The epic tradition has been part of many different cultures throughout human history. This noteworthy collection of essays provides a comparative reassessment of epic and its role in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds, as it explores the variety of contemporary approaches to the epic genre. Employing theoretical perspectives drawn from anthropology, literary studies, and gender studies, the authors examine familiar and less well known oral and literary traditions--ancient Greek and Latin, Arabic, South Slavic, Indian, Native American, Italian, English, and Caribbean--demonstrating the...

In the fifth century A.D., Proclus served as head of the Academy in Athens that had been founded 900 years earlier by Plato. Proclus was the last great systematizer of Greek philosophy, and his work exerted a powerful influence in late antiquity, in the Arab world, and in the Renaissance. His treatise On the Eternity of the World formed the basis for virtually all later arguments for the eternity of the world and for the existence of God; consequently, it lies at the heart of neoplatonic philosophy and the controversy between pagans and Christians at the end of antiquity.

Proclus's...