This book deals with the ways in which the ancient Roman literary imagination explored the phenomenon of slavery. It asks what the free imagination made of the experience of living with slaves, beings who both were and were not fellow humans. The book covers the full range of Roman literature, and is arranged thematically. It discusses the ideological relation of Roman literature to the institution of slavery, and also the ways in which slavery provided a metaphor for other relationships and experiences, and in particular for literature itself.

In this age of the sound bite, what sort of author could be more relevant than a master of the epigram? Martial, the most influential epigrammatist of classical antiquity, was just such a virtuoso of the form, but despite his pertinence to today's culture, his work has been largely neglected in contemporary scholarship. Arguing that Martial is a major author who deserves more sustained attention, William Fitzgerald provides an insightful tour of his works, shedding new and much-needed light on the Roman poet's world-and how it might speak to our own. Writing in the late first century CE-when the epigram was firmly embedded in the social life of the Roman elite-Martial published his poems in a series of books that were widely read and enjoyed. Exploring what it means to read such a collection of epigrams, Fitzgerald examines the paradoxical relationship between the self-enclosed epigram and the book of poems that is more than the sum of its parts. And he goes on to show how Martial, by imagining these books being displayed in shops and shipped across the empire to admiring readers, prophetically behaved like a modern author. Chock-full of epigrams itself-in both Latin and English versions-Fitzgerald's study will delight classicists, literary scholars, and anyone who appreciates an ingenious witticism.

Ennius Perennis: The Annals and Beyond is a collection of eight essays by an international group of scholars on different aspects of the poetry and legacy of Quintus Ennius (239-169 BC). Ennius' epic poem The Annals and his many other works, including tragedies, satires and epigrams, survive only in mystifying fragments, but his influence on Latin poetry was enormous. He is now beginning to be appreciated, thanks both to excellent critical editions and to more enlightened literary and historical approaches, as a complex and varied poet and a fascinating representative of an era of intense cultural and political change. While they acknowledge the extent to which later authors are responsible for creating a misleading perception of Ennius as monolithic, jingoistic and clumsy, these essays also reflect on what can be said about the nature and aims of his work, given the limitations of our evidence. Subjects discussed include Cicero's "invention" of Ennius, the part played by the cor (heart) in unifying Ennius' literary project, the possibility of "further voices" and a role for women in Ennius, Virgil's fraught "father-son" relationship with his epic predecessor and Ennius' later reincarnation in the works of Horace and Petrarch. The collection is likely to appeal to all who are interested in Latin literature, literary history or reception studies.

The idea of variety may seem too diffuse, obvious, or nebulous to be worth scrutinizing, but modern usage masks the rich history of the term. This book examines the meaning, value, and practice of variety from the vantage point of Latin literature and its reception and reveals the enduring importance of the concept up to the present day. William Fitzgerald looks at the definition and use of the Latin term varietas and how it has played out in different works and with different authors. He shows that, starting with the Romans, variety has played a key role in our thinking about nature, rhetoric, creativity, pleasure, aesthetics, and empire. From the lyric to elegy and satire, the concept of variety has helped to characterize and distinguish different genres. Arguing that the ancient Roman ideas and controversies about the value of variety have had a significant afterlife up to our own time, Fitzgerald reveals how modern understandings of diversity and choice derive from what is ultimately an ancient concept.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1850 Edition.

1850. With notes and an introductory discourse. This work is designed primarily for the use of the Senior Sophisters in college, but was trusted to be a satisfactory textbook for introduction young students to the study of Aristotle's ethics. The Greek is printed from Bekke's text. It aims to give the reader a view of Aristotle's most finished delineation of the purely moral virtues.