Nicolaus of Damascus, the chief minister of Herod the Great, was an exact contemporary of the first Roman emperor Augustus; he spent considerable time in Roman society and knew Augustus. The extensive remains of his Bios Kaisaros contain the earliest and most detailed account of the conspiracy against Julius Caesar and his assassination. The Bios also presents the most extensive account of the boyhood and early development of Augustus. This edition presents the Greek text and translation of the Bios and Nicolaus' autobiography, along with a historical and historiographical commentary. The Introduction situates the text in relation to the considerable evidence for the life and career of Nicolaus preserved in the works of Josephus, addresses the problem of its date of composition, analyses the language and narrative technique of Nicolaus and discusses the Bios in relation to the evidence for Greek biographical encomium.

This volume includes Natasha Bershadsky, "A Picnic, a Tomb, and a Crow: Hesiod's Cult in the Works and Days"; Alexander Dale, "Sapphica"; Andrew Faulkner, "Fast, Famine, and Feast: Food for Thought in Callimachus' Hymn to Demeter"; Guillermo Galan Vioque, "A New Manuscript of Classical Authors in Spain"; Jarrett T. Welsh, "The Dates of the Dramatists of the Fabula Togata"; Andrea Cucchiarelli, "Ivy and Laurel: Divine Models in Virgil's Eclogues"; John Henkel, "Nighttime Labor: A Metapoetic Vignette Alluding to Aratus at Georgics 1.291-296"; Salvatore Monda, "The Coroebus Episode in Virgil's Aeneid"; Mark Toher, "Herod's Last Days"; Bart Huelsenbeck, "The Rhetorical Collection of the Elder Seneca: Textual Tradition and Traditional Text"; Robert Cowan, "Lucan's Thunder-Box: Scatology, Epic, and Satire in Suetonius' Vita Lucani"; Erin Sebo, "Symphosius 93.2: A New Interpretation"; Christopher P. Jones, "Imaginary Athletics in Two Followers of John Chrysostom"; and William T. Loomis and Stephen V. Tracy, "The Sterling Dow Archive: Publications, Unfinished Scholarly Work, and Epigraphical Squeezes."

Nicolaus of Damascus, the chief minister of Herod the Great, was an exact contemporary of the first Roman emperor Augustus; he spent considerable time in Roman society and knew Augustus. The extensive remains of his Bios Kaisaros contain the earliest and most detailed account of the conspiracy against Julius Caesar and his assassination. The Bios also presents the most extensive account of the boyhood and early development of Augustus. This edition presents the Greek text and translation of the Bios and Nicolaus' autobiography, along with a historical and historiographical commentary. The Introduction situates the text in relation to the considerable evidence for the life and career of Nicolaus preserved in the works of Josephus, addresses the problem of its date of composition, analyses the language and narrative technique of Nicolaus and discusses the Bios in relation to the evidence for Greek biographical encomium.

Representing five major areas of Augustan scholarship - historiography, poetry, art, religion, and politics - the nineteen contributors to this volume bring us closer to a balanced, up-to-date account of Augustus and his principate.