Barbara Pavlock unmasks major figures in Ovid's ""Metamorphoses"" as surrogates for his narrative persona, highlighting the conflicted revisionist nature of the ""Metamorphoses"". Although Ovid ostensibly validates traditional customs and institutions, instability is in fact a defining feature of both the core epic values and his own poetics. ""The Image of the Poet"" explores issues central to Ovid's poetics - the status of the image, the generation of plots, repetition, opposition between refined and inflated epic style, the reliability of the narrative voice, and the interrelation of rhetoric and poetry. The work explores the constructed author and complements recent criticism focusing on the reader in the text. Ovid's simultaneous play to and rebellion against epic tradition makes Narcissus both an idealized elegiac image through allusions to the poet's own mistress in the Amores and an elegiac poet fixated on his own image. Through Narcissus' demise, Ovid reflects the instability of visual images. In ""Orpheus' story of Venus and Adonis"", an undercurrent of desire in Venus' inset tale reveals a problematic self-involvement. The self-referential nature of Orpheus' song then raises questions about his reliability as narrator, a theme that culminates in Ulysses' contest with Ajax. Here Ovid undercuts heroic views about lineage and valor, but also highlights the many clever strategies by which Ulysses elevates himself over his rival, undermining Homer's ""Illiad"" and ""Odyssey"". Ovid questions the authority of the narrator but also provides the means for understanding the problems at the core of his epic. Thus, in his time and ours, the reader ultimately emerges better equipped to assess inherited traditions in literary, social, and political spheres.

The charismatic Alexander the Great of Macedon (356-323 B.C.E.) was one of the most successful military commanders in history, conquering Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, central Asia, and the lands beyond as far as Pakistan and India. Alexander has been, over the course of two millennia since his death at the age of thirty-two, the central figure in histories, legends, songs, novels, biographies, and, most recently, films. In 2004 director Oliver Stone's epic film ""Alexander"" generated a renewed interest in Alexander the Great and his companions, surroundings, and accomplishments, but the critical response to the film offers a fascinating lesson in the contentious dialogue between historiography and modern entertainment. This volume brings together an intriguing mix of leading scholars in Macedonian and Greek history, Persian culture, film studies, classical literature, and archaeology - including some who were advisors for the film - and includes an afterword by Oliver Stone discussing the challenges he faced in putting Alexander's life on the big screen. The contributors scrutinize Stone's project from its inception and design to its production and reception, considering such questions as: Can a film about Alexander (and similar figures from history) be both entertaining and historically sound? How do the goals of screenwriters and directors differ from those of historians? How do Alexander's personal relationships - with his mother Olympias, his wife Roxane, his lover Hephaistion, and others - affect modern perceptions of Alexander? Several of the contributors also explore reasons behind the film's tepid response at the box office and subsequent controversies.