Cambridge Classical Studies

Series · 41

books · 1983-2025

By Unknown, Chad Jorgenson, Lacey M. Wallace, and more

Books in series

Theodosius II

Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity

2013

Theodosius II (AD 408 450) was the longest reigning Roman emperor. Ever since Edward Gibbon, he has been dismissed as mediocre and ineffectual. Yet Theodosius ruled an empire which retained its integrity while the West was broken up by barbarian invasions. This book explores Theodosius' challenges and successes. Ten essays by leading scholars of late antiquity provide important new insights into the court at Constantinople, the literary and cultural vitality of the reign, and the presentation of imperial piety and power. Much attention has been directed towards the changes promoted by Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century; much less to their crystallisation under Theodosius II. This volume explores the working out of new conceptions of the Roman Empire its history, its rulers and its God. A substantial introduction offers a new framework for thinking afresh about the long transition from the classical world to Byzantium.

Land and Taxes in Ptolemaic Egypt

An Edition, Translation and Commentary for the Edfu Land Survey (P. Haun. IV 70)

2017

This book provides the first edition with an extensive introduction and full commentary of a unique land survey written on papyrus in Greek which derives from that area of southern (Upper) Egypt known as the Apollonopolite (or Edfu) nome and is now preserved in Copenhagen. Dating from the late second century BC, this survey provides a new picture of both landholding and taxation in the area which differs significantly from that currently accepted. The introduction sets this new evidence in its contemporary context, drawing particular attention to what it reveals about the nature of the relations of the Ptolemaic royal administration with local grandees, Egyptian temples and the army. No student of Hellenistic Egypt can afford to ignore this text, which importantly extends our knowledge of Upper Egypt under the Ptolemaic kings and involves some modification to the prevailing picture of landholding in Hellenistic Egypt.

Playing Hesiod

The 'Myth of the Races' in Classical Antiquity

2014

This book offers a new description of the significance of Hesiod's 'myth of the races' for ancient Greek and Roman authors, showing how the most detailed responses to this story go far beyond nostalgia for a lost 'Golden' age or hope of its return. Through a series of close readings, it argues that key authors from Plato to Juvenal rewrite the story to reconstruct 'Hesiod' more broadly as predecessor in forming their own intellectual and rhetorical projects; disciplines such as philosophy, didactic poetry and satire all engage in implicit questions about 'Hesiodic' teaching. The first chapter introduces key issues; the second re-evaluates the account in Hesiod's Works and Days. A major chapter outlines Plato's use of Hesiod through close study of the Protagoras, Republic and Statesman. Subsequent chapters focus on Aratus' Phaenomena and Ovid's Metamorphoses; the final chapter, on the Octavia attributed to Seneca and Juvenal's sixth Satire, broadens ideas of Hesiod's reception in Rome.

Oscan in the Greek Alphabet

2015

Oscan was spoken in Southern Italy in the second half of the first millennium BC. Here, for the first time, all the evidence for the spelling of Oscan in the Greek alphabet is collected and examined. Understanding the orthography of these inscriptions has far-reaching implications for the historical phonology and morphology of Oscan and the Italic languages (for example providing unique evidence for the reconstruction of the genitive plural). A striking discovery is the lack of a standardised orthography for Oscan in the Greek alphabet, which seriously problematises attempts to date inscriptions by assuming the consistent chronological development of spelling features. There are also intriguing insights into the linguistic situation in South Italy. Rather than a separate community of Oscan-speakers who had adopted and subsequently adapted the Greek alphabet in isolation, we should posit groups who were in touch with contemporary developments in Greek orthography due to widespread Greek-Oscan bilingualism.

#10

Southern Gaul and the Mediterranean

Multilingualism and Multiple Identities in the Iron Age and Roman Periods

2013

The interactions of the Celtic-speaking communities of Southern Gaul with the Mediterranean world have intrigued commentators since antiquity. This book combines sociolinguistics and archaeology to bring to life the multilingualism and multiple identities of the region from the foundation of the Greek colony of Massalia in 600 BC to the final phases of Roman Imperial power. It builds on the interest generated by the application of modern bilingualism theory to ancient evidence by modelling language contact and community dynamics and adopting an innovative interdisciplinary approach. This produces insights into the entanglements and evolving configurations of a dynamic zone of cultural contact. Key foci of contact-induced change are exposed and new interpretations of cultural phenomena highlight complex origins and influences from the entire Mediterranean koine. Southern Gaul reveals itself to be fertile ground for considering the major themes of multilingualism, ethnolinguistic vitality, multiple identities, colonialism and Mediterraneanization.

#12

Justice and Reciprocity in Aristotle's Political Philosophy

2015

This book illustrates how Aristotle's ethical concepts such as justice, reciprocity and friendship offer a basis for his political philosophy. In particular, it points out the importance of Aristotle for articulating the concept of a civic relationship and developing a theory of integration, by exploring how he includes a wide variety of people within the deliberative and judicial processes. Comparisons between Aristotle's own thought and present-day 'Aristotelian' political theories, such as communitarianism, civic republicanism and the capabilities approach, are also among the unique approaches offered by the book and are used to illustrate his original vision of politics. They can also, however, offer new insights into the problems of how to read his texts appropriately in their context and why we now need to read them, not only out of an antiquarian interest but also out of our concern for politics.

#14

Menander, New Comedy and the Visual

2014

This book argues that New Comedy has a far richer performance texture than has previously been recognised. Offering close readings of all the major plays of Menander, it shows how intertextuality - the sustained dialogue of New Comedy performance with the diverse ideological, philosophical, literary and theatrical discourses of contemporary polis culture - is crucial in creating semantic depth and thus offsetting the impression that the plots are simplistic love stories with no political or ideological resonances. It also explores how the visual aspect of the plays ('opsis') is just as important as any verbal means of signification - a phenomenon termed 'intervisuality', examining in particular depth the ways in which the mask can infuse various systems of reference into the play. Masks like the panchrēstos neaniskos (the 'all-perfect youth'), for example, are now full of meaning; thus, with their ideologically marked physiognomies, they can be strong instigators of literary and cultural allusion.

#15

The Origin of Roman London

2014

In this book Dr Wallace makes a fundamental contribution to the study of urbanism in the Roman provinces. She attempts for the first time to present a detailed archaeological account of the first decade of one of the best-excavated cities in the Roman Empire. Delving into the artefact and structural reports from all excavations of pre-Boudican levels in London, she brings together vast quantities of data which are discussed and illustrated according to a novel methodology that address both the difficulties and complexity of 'grey literature' and urban excavation.

#16

Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily

Evaluating Language Contact in a Fragmentary Corpus

2015

In pre-Roman Italy and Sicily, dozens of languages and writing systems competed and interacted, and bilingualism was the norm. Using frameworks from epigraphy, archaeology and the sociolinguistics of language contact, this book explores the relationship between Greek and Oscan, two of the most widely spoken languages in the south of the peninsula. Dr McDonald undertakes a new analysis of the entire corpus of South Oscan texts written in Lucania, Bruttium and Messana, including dedications, curse tablets, laws, funerary texts and graffiti. She demonstrates that genre and domain are critical to understanding where and when Greek was used within Oscan-speaking communities, and how ancient bilinguals exploited the social meaning of their languages in their writing. This book also offers a cutting-edge example of how to build the fullest possible picture of bilingualism in fragmentary languages across the ancient world.

#20

Cambridge Classical Studies Unknown

2025

#22

The Sanctuary at Bath in the Roman Empire

2020

The Roman sanctuary at Bath has long been used in scholarship as an example par excellence of religious and artistic syncretisms in Roman Britain. With its monumental temple, baths, and hot springs, its status as one of the most significant Roman sites in the province is unquestioned. But our academic narratives about Roman Bath are also rooted in the narratives of our more recent past. This book begins by exploring how Georgian and Victorian antiquaries developed our modern story of a healing sanctuary at Roman Bath. It shows that a curative function for the sanctuary is in fact unsupported by the archaeological evidence. It then retells the story of Roman Bath by focusing on three interlinked aspects: the entanglement of the sanctuary with Roman imperialism, the role of the hot springs in the lives of worshipers, and Bath's place within the wider world of the western Roman Empire.

#23

Carthage in Virgil's Aeneid

Staging the Enemy under Augustus

2018

Founded upon more than a century of civil bloodshed, the first imperial regime of ancient Rome, the Principate of Caesar Augustus, looked at Rome's distant and glorious past in order to justify and promote its existence under the disguise of a restoration of the old Republic. In doing so, it used and revisited the history and myth of Rome's major success against external enemies: the wars against Carthage. This book explores the ideological use of Carthage in the most authoritative of the Augustan literary texts, the Aeneid of Virgil. It analyses the ideological portrait of Carthaginians from the middle Republic and the truth-twisting involved in writing about the Punic Wars under the Principate. It also investigates the mirroring between Carthage and Rome in a poem whose primary concern was rather the traumatic memory of Civil War and the subsequent subversion of Rome's Republican institutions through the establishment of Augustus' Principate.

#24

Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason

The Republic and Laws

2013

A prolific philosopher who also held Rome's highest political office, Cicero was uniquely qualified to write on political philosophy. In this book Professor Atkins provides a fresh interpretation of Cicero's central political dialogues - the Republic and Laws. Devoting careful attention to form as well as philosophy, Atkins argues that these dialogues together probe the limits of reason in political affairs and explore the resources available to the statesman given these limitations. He shows how Cicero appropriated and transformed Plato's thought to forge original and important works of political philosophy. The book demonstrates that Cicero's Republic and Laws are critical for understanding the history of the concepts of rights, the mixed constitution and natural law. It concludes by comparing Cicero's thought to the modern conservative tradition and argues that Cicero provides a perspective on utopia frequently absent from current philosophical treatments.

#25

Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia

2013

This book examines foundation myths told about the Ionian cities during the archaic and classical periods. It uses these myths to explore the complex and changing ways in which civic identity was constructed in Ionia, relating this to the wider discourses about ethnicity and cultural difference that were current in the Greek world at this time. The Ionian cities seem to have rejected oppositional models of cultural difference which set in contrast East and West, Europe and Asia, Greek and Barbarian, opting instead for a more fluid and nuanced perspective on ethnic and cultural distinctions. The conclusions of this book have far-reaching implications for our understanding of Ionia, but also challenge current models of Greek ethnicity and identity, suggesting that there was a more diverse conception of Greekness in antiquity than has often been assumed.

#27

Performing Citizenship in Plato's Laws

2014

In the Laws, Plato theorizes citizenship as simultaneously a political, ethical, and aesthetic practice. His reflection on citizenship finds its roots in a descriptive psychology of human experience, with sentience and, above all, volition seen as the primary targets of a lifelong training in the values of citizenship. In the city of Magnesia described in the Laws erôs for civic virtue is presented as a motivational resource not only within the reach of the 'ordinary' citizen, but also factored by default into its educational system. Supporting a vision of 'perfect citizenship' based on an internalized obedience to the laws, and persuading the entire polity to consent willingly to it, requires an ideology that must be rhetorically all-inclusive. In this city 'ordinary' citizenship itself will be troped as a performative Magnesia's choral performances become a fundamental channel for shaping, feeling and communicating a strong sense of civic identity and unity.

#28

M. I. Finley

An Ancient Historian and his Impact

2016

M. I. Finley (1912–86) was the most famous ancient historian of his generation. He was admired by his peers, and was Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. His unmistakable voice was familiar to tens of thousands of radio listeners, his polemical reviews and other journalism were found all over the broadsheets and weeklies, and his scholarly as well as his popular works sold in very large numbers as Penguin paperbacks. Yet this was also a man dismissed from his job at Rutgers University when he refused to answer the question of whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. This pioneering volume assesses Finley's achievements and analyses the nature of the impact of this charismatic individual and the means by which he changed the world of ancient history.

#30

Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion

2017

This book examines a type of object that was widespread and very popular in classical antiquity - votive offerings in the shape of parts of the human body. It collects examples from four principal areas and time Classical Greece, pre-Roman Italy, Roman Gaul and Roman Asia Minor. It uses a compare-and-contrast methodology to highlight differences between these sets of votives, exploring the implications for our understandings of how beliefs about the body changed across classical antiquity. The book also looks at how far these ancient beliefs overlap with, or differ from, modern ideas about the body and its physical and conceptual boundaries. Central themes of the book include illness and healing, bodily fragmentation, human-animal hybridity, transmission and reception of traditions, and the mechanics of personal transformation in religious rituals.

#31

Imagining Reperformance in Ancient Culture

Studies in the Traditions of Drama and Lyric

2017

This book offers a series of studies of the idea and practice of reperformance as it affects ancient lyric poetry and drama. Special attention is paid to the range of phenomena which fall under the heading 'reperformance', to how poets use both the reality and the 'imaginary' of reperformance to create a deep temporal sense in their work and to how audiences use their knowledge of reperformance conditions to interpret what they see and hear. The studies range in scope from Pindar and fifth-century tragedy and comedy to the choral performances and reconstructions of the Imperial Age. All chapters are informed by recent developments in performance studies, and all Greek and Latin is translated.

#33

Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy

2018

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is often characterised in terms of competitive individuals debating orally with one another in public arenas. But it also developed over its long history a sense in which philosophers might acknowledge some other particular philosopher or group of philosophers as an authority and offer to that authority explicit intellectual allegiance. This is most obvious in the development after the classical period of the philosophical 'schools' with agreed founders and, most importantly, canonical founding texts. There also developed a tradition of commentary, interpretation, and discussion of texts which itself became a mode of philosophical debate. As time went on, the weight of a growing tradition of reading and appealing to a certain corpus of foundational texts began to shape how later antiquity viewed its philosophical past and also how philosophical debate and inquiry was conducted. In this book leading scholars explore aspects of these important developments.

#34

Antiochus and Peripatetic Ethics

2019

This book offers a fresh analysis of the account of Peripatetic ethics in Cicero's On Ends 5, which goes back to the first-century BCE philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. Georgia Tsouni challenges previous characterisations of Antiochus' philosophical project as 'eclectic' and shows how his reconstruction of the ethics of the 'Old Academy' demonstrates a careful attempt to update the ancient heritage, and predominantly the views of Aristotle and the Peripatos, in the light of contemporary Stoic-led debates. This results in both a hermeneutically complex and a philosophically exciting reading of the old tradition. A case in point is the way Antiochus grounds the 'Old Academic' conception of the happy life in natural appropriation (oikeiosis), thus offering a naturalistic version of Aristotelian ethics.

#36

Hesiodic Voices

Studies in the Ancient Reception of Hesiod's Works and Days

2013

This book selects central texts illustrating the literary reception of Hesiod's Works and Days in antiquity and considers how these moments were crucial in fashioning the idea of 'didactic literature'. A central chapter considers the development of ancient ideas about didactic poetry, relying not so much on explicit critical theory as on how Hesiod was read and used from the earliest period of reception onwards. Other chapters consider Hesiodic reception in the archaic poetry of Alcaeus and Simonides, in the classical prose of Plato, Xenophon and Isocrates, in the Aesopic tradition, and in the imperial prose of Dio Chrysostom and Lucian; there is also a groundbreaking study of Plutarch's extensive commentary on the Works and Days and an account of ancient ideas of Hesiod's linguistic style. This is a major and innovative contribution to the study of Hesiod's remarkable poem and to the Greek literary engagement with the past.

#37

The Early Textual History of Lucretius' De rerum natura

2013

This is the first detailed analysis of the fate of Lucretius' De rerum natura from its beginnings in the 50s BC down to the creation of our earliest extant manuscripts during the Carolingian age. A detailed investigation of the knowledge of Lucretius' poem among writers throughout the Roman, and subsequently the medieval, worlds allows fresh insight into the work's readership and reception, and an assessment of the value of the indirect tradition for editing the poem. The first extended analysis of the 170+ subject headings (capitula) that intersperse the text reveals the close engagement of Roman readers. A fresh inspection and assignation of marginal hands in the poem's most important manuscript provides new evidence about the work of Carolingian correctors and the basis for a new Lucretian stemma codicum. Further clarification of the interrelationship of Renaissance manuscripts of Lucretius gives additional evidence of the poem's reception in fifteenth-century Italy.

#38

Juvenal and the Poetics of Anonymity

2017

The satirist Juvenal remains one of antiquity's greatest question marks. His Satires entered the mainstream of the classical tradition with nothing more than an uncertain name and a dubious biography to recommend them. Tom Geue argues that the missing author figure is no mere casualty of time's passage, but a startling, concerted effect of the Satires themselves. Scribbling dangerous social critique under a historical maximum of paranoia, Juvenal harnessed this dark energy by wiping all traces of himself - signature, body, biographical snippets, social connections - from his reticent texts. This last major ambassador of a once self-betraying genre took a radical leap into the anonymous. Juvenal and the Poetics of Anonymity tracks this mystifying self-concealment over the whole Juvenalian corpus. Through probing close readings, it shows how important the missing author was to this satire, and how that absence echoes and amplifies the neurotic politics of writing under surveillance.

#39

Sociological Studies in Roman History

2017

Keith Hopkins was a sociologist and Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge from 1985 to 2001. He is widely recognised as one of the most radical, innovative and influential Roman historians of his generation. This volume presents fourteen of Hopkins' essays on an impressive range of contraception, demography, economic history, slavery, literacy, imperial power, Roman religion, Early Christianity, and the social and political structures of the ancient world. The papers have been re-edited and revised with accompanying essays by Hopkins' colleagues, friends and former students. This volume brings Hopkins' work up to date. It sets his distinctive and pioneering use of sociological approaches in a wider intellectual context and explores his lasting impact on the ways that ancient history is now written. This volume will interest all those fascinated by Rome and its empire, and particularly those eager to experience challenging and controversial ways of understanding the past.

#40

Heracles and Euripidean Tragedy

2005

Euripides' Heracles is an extraordinary play of great complexity, exploring the co-existence of both positive and negative aspects of the eponymous hero. Euripides treats Heracles' ambivalence by showing his uncertain position after the completion of his labours and turns him into a tragic hero by dramatizing his development from the invincible hero of the labours to the courageous bearer of suffering. This book offers a comprehensive reading of Heracles examining it in the contexts of Euripidean dramaturgy, Greek drama and fifth-century Athenian society. It shows that the play, which raises profound questions on divinity and human values, deserves to have a prominent place in every discussion about Euripides and about Greek tragedy. Tracing some of Euripides' most spectacular writing in terms of emotional and intellectual effect, and discussing questions of narrative, rhetoric, stagecraft and audience reception, this work is required reading for all students and scholars of Euripides.

#43

Apuleius' Platonism

The Impersonation of Philosophy

2014

Apuleius of Madauros, writing in the latter half of the second century CE in Roman North Africa, is best known to us today for his Latin fiction, the Metamorphoses aka The Golden Ass, about a man who turned into a donkey and back again. However, he was also a Platonic philosopher, who, even though many of his writings are lost, wrote a range of rhetorical and philosophical works which survive to this day. This book examines these works to reveal how Apuleius' Platonism is a result of his 'impersonation of philosophy', that is, a rhetorically powerful methodological tool that allows him to 'speak' on behalf of Plato and his philosophy. This book is the first exploration of the full scope of his idiosyncratic brand of Platonism across his multifarious literary corpus and is a major contribution to the study of the dynamic between literature and philosophy in antiquity and beyond.

#46

The Embodied Soul in Plato's Later Thought

2018

In this book, Chad Jorgenson challenges the view that for Plato the good life is one of pure intellection, arguing that his last writings increasingly insist on the capacity of reason to impose measure on our emotions and pleasures. Starting from an account of the ontological, epistemological, and physiological foundations of the tripartition of the soul, he traces the increasing sophistication of Plato's thinking about the nature of pleasure and pain and his developing interest in sciences bearing on physical reality. These theoretical shifts represent a movement away from a conception of human happiness as a purification or flight of the soul from the sensible to the intelligible, as in the Phaedo, towards a focus on the harmony of the individual as a psychosomatic whole under the hegemonic power of reason.

#47

Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion

2016

Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.

#51

Emperor and Senators in the Reign of Constantius II

Maintaining Imperial Rule Between Rome and Constantinople in the Fourth Century AD

2018

In this book, Muriel Moser investigates the relationship between the emperors Constantine I and his son Constantius II (AD 312–361) and the senators of Constantinople and Rome. She examines and contextualizes the integration of the social elites of Rome and the Eastern provinces into the imperial system and demonstrates their increased importance for the maintenance of imperial rule in response to political fragility and fragmentation. An in-depth analysis of senatorial careers and imperial legislation is combined with a detailed assessment of the political context - shared rule, the suppression of usurpations, Constantius' use of Constantine's memory. Using a wide range of literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and legal sources, some of which are as yet unpublished, this volume produces significant new readings of the history of the senates in Rome and Constantinople, of the construction of imperial rule and of historical change in Late Antiquity.

#52

Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae

Philosophizing Theatre and the Politics of Perception in Late Fifth-Century Athens

2014

Aristophanes' comic masterpiece Thesmophoriazusae has long been recognized amongst the plays of Old Comedy for its deconstruction of tragic theatricality. This book reveals that this deconstruction is grounded not simply in Aristophanes' wider engagement with tragic realism. Rather, it demonstrates that from its outset Aristophanes' play draws upon Parmenides' philosophical revelations concerning reality and illusion, employing Eleatic strictures and imagery to philosophize the theatrical situation, criticize Aristophanes' poetic rival Euripides as promulgator of harmful deceptions, expose the dangerous complicity of Athenian theatre audiences in tragic illusion, and articulate political advice to an audience negotiating a period of political turmoil characterized by deception and uncertainty (the months before the oligarchic coup of 411 BC). The book thereby restores Thesmophoriazusae to its proper status as a philosophical comedy and reveals hitherto unrecognized evidence of Aristophanes' political use of Eleatic ideas during the late fifth century BC.

#55

Between Greece and Babylonia

Hellenistic Intellectual History in Cross-Cultural Perspective

2019

This book argues for a new approach to the intellectual history of the Hellenistic world. Despite the intense cross-cultural interactions which characterised the period after Alexander, studies of 'Hellenistic' intellectual life have tended to focus on Greek scholars and institutions. Where cross-cultural connections have been drawn, it is through the Greek adoption of Babylonian astrology; the Egyptian scholar Manetho deploying Greek historiographical models. In this book, however, Kathryn Stevens advances a 'Hellenistic intellectual history' which is cross-cultural in scope and goes beyond borrowing and influence. Drawing on a wide range of Greek and Akkadian sources, she argues that intellectual life in the Greek world and Babylonia can be linked not just through occasional contact and influence, but also by deeper parallels in intellectual culture that reflect their integration into the same overarching imperial system. Tracing such parallels yields intellectual history which is diverse, multipolar and, therefore, truly 'Hellenistic'.

#58

Expressions of Time in Ancient Greek

2014

How did Ancient Greek express that an event occurred at a particular time, for a certain duration, or within a given time frame? The answer to these questions depends on a variety of conditions - the nature of the time noun, the tense and aspect of the verb, the particular historical period of Greek during which the author lived - that existing studies of the language do not take sufficiently into account. This book accordingly examines the circumstances that govern the use of the genitive, dative, and accusative of time, as well as the relevant prepositional constructions, primarily in Greek prose of the fifth century BC through the second century AD, but also in Homer. While the focus is on developments in Greek, translations of the examples, as well as a fully glossed summary chapter, make it accessible to linguists interested in the expression of time generally.

#59

Virgil's Ascanius

Imagining the Future in the Aeneid

2017

Ascanius is the most prominent child hero in Virgil's Aeneid. He accompanies his father from Troy to Italy and is present from the first book of the epic to the last; he is destined to found the city of Alba Longa and the Julian family to which Caesar and Augustus both belonged; and he hunts, fights, makes speeches, and even makes a joke. In this first book-length study of Virgil's Ascanius, Anne Rogerson demonstrates the importance of this character not just to the Augustan family tree but to the texture and the meaning of the Aeneid. As a figure of prophecy and a symbol both of hopes for the future and of present uncertainties, Ascanius is a fusion of epic and dynastic desires. Compelling close readings of the representation and reception of this understudied character throughout the Aeneid expose the unexpectedly childish qualities of Virgil's heroic epic.

#61

Aegean Linear Script(s)

Rethinking the Relationship Between Linear A and Linear B

2020

When does a continuum become a divide? This book investigates the genetic relationship between Linear A and Linear B, two Bronze Age scripts attested on Crete and Mainland Greece and understood to have developed one out of the other. By using an interdisciplinary methodology, this research integrates linguistic, epigraphic, palaeographic and archaeological evidence, and places the writing practice in its sociohistorical setting. By challenging traditional views, this work calls into question widespread assumptions and interpretative schemes on the relationship between these two scripts, and opens up new perspectives on the ideology associated with the retention, adaptation and transmission of a script, and how identity was negotiated at a moment of closer societal interaction between Cretans and Greek-speaking Mainlanders in the Late Bronze Age. By delving deeper into the structure and inner workings of these two writing systems, this book will make us rethink the relationship between Linear A and B.

#62

Roman Frugality

Modes of Moderation from the Archaic Age to the Early Empire and Beyond

2020

Roman Frugality offers the first-ever systematic analysis of the variants of individual and collective self-restraint that shaped ancient Rome throughout its history and had significant repercussions in post-classical times. In particular, it tries to do the complexity of a phenomenon justice that is situated at the interface of ethics and economics, self and society, the real and the imaginary, and touches upon thrift and sobriety in the material sphere, but also modes of moderation more generally, not least in the spheres of food and drink, sex and power. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawing on ancient history, philology, archaeology and the history of thought, the volume traces the role of frugal thought and practice within the evolving political culture and political economy of ancient Rome from the archaic age to the imperial period and concludes with a chapter that explores the reception of ancient ideas of self-restraint in early modern times.

#63

Migration, Mobility and Language Contact in and around the Ancient Mediterranean

2020

Migration, Mobility and Language Contact in and around the Ancient Mediterranean is the first volume to show the different ways in which surviving linguistic evidence can be used to track movements of people in the ancient world. Eleven chapters cover a number of case studies, which span the period from the seventh century BC to the fourth century AD, ranging from Spain to Egypt, from Sicily to Pannonia. The book includes detailed study of epigraphic and literary evidence written in Latin and Greek, as well as work on languages which are not so well documented, such as Etruscan and Oscan. There is a subject index and an index of works and inscriptions cited.

#64

Theatrical Reenactment in Pindar and Aeschylus

2019

What would Pindar and Aeschylus have talked about had they met at some point during their overlapping poetic careers? How do we map the space shared by these two fifth-century choral poets? In the first book-length comparative study of Pindar and Aeschylus in over six decades, Anna S. Uhlig pushes back against the prevailing tendency to privilege interpretive frames that highlight the differences in their works. Instead, she adopts a more inclusive category of choral performance, one in which both poets are shown to be grappling to understand how the vivid here and now of their compositions are in fact a reenactment of voices and bodies from elsewhere. Pairing close readings of the ancient texts with insights from modern performance studies, Uhlig offers a novel perspective on the 'song culture' of early fifth-century BC Greece.

#65

Population and Economy in Classical Athens

2019

This is the first comprehensive account of the population of classical Athens for almost a century. The methodology of earlier scholars has been criticised in general terms but their conclusions have not been seriously challenged. Ben Akrigg reviews and assesses those methodologies and conclusions for the first time and thereby sets the historical demography of Athens on a firm footing. The main focus is on the economic impact of that demography, but new conclusions are presented which have profound implications for our understanding of Athenian society and culture. The book establishes that the Athenian population grew very large in the fifth century BC, before falling dramatically in the final three decades of that century. These changes had important immediate consequences but the city of the fourth century was shaped in fundamental ways by the demographic upheavals of its past.

#67

Plato's Timaeus and the Latin Tradition

2018

This book focuses on the development of Platonic philosophy at the hands of Roman writers between the first century BCE and the early fifth century CE. It discusses the interpretation of Plato's Timaeus by Cicero, Apuleius, Calcidius, and Augustine, and examines how these authors created new contexts and settings for the intellectual heritage they received and thereby contributed to the construction of the complex and multifaceted genre of Roman Platonism. It takes advantage of the authors' treatment of Plato's Timaeus as a continuous point of reference to illustrate the individuality and originality of each writer in his engagement with this Greek philosophical text; each chooses a specific vocabulary, methodology, and literary setting for his appropriation of Timaean doctrine. The authors' contributions to the dialogue's history of transmission are shown to have enriched and prolonged the enduring significance of Plato's cosmology.

#68

Latin Literature and its Transmission

2015

This is a series of innovative studies in the textual and literary criticism of Latin literature, exploring how these two branches of the discipline are mutually supportive. The contributors include many leading scholars in the field. Individual essays are devoted to Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, Tacitus and Virgil, and there are also essays on the Renaissance reception of Virgil and on principles of editorial practice. The collection celebrates the extraordinary contribution which Michael Reeve has made and continues to make to Latin studies.

#78

A Study of Daphnis and Chloe

1983

This 1983 book provides a serious modern literary treatment of perhaps the best known of all surviving works of ancient Greek fiction. Dr Hunter demonstrates the sophistication of this pastoral romance, a sophistication which he maintains has often been assumed but never properly discussed. Evidence for the identity of the author and the date of composition are also considered.

Authors

Unknown

Author · 194 books

Books can be attributed to "Unknown" when the author or editor (as applicable) is not known and cannot be discovered. If at all possible, list at least one actual author or editor for a book instead of using "Unknown". Books whose authorship is purposefully withheld should be attributed instead to Anonymous.

Richard Lawrence Hunter, FBA is an Australian classical scholar. From 2001 to 2021, he was the 37th Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge.

Richard Fletcher

Author · 7 books

Richard Alexander Fletcher was a historian who specialized in the medieval period. He was Professor of History at the University of York and one of the outstanding talents in English and Spanish medieval scholarship.

Morris Keith Hopkins was a British historian and sociologist. He was professor of ancient history at the University of Cambridge from 1985 to 2000. Hopkins had a relatively unconventional route to the Cambridge professorship. After Brentwood School, he graduated in classics at King's College, Cambridge in 1958. He spent time as a graduate student, much influenced by Moses Finley, but left before completing his doctorate for an assistant lectureship in sociology at the University of Leicester (1961–63). He returned to Cambridge as a research fellow at King's College, Cambridge (1963–67) while at the same time taking a lectureship at the London School of Economics, before spending two years as professor of sociology at Hong Kong University (1967–69) After a further two years at the LSE (1970–72), he moved to Brunel University as professor of sociology in 1972, also serving as dean of the social sciences faculty from 1981 to 1985. In 1985 he was elected to the Cambridge chair in ancient history. The fullest account of his career and significance as an ancient historian is in his British Academy necrology (W.V. Harris, Proceedings of the British Academy 130 (2005), 3–27).

Coulter H. George is Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. The author of Expressions of Agency in Ancient Greek (CUP, 2005) and Expressions of Time in Ancient Greek (CUP, 2014), he has also taught at Rice University and was a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Dr David Butterfield is a fellow and senior lecturer of classics at Queens’ College, Cambridge. He is the author of many books including, most recently, Varro Varius: The Polymath of the Roman World. Outside the classical world, he has written regularly on any subject other than politics for The Spectator, where he is a contributing editor.

Muriel Moser

Author · 1 books