This volume presents a newly edited Greek text of one of the masterpieces of ancient Greek prose, a speech delivered by the orator Demosthenes before a court in Athens in 330 BCE. The book contains an introductory essay outlining the historical situation that gave rise to the speech, the nature of Demosthenes' rhetorical art, and the history of the text. The greater part of the book consists of a commentary that elucidates the text and makes clear how Demosthenes achieved his objectives.

Considered one of the most important works of history in Western literature, Herodotus's Histories is a key text for the study of ancient Greece and the Persian Empire. Book V not only describes the revolt of the east Greeks against their Persian masters, which led to the great Persian Wars of 490-479 BC, but also provides fascinating material about the mainland Greek states in the sixth century BC. The importance of Herodotus as the freshest and liveliest of all classical Greek prose authors and the historical centrality of the period covered are the main reasons for studying Book V. This is...

Pliny the Younger's nine-book Epistles is a masterpiece of Roman prose. Often mined as a historical and pedagogical sourcebook, this collection of 'private' letters is now finding recognition as a rich and rewarding work in its own right. The second book is a typically varied yet taut suite of miniatures, including among its twenty letters the trial of Marius Priscus and Pliny's famous portrait of his Laurentine villa. This edition, the first to address a complete book of Epistles in over a century, presents a Latin text together with an introduction and commentary intended for students,...

Book VIII is one of the most attractive and important books of Virgil's Aeneid. It includes the visit of Aaneas to the site of the future Rome, the story of Hercules and Cacus, the episode between Venus and Vulcan and the description of the great symbolic shield of Aeneas. Mr Gransden's introduction relates this book to the Aeneid as a whole considers the text in various aspects: the topography, Virgil's sense of history, his typology and symbolism, his literary style and his influence on subsequent vernacular poetry. The commentary discusses points of special interest and difficulty in...

The third book of Lucretius' great poem on the workings of the universe is devoted entirely to expounding the implications of Epicurus' dictum that death does not matter, 'is nothing to us'. The soul is not immortal: it no more exists after the dissolution of the body than it had done before its birth. Only if this fact is accepted can men rid themselves of irrational fears and achieve the state of ataraxia, freedom from mental disturbance, on which the Epicurean definition of pleasure was based. To present this case Lucretius deploys the full range of poetic and rhetorical registers, soberly...

Livy's Ab urbe condita Book XXII narrates Hannibal's massive defeats of the Romans at Trasimene (217 BC) and Cannae (216 BC). It is Livy's best and most dramatic book, and the one most likely to appeal to students at every level. Livy drew on the Greek historian Polybius, but transformed his drier treatment into a rhetorical masterpiece, which by a series of insistent thematic contrasts brings out the tensions between the delaying tactics of Fabius and the costly rashness of Flaminius, Minucius and Varro. A substantial and accessibly written introduction by two experienced commentators covers...

Livy's Ab urbe condita Book XXII narrates Hannibal's massive defeats of the Romans at Trasimene (217 BC) and Cannae (216 BC). It is Livy's best and most dramatic book, and the one most likely to appeal to students at every level. Livy drew on the Greek historian Polybius, but transformed his drier treatment into a rhetorical masterpiece, which by a series of insistent thematic contrasts brings out the tensions between the delaying tactics of Fabius and the costly rashness of Flaminius, Minucius and Varro. A substantial and accessibly written introduction by two experienced commentators covers...

Plato challenges his readers by depicting an elderly Socrates as an enthusiastic student of rhetoric who has learned from his teacher Aspasia to recite an inspiring funeral oration, an oration that conspicuously refers to events occurring after the deaths of Socrates and Aspasia, an oration that Aspasia, as a woman and a non-Athenian, was not eligible to deliver over the Athenians who died in war. This commentary, the first in English in over 100 years, assists the modern reader in confronting Plato's challenge. The Introduction sets the dialogue in the context of the traditional Athenian...

Plato challenges his readers by depicting an elderly Socrates as an enthusiastic student of rhetoric who has learned from his teacher Aspasia to recite an inspiring funeral oration, an oration that conspicuously refers to events occurring after the deaths of Socrates and Aspasia, an oration that Aspasia, as a woman and a non-Athenian, was not eligible to deliver over the Athenians who died in war. This commentary, the first in English in over 100 years, assists the modern reader in confronting Plato's challenge. The Introduction sets the dialogue in the context of the traditional Athenian...