Browse

This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s bc) for Aeschylus' trilogy Supplices, thus upsetting the previous scholarly consensus that it was an early work — indeed the earliest Greek tragedy to survive. There was, the book argued, no longer good reason to suppose that the play belonged to an early stage in its author's development. A final chapter also examines the evidence for reconstruction of the other, lost plays of the trilogy. Few would now argue, as they used to, that Supplices belongs to the 490s but some still have the feeling that it looks like an early play; they attempt to put it back into the 470s. Stylistic and structural evidence, itself often subjective, is not strong enough to place the play in one decade or exclude it from the previous one; but the book remains convinced that, even without the additional testimony of the papyrus, all the internal evidence points to the 460s. While the view that Supplices is very early may now have died, some of the salutary lessons of P.Oxy 2256 fr. 3 have still to be learnt and it is timely for this re-issue to be presented to a new generation of Aeschylean students and scholars.

This short book sets the Confessions of Augustine in the social and intellectual context of late antiquity in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Part 1 explores the world in which Augustine lived, where Roman control of western Europe was under threat from non-Roman peoples, and Roman literary and philosophical culture was challenged by educated Christians expounding their scriptures. This chapter discusses the choices Augustine made in his education in literature and rhetoric, in his career as a teacher of rhetoric and then as a bishop, and in his search for understanding of himself and of God. Part 2 considers the interpretation of a life, by the person who lives it and by people who accept or challenge that person's account. It discusses literary questions of style, models and audience, and philosophical questions of what matters in a human life, in comparison with some classical and some later examples of writing about oneself. This chapter argues that Augustine knew how differently texts can be interpreted, but that he cannot be used to support theories that there is no canon of texts and no authoritative reading. He believed that classical literature may offer some wisdom, but canonical scripture is authoritative; that interpretations may differ, but must accord with the Christian principles of love of God and neighbour; and that there is an authoritative reading of every life, known to God though not to us.

This book examines harmful interaction between the living and the dead in fifth-century BC Greek tragedy, i.e. how the living can harm the dead, and how the dead can harm the living in return. Tragedy contains some of the most fascinating and important stage-ghosts in Western literature, whether the talkative Persian king Darius, who is evoked from the Underworld in Aeschylus’ Persians, or the murdered Trojan prince Polydorus, who seeks burial for his exposed corpse in Euripides’ Hecuba. These manifest figures can tell us a vast amount about the abilities of the tragic dead, particularly in relation to the nature, extent and limitations of their interaction with the living through, for example, ghost-raising ceremonies and dreams. Beyond these manifest dead, tragedy presents a wealth of invisible dead whose anger and desire for revenge bubble up from the Underworld, and whose honour and dishonour occupy the minds and influence the actions of the living. Combining both these manifest and invisible dead, this book delves into the possibility of harmful interaction between the living and the dead. This includes discussions on the extent to which the dead are aware of and can react to honourable or dishonourable treatment by the living, the social stratification of the Underworld, the consequences of corpse exposure and mutilation for both the living and the dead, and how the dead can use and collaborate with avenging agents, such as the gods, the living and the Erinyes.

This is not a commentary on Juvenal 10 but a critical appreciation of the poem which examines it on its own and in context and tries to make it come alive as a piece of literature, offering one man’s close reading of Satire 10 as poetry, and concerned with literary criticism rather than philological minutiae. In line with the recent broadening of insight into Juvenal’s writing this book often addresses the issues of distortion and problematizing and covers style, sound and diction as well. Much time is also devoted to intertextuality and to humour wit and irony. Building on the work of scholars like Martyn, Jenkyns and Schmitz, who see in juvenal a consistently skilful author, this is a whole book demonstrating a high level of expertise on Juvenal’s part sustained throughout a long poem. This investigation leads to the conclusion that Juvenal is an accomplished poet and provocative satirist, a writer with real focus, who makes every word count, and a final chapter exploring 11 and 12 confirms that assessment. Translation of the Latin and explanation of references are also included so that Classics students will find the book easier to use and it will also be accessible to scholars and students interested in satire outside of Classics departments.

This volume of specially written essays explores the understanding of the boundaries between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood in ancient Greek and Roman culture, and the relationship between ancient and modern thinking on this topic. Essays consider the extent to which the concept of fiction was explicitly defined in ancient critical, rhetorical and philosophical writing or was implicitly recognised even if was not explicitly theorised. A wide range of genres of ancient writing are discussed, ranging from Homeric epic, Hesiod, and archaic Greek poetry to Greek and Roman historiography, philosophy (especially Plato), and the Greek and Roman novels or prose fictions. In ancient historiography, stress is laid on the combination of an explicit aspiration to factuality with a strong implicit element of creativity or inventive elaboration, extending in some cases to sheer lying. Essays discuss also especially the kind of ‘make believe’ or fictive belief invited by the ancient novels and the interplay between the ‘story world’ of the novels and the real world shared by its readers and author. Another area treated is the ethical value (or disvalue) of fiction and the question whether fiction is valued in the same way in antiquity as in the modern world. Although antiquity differs from the modern world in not defining fiction as such or in producing a literary theory of the novel, it is suggested by some essays that ancient and modern attitudes to fiction and its value are not as dissimilar as this difference might lead one to expect.

This is a study of Greek tragedies known to us only from small fragmentary remnants that have survived. The book discusses a variety of Greek tragic fragments from all three of the famous Athenian tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The recent publication of translations of some of these fragments (Sophocles in the Loeb series, and Euripides in the Aris and Phillips series) means that the fragments are now more readily available than ever for study. The large number of extant fragments of ancient Greek tragedy can tell us enormous amounts about that genre and about the society that produced it. Papyrus finds over the last hundred years have drastically altered and supplemented our knowledge of ancient Greek tragedy; the book is at the cutting-edge of research in this field.

This is a general introduction to Plato's political thought. It covers the main periods of Platonic thought, examining those dialogues that best show how Plato makes the city's unity the aim of politics and then makes the quest for that unity the aim of philosophy. From the psychological model (the city is like a great soul) to the physiological definition (the city is a living being), the reader can traverse the whole of Plato's oeuvre, and understand it as a political philosophy. The book is designed to be an undergraduate textbook but will also be of interest to scholars. It is an English translation of Platon et la cité, published in French by Presses Universitaires de France in 1997 as part of the series Philosophies, and offers English-speaking readers access to a more unifying continental European reading of Plato than is common in UK or North American scholarship.

This book provides the materials needed for detailed study of Plato’s Atlantis story. It contains the two relevant Greek texts, the start of the Timaeus and incomplete Critias, in the Oxford Classical Text edition, with a new English translation of these texts. It also provides a full interpretative introduction, a medium-length commentary, and a Greek vocabulary. It is the only book which currently provides all these resources. Different kinds of readers will be able to use the book in different ways. Those primarily interested in Plato’s philosophy can focus on the translation and the introduction. Students or scholars of Greek can also use the text, commentary, and vocabulary.Distinctive features of the book include the full interpretative introduction, which takes account of recent scholarship on Plato’s story. Also, the commentary, interleaved with the Greek text for ease of reference, offers concise but informative help with the grammar and translation, supplemented by the complete Greek vocabulary. This makes the book useful in providing a medium-length prose text of considerable interest for students learning Greek and also for scholars wanting exegetical guidance. The book is based on an earlier edition, published in 1980 by Bristol Classical Press; however, the translation and most of the introduction are entirely new, and the commentary has been modified to match the new introduction and to take account of scholarship in the intervening years.

This book demonstrates how Greek tragedy can be called a political art form and why this is an exciting idea both for modern scholarship and to modern theatre producers and audiences. The central argument is that Greek tragedy made itself politically relevant to the members of the Greek city-state (polis) generally, rather than to Athenian democracy narrowly. The book begins by explaining the historical and theatrical context of first performance and then proceeds (in chapter 2) through a critical analysis of modern scholarly approaches to tragic politics. Chapter 3 gives a working definition of ‘political’ as ‘a concern with human beings as part of the community of the polis’ and shows how these concerns are manifest in the very shape (staging, performance) of tragedy. Chapter 4 discusses four political plays and identifies political issues that would have mattered to their original audience. Chapter 5 considers two of these four plays in modern performance and draws conclusions from the different political readings thus yielded: modern political theatre has often been counter-cultural; ancient Greek tragedy, for all that it posed awkward questions relevant to the life of the polis, was part of the establishment.

This book presents a collection of historical anecdotes written during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius in the first century ad. The book aims to redefine the significance of the work of Valerius Maximus, author of The Memorable Deeds of the Men of Rome and Foreign Nations. It argues that modern scholarship's view of Valerius' work as a mere source-book for rhetoricians is misconceived. The popularity of the work during the Middle Ages and Renaissance was due to its value to the readers of those times as a source of moral exhortation and guidance that was as relevant to them as it had been to Valerius' contemporaries. The wider appeal of the book lies in its examination of earlier forms of exemplary literature, in its discussion of how Roman literature was communicated to its audience, and in its original theory concerning the identity of Valerius Maximus himself.

The text of the Periplous or ‘circumnavigation’ that survives under the name of Skylax of Karyanda is in fact by an unknown author of the 4th century BC. It describes the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, naming hundreds of towns with geographical features such as rivers, harbours and mountains. But, argues Graham Shipley, it is not the record of a voyage or a navigational handbook for sailors. It is, rather, the first work of Greek theoretical geography, written in Athens at a time of intellectual ferment and intense speculation about the nature and dimensions of the inhabited world. While other scientists were gathering data about natural science and political systems or making rapid advances in philosophy, rhetorical theory, and cosmology, the unknown author collected data about the structure of the lands bordering the seas known to the Greeks, and compiled sailing distances and times along well-frequented routes. His aim was probably nothing less ambitious than to demonstrate the size of the inhabited world of the Greeks. This is the first full edition of the Periplous for over 150 years, and includes a newly revised Greek text and specially produced maps along with the first complete English translation. In this fully reset second edition, the introduction is expanded to include a section on the late-antique geographer Markianos, and updates incorporated into both the Introduction and Commentary.

Of all the Roman poets, Catullus is the most accessible for the modern reader. His poems range from the sublimely beautiful to the scatologically disgusting, from the world of heroic epic poetry to the dirt of the Roman streets. This book, which assumes no prior knowledge of the poet or of Roman poetry in general, explores Catullus in all his many guises. In six concise chapters, it deals with the cultural background to his poetic production, its literary context, the role of love, Alexandrian learning and obscenity, and, in the final chapter, considers the coherence and rationale of the collection as a whole. Each chapter is illustrated by readings of a number of poems, chosen to give a representative overview of Catullus' poetry. All quotations from the text are translated, and a brief discursive section of ‘Further Reading’ is provided at the end of each chapter. A timeline giving dates of authors mentioned and a full bibliography are also supplied.

SiliusItalicus’ Punica, the longest surviving epic in Latin literature, has seen a resurgence of interest among scholars in recent years. A celebration of Rome's triumph over Hannibal and Carthage during the second Punic war, Silius’ poem presents a plethora of familiar names to its readers: Fabius Maximus, Claudius Marcellus, Scipio Africanus and, of course, Rome's ‘ultimate enemy’ – Hannibal. Where most recent scholarship on the Punicahas focused its attention on the problematic portrayal of Scipio Africanus as a hero for Rome, this book shifts the focus to Carthage and offers a new reading of Hannibal's place inSilius’ epic, and in Rome's literary culture at large. Celebrated and demonised in equal measure, Hannibal became something of an anti-hero for Rome; a man who acquired mythic status, and was condemned by Rome's authors for his supposed greed and cruelty, yet admired for his military acumen. For the first time this book provides a comprehensive overview of this multi-faceted Hannibal as he appears in the Punica and suggests that Silius’ portrayal of him can be read as the culmination to Rome's centuries-long engagement with the Carthaginian in its literature. The works of Polybius, Livy, Virgil, and the post Virgilianepicists all have a bit-part in this book, which aims to show that SiliusItalicus’ Punicais as much an example of how Rome remembered its past, as it is a text striving to join Rome's epic canon.

This book provides separate discussions of each of Sophocles' seven plays: Ajax, Women of Trachis, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. It sets these between an chapter that outlines modern approaches to Greek tragedy and a final chapter that spotlights a key moment in the reception of each work. Focusing on the tragedies' dramatic power and the challenges with which they confront an audience, the book refuses to confine them within a supposedly Sophoclean template. They are seven unique works, only alike in the fact that they are all major masterpieces.

Twenty of the author's shorter pieces first published between 1963 and 2004 (when the book was initially prepared), which emphasize textual questions, verbal criticism, dramatic form and general interpretation. They are grouped roughly under the three words of the title, and handle subjects ranging from A: phenomena general to Greek Tragedy: its demand upon students and readers; stichomythia; the fragmentary tragedian Chaeremon; the attribution of a fragmentary Pirithous-play; the textual quality of quotations in Athenaeus; review of an important select edition of fragments; through (B): some topics particular to Euripides: scribal hands in a famous manuscript; the problematic Funeral Oration in Suppliants; that play's disputed date; appreciation of a choral ode in Hecuba; specialist lexicography of the poet; reviews of the now standard critical edition of the poet; to (C): appreciations of some scholars of Tragedy and particularly Euripides prominent since the 16^th Century: Dirk Canter, Joshua Barnes, Jeremiah Markland, Samuel Musgrave, Peter Elmsley, James Henry Monk, and Frederick Apthorp Paley. All pieces have been edited, revised and supplemented with notes and bibliography as far as 2006. The problems of collecting and editing fragmentary texts emerge as the author's regular interest, anticipating his concentration on this work since 1995, in five collaborative editions and some shorter studies, some of which are listed or heralded in his List of Publications at the end of the volume.