This book's first appearance (1969) was a full response to the publication (in 1952) of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus which indicated a late production date (in the 460s BC) for Aeschylus' Supplices, thus upsetting the previous scholarly consensus that it was an early work - indeed the earliest Greek tragedy to survive. There was, the book argued, no longer good reason to suppose that the play belonged to an early stage in its author's development. A final chapter also examined the evidence for reconstruction of the other, lost plays of the trilogy.The present (and first paperback)...

Scarcely more than a generation before Octavian (later Augustus) set out to encounter Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium, confidently relying on the firm support of 'all Italy', the Italians were in revolt, with the avowed aim of destroying Rome. The impressive unity displayed in 31 BC was the hard-won product of fifty years of earlier struggle; and that struggle forms the subject of this book. From the second century BC the subject peoples of Italy were motivated by a desire for equality with their powerful sister, Rome. Their reasons were diverse, but once their aspirations...