Modern readers are becoming increasingly drawn to the works of Statius, an erudite poet of the first century AD who gained particular popularity in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Thebaid is a twelve-book Latin epic, which he composed around AD 80-92, and tells the mythological story of the expedition of the seven warriors against Thebes as they try to oust Eteocles from the throne in favour of his brother Polynices. Book 4 includes a catalogue of the attacking warriors, a depiction of a necromantic summoning of ghosts, and a description of the invading army's relief from thirst....

In this book, McEvoy addresses the remarkable phenomenon of the Roman child-emperor. During the late fourth century the emperor Valentinian I, recovering from a life-threatening illness, took the novel step of declaring his eight year old son Gratian as his co-Augustus. Valentinian I's actions set a vital precedent: over the following decades, the Roman West was to witness the accessions of four year old Valentinian II, ten year old Honorius, and six year old Valentinian III -- all as full emperors of the Roman world despite their tender ages.
Even though they were sons of emperors, the...

This book is an investigation of how semivowels were realised in Indo-European and in early Greek. More specifically, it examines the extent to which Indo-European *i and *y were independent phonemes, in what respects their alternation was predictable, and how this situation changed as Indo-European developed into Greek.
The comprehensive nature of this study, its chronological sensitivity, and careful assessment of what is inherited and what is innovative, enables substantive conclusions to be drawn regarding the behaviour of semivowels at various stages in the history of Greek and in...

Sharing with the Gods examines one of the most ubiquitous yet little studied aspects of ancient Greek religion, the offering of so-called "first-fruits" (aparchai) and "tithes" (dekatai), from the Archaic period to the Hellenistic. While most existing studies of Greek religion tend to focus on ritual performance, this volume investigates questions of religious belief and mentality: why the Greeks presented these gifts to the gods, and what their behaviour tells us about their religious world-view, presuppositions, and perception of the gods. Exploiting an array of...

This volume offers a full analysis of one of the more intriguing works by a figure who is central to our understanding of Late Antiquity and early Christianity: the translator, exegete, and controversialist Jerome (c.347-419/20AD). The neglected text of the Vita Malchi - or, to use Jerome's title, the Captive Monk - recounts the experiences of Malchus, a monk abducted by nomadic Saracens on the Eastern fringe of the fourth-century Roman Empire, in what today is the border region between southern Turkey and Syria. Most of this short, vivid, and fast-paced narrative is recounted by Malchus in...

Kings and Usurpers in the Seleukid Empire: The Men who would be King focuses on ideas of kingship and power in the Seleukid empire, the largest of the successor states of Alexander the Great. Exploring the question of how a man becomes a king, it specifically examines the role of usurpers in this particular kingdom--those who attempted to become king, and who were labelled as rebels by ancient authors after their demise--by placing these individuals in their appropriate historical contexts through careful analysis of the literary, numismatic, and epigraphic material.
By writing...

Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae holds a prominent position in modern studies of the emperor Julian as the fullest extant narrative of the reign of the last "pagan" emperor. Ammianus' Julian: Narrative and Genre in the Res Gestae offers a major reinterpretation of the work, which is one of the main narrative sources for the political history of the later Roman Empire, and argues for a re-examination of Ammianus' agenda and methods in narrating the reign of Julian.
Building on recent developments in the application of literary approaches and critical theories to historical texts, Ammianus'...

In 330 AD, the Emperor Constantine consecrated the new capital of the eastern Roman Empire on the site of the ancient city of Byzantium. Its later history is well known, yet comparatively little is known about the city before it became Constantinople, and then Istanbul. Although it was just a minor Greek polis located on the northern fringes of Hellenic culture, surrounded by hostile Thracian tribes and denigrated by one ancient wit as the -armpit of Greece, - Byzantium did nevertheless possess one unique advantage--control of the Bosporus strait. This highly strategic waterway links...

New critical editions, with detailed introductions, appendices, and English translations of two important historical sources for late antiquity.

Traditional accounts of ancient pain tend to focus either on philosophical or medical theories of pain or on Christian notions of suffering: this volume moves beyond these approaches to argue that pain in Imperial Greek culture was not a narrow physiological perception but must be understood within its broad personal, social, and emotional context.