The foundation of this book is a line-by-line analysis of enjambement, or the syntactical relationship between successive verses, in the Iliad. Such a study develops naturally from Milman Parry's work, which sought to show the importance for oral composition, and specifically for Homer, both of the syntactical link between lines and the frequency of each type of enjambement. In contrast to earlier studies, which utilized only portions of the text, Dr. Higbie's book is unique in presenting analyses of the complete poem. In doing so, she makes material available which can be used to answer larger stylistic questions of genre, effect, and the manipulation and enjambing of formulae. Speeches, similes, battle scenes, and catalogues, for example, can be distinguished by the length and structure of the sentences, as well as by the relationship between the individual sentence and the hexameter verse. Moreover, the flexibility and survival of the formula depend in part upon its grammatical construction. The importance of enjambement to Homeric verse makes this book an essential reference work for scholars and students of Homer alike.

This volume includes "Divide and Edit: A Brief History of Book Divisions" by Carolyn Higbie; "Aristotle's Hamartia Reconsidered" by Ho Kim; "Callimachus and his Allusive Virgins" by Andrew Faulkner; "Theokritos' Idyll 16: The Kharites and Civic Poetry" by Jose Gonzalez; "Boxing and Sacrifice in Epic: Apollonius, Vergil, and Valerius" by Matthew Leigh; "The Rhodian Loss of Caunus and Stratonicea in the 160s" by Sviatoslav Dmitriev; "Trina tempestas (Carmina Einsidlensia 2.33)" by Radoslaw Pietka; "The Vanishing Gardens of Priapus" by James Uden; "Trimalchio and Fortunata as Zeus and Hera" by Maria Ypsilanti; "Ps.-Dionysius on Epideictic Rhetoric: Seven Chapters, or One Complete Treatise?" by Martin Korenjak; "The Grammarian C. Iulius Romanus and the Fabula Togata" by Jarrett T. Welsh; "Quintus of Smyrna and the Second Sophistic" by Silvio Bar; and "The Conversion of A. D. Nock in the Context of His Life, Scholarship, and Religious View" by Simon Price.

Carolyn Higbie uses an inscription of the first century BC from the Greek island of Rhodes to study what the ancient Greeks believed about their past. They believed that figures such as Heracles, Helen, Menelaus, and Alexander the Great had visited their island to give offerings to the goddess Athena and that Athena herself had appeared in three epiphanies to the townspeople. They then used this history to make themselves more important in the present.

Collectors, Scholars, and Forgers in the Ancient World focuses on the fascination which works of art, texts, and antiquarian objects inspired in Greeks and Romans in antiquity and draws parallels with other cultures and eras to offer contexts for understanding that fascination. Statues, bronze weapons, books, and bones might have been prized for various reasons: because they had religious value, were the work of highly regarded artists and writers, had been possessed by famous mythological figures, or were relics of a long disappeared past. However, attitudes towards these objects also changed over time: sculpture which was originally created for a religious purpose became valuable as art and could be removed from its original setting, while historians discovered value in inscriptions and other texts for supporting historical arguments and literary scholars sought early manuscripts to establish what authors really wrote. As early as the Hellenistic era, some Greeks and Romans began to collect objects and might even display them in palaces, villas, or gardens; as these objects acquired value, a demand was created for more of them, and so copyists and forgers created additional pieces - while copyists imitated existing pieces of art, sometimes adapting to their new settings, forgers created new pieces to complete a collection, fill a gap in historical knowledge, make some money, or to indulge in literary play with knowledgeable readers. The study of forged relics is able to reveal not only what artefacts the Greeks and Romans placed value on, but also what they believed they understood about their past and how they interpreted the evidence for it. Drawing on the latest scholarship on forgery and fakes, as well as a range of examples, this book combines stories about frauds with an analysis of their significance, and illuminates and explores the link between collectors, scholars, and forgers in order to offer us a way to better understand the power that objects held over the ancient Greeks and Romans.