The philologist Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775 1853) combined his career as a senior master at schools in Frankfurt and Hannover with the publication of school textbooks on German and Latin, and academic research in ancient history and languages. He was a co-founder of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica series of historical sources, still widely consulted today, and is also remembered for his role in the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform. During his lifetime he was best known for his studies of the Umbrian and Oscan languages (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection) and this...

Walter Leaf (1852-1927), banker, classicist and alpinist, held various positions as chairman of the Westminster Bank, founder of the London Chamber of Commerce and president of the Hellenic Society, reflecting his wide-ranging professional and scholarly interests. Leaf was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1875. As a scholar, Leaf was concerned with uncovering the physical reality of the classical world, and in this 1912 work he 'aims at testing the tradition of the Trojan War by comparing the text of Homer with the natural conditions...

The classical scholar J. P. Mahaffy (1839-1919) is known equally for his work on Greek texts and Egyptian papyri (his edition of The Flinders Petrie Papyri is reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection). This illustrated work of 1895 is a sort of sequel to his Alexander's Empire of 1887 (also reissued in this series), in which he focuses specifically on the dynasty of the Ptolemies, rulers of Egypt, but also, as he points out, of wider territories and subject kingdoms. The study of the successor states of Alexander was in its infancy at this period, and Mahaffy regards this work as a...

A pioneer in establishing the study of geography in British universities, Henry Fanshawe Tozer (1829-1916) sought to share his deep appreciation of the subject's ancient authorities, particularly Strabo. His keen understanding of historical geography rested on first-hand knowledge of physical landscapes, gained during travels through Italy, Greece and Turkey. While E. H. Bunbury had already produced an extensive work along similar lines, Tozer believed that classicists as well as other readers would welcome a more manageable, single-volume textbook. First published in 1897, it traces the...

In this 1814 work, geographer James Rennell compares the topography of the hypothetical site of Troy with ancient accounts.

The Greek geographer and historian Strabo is known chiefly for this remarkable description of the known world in the early decades of the Roman Empire. The range and importance of the text ensured its copying and distribution in the medieval period, and multiple printed editions appeared later. Reissued here is the version published by the influential French publishing house Didot in 1853 as part of their series of Greek classics. It was prepared by the German classical scholars Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Muller (1813-94) and Johann Friedrich Dubner (1802-67). Muller's two-volume collection of the...

Eugenie Strong (nee Sellers, 1860 1943) studied classics at Girton College, Cambridge, and then classical archaeology in London. Her translations of Schuchardt's account of Schliemann's excavations at Troy, and of Furtwangler's Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, are also reissued in this series. Among other distinctions, she was the first female student of the British School at Athens, and in 1909 (partly as a result of the 1907 publication of this book) was appointed assistant director of the British School at Rome. Roman sculpture had consistently been regarded as the 'poor relation' of what...

The classical historian J. B. Bury (1861 1927) was the author of a history of Greece which was a standard textbook for over a century. He also wrote on later periods, and, in this two-volume work of 1889, examines Byzantine history from 395 to 800. Arguing for the underlying continuity of the Roman empire from the time of Augustus until 1453, Bury nevertheless begins his account in the year in which, on the death of Theodosius I, the empire was divided into eastern and western parts, and Constantinople began to take on the metropolitan role formerly held by Rome. Broadly chronological, but...

The classical historian J. B. Bury (1861 1927) was the author of a history of Greece which was a standard textbook for over a century. He also wrote on later periods, and, in this two-volume work of 1889, examines Byzantine history from 395 to 800. Arguing for the underlying continuity of the Roman empire from the time of Augustus until 1453, Bury nevertheless begins his account in the year in which, on the death of Theodosius I, the empire was divided into eastern and western parts, and Constantinople began to take on the metropolitan role formerly held by Rome. Volume 2, after reviewing...

Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) is best remembered today for The Golden Bough, widely considered to be one of the most important early texts in the fields of psychology and anthropology. Originally a classical scholar, Frazer also published this five-volume edition of Ovid's Fasti in 1929. It contains the text and a parallel English translation, with commentary on the six books, indexes, illustrations, and plans. Frazer's interest in Ovid's unfinished final poem arose from his wide-ranging studies of ancient literature and the origins of myth. The work describes the origins of the Roman calendar...