Books in the Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes series

The protagonists of the ancient novels wandered or were carried off to distant lands, from Italy in the west to Persia in the east and Ethiopia in the south; the authors themselves came, or pretended to come, from remote places such as Aphrodisia and Phoenicia; and the novelistic form had antecedents in a host of classical genres. These intersections are explored in this volume. Papers in the first section discuss ¿mapping the world in the novels.¿ The second part looks at the dialogical imagination, and the conversation between fiction and history in the novels. Section 3 looks at the way ancient fiction has been transmitted and received. Space, as the locus of cultural interaction and exchange, is the topic of the fourth part. The fifth and final section is devoted to character and emotion, and how these are perceived or constructed in ancient fiction. Overall, a rich picture is offered of the many spatial and cultural dimensions in a variety of ancient fictional genres.

This volume contains a series of studies of Latin poetry of the Augustan period especially as it relates to its literary antecedents both Greek and Latin, and its reception by subsequent ancient and modern poets, including Marvell and Dylan.

Since antiquity, Book 8 of Thucydides' History has been considered an unpolished draft which lacks revision. Even those who admit that the book has some elements of internal coherence believe that Thucydides, if death had not prevented him, would have improved many chapters or even the whole structure of the book. Consequently, while the first seven books of the History have been well examined through the last two centuries, the narrative plan of Book 8 remains an obscure subject, as we do not possess an extensive and detailed presentation of its whole narrative design. Vasileios Liotsakis tries to satisfy this central desideratum of the Thucydidean scholarship by offering a thorough description of the compositional plan, which, in his opinion, Thucydides put into effect in the last 109 chapters of his work. His study elaborates on the structural parts of the book, their details, and the various techniques through which Thucydides composed his narration in order to reach the internal cohesion of these chapters as well as their close connection to the rest of the History. Liotsakis offers us an original approach not only of Book 8 but also of the whole work, since his observations reshape our overall view of the History.

This book offers a new edition and comprehensive commentary of the extant fragments of genealogical and antiquarian epic dating to the archaic period (8th-6th cent. BC). By means of a detailed study of the multifaceted material pertaining to the remains of archaic Greek epic other than Homer, Hesiod, and the Homeric Hymns, it provides readers with a critical reassessment of the ancient evidence, allows access to new material hitherto unnoticed or scattered in various journals after the publication of the three standard editions now available to us, and offers a full-scale commentary of the extant fragments. This book fills a gap in the study of archaic Greek poetry, since it offers a guiding tool for the further exploration of Greek epic tradition in the archaic period and beyond.

In recent years, scholars have extensively explored the function of the miraculous and wondrous in ancient narratives, mostly pondering on how ancient authors view wondrous accounts, i.e. the treatment of the descriptions of wondrous occurrences as true events or their use. More precisely, these narratives investigate whether the wondrous pursues a display of erudition or merely provides stylistic variety; sometimes, such narratives even represent the wish of the author to grant a ¿rational explanation¿ to extraordinary actions. At present, however, two aspects of the topic have not been fully examined: a) the ability of the wondrous/miraculous to set cognitive mechanisms in motion and b) the power of the wondrous/miraculous to contribute to the construction of an authorial identity (that of kings, gods, or narrators). To this extent, the volume approaches miracles and wonders as counter intuitive phenomena, beyond cognitive grasp, which challenge the authenticity of human experience and knowledge and push forward the frontiers of intellectual and aesthetic experience. Some of the articles of the volume examine miracles on the basis of bewilderment that could lead to new factual knowledge; the supernatural is here registered as something natural (although strange); the rest of the articles treat miracles as an endpoint, where human knowledge stops and the unknown divine begins (here the supernatural is confirmed). Thence, questions like whether the experience of a miracle or wonder as a counter intuitive phenomenon could be part of long-term memory, i.e. if miracles could be transformed into solid knowledge and what mental functions are encompassed in this process, are central in the discussion.

This collection of essays, published in honour of Professor Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos, addresses topics which lie at the forefront of current research on the fields of Greek drama and classical reception studies. It brings together internationally distinguished scholars who provide fresh insights into issues pertaining to the origins of Greek tragedy and comedy, their generic identity, the structure, the morality or the divine and human characters emerging from individual plays, the presence of Greek drama outside Athens in post-classical times, the associations between drama and genres such as epic and oratory or even the reception of Greek drama in operatic works such as Wagner¿s Tristan und Isolde. Related art forms, such as music, receive particular attention. Focusing on either broader topics or specific texts, the essays of this volume provide a wide range of theoretical perspectives often combining modern critical trends such as reception studies, narratology or cultural studies with close and acute readings of individual passages. The volume is of particular interest to scholars and students of Greek drama and its reception as well as to anyone interested in Greek culture and its various manifestations.

The papers in this volume discuss the unique, and so far unprecedented for Macedonia, 191 sherds from Methone in Pieria, dated to ca 700 BCE, which bear inscriptions, graffiti, and (trade)marks inscribed, incised, scratched and rarely painted.

Conceived as a necessary reconsideration of the pristine "elegiac question" in Ovid¿s Metamorphoses, this book intends to offer an analysis of the function of elegiac discourse within Ovid¿s magnum opus from the perspective of metapoetics. To that end, the author undertakes, in the first section, a close re-reading of some relevant passages of Latin love elegy. From a prism that takes into account the characteristically elegiac multivocality, the genre reveals itself as an agonistic discourse in which the poet dramatises his metaliterary power-relation with the puella, who is unveiled as the synthesis of the distinct sub-products of his poetic activity. Thereupon, the author proceeds to scrutinise how elegiac elements are assimilated and transformed as they become integrated within the framework of Ovid¿s poem of changing forms. Far from being a mere stylistic ornament, the presence of an elegiac register in many erotic passages tells us about Ovid¿s stance towards love as a metapoetic trope. By reworking elegiac tradition to the point of transforming it into a novum corpus, the poet ultimately substantiates the mutability of generic categories.

Taking their point of departure from Frederick Ahl's work, this book features scholars who re-examine the relation of poetry and power in the context of authoritarian regimes in ancient Rome and examines the ways that poets not only commented on imperial politics, but also were direct participants in the construction of that political reality.

T. Calpurnius Siculus:A Pastoral Poet in Neronian Rome is the first ever detailed examination of the whole of Calpurnius' pastoral corpus in English. It aims to offer an overall picture of Calpurnius' epigonal and generically transcending poetics and meta-poetics through a thorough comparative analysis of the generic interfaces between the bucolic host genre (as bequeathed to Siculus from Theocritus to Vergil) and various generic modes which operate in Calpurnius' eclogues, such as epic, panegyric, elegiac, didactic/georgic. The analysis includes themes/motifs, intertexts and allusion, narrative sequences, diction and metre as well as meta-generic/meta-poetic signs, including Calpurnius' redirection and inversion of the Callimachean-neoteric poetological meta-language. The study's interests also revolve around the ways in which Neronian ideology and imperial politics inform the pastoral narrative and often account for the formalistic change discerned as well as the manner in which Post-Classical diction functions as a targeted, self-conscious linguistic tell-tale of generic evolution. The book is intended for students or scholars working on or interested in Roman pastoral and its generic evolution as well as Neronian Literature.

This book explores for the first time the relation between Atticist lexicography and the pronunciation of Greek, an aspect of Atticism that has never been studied thouroughly before. It examines the ideas of the Atticist about what Greek should sound like, drawing on Atticist lexicography as the main source of information on the special pronunciation of the Atticist. The book addresses all scholars with an interest in Atticism, Greek in the Imperial period, and linguistic purism more in general. It sheds new light on an aspect of Atticism that is otherwise poorly attested, and complements the existiting study on later Greek and the impact of Atticism in the history of the Greek language.

Lysias' 21st speech "e;On a charge of taking bribes"e; is an important example of Attic oratory that sheds significant light on Classical history and society. Delivered after the restoration of democracy in 402 B.C.E., this speech provides information that is critical for our understanding of the relationship between the Athenian demos and aristocrats, Athenian civic institutions (e.g., taxation, liturgies and conscription), religious beliefs, moral values, political behavior, and, in particular, of the legal and rhetorical treatment of embezzlement and bribery. It also supplies unique information about the military engagement of the Athenians at Aegospotami and the role of Alcibiades in the political life of Athens. Despite its importance, however, Lysias' speech has never been the subject of an extensive study in its own right. This volume seeks to fill that gap by presenting the first systematic commentary on this speech. The author puts much emphasis on its structure, strategy, and argumentation, focusing especially on the tension between the actual practices of the anonymous client of the logographer and civic ideals invoked in the present case. The book is intended to be of interest to classicists, ancient historians and political theorists, but also to the general reader.

This collection of essays reaffirms the central importance of adopting an intertextual approach to the study of Flavian epic poetry and shows, despite all that has been achieved, just how much still remains to be done on the topic. Most of the contributions are written by scholars who have already made major contributions to the field, and taken together they offer a set of state of the art contributions on individual topics, a general survey of trends in recent scholarship, and a vision of at least some of the paths work is likely to follow in the years ahead. In addition, there is a particular focus on recent developments in digital search techniques and the influence they are likely to have on all future work in the study of the fundamentally intertextual nature of Latin poetry and on the writing of literary history more generally.

This book argues that Xenophon has crafted his narrative in such a way as to reinforce the opinion of his predecessor Thucydides that the development of the Peloponnesian War depended to a great extent on Persian money, but the factors that ultimately determined its outcome were the moral virtues and the skills of the military leaders of Athens and Sparta.

Explores the interaction between the ancient Armenian and Greek worlds and their literatures, focusing on the Armenian translations of Greek texts, the historical context and historiographic sources, the Armenian reception of biblical, Christian and Byzantine literature, as well as philological, linguistic and lexical aspects.

Takes a fresh approach to Roman drama by looking at comic and tragic plays from the Republican and imperial periods in 'context'. This book explores the role of Roman drama in contexts such as the literary tradition, the relationship to works in other literary genres, the historical and social situation or the intellectual background.

In the Parallel Lives Plutarch does not absolve his readers of the need for moral reflection by offering any sort of hard and fast rules for their moral judgement. Rather, he uses strategies to elicit readers¿ active engagement with the act of judging. This book, drawing on the insights of recent narrative theories, especially narratology and reader-response criticism, examines Plutarch¿s narrative techniques in the Parallel Lives of drawing his readers into the process of moral evaluation and exposing them to the complexities entailed in it. Subjects discussed include Plutarch¿s prefatory projection of himself and his readers and the interaction between the two; Plutarch¿s presentation of the mental and emotional workings of historical agents, which serves to re-enact the participants¿ experience at the time and thus arouse empathy in the readers; Plutarch¿s closural strategies and their profound effects on the readers¿ moral inquiry; Plutarch¿s principles of historical criticism in On the malice of Herodotus in relation to his narrative strategies in the Lives. Through illustrating Plutarch¿s narrative technique, this book elucidates Plutarch¿s praise-and-blame rhetoric in the Lives as well as his sensibility to the challenges inherent in recounting, reading about, and evaluating the lives of the great men of history.

A classical scholar, a rhetorician, a theologian, a high prelate who became the archbishop of the second city of the Empire: Eustathios of Thessalonike is doubtless an outstanding figure of the 12th century.

This is the first study considering the reception of Greek tragedy and the transformation of the tragic idea in Hellenistic poetry. The focus is on third-century Alexandria, where the Ptolemies fostered tragedy as a theatrical form for public entertainment and as an official genre cultivated by the Pleiad, whereas the scholars of the Museum were commissioned to edit and comment on the classical tragic texts. More importantly, the notion of the tragic was adapted to the literary trends of the era. Released from the strict rules established by Aristotle about what makes a good tragedy, the major poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde struggled to transform the tragic idea and integrate it into non-dramatic genres. Tragic Failures traces the incorporation of the tragic idea in the poetry of Callimachus and Theocritus, in Apollonius' epic Argonautica, in the iambic Alexandra, in late Hellenistic poetry and in Parthenius' Erotika Pathemata. It offers a fascinating insight into the new conception of the tragic dilemmas in the context of Alexandrian aesthetics.

Provides a fresh perspective on Homeric reception through a focused, interdisciplinary investigation of the transformations of Homeric epic within varying generic and cultural contexts. This book explores how various aspects of Homeric poetics can be mapped on to a diversity of contexts under different historical, literary and artistic conditions.

Focuses on a major polarity in Euripidean drama, including its roots in the tradition and its reception in vase-painting and literature. In this book, leading international scholars discuss the polarity and the plays' ambiguities from various angles and theoretical perspectives, offering trenchant insights into moral, social and historical issues.