Taking a fresh look at the poetry and visual art of the Hellenistic age, from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to 20 BC, Graham Zanker makes enlightening discoveries about the assumptions and conventions of Hellenistic poets and artists and their audiences. Zanker offers exciting new interpretations by closely comparing poetry and art for the light each sheds on the other.

This lively translation of "Devins, Dieux et Demons is the first English-language edition of Jean-Rene Jannot's highly informative examination of Etruscan religion. Jannot tackles this elusive subject within three major constructs--death, ritual, and the nature of the gods--and presents recent discoveries in an accessible format. Jane K. Whitehead's translation updates Jannot's innovative text and introduces readers of all types--students, scholars, and the general audience--to this thorough overview of ancient Etruscan beliefs, including the afterlife, funerary customs, and mythology.
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In his first book of Satires, written in the late, violent days of the Roman republic, Horace exposes satiric speech as a tool of power and domination. Using critical theories from classics, speech act theory, and others, Catherine Schlegel argues that Horace's acute poetic observation of hostile speech provides insights into the operations of verbal control that are relevant to his time and to ours. She demonstrates that though Horace is forced by his political circumstances to develop a new, unthreatening style of satire, his poems contain a challenge to our most profound habits of...

Asses, asses, and more asses! This new edition of Plautus' rumbustious comedy provides the complete original Latin text, witty scholarly commentary, and an English translation that both complements and explicates Plautus' original style. John Henderson reveals this play as a key to Roman social relations centered on many kinds of slavery: to sex, money, and family structure; to masculinity and social standing; to senility and partying; and to jokes, lies, and idiocy. The translation remains faithful to Plautus' syllabic style for reading aloud, as well as to his humorous colloquialisms and...

Scrutinizes most of the best-known pieces of Greek sculpture to determine what can be securely considered to have been produced during 200-100 BC. This book reveals a tentative but plausible picture of the artistic trends of this fascinating period.

This impressive collection brings to light the works of international scholars, some previously unavailable to an English-language audience. With new information and assessments about the art, architecture, and archaeology of one of the most dynamic periods in the history of the ancient world the transition between pre-Roman and Roman Italy these scholars focus on ancient Italy and the wider Mediterranean. Shedding new light on the evidence of well-known and recently excavated sites and the objects they have yielded their iconography, manufacturing techniques, and afterlives this collection...

Barbara Pavlock unmasks major figures in Ovid s Metamorphoses as surrogates for his narrative persona, highlighting the conflicted revisionist nature of the Metamorphoses. Although Ovid ostensibly validates traditional customs and institutions, instability is in fact a defining feature of both the core epic values and his own poetics.
The Image of the Poet explores issues central to Ovid s poetics the status of the image, the generation of plots, repetition, opposition between refined and inflated epic style, the reliability of the narrative voice, and the...

The Persica is an extensive history of Assyria and Persia written by the Greek historian Ctesias, who served as a doctor to the Persian king Artaxerxes II around 400 bce. Written for a Greek readership, the Persica influenced the development of both historiographic and literary traditions in Greece. It also, contends Matt Waters, is an essential but often misunderstood source for the history of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
Waters, as a historian of Persia with command of Akkadian, Elamite, and Old Persian languages in addition to Latin and Greek, offers a fresh...

Offering a fresh approach to ancient Greek architecture, Shaping Ceremony focuses on the overlooked subject of monumental steps. Written in a clear and readable style, the book presents three complementary ways of studying steps: examining how the human body works on steps; theoretical perspectives on the relationship between architecture and human behavior; and the socio-political effects of steps' presence. Although broad steps are usually associated with emperors and political dominance, Mary B. Hollinshead argues that earlier, in Greek sanctuaries, they expressed and reinforced...