state of hostility? Or is it one specific means to a preconceived end, rather like an instrument whose employment may or may not be justified? Katherine Lu Hsu explores these evolving attitudes towards individual violence in the ancient Greek world while also shedding light on timeless debates about the nature of violence itself.

How to Do Things with History is a collection of essays that explores current and future approaches to the study of ancient Greek cultural history. Rather than focus directly on methodology, the essays in this volume demonstrate how some of the most productive and significant methodologies for studying ancient Greece can be employed to illuminate a range of different kinds of subject matter. These essays, which bring together the work of some of the most talented scholars in the field, are based upon papers delivered at a conference held at Cambridge University in September of 2014 in honor of Paul Cartledge's retirement from the post of A. G. Leventis Professor of Ancient Greek Culture. For the better part of four decades, Paul Cartledge has spearheaded intellectual developments in the field of Greek culture in both scholarly and public contexts. His work has combined insightful historical accounts of particular places, periods, and thinkers with a willingness to explore comparative approaches and a keen focus on methodology. Cartledge has throughout his career emphasized the analysis of practice - the study not, for instance, of the history of thought but of thinking in action and through action. The assembled essays trace the broad horizons charted by Cartledge's work: from studies of political thinking to accounts of legal and cultural practices to politically astute approaches to historiography. The contributors to this volume all take the parameters and contours of Cartledge's work, which has profoundly influenced an entire generation of scholars, as starting points for their own historical and historiographical explorations. Those parameters and contours provide a common thread that runs through and connects all of the essays while also offering sufficient freedom for individual contributors to demonstrate an array of rich and varied approaches to the study of the past.

The first six books of David Hadbawnik's astonishing modern translation of the Aeneid appeared from Shearsman Books in 2015. He now brings the whole project to a spectacular conclusion in a volume accompanied by Omar Al-Nakib's dramatic abstract illustrations. "Few narrative poems have possessed the Western imagination like Virgil's twelve-book epic written during Augustus's triumphant consolidation of the Roman Empire. [...] This new volume goes a long way toward moving the narrative into the hands of contemporary readers, drawing out a playful understanding of the ancient story while exhibiting modern preferences for poetic interaction and inquiry into the history and terms of poetic form and translation. Hadbawnik shows the fun to be had in language's etymological resonance, and he delights in scenes of dramatic fulfillment and failure. His translation distills the essence of the narrative by directing a reader's perception of the tale. [...] The turbulent energy Hadbawnik frames in the Aeneid is reinforced by Omar Al-Nakib's illustrations. The images are extraordinarily active, shimmering. Figurative abstractions in black and red ink commit visual renderings that merge a new language with the text. A kind of haptic interplay takes place in textures of visual and auditory modes that interact in the experience of reading. The interplay between the text and images vividly enhance the poem's movements. Readers enter it anew as a work of contemporary art and not as a furzy excavation or dour education in classical writing. It is instead a vivid opportunity to confront our own pleasure for words and images violently imagined in the ancient corpus." -from Dale Martin Smith's Introduction, 'The Warrior Agon'.