In writing this book on the plays of New Comedy the author's aim is to fill a gap in the existing literature by concentrating on what one might look for in watching and reading these plays and why such an exercise might be pleasurable. The social comedy of Menander, Plautus and Terence provided a style of comic drama which was to prove the root of all subsequent western comedy. Dr Hunter gives a literary account of this drama, placing it in its ancient context and then ranging over a number of specific topics and themes: the dramatic craft of the poets, their exploration of how to give variety to stereotyped plots and characters, the presentation of women, the use of language and themes from tragedy, the place of moralising and philosophy. All Greek and Latin is translated.

This is the first full-scale commentary on poems by Theocritus since Gow's edition of 1950, and the first to exploit the recent revolution in the study of Hellenistic and Roman poetry; the poems included in this volume (Idylls 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13) are principally the bucolic poems which, through their influence on Virgil, established the Western pastoral tradition. The focus of the commentary is literary - both on how Theocritus exploited the classical heritage for a new type of poetry, and on what that poetry meant in the third century BC. The commentary, together with the introductory essays to each poem, makes a major contribution to the understanding of this extraordinary poetic form. The Introduction explores the meaning of 'bucolic', the presentation of a stylised countryside, the importance of eros in the bucolic world, and Theocritus' verbal and metrical style.

This colloquium volume celebrates a new Hellenistic epigram collection attributed to the third-century B.C.E. poet Posidippus, one of the most significant literary finds in recent memory. Included in this collection are an unusual variety of voices and perspectives: papyrological, art historical, archaeological, historical, literary, and aesthetic. These texts are considered as individual poems and as collective artifact, an early poetry book. The volume will be of interest to readers of Greek and Latin epigram, students of the Hellenistic period, and all readers interested in the aesthetics of poetry collection and the evolution of the poetry book in antiquity.