This new critical edition of Aulus Gellius' Noctes Atticae by Leofranc Holford-Strevens is intended to replace the previous Oxford Classical Text by Peter K. Marshall, published in 1968 but soon superseded by Marshall's own later discoveries as well as by other scholarship. Based on a thorough reconsideration of the manuscripts, of the indirect tradition, and of both the Latin and the Greek text, this new edition utilizes manuscript evidence unknown to previous editors, refines the standard account of relations between the earlier manuscripts, and distinguishes between readings in the later manuscripts derived from an older lost witness and those resulting from error or interpolation. All known witnesses to the indirect tradition as preserved in four florilegia have been examined, at times enabling readings less well supported by the manuscripts of the direct tradition to be restored. Above all, the approach to the transmitted text evinces a more sceptical, less trusting view than that of many recent editors: the apparatus criticus contains numerous emendations and suggestions, and in several places corrects the attribution of previous scholars' conjectures, yet remains more generous than Marshall's and avoids trivial details.

Why do we measure time in the way that we do? Why is a week seven days long? At what point did minutes and seconds come into being? Why are some calendars lunar and some solar? The organisation of time into hours, days, months and years seems immutable and universal, but is actually far more artificial than most people realise. The French Revolution resulted in a restructuring of the French calendar, and the Soviet Union experimented with five and then six-day weeks. Leofranc Holford-Strevens explores these questions using a range of fascinating examples from Ancient Rome and Julius Caesar's imposition of the Leap Year, to the 1920s' project for a fixed Easter. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This new critical edition of Aulus Gellius' Noctes Atticae by Leofranc Holford-Strevens is intended to replace the previous Oxford Classical Text by Peter K. Marshall, published in 1968 but soon superseded by Marshall's own later discoveries as well as by other scholarship. Based on a thorough reconsideration of the manuscripts, of the indirect tradition, and of both the Latin and the Greek text, this new edition utilizes manuscript evidence unknown to previous editors, refines the standard account of relations between the earlier manuscripts, and distinguishes between readings in the later manuscripts derived from an older lost witness and those resulting from error or interpolation. All known witnesses to the indirect tradition as preserved in four florilegia have been examined, at times enabling readings less well supported by the manuscripts of the direct tradition to be restored. Above all, the approach to the transmitted text evinces a more sceptical, less trusting view than that of many recent editors: the apparatus criticus contains numerous emendations and suggestions, and in several places corrects the attribution of previous scholars' conjectures, yet remains more generous than Marshall's and avoids trivial details.

Between 1485 and 1492 Cardinal Ascanio Sforza was the recipient of a music treatise composed for him by "Florentius Musicus" (Florentius de Faxolis), who had served him in Naples and Rome. Now in Milan, the richly illuminated small parchment codex bears witness to the musical interests of the cardinal, himself an avid singer taught by Duke Ercole d'Este. Florentius, whose treatise, found in no other source, is edited here for the first time, evidently took the cardinal's predilections into account, for the Book on Music is unusual for its emphasis on "the praises, power, utility, necessity, and effect of music": he devotes far more space to citations from classical and medieval authors than is the norm, and his elevated style shows that he aspires to appear as a humanist and not merely a technician. Likewise, the production quality of the manuscript indicates the acceptance of music's place within the high culture of the Quattrocento. The author's unusual insights into the musical thinking of his day are discussed in the ample commentary. The editors, a Renaissance musicologist (Bonnie Blackburn) and a classical scholar (Leofranc Holford-Strevens), have combined their disciplines to pay close attention both to Florentius' text and to his teachings.

Aulus Gellius originated the modern use of 'classical' and 'humanities'. His Attic Nights, so named because they began as the intellectual pastime of winter evenings spent in a villa outside Athens, are a mine of information on many aspects of antiquity and a repository of much early Latin literature which would otherwise be lost; he took a particular interest in questions of grammar and literary style. The whole work is interspersed with interesting personal observations and vignettes of second-century life that throw light on the Antonine world. In this, the most comprehensive study of Gellius in any language, Dr Holford-Strevens examines his life, his circle of acquaintances, his style, his reading, his scholarly interests, and his literary parentage, paying due attention to the text, sense, and content of individual passages, and to the use made of him by later writers in antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and more recent times. It covers many subject areas such as language, literature, history, law, rhetoric, medicine; light is shed on a wide range of problems in Greek as well as Latin authors, either in the main text or in the succinct but wide-ranging footnotes. In this revised edition every statement has been reconsidered and account taken of recent work by the author and by others; an appendix has been added on the relation between the literary trends of Latin (the so-called archaizing movement) and Greek (Atticism) in the second century AD, and more space has been given to Gellius' attitudes towards women, as well as to recurrent themes such as punishment and embassies. The opportunity has been taken to correct or excise errors, but otherwise nothing has been removed unless superseded by more recent publications.

Known as "the Theologian", St Gregory of Nazianzus (in the eastern part of Turkey) is, with St Basil and St Gregory of Nyssa, one of the celebrated Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth-century Christian Church. Highly educated in both Christian theology and classical Greek literature, he found himself torn between a solitary, contemplative life and the reluctantly accepted, though in actuality relished, public figure of bishop, vigorous in defence of orthodoxy against the attacks of the Arians. He was even, briefly, Bishop of Constantinople and chairman of the Council in 381 which produced what we now know as the Nicene Creed. This edition of his poems brings together his theological acumen in a formative period and shows his ability to operate in the genre of didactic verse going back to the eighth century BC. The poems cover a range of topics, from the strictly theological to others dealing more broadly with the creation of the world, providence, the world of spiritual beings, and the human soul. They give a unique new insight both on the theological ideas of the period and on the uneasy emergence of Christian culture from the pagan past.

This is the first collection of essays in any language on Aulus Gellius. Its contributors, both established and younger scholars, include Gellian experts looking out with specialists in other fields looking in; they combine traditional and new approaches. Subjects range from the bilingual culture in which Gellius wrote, through his stylistic judgements, his skills in etymology and narrative, his relation to the antiquarian tradition, the generic expectations of miscellany, his claim to educate his readers, the theory of "Gellian humanism," and his attitude towards intellectuals, to his reception in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution.

This is the first detailed history of European versification. Examining poetry written in 30 languages (from Irish to Belorussian) and over several millennia (from classical Latin and Greek to the experiments of the contemporary avant garde), M.L. Gasparov shows how the poetry of English, French, Russian, Greek, and other European languages has developed from a single common Indo-European source. The book's account is liberally illustrated with verse examples, both in their original languages and in translation.