Books in the Oxford Classical Monographs series

The first investigation of the relationship between the chorus of Greek tragedy and other types of choral song in Greek society. L. A. Swift not only provides new insights into individual plays, but also enriches our understanding of the role poetry and song played in ancient Greek life.

A study of the rhetorical and political strategy adopted by the Roman orator and statesman Cicero as a newcomer in Roman republican politics. Henriette van der Blom argues that Cicero advertised himself as a follower of chosen models of behaviour from the past - his role models - and in turn presented himself as a role model to others.

Cicero's Topica is one of the canonical texts on ancient rhetorical theory. This is the first full-scale commentary on this work, and the first critical edition of the work that is informed by a full analysis of its transmission.

Aristocles of Messene is a first century AD Aristotelian philosopher who discusses the thought of ancient Greek philosophers, including Plato, Zeno, Pyrrho, and Epicurus, as well as Eleatic and Cyrenaic philosophies. His main contribution is his testimony on Pyrrhonism, and his political verve makes his On Philosophy an interesting and amusing read for specialists and non-specialists alike.

By examining the literary evidence relating to the historical, ethnographic, and geographic writings of Greeks and Romans focussing on invasion and conflict, this work attempts to answer the questions how and why the Gauls became the deadly enemy of the Romans.

Reconstructs the lives of some of the men who shaped events in the final controversial years of the Western Roman Empire during the fifth century AD. Ranging from the Balkans and Italy to northern France, this study uses a wide range of historical evidence, folklore, letters, poems, sermons, archaeology, and coins.

The text is about the tension between the classical city and the individual of superlative power, status and ambition. It looks at the way Alcibiades is approximated to archetypes of the individual "outside" the city: the tyrant, the victor, the ostracism victim, the scapegoat, the barbarian.

This study explores how Christian women of the classical world initiated ascetic ways of living, and how these practices were then institutionalized. The author demonstrates that - in direct contrast to later conceptions - asceticism began primarly as an urban movement.

As well as giving a better understanding of the history of Greek accentuation, this study yields insights into aspects of Indo-European accentuation and into the effects of word frequency on language change.

This is a study of six historians from different corners of the Roman empire at the end of the Republic. All these writers accept the new ruling power, but comment on how that power might best be used. They therefore provide a unique insight into the minds of the conquered peoples and the intellectual culture which allowed them to influence their conquerors.

This edition of Book 5 of Statius' Silvae includes an introduction, translation, and full literary and cultural commentary, enabling readers to engage with the work of this learned and increasingly popular poet.

Anna J. Clark explores 'divine qualities', such as Concord, Faith, Hope, and Clemency, to show how they reveal an aspect of how Romans thought about themselves. Clark draws on a wide range of evidence (literature, drama, coins, architecture, inscriptions and graffiti) to show that these qualities were relevant to a wide range of people.

A fresh approach to the old problem of the nature of individual liberty in ancient Athens. Using modern political theory as a springboard, Peter Liddel argues that the ancient Athenians held liberty to consist of the substantial obligations (political, financial, and military) of citizenship.

In a critique of Max Weber's influential ideas about the Mediterranean region in late antiquity, Jairus Banaji shows that the fourth to seventh centuries were in fact a period of major social and economic change, bound up with an expanding circulation of gold.

A full account of the reception of the second-century prose fiction The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses) of Apuleius, which has intrigued readers as diverse as St Augustine, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Robert H. F. Carver traces readers' responses to the novel from the third to the seventeenth centuries.

An original and wide-ranging study of the Greek lyric poet Bacchylides, exploring his engagement with poetic tradition and evaluating the complex relationship of the poetry to its multiple contexts of performance.

The speeches of Demosthenes and other 4th-century BC Athenian orators have long been recognized as a source of information about the mindset and life of ordinary Athenians. This book contributes to an understanding of religion in the public discourse by studying references to religious beliefs, institutions, and events in the oratorical corpus.

The first comprehensive treatment of Latin extra-paradigmatic verb forms, that is, verb forms which cannot easily be assigned to any particular tense in the Latin verbal system.

Adrian Kelly shows that familiarity with the oral background of Homeric poetry is vital for a proper appreciation of Homeric narrative. He presents the kind of information a modern reader requires to become as fluent in traditional epic poetry as an original ancient audience.

An exploration of the use of drama as an intertext in the work of the 2nd century Latin author Apuleius, who wrote the only complete extant Latin novel, the Metamorphoses, in which a young man is turned into a donkey by magic. All Latin and Greek is translated into English.

Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory (first century BC) is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. This commentary seeks to locate Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts.

This study of Cicero's political oratory and Roman imperialism in the late Republic offers new readings of neglected speeches. C.E.W. Steel examines the role and capacities of political oratory and puts Cicero's attitude to empire, with its limitations and weaknesses, in the context of wider debates among his contemporaries on the problems of empire.

This is the first book-length study of Philo (159-84 BC), the principal philosophical teacher of Cicero. Charles Brittain reconstructs the Platonic Academy's gradual rejection of scepticism under Philo's leadership, which prepared the way for the revival of Platonism in the first century AD. The Appendix contains a full collection of the testimonia and 'fragments' of Philo.

"The Pharsalia" is Lucan's epic on the civil wars between Caesar and Pompey. It is a poem of energy in which spectacle and spectatorship are prominent. The author shows that by transforming certain Virgilian narrative devices Lucan launches an attack on the Augustan ideology of the Aeneid.

The first systematic treatment of the role of land transport within the economic life of Roman Egypt, an everyday economic activity at the centre of the economy not only of Egypt but the Roman world.

How did early Christians give comfort to the bereaved? This examination of one of the most important early Christian letters of consolation shows how Christian consolers adopted many of the approaches used by their pagan predecessors. The book includes both a text and translation of the letter.

The Fasti is a poetical calendar of the Roman year, written by Ovid between AD 4-16. Dr Herbert-Brown's new research illuminates the poem as a unique contemporary source for our understanding of the politics and culture of the Augustan period, including the revival of religion. Ovid himself - who was banished in AD 8 - is revealed as a fascinating and ambivalent commentator.

Prudentius was a Latin poet of the early 4th century AD in Spain. His "Peristephanon" is a collection of poems on martyrs and their deaths which Dr Palmer examines together with the poet's life, background and society investigating why the poems were written and discussing their intended audience.

A refutation of the conventional view that after the adoption of Christianity by the Roman empire the local community lost its voice in the appointment of bishops. Peter Norton argues that this right remained for longer than is normally assumed, with important consequences for our understanding of the administration of the later empire.

Patronage has been an important topic of interest to ancient historians, but it remains unclear what patronage entailed and how it worked. An examination of inscriptions from the Greek East, however, implies that the practice whereby Romans became patrons of Greek cities was not only a part of Rome's history, but had a history of its own.