Fragmentary texts play a central role in Classics. Their study poses a stimulating challenge to scholars and readers, while its methods and principles, far from being rigidly immutable, invite constant reflection on its methods, approaches, and goals. By focusing on some of the most relevant issues that fragmentologists have to face, this book contributes to the ongoing and lively debate on the study of fragmentary texts. This volume contains an extensive theoretical introduction on the study of textual fragments, followed by eight essays on a wide variety of topics relevant to the study of fragmentary texts across literary genres. The chapters range from archaic Greek epics (the Hesiodic corpus) to late-antique grammarian Nonius Marcellus as a source of fragments of Republican literature. All contributions share a nuanced, critical attention to the main methodological implications of the study of fragmentary texts and mutually contribute to highlighting the field's common specificities and limitations, both in theory and in editorial practice. The book offers a representative spectrum of fragmentological issues, providing all readers with an interest in Classics with an up-to-date, methodologically aware approach to the field.

Cornelius Nepos' De viris illustribus was a collection of biographies of distinguished Romans and foreigners, originally arranged in at least sixteen books, of which only the Liber de excellentibus ducibus exterarum gentium has survived. In this volume, Francesco Ginelli provides a philological, stylistic, grammatical, and historical commentary on the first eight Vitae of the Liber, comprising Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Pausanias, Cimon, Lysander, Alcibiades, and Thrasybulus, all eminent generals of the fifth century BCE. Ginelli also provides a substantial introduction, giving an overview of Nepos' life, the key features of his works, and the manuscript tradition of the De viris illustribus. As the first academic commentary on Nepos' biographies of the Greek commanders of the fifth century BCE, this book will fill a gap in Latin studies, providing a useful tool for both students and scholars interested in Nepos, as well as those interested in ancient biography and Latin historiography more generally.