Winner of the 2015 Jozef IJsewijn Prize for best first book on a Neo-Latin topic Early modern commentaries on Statius' Thebaid have been little studied; even that by Barth (1664-5), which holds a conspicuous place among them, has only been taken into account now and then, and often in a rather superficial way. The present book, which makes use of unpublished archival material, offers a comprehensive overview of these works (contexts, contents, interconnections). It is particularly interested in 16th-17th commentators and strives to give Barth's achievement the attention...

In recent years, classicists have begun aggressively to explore the impact of performance on the ways in which Greek and Roman plays are constructed and appreciated, both in their original performance context and in reperformances down to the present day. While never losing sight of the playscripts, it is necessary to adopt a more inclusive point of view, one integrating insights from archaeology, art, history, performance theory, theatre semiotics, theatrical praxis, and modern performance reception. This volume contributes to the restoration of a much-needed balance between performance and...

In A Commentary on Selected Speeches of Isaios, Brenda Griffith-Williams offers a fresh insight, accessible to non-Greek readers, into four disputed inheritance cases from the Athenian courts in the 4th century B.C. The only comprehensive English language commentary on Isaios (Wyse, 1904) reflects a negative view of the Athenian legal system as one in which the judges, who had no legal training, could be easily outwitted by an unscrupulous speechwriter with no regard for the truth. By addressing the complex interplay of factual, legal, and rhetorical issues in the selected speeches,...

This book involves a new historiographical study of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia that defines its relationship with fifth- and fourth-century historical works as well as its role as a source of Diodorus' Bibliotheke. The traditional and common approach taken by those who studied the HO is primarily historical: scholars have focused on particular, often isolated, topics such as the question of the authorship, the historical perspective of the HO against other Hellenica from the 4th century BC. This book is unconventional in that it offers a study of the...

Family in Flavian Epic examines the treatment of family bonds in Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, Statius' Thebaid and Achilleid, and Silius Italicus' Punica. The eleven contributions consider the representation of epic parents, children, siblings, and spouses, and their interaction with each other, demonstrating the Flavian poets' engagement with their epic, and more generally literary, tradition. At the same time, Roman attitudes towards the family and Flavian concerns especially related to dynastic harmony and civil war also characterise both historical and...

There is a long tradition in classical scholarship of reducing the Hellenistic period to the spreading of Greek language and culture far beyond the borders of the Mediterranean. More than anything else this perception has hindered an appreciation of the manifold consequences triggered by the creation of new spaces of connectivity linking different cultures and societies in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. In adopting a new approach this volume explores the effects of the continuous adaptations of ideas and practices to new contexts of meaning on the social imaginaries of the parties...

Flavian Poetry and its Greek Past breaks new ground by investigating the close interaction between Flavian poetry and Greek literary tradition and by evaluating the meaning of this affiliation in the socio-political and cultural context of the late first century CE. Authors examined include Martial, Silius Italicus, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus. Their interaction with Greek literature is not just thematic or geographical: the Greek literary past is conceived as the poetic influence of a variety of authors, periods, and genres, such as Homer, the Cyclic tradition, Greek lyric poetry,...

The 'classical tradition' is no invention of modernity. Already in ancient Greece and Rome, the privileging of the ancient played a role in social and cultural discourses of every period. A collaboration between scholars in diverse areas of classical studies, this volume addresses literary and material evidence for ancient notions of valuing (or disvaluing) the deep past from approximately the fifth century BCE until the second century CE. It examines how specific communities used notions of antiquity to define themselves or others, which models from the past proved most desirable, what...

The essays in Between Orality and Literacy address how oral and literature practices intersect as messages, texts, practices, and traditions move and change, because issues of orality and literacy are especially complex and significant when information is transmitted over wide expanses of time and space or adapted in new contexts. Their topics range from Homer and Hesiod to the New Testament and Gaius' Institutes, from epic poetry and drama to vase painting, historiography, mythography, and the philosophical letter. Repeatedly they return to certain issues. Writing and orality...

Pindar's Sixth Olympian Ode is considered one of the poet's most brilliant victory odes. This is the first full-scale commentary on it. Adorjani presents Greek text with critical apparatus, translation and metrical analysis. Three introductory chapters treat matters of history (background, date, performance) and literary criticism. Then follows a verse-by-verse commentary rooted in the tradition of philological exegesis, concentrating on grammatical, stylistic and interpretive features. Until now the Sixth Olympian has been praised chiefly for its magnificent and lucid...