Adventure, sex, magic, robbery, and dramatic declamatory displays play a central role in the plot of Apuleius' Metamorphoses III. This volume completes the prestigious Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius series, which is available in its entirety as a digital resource as well: Apuleius Online. This volume on book III presents a new text of Metamorphoses III provided with an English translation and a full commentary, which covers literary, linguistic, textual, narratological, and socio-cultural matters. The introduction casts new light on many aspects of Apuleius' novel, including its relationship with its lost Greek model, with the Greek love novels and with other genres (epic, poetry, declamation), Apuleius' elaborate style, the narratological features of book III and its main themes. An appendix is devoted to the manuscript transmission of the Metamorphoses: it factors in new textual evidence gathered from the first examination of several recentiores since Oudendorp (1786) and Hildebrand (1842).

The magnum opus of Plato's writings that detail out the utopia that Socrates had thought of when debating with his contemporaries in ancient Greece. While many people have criticized these views over the years, these ideas have sparked many ideas of what makes government work and what does not as well as laying down the foundations for our own democratic systems in the present day. Socrates has many things to say about people and society in general making it a very enlightening piece of work.

The Republic is a dialogue by Plato in which the famous Athenian philosopher examines the nature of an ideal society. The insights are profound and timeless. A landmark of Western literature, The Republic is essential reading for philosophy students.

Euripides' Medea is one of the most popular Greek tragedies in the contemporary theatre. Numerous modern adaptations see the play as painting a picture of the struggle of the powerless under the powerful, of women against men, of foreigners versus natives. The play has been adapted into colonial and historical contexts to lend its powerful resonances to issues of current import. Black Medea is an anthology of six adaptations of the Euripidean tragedy by contemporary American playwrights that present Medea as a woman of color, combined with interviews, analytical essays and introductions which frame the original and adaptations. Placing six adaptations side by side and interviewing the playwrights in order to gain their insights into their work allows the reader to see how an ancient Greek tragedy has been used by contemporary American artists to frame and understand African American history. Of the six plays present in the volume, three have never before been published and one of the others has been out of print for almost thirty years. Thus the volume makes available to students, scholars and artists a significant body of dramatic work not currently available. Black Medea is an important book for scholars, students, artists and libraries in African American studies, classics, theatre and performance studies, women and gender Studies, adaptation theory and literature. Theatre companies, universities, community theatres, and other producing organizations will also be interested in the volume.

With concern to Greek literature and particularly to 5th c. BCE tragic production, papyri provide us usually with not only the most ancient attestation but also the most reliable one. Much more so when the papyri are the only or the main witnesses of the tragic plays. The misfortune is that the papyri transmit texts incomplete, fragmentary, and almost always anonymous. It is the scholar's task to read, supplement, interpret and identify the particular texts. In this book, five Greek plays that survived fragmentarily in papyri are published, four by Aeschylus and one by Sophocles. Three of them are satyr plays: Aeschylus' Theoroi, Hypsipyle, and Prometheus Pyrkaeus; Sophocles' Inachos belongs to the genre we use to call 'prosatyric'; Aeschylus' Laios is a typical tragedy. The author's scope was, after each text's identification was secured as regards the poet and the play's title, to proceed to textual and interpretative observations that contributed to reconstructing in whole or in part the storyline of the relevant plays. These observations often led to unexpected conclusions and an overthrow of established opinions. Thus, the book will appeal to classical scholars, especially those interested in theatrical studies.

Popular American essayist, novelist, and journalist CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER (1829-1900) was renowned for the warmth and intimacy of his writing, which encompassed travelogue, biography and autobiography, fiction, and more, and influenced entire generations of his fellow writers. Here, the prolific writer turned editor for his final grand work, a splendid survey of global literature, classic and modern, and it's not too much to suggest that if his friend and colleague Mark Twain-who stole Warner's quip about how "everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it"-had assembled this set, it would still be hailed today as one of the great achievements of the book world. Highlights from Volume 14 include: . the discourses of Epictetus . the letters of Erasmus . the verse of Euripides . the orations of Edward Everett . excerpts from the religious biographies of Frederick William Farrar . selections from Henry Fielding's Tom Jones . the verse of Firdausi, 10th-century national poet of Persia . the writings of Gustave Flaubert . and much, much more.

Muhammad ibn Habib (d. 860), a specialist in Arab history, tribal genealogy, and poetry, who lived in Baghdad, collected in his Prominent Murder Victims many stories of murderers and murder victims from the legendary pre-Islamic past, such as how Bilqis, the Arabic name for the Queen of Sheba, came to power, to the assassinations ordered by viziers or caliphs in the early Islamic centuries. A lengthy appendix deals with poets from pre- and early Islamic times who were killed. The stories are entertaining as well as informative. Strikingly, the author refrains from explicit moralising. The present book offers a richly annotated English translation together with an improved Arabic text and indexes of persons, places, and rhymes.