Cicero had written seven books on rhetoric, but Ramus chose Orator for the attack which had been inevitable since his original denunciation of Cicero's rhetoric in 1543. There are probably two reasons for this. The first is that he was thus able to enter into the widespread controversy over "Ciceronianism." More importantly, this choice enabled him to concentrate on the one Ciceronian work closest to his own personal view of rhetoric. For Ramus, rhetoric was a matter only of the exterior elements of style and delivery and Orator concentrates on style. It is set in the form of a letter to Cicero's friend Marcus Junius Brutus responding to Brutus's reaction to Cicero's earlier history of Roman oratory -- titled Brutus after its dedicatee. None of Cicero's other six works on rhetoric would have provided Ramus the same opportunity to fasten on questions of style the way he does in the Questions of Brutus. Ramus accuses Cicero of trying to prove that he is the "perfect orator" about which Orator is written. He also accuses him of being merely an unthinking follower of Aristotle. The basic assault, however, is syllogistic. Ramus reduces Cicero's ideas to syllogistic form to demonstrate their error and inconsistency. Throughout, Ramus continues to claim that Cicero does not know the true province of rhetoric. Moreover, he argues that what is found "muddled and confused in unfathomable darkness" in this one book is also true of all of Cicero's other books. Thus, The Questions of Brutus becomes a wide-ranging polemic like his attack on Aristotle. There are numerous rhetorical questions, apostrophes, exclamations, syllogistic analyses, and a great many digressions. Basically Ramus follows the order of Cicero's Orator, though there are occasional backward-forward references as well. Ramus does not, however, use the quotation-plus-interpretation method employed in the commentaries on his orations. Instead he takes up concepts rather than quotations, usually using specific citations only when he wishes to attack Cicero's language on some point. Therefore, this book is self-contained: Ramus states Cicero's position, then his own.

In the essays of this volume, Michael Putnam shows how seriously Statius pays homage to his canonical predecessor, Virgil, how thoroughly he interprets the complexities of Virgilian poetry, and how he often, by placing a Virgilian reference in a different social and cultural context, boldly turns Virgil to new and more positive purposes. He focuses particularly, though not exclusively, on those Silvae which deal with the architectural world of Statius' society, the private villas, the gardens, and the imperial palace. He also writes of the Roman equivalent of the 'Grand Tour,' a young man's educational journey through the monuments of Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor. The essays offer valuable insight into the cultural and social identity of late first-century imperial Rome. Statius' reverential but also heuristic engagement with Virgil emerges more distinctly across the interrelated essays. Putnam's collected essays display the pioneering nature of Statius' Silvae in the development of ecphrasis as an important social and literary mode in Roman poetry.

Brill's Companion to Statius is the first companion volume to be published on arguably the most important Roman poet of the Flavian period. Thirty-four newly commissioned chapters from international experts provide a comprehensive overview of recent approaches to Statius, discuss the fundamental issues and themes of his poetry, and suggest new fruitful areas for research. All of his works are considered: the Thebaid, his longest extant epic; the Achilleid, his unfinished epic; and the Silvae, his collected short poetry. Particular themes explored include the social, cultural, and political issues surrounding his poetry; his controversial aesthetic; the influence of his predecessors upon his poetry; and the scholarly and literary reception of his poetry in subsequent ages to the present.