Sextus Aurelius Victor was an imperial bureaucrat whose life spanned most of the fourth century AD. Harry Bird describes how Victor, a man of humble African origin, acquired by virtue of his education and personal qualities a consular governorship in Pannonia and the urban prefecture at Rome. Victor's short historical monograph, the De Caesaribus, reveals his attitudes towards education, culture, history and politics - attitudes which probably reflect those of a considerable segment of fourth-century society. We can therefore glimpse how the emperors, the senate, the army and the bureaucracy...

This is a major new commentary on Jerome's Libellus de virginitate servanda, the first in any language to be devoted to this work. Written in Rome in 384, this treatise sets out the manner of life appropriate to a Christian virgin. It takes the form of a letter to a specific person, Eustochium, the teenage daughter of an aristocratic family, encouraging her to persevere in her intention of remaining a virgin. The Libellus, however, is more than just a friendly lecture on morality; it is an extensive academic treatise, forty-one chapters long, covering many aspects of virginity. Although the...

Julius Caesar changed world history by inaugurating the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. This themed volume of PLLS handles the important and controversial problem of Caesar's own attitudes to 'liberty' and 'autocracy'. It contains revised, annotated and sometimes expanded versions of papers delivered at the Seventh Annual Langford Conference at Florida State University, along with one supplementary contribution and English translations of two papers originally published in Italian. The contributors constitute a distinguished international group of ancient...

This collection of fourteen papers focuses on Classical poetry and historiography, with contributions coming from scholars from all over the UK and America. Contents: Greek and Roman Poetry: The Pleasures of the Ancient Text, or The Pleasure of Poetry from Plato to Plutarch ( David Konstan ); The Eschatology of the Epitaphs in the New Posidippus Papyrus ( M W Dickie ); The Legal and Social Framework of Plautus' Cistellaria ( Peter G McC Brown ); The Ancient Etymology of Carmen ( Alex Hardie ); Etymologising and the Structure of Argument in Lucretius Book 1 ( Robert Maltby ); Teucer's Imperium...

When Anastasius I came to the throne in 491, the Late Roman Empire was in severe difficulty. Internal instability, exacerbated by the dominance of the unpopular Isaurians in Constantinople, resulted in a struggling economy, hostile relations with Persia, the abandonment of Italy to a barbarian king, and doctrinal schisms. Anastasius, an elderly statesman with long experience as an administrator and economist, turned his attention first to the Isaurians, ousting them from the imperial capital and defeating them in their homeland; he could then focus on streamlining the administration,...

Ovid's Heroides, letters in elegiac verse supposedly penned by famous mythological lovers, have attracted renewed scholarly attention over the past twenty or so years. Heroides 16 and 17, the letters exchanged by Paris and Helen, are the subject of this volume. It consists of an Introduction, the Latin text of Heroides 16 and 17 with apparatus criticus, and a detailed commentary followed by bibliography and indexes. Dr. Michalopoulos elucidates the content, structure and background of Heroides 16 and 17 and brings new light to bear on the interpretation of the poems, supplementing Palmer's...

Works written and published in Latin by Elizabethan and Jacobean writers covered a vast range, from brief poetic trifles to massive scholarly, humanist and scientific treatises. Among its authors were some of the greatest intellects of the day; and study of Latin dedications and commendatory verses makes clear the importance of Latinate culture in the Court as well as in the universities and learned professions. English renaissance Latin culture was the shared intellectual background for all educated people, England's bridge to the scientific, literary, political, philosophical and religious...

Updating and enlarging on a lifetime's work on Augustus and his constitutions' Lacey discusses the process of gradual encroachment whereby Augustus unobtrusively and with minimal opposition accumulated more and more power, whilst outwardly retaining the facade of a republic. Chapters examine the constitutional settlements of 27 and 23 BC, to which Lacey attributes less importance than most, the nature of the role given to Agrippa, the evolution of tribunician power, his religious prominence and dynastic arrangements. This all adds up to a very thorough and incisive study of how under Augustus...

Virgil's debt to Homer is well known but, as this detailed and specialized analysis demonstrates, Apollonius RhodiusAE Argonautica, itself influenced by Homer, was a more immediate source. Assuming prior knowledge of the texts, Greek and Latin, Damien Nelis scrutinizes and compares specific episodes, characters or passages of text from Virgil, Apollonius and Homer, providing a fresh perspective on all three authors, and looks for the reasoning behind Virgil's choice of sources. Extracts in Greek and Latin."

A collection of c.200 etymologies and etymological complexes in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The list includes brief contextual information, evidence from ancient grammarians, discussion of the artistic function of the wordplay and examples of its use in the works of Ovid and other Latin poets. In the introduction, Michalopoulos outlines the conceptual framework and describes etymological techniques, particularly those typical of Ovid.