This volume is the first comprehensive commentary on the fourth book of Martial's epigrams. The introduction discusses its date of publication, major themes (Domitian, literature, death), the arrangement and form of the epigrams, and some issues concerning the transmission of the text. Of special note is the author's study of the structure of the book. The commentary, preceded by the Latin critical text and an English translation, aims to provide readers with as much pertinent information as possible to enable them to fully comprehend the epigrams. Attention is paid to style and literary...

The volume represents the seventh in the series on Orality and Literacy in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds. It comprises a collection of essays on the significance and working of memory in ancient texts and visual documentation, from contexts both oral (or oral-derived) and literate. The authors discuss a variety of interpretations of 'memory' in Homeric epic, lyric poetry, tragedy, historical inscriptions, oratory, and philosophy, as well as in the replication of ancient artworks, and in Greek vase inscriptions. They present therefore a wide-ranging analysis of memory as a fundamental...

The prominent role of women in Greek drama has always fascinated readers. This book proposes that women in Euripides' plays communicate in ways constructed by the tragic genre itself as 'female.' Yet these women's words are surprisingly not uniformly dangerous or excessively emotional, as has traditionally been thought. Rather, Euripides' women resort to 'female' ways of talking in order to enable others to understand them and their unique point-of-view. Aspects of women's speech--song, silence and secret-keeping as female verbal genres, and the challenges of speaking out of place--contribute...

Alleged incompatibility of Epicurus' philosophy with rhetoric has led modern scholars to isolate rhetorical procedures in Lucretius' De rerum natura and regard them as non-Epicurean, accessory features. This study of Lucretius' rhetorical procedures is based on a wider understanding of the term rhetoric, not limited to the genre of oratory. In a fresh discussion of the questions of provenance and the role of the most important formal procedures of exposition in De rerum natura the author argues that instead of injecting rhetorical strategies from non-Epicurean sources, Lucretius in fact...

The fourth in a series that explores cultural and ethical values in Classical Antiquity, this volume examines the negative foils, the anti-values, against which positive value notions are conceptualized and calibrated in Classical Antiquity. Eighteen chapters address this theme from different perspectives -historical, literary, legal and philosophical. What makes someone into a prototypically 'bad' citizen? Or an abomination of a scholar? What is the relationship between ugliness and value? How do icons of sexual perversion, monstruous emperors and detestable habits function in philosophical...

The Greek rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus was active in Augustan Rome. For a long time, modern scholars have regarded him as a rather mediocre critic, whose works were only interesting because of the references to earlier scholars and the citations of literary fragments. By interpreting Dionysius' views within the context of his rhetorical programme, this book shows that Dionysius was in fact an intelligent scholar, who combined theories and methods from various language disciplines and used them for his own practical purposes. His rhetorical writings not only inform us about the...

Flavius Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana (Vita Apollonii), written in the first half of the third century CE, is a key text in the cultural, literary and religious history of the Second Sophistic and of Late Antiquity. Its generic and formal diversity, its shifting cultural and historical background, as well as its protean hero, call for a multifaceted and interdisciplinary reading. Theios Sophistes is the first collection of interpretative essays on the Vita Apollonii. Leading scholars in the field and younger critics make for a combination of methodological continuity...

This is Nicholas Horsfall's fourth commentary on a book of the Aeneid and in scale and approach follows closely the earlier volumes.It is aimed at the scholarly public and is not intended as a replacement for Austin's admirable school and undergraduate commentary of 1964. But so splendid an ancient text requires fresh scholarly instruments and this commentary discusses fully the acutely controversial Helen-episode (spurious), matters of linguistic and textual interpretation, metre, prosody, grammar, lexicon and idiom, as well as Virgil's sources and the literary tradition in which he...