The teachings of Epicurus-about life and death, religion and science, physical sensation, happiness, morality, and friendship-attracted legions of adherents throughout the ancient Mediterranean world and deeply influenced later European thought. Though Epicurus faced hostile opposition for centuries after his death, he counts among his many admirers Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, and Isaac Newton. This volume includes all of his extant writings-his letters, doctrines, and Vatican sayings-alongside parallel passages from the greatest exponent of his philosophy, Lucretius, extracts from Diogenes Laertius' Life of Epicurus, a lucid introductory essay about Epicurean philosophy, and a foreword by Daniel Klein, author of Travels with Epicurus and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar.

Hellenistic poet Theocritus showcased a wide variety of women and their relationships to men in his work. Representations of Women in Theocritus's Idylls: Authenticity of the Female Voice in the Erotic and Non-Erotic Portrayals is the first comprehensive analysis of these women. This book uses a unique and widely inclusive set of tools derived from gender studies, literary criticism, and Hellenistic history to extract the voices of females, as most are silent themselves and spoken for by others. This analysis questions the validity of the female voice and determines authenticity through a method derived from Lacanian psychoanalysis. Author Marilyn Likosky identifies a female erotic voice that according to criteria is not attributed to a woman but rather to the imagination of the male responding to perceived risks in engaging with a female at a time in which she received greater liberties. Theocritus explores a number of candidate strategies for males to lessen disruptions from erotic encounters. Likosky identifies an ambiguity in the presentation of voice, finding it likely an intentional means for Theocritus to engage his audience in troublesome issues. This book supports academic seminars in gender studies, Hellenistic poetry, and literary criticism.

Cuatrocientos anos despues de su publicacion, el Quijote cervantino sigue ejerciendo en el mundo entero una peculiar fascinacion que se refleja en las mas diversas expresiones artisticas. El presente volumen pretende contribuir a los estudios de recepcion de la obra de Miguel de Cervantes desde un enfoque multidisciplinar e internacional, analizando la presencia de su obra y, en especial, de Don Quijote de la Mancha, durante los siglos XX y XXI. Los trabajos aqui editados se refieren a la figura de Don Quijote como mito literario, recogiendo textos de autores de diferentes paises que estudian la impronta del autor manchego en ambitos y generos tan diversos como la literatura (novela de ficcion y novela historica, teatro, literatura infantil, novela grafica y comic), la musica (jazz, opera, cantata escenica, musica incidental), los medios audiovisuales (cine, television, publicidad), la filosofia y la historia, centrando el foco de atencion en la cultura occidental, pero sin olvidar la presencia de Cervantes en otras culturas, como la oriental o la arabe. A modo de anexo se publica, ademas, un texto inedito que hasta ahora era solo accesible en lengua arabe: el prologo a la traduccion a dicha lengua del Quijote, publicado aqui por vez primera en castellano.

Written in the twilight of the Roman Republic, the poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus offers a delicious insight into the passions and gossip of high Roman society. From the poet and his friends to cultural and political titans, including Caesar, Cicero, and Pompey, his cutting, modern verse spares no-one. In this new translation by Daisy Dunn, author of Catullus' Bedspread, his obscene honesty, arrogant wit and surprising tenderness capture Roman society at their best. Most famous for his obsessive love lyrics for the married Lesbia, Catullus' words are an immortal expression of youth, rebellion and agonised love.

Tacitus' account of Nero's principate is an extraordinary piece of historical writing. His graphic narrative (including Annals XV) is one of the highlights of the greatest surviving historian of the Roman Empire. It describes how the imperial system survived Nero's flamboyant and hedonistic tenure as emperor, and includes many famous passages, from the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 to the city-wide party organised by Nero's praetorian prefect, Tigellinus, in Rome. This edition unlocks the difficulties and complexities of this challenging yet popular text for students and instructors alike. It elucidates the historical context of the work and the literary artistry of the author, as well as explaining grammatical difficulties of the Latin for students. It also includes a comprehensive introduction discussing historical, literary and stylistic issues.

What happened after Mr. Darcy married Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice? Where did Heathcliff go when he disappeared in Wuthering Heights? What social ostracism would Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter have faced in 20th century America? Great novels often leave behind great questions-sequels seek to answer them. This critical analysis offers fresh insights into the sequels to seven literary classics, including Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the Bronte sisters' Jane Eyre, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

'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.

Readers coming to the Odyssey for the first time are often dazzled and bewildered by the wealth of material it contains which is seemingly unrelated to the central story: the main plot of Odysseus' return to Ithaca is complicated by myriad secondary narratives related by the poet and his characters, including Odysseus' own fantastic tales of Lotus Eaters, Sirens, and cannibal giants. Although these 'para-narratives' are a source of pleasure and entertainment in their own right, each also has a special relevance to its immediate context, elucidating Odysseus' predicament and also subtly influencing and guiding the audience's reception of the main story. By exploring variations on the basic story-shape, drawing on familiar tales, anecdotes, and mythology, or inserting analogous situations, they create illuminating parallels to the main narrative and prompt specific responses in readers or listeners. This is the case even when details are suppressed or altered, as the audience may still experience the reverberations of the better-known version of the tradition, and it also applies to the characters themselves, who are often provided with a model of action for imitation or avoidance in their immediate contexts.

This is the first new critical edition of this text since 1908, and the first to appear in the Oxford Classical Texts series. The edition is informed by a comprehensive analysis of the entire tradition of Lucullus and Academicus Primus, and by a thorough rethinking of the text documented in the accompanying commentary volume. Lucullus and Academicus Primus are a key body of evidence for the development of Academic scepticism, one of the two varieties of scepticism in antiquity. The texts also shed light on the re-emergence of dogmatic Platonic philosophy in the first century BC.

Horace's Odes remain among the most widely read works of classical literature. This volume constitutes the first substantial commentary for a generation on this book, and presents Horace's poems for a new cohort of modern students and scholars. The introduction focusses on the particular features of this poetic book and its place in Horace's poetic career and in the literary environment of its particular time in the 20s BCE. The text and commentary both look back to the long and distinguished tradition of Horatian scholarship and incorporate the many advances of recent research and thinking about Latin literature. The volume proposes some new solutions to established problems of text and interpretation, and in general improves modern understanding of a widely read ancient text which has a firm place in college and university courses as well as in classical research.

This book examines the impact that Athenian Old Comedy had on Greek writers of the imperial era. It is generally acknowledged that imperial-era Greeks responded to Athenian Old Comedy in one of two ways: either as a treasure trove of Atticisms or as a genre defined by and repudiated for its aggressive humor. Worthy of further consideration, however, is the degree to which both approaches, and particularly the latter one that relegated Old Comedy to the fringes of the literary canon, led authors to engage with the ironic and self-reflexive humor of Aristophanes, Eupolis and Cratinus. Authors ranging from serious moralizers (Plutarch and Aelius Aristides) to comic writers in their own right (Lucian, Alciphron) to other figures not often associated with Old Comedy (Libanius) adopted aspects of the genre to negotiate power struggles, facilitate literary and sophistic rivalries, and as a model for autobiographical writing. To varying degrees, these writers wove recognizable features of the genre (e.g. the parabasis, its agonistic language, the stage biographies of the individual poets) into their writings. The image of Old Comedy that emerges from this time is that of a genre in transition. It was, on the one hand, with the exception of Aristophanes' extant plays, on the verge of being almost completely lost; on the other hand, its reputation and several of its most characteristic elements were being renegotiated and reinvented.

Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff's collaboration on this new translation combines the strengths that have recently distinguished both as translators of Greek tragedy: expert knowledge of the Greek and of the needs of the teaching classicist, intimate knowledge of theatre, and an excellent ear for the spoken word. Their Oedipus Tyrannus features foot-of-the-page notes, an Introduction, stage directions and a translation characterized by its clarity, accuracy, and power.

Aeschylus (ca. 525-456 BCE), the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art forms, witnessed the establishment of democracy at Athens and fought against the Persians at Marathon. He won the tragic prize at the City Dionysia thirteen times between ca. 499 and 458, and in his later years was probably victorious almost every time he put on a production, though Sophocles beat him at least once.

Of his total of about eighty plays, seven survive complete. The second volume contains the complete Oresteia trilogy, comprising "Agamemnon," "Libation-Bearers," and "Eumenides," presenting the murder of Agamemnon by his wife, the revenge taken by their son Orestes, the pursuit of Orestes by his mother's avenging Furies, his trial and acquittal at Athens, Athena's pacification of the Furies, and the blessings they both invoke upon the Athenian people.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. A green horse great and tall; A steed full stiff to guide, In broidered bridle all He worthily bestrides Dating from around 1400 and composed by an anonymous writer, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was first translated and published almost 200 years ago. Its epic nature has not been dimmed by time: the classic story of a knight on a green steed challenging Sir Gawain to a monumental wager, it is a strange tale full of decapitations, seduction and magic. Soon to be brought to the big screen, Sir Gawain is one of the earliest great stories of English literature.

Maxime cum principibus philosopho esse disserendum - Ad principem ineruditum - An seni sit gerenda res publica - Praecepta gerendae rei publicae - De tribus rei publicae generibus - De vitando aere alieno.

Ausonius provides translations of the key works of Ausonius, an important later Latin poet whose poems detail the social and cultural life of Gaul and its environment. His often difficult and playful Latin is presented in English by the award winning poet Deborah Warren, enabling a new generation of students to use and understand the poems. With notes and commentary throughout, this volume will be important not only as an example of later Latin poetry but also as a window onto the Later Roman Empire and the beginnings of early Christian writing.

Das bekannte Enniuswort, dass auf "den alten Sitten und Mannern die roemische Sache ruht", akzentuiert treffend die grosse Bedeutung, die der mos maiorum als Inbegriff von Wertvorstellungen, Leitbildern und Reglements, welche als verpflichtendes Erbe der Vorvater aufgefasst wurde, in der roemischen Gesellschaft besass. Neben Aufsatzen zu den verschiedenen literarischen Kommunikationsformen uber den mos maiorum wird auch die Reprasentation roemischer Wertvorstellungen in den archaologischen Zeugnissen berucksichtigt. Inhalt: I. Werte und literarische Kommunikation, A. Allgemeines, B. Zu Gattungen, Autoren und Werken, II. Werte und visuelle Kommunikation, III. Zu Begriff und Geschichte des mos maiorum.

A stunning new translation of the classic tale of the fall of Troy from one of the world's finest translators. If you enjoyed THE SONG OF ACHILLES, discover the original and the best... Man seduces another's wife then kidnaps her. The husband and his brother get a gang together to steal her back and take revenge. The woman regrets being seduced and wants to escape, whilst the man's entourage resent the position they have been placed in. Yet the battle lines have been drawn and there is no going back... Not the plot of the latest Hollywood thriller, but the basis of the ILIAD - the Greek classic that details the war between the Greeks and the Trojans after the kidnapping of Helen of Sparta. Based on the recent, superb, M.L. West edition of the Greek, this ILIAD is more readable and moving than any previous version. Thanks to the scholarship and poetic power of the highly acclaimed Stephen Mitchell, this new translation recreates the energy and simplicity, the speed, grace, and continual thrust and pull of the original, while the ILIAD's ancient story bursts vividly into life. This edition also includes book 10 as an appendix, making it indispensible for students and lay readers alike.

Studies on the Text of Suetonius' De uita Caesarum is a companion volume to the critical edition of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars in the Oxford Classical Texts series, edited by Robert Kaster. It provides detailed insight into the research and textual analysis behind the edition. Part I presents the first comprehensive and accurate account of the medieval manuscript tradition (ninth to thirteenth centuries) on which the Oxford Classical Text is based, and Part II analyses hundreds of passages where a variety of textual problems are encountered, often offering new solutions. Four appendices provide additional support to the arguments of Part I, while a fifth lists all the places (just over 300) where the new text differs from the edition by Maximilian Ihm that has been the standard since 1907.