Books in the Oxford Classical Monographs series

This volume is a historical study of the ancient city of Byzantium, before it became Constantinople then Istanbul, and its relationship with the Bosporus strait. It explores how this relationship shaped many facets of its inhabitants' lives and illustrates how the region's history cannot be understood in isolation from its geographical context.

This study of Euripides' Electra marries linguistics and literary criticism to provide novel insights into the interpretation of the play. Focusing on characterization, it demonstrates how the figures are shaped through their use of language, using new means of analysis to argue for a balanced interpretation and challenge prevailing views.

Pindar's Library is the first volume to analyse the role played by Pindar's literary, cultic, and scholarly reception in affecting readers' engagement with his poetry, considering the continuities between reading and attending performances, and highlighting elements of readers' experiences which were distinctive to Hellenistic culture.

The Greek Gods in Modern Scholarship examines major theories of interpretation of the Greek gods in German and British classical scholarship during the nineteenth and early twentieth century and their significance and influence.

Religion and Society in Ancient Thessaly explores the issues of regionalism in ancient Greek religion and the relationship between religion and society, investigating the Thessalian particularities of the evidence and the role of religion in giving Thessalonians a sense of their identity and place in the wider Greek world.

Cotton examines Plato's ideas about education and learning, with a particular focus on the experiences a learner must go through in approaching philosophical understanding.

This book is an investigation of how semivowels were realised in Indo-European and in early Greek. It examines the extent to which Indo-European *i and *y were independent phonemes, in what respects their alternation was predictable, and how this situation changed as Indo-European developed into Greek.

Sharing with the Gods examines one of the most ubiquitous yet little studied aspects of ancient Greek religion, the offering of so-called 'first-fruits' (aparchai) and 'tithes' (dekatai), from the Archaic period to the Hellenistic.

Goldschmidt looks at the relationship between Rome's two great epic poems, Ennius' Annales and Virgil's Aeneid. Focusing on the intersections between intertextuality and the appropriations of cultural memory, Goldschmidt considers how Virgil's poem appropriates and re-writes the myths and memories which Ennius had enshrined in Roman epic.

McEvoy addresses the phenomenon of the Roman child-emperor during the late fourth century. Tracing the course of their reigns, the book looks at the sophistication of the Roman system of government which made their accessions possible, and the adaptation of existing imperial ideology to portray boys as young as six as viable rulers.

Investigates the myths of three Cretan women - King Minos' wife, Pasiphae, and their daughters Ariadne and Phaedra - as they appear in Latin poetry of the late Republic and early Empire. This title offers detailed readings of several treatments of the stories, alongside a thematic investigation of the ideas of memory, wildness, and morality.

This book examines the ways by which the city-state of Athens, and its various associations, administrative and religious, managed their landed assets. It investigates the close connection between income and sacred property and it analyses notions of sacred and public ownership in antiquity by deconstructing earlier anachronistic interpretations.

In this study of the relationship between a modern philosophical idea and an ancient historical moment, Lauren Apfel explores how the notion of pluralism, made famous by Isaiah Berlin, features in the Classical Greek world and, more specifically, in the thought of three of its most prominent figures: Protagoras, Herodotus, and Sophocles.

This text describes Athenian attempts to cope with the contradictions in the character of Theseus who seemed the perfect Athenian, but under this exterior lay a heartless seducer, rapist and killer of his own son. Theseus in the context of 5th century Athenian culture is also discussed.

This oracle is of particular interest as the only first-hand narrative of the critical years of the mid-3rd century AD. A full introduction is followed by the new edition of the text since 1902 and detailed commentary.

A totally original and exciting new study on Homer. Drawing on the latest linguistic and literary theory, Kahane looks at the literary significance of word repetition and linguistic patterns in Homer, and highlights the sophisticated irony, allusion, and ambiguity in Homer's discourse.

Kechagia rehabilitates Plutarch as a thinker and historian of philosophy by offering a critical analysis of Against Colotes, an anti-Epicurean treatise in which Plutarch discusses some of the most important philosophical theories. The book argues that Plutarch produces insightful philosophical interpretations of past theories.

A detailed commentary on Tristia 2, Ovid's verse letter addressed from exile to the emperor Augustus. Jennifer Ingleheart provides an indispensable guide to all aspects of the poem - textual, literary, historical, and political - while her Introduction explores, among other topics, its ironical and subversive aspects.

Thebaid is a Latin epic, composed by Statius in AD 80-92, about the mythological story of the expedition of the seven warriors against Thebes. In this volume Parkes offers the first full-length scholarly commentary on the whole of Thebaid 4, with text and apparatus criticus, an English translation, and a comprehensive introduction.

The comic drama of the late fifth and early fourth century BCE was typified by the combination of absurd and fantastic plots, often dealing with social and political issues of the day. This study puts these elements centre-stage and argues that it was through them that the comedy of the period made its political interventions.

This volume studies the origin and evolution of philosophical interest in Aristotle's Categories, and illuminates the earliest arguments for Aristotle's approach to logic as the foundation of higher education.

This volume offers a full translation and analysis of Vita Malchi, one of the more intriguing works by a figure who is central to our understanding of Late Antiquity and early Christianity: the translator, exegete, and controversialist Jerome (c.347-419/20AD).

This volume examines the question of whether early Greek poetry was inspired by texts from the neighbouring civilizations of the ancient Near East, especially Mesopotamia.

For long stretches of Greek history in the classical period, Diodorus Siculus provides the only surviving narrative of events. For this narrative he summarized, work of earlier historians whose original texts are lost. The present study aims to meet the needs of history and historiography.

The author examines images of the fall of Troy in early Greek epic poetry, fifth-century Athenian tragedy, and Athenian black- and red-figure vase painting to focus on the narrative artistry with which poets and painters blended the various components of the myth into a balanced whole and intertwined them with other chapters in the story of Troy.

Statius' epic poem the "Thebaid", which was written in 12 books in about AD 80-92, concerns the expedition of the seven kings against Thebes. This edition of book IX includes a translation, a commentary and an introduction on Statius' life and works and his influence on European literature.

The Fasti is one of Ovid's most complex, inventive, and remarkable works. This commentary on Book 2 - the first detailed commentary in English - guides the reader towards a fuller appreciation of the poem, through detailed analysis of its religious, historical, political, and literary background.

The control over marble and metal resources was of major importance to the Roman Empire. Alfred Hirt's comprehensive study defines the organizational outlines and the internal structures of the mining and quarrying ventures under imperial control.

The force of example was a distinctive determiner of Roman identity. In this study of the representation of certain central characters in Silius Italicus' Punica, Ben Tipping considers the virtues and vices they embody, their status as exemplars, and the process by which Silius as epic poet heroizes, demonizes, and establishes models.

Dr Allan has produced a fundamental reappraisal of one of Euripides' most problematic and neglected tragedies. The close study of a single play is used to test, and to escape, many standard assumptions about Euripidean tragedy. The Andromache is shown to be a powerful and stimulating drama.