Lewis Richard Farnell's five-volume The Cults of the Greek States, first published between 1896 and 1909, disentangles classical Greek mythology and religion, since the latter had often been overlooked by nineteenth-century English scholars. Farnell describes the cults of the most significant Greek gods in order to establish their zones of influence, and outlines the personality, monuments, and ideal types associated with each deity. He also resolutely avoids the question of divine origins and focuses instead on the culture surrounding each cult, a position which initially drew some...

Herman Alexander Diels (1848 1922) published Doxographi Graeci in 1879. In many ways this work established the critical discipline of doxography - the editing, cataloguing, and analysing of extracts of extant classical texts that contain references to the ideas and arguments of lost authors and schools. In Doxographi Graeci Diels analyses passages from the extant work of authors such as Plutarch, Arius Didymus, Diogenes Laertius, Ps-Plutarch, Hippolytus, Ps-Galen, Stobaeus, Theodoret and Eusebius and uses them to uncover information about the Presocratic philosophers and schools whose written...

Between 1839 and 1851 Ernest Ludwig von Leutsch (1808 1887) and Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin (1810 1856), classics professors at the University of Gottingen, published this collection of ancient paroimia or proverbs written or collected by ancient Greek authors. Volume 1 contains writings by Zenobius, Diogenianus, Plutarchus, and Gregorius Cyprius. A critical apparatus for each text cites variant readings between manuscripts; a running Latin commentary is given below the critical apparatus; and a Latin preface, written by Schneidewin, introduces the volume and explains the editorial methods...

Karl Ottfrid von Muller's translation of and commentary on Aeschylus' play The Eumenides, the concluding drama in the Oresteia trilogy, was first published in 1833. The play is a reenactment of the Greek legend of the trial of Agamemnon's son Orestes in Athens. Orestes' mother Clytemnestra had killed her husband, and as an act of revenge Apollo ordered Orestes to murder her. Orestes is hounded by the Eumenides (Furies) and travels first to Delphi to have his blood-guilt purified and then to Athens to seek the help of Athena. She decides that an impartial jury of Athenian citizens should...

In this work, first published in two volumes in 1890 and 1894, Erwin Rohde (1845 1898), the German classical scholar and friend of Nietzsche, describes the ancient Greek cult of souls and establishes the sources of the belief in the immortality of the soul, exploring its relation to life both before and after death. This belief in the survival of the soul already existed in the earliest Greek writings, but when and from where did it originate? In Volume 1 Rohde examines belief in the soul as it appears in Homeric poetry and within local cults, and finds that the idea of an afterlife is...

In this work, first published in two volumes in 1890 and 1894, Erwin Rohde (1845 1898), the German classical scholar and friend of Nietzsche, describes the ancient Greek cult of souls and establishes the sources of the belief in the immortality of the soul, exploring its relation to life both before and after death. This belief in the survival of the soul already existed in the earliest Greek writings, but when and from where did it originate? Volume 2 examines the question in the context of the worship of Dionysos, arguing that there were originally many sides to the cult of the wine-god,...

The classical scholar and philologist Gottfried Hermann (1772 1848), professor of classics at Leipzig, was especially influential in the fields of Greek grammar and poetical metres. He was among the leading scholars who argued that an accurate knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages was crucial for understanding the intellectual life of the ancient world, and should be the chief aim of philology, the study of the development of languages. Only seven of the plays of Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, survive in complete form, and Hermann's was the first critical edition to contain all...

The classical scholar and philologist Gottfried Hermann (1772 1848), professor of classics at Leipzig, was especially influential in the fields of Greek grammar and poetical metres. He was among the leading scholars who argued that an accurate knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages was crucial for understanding the intellectual life of the ancient world, and should be the chief aim of philology, the study of the development of languages. Only seven of the plays of Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, survive in complete form, and Hermann's was the first critical edition to contain all...

Moritz Wilhelm Constantin Schmidt (1823 1888) published this work in 1854. It is a collection of the fragmentary Greek texts of Didymus Chalcenterus (63 BCE 10 CE), a grammarian and compiler who lived and taught in Alexandria and Rome. Didymus was perhaps the most prolific writer of antiquity: it is suggested by other ancient sources that he wrote between 3,500 and 4,000 books. Because he borrowed heavily from other authors, he is an important source for the lost work of writers such as Aristophanes and Aristarchus. Most of Didymus' own work has perished, but what remains is collected here by...

Hermann Karl Usener (1834 1905) published his monumental Epicurea in 1887. The volume is a collection of Epicurean texts and citations from a wide range of classical authors including Arrian, Cicero, Diodorus, Euripides, Plato and Seneca. The volume includes critical texts of Epicurus' most important letters: Letter to Menoeceus, Letter to Herodotus and Letter to Pythocles, preserved by the third-century compiler Diogenes Laertius. The letters give important summaries of Epicurus' philosophy. Usener's pioneering work represented the first attempt to deal critically with the manuscript...