En dehors d'analyses de type sociologique, les declamations latines n'ont generalement que peu retenu l'attention des specialistes de l'Antiquite. Pourtant, ces discours fictifs constituaient le couronnement de l'education rhetorique et un element central de l'activite litteraire. De ce fait, ils appartiennent de plein droit au domaine de la litterature antique. Ce livre veut mieux faire connaitre les declamations latines et leur fonction dans le systeme educatif romain. Il s'attache a mettre en lumiere leur litterarite, en analysant les techniques narratives mises en oeuvres et en soulignant...

This book investigates the cosmological context of Pindar's victory odes, and how it influences his presentation of praise. The study first focuses on gnomai as a reflection of cosmology, using these sayings to establish the views the poems reveal on matters such as the divine, the human condition and man in society. This overview is complemented by detailed literary analyses demonstrating how cosmology functions in individual odes. They show that Pindar shapes the poet persona to emphasize different aspects of the traditional world view or represent varying viewpoints so that he can praise...

By looking at aspects of "Medea" that are largely overlooked in the criticism, this book aims at an open and multiple reading. It shows that stories presented in the drama of 5th century Athens are not unrelated to human beings who actually exist.

Sixteen international contributors offer the first comprehensive examination of the life, works and reception of Ion of Chios, the prolific and innovative fifth century BC writer (variously prose and poetry) on classical Greek mythology, history and society.

This book examines Ancient Egyptian and Greek proverbs, as they are found in wisdom collections, circulating in Egypt and Greece of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Its examination compares the proverbs' grammar, structure, style, theme and usage within the collections. This multi-leveled comparison results in the indentification of a great number of similarities and differences that are interpreted in cultural terms, that is, through their association with the cultural context of production and usage of the proverbs. Hence this study offers an original insight into the literary production...

The work concerns 15 epigraphic and/or verse inscriptions, handed down from the writers of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. These inscriptions were probably commissioned from Simonides of Keos. The commentaries on the individual verse inscriptions form the centre of the investigation. Each commentary is introduced by a text for the sake of orientation concerning the epigram in question, by a brief apparatus criticus, and by a review of the relevant secondary literature. The historic, literary, and, when possible, architectural contexts are taken into consideration in the interpretations. The...

This study investigates the reception of contemporary religion in Hellenistic poetry and analyses the treatment of the cult of Artemis--taken as paradigmatic--in Theocritus' second Idyll and Callimachus' Hymns. Both Theocritus and Callimachus display a lively interest in contemporary religion in all its facets and each dwells upon an aspect of the cult of Artemis absent in earlier poetry: Theocritus depicts her as a goddess of magic, and Callimachus as a city-goddess. These are precisely the features of her cult that gained prominence in the Hellenistic period. The monograph...

This book examines the causes and courses of the series of wars in the Hellenistic period fought between the kingdom of the Seleukids and the Ptolemies over possession of Syria. This is a subject always mentioned by historians of the period in a glancing or abbreviated way, but which is actually wholly central to the development of both kingdoms and of the period as a whole. Other than relatively brief summaries no serious account has ever been produced. This extended consideration will bring to the centre of research on the Hellinistic period this long sequence of wars. Arguably they were...

With its focus on 'reasoning through imagery' this book applies aspects of cognitive psychology to a study of key tragic props in order to draw connections between visual imagery and the spectators' intellectual experience of ancient Greek tragedy.

In this collection of essays Roman historical and biographical texts are studied from a literary point of view. The main interest of the author, Daniel den Hengst, professor emeritus of Latin at the University of Amsterdam, concerns the development of Roman historiography, the ways in which Roman historians present their work and the intertextual relations between these works and other literary genres. Special attention is given to the Historia Augusta and Ammianus Marcellinus, but also authors from the classical period, such as Cicero, Livy and Suetonius and their ideas about...