This monograph focuses on religion to explore how the socio-cultural infrastructure of Cyprus was affected by the transition from segmented administration by many Cypriot kings to the island-wide government by a foreign Ptolemaic correspondent. It approaches politico-religious ideological responses and structures of symbolism through the study of sacred landscapes, specific iconographic elements, and archaeological contexts and architecture, as well as through textual and epigraphic evidence. A fresh approach to the transition is put forward, connecting the island more emphatically with its...

Xenophon's personal history was exceptional for its combination of Socratic education and the exercise of military leadership in a time of crisis. His writings provide an intellectually and morally consistent response to his times and to the issue of ethical but effective leadership, and they play a special role in defining our sense of the post-Athenian-Empire Greek world. Recent Xenophontic scholarship has established the general truth of these claims. The current volume will not only reinforce them but also contribute to greater understanding of a voice that is neither simply ironic nor...

Anonymous characters appear in almost every extant Greek Tragedy, yet they have long been overlooked in critical scholarship. This book argues that the creation and use of anonymous figures is an important tool in the transformation of traditional mythological heroes into unique dramatic characters. Through close reading of the passages in which nameless characters appear, this study demonstrates the significant impact of their speech, actions, and identity on the characterization of the particular named heroes to whom they are attached. Exploring the boundaries between anonymity and naming...

Allusions to the epic poets Virgil and Lucan in the writing of the Roman historian Tacitus (c. 55 - c. 120 C.E.) have long been noted. This monograph argues that Tacitus fashions himself as a rivaling literary successor to these poets; and that the emulative allusions to Virgil's Aeneid and Lucan's Bellum Civile in Books 1-3 of his inaugural historiographical work, the Histories, complement and build upon each other, and contribute significantly to the picture of repetitive, escalating civil war in the work. The argument is founded on the close reading of a series of...

Aelius Aristides' Sacred Tales offer a unique opportunity to examine how an educated man of the Second Century CE came to terms with illness. The experiences portrayed in the Tales disclose an understanding of illness in both religious and medical terms. Aristides was a devout worshipper of Asclepius while at the same time being a patient of some of the most distinguished physicians of his day. This monograph offers a textual analysis of the Sacred Tales in the context of the so-called Second Sophistic; medicine and the medical use of dream interpretation; and religion,...

Quintus Smyrnaeus' Posthomerica (3rd century C.E.), the 14 book Greek epic on the Trojan War, is a text which has traditionally been overlooked in the main canon of Classical authors, and in fact until only recently has been largely ignored as a literary work. This book, the first monograph in English on the poem since 1904, examines the Posthomerica's close relationship with the Homeric epics, with a focus on the originality and Late Antique interpretative bias of Quintus in his readings and emulation of Homer. The study deals specifically with three separate aspects of poetics, and their...

How do people respond to and evaluate their sensory experiences of the natural and man-made world? What does it mean to speak of the 'value' of aesthetic phenomena? And in evaluating human arts and artifacts, what are the criteria for success or failure? The sixth in a series exploring 'ancient values', this book investigates from a variety of perspectives aesthetic value in classical antiquity. The essays explore not only the evaluative concepts and terms applied to the arts, but also the social and cultural ideologies of aesthetic value itself. Seventeen chapters range from the 'life...

This collection of essays considers the challenging questions around the formation, establishment and continuation of the Julio-Claudian principate from the coming to power of Augustus. Augustus laid down the ground rules for a princeps, and the essays explore the subsequent transition of power, and how the succession and subsequent rule manifested itself, even though there was no formal mechanism for such a transfer. These essays fully utilize the extant literary, epigraphic, numismatic and visual record to evaluate Augustus' "political legacy." The representation, and retention, of...

This study of the Eclogues focuses on Vergil's exploration of issues relating to the subject of human happiness (eudaimonia)-ideas that were the subject of robust debate in contemporary philosophical schools, including the community of emigre Epicurean teachers and their Roman pupils located in the vicinity of Naples ("Parthenope"). The latent "interplay of ideas" implicit in the songs of the various poet-herdsmen centers on differing attitudes to acute misfortune and loss, particularly in the spheres of land dispossession and frustrated erotic desire. In the bucolic dystopia...

In 'Images of Eternal Beauty in Funerary Verse Inscriptions of the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman Periods Andrzej Wypustek provides a study of various forms of poetic heroization that became increasingly widespread in Greek funerary epigram. The deceased were presented as eternally young heroes, oblivious of old age and death, as stars shining with an eternal brightness in heavens or in Ether, or as the ones chosen by the gods, abducted by them to their home in the heavens or married to them in the other world (following the examples of Ganymede, Adonis, Hylas and Persephone). The author...