What are the halcyon days? On what date do the dog days begin? What is Hansel Monday? How do Chinese, Muslim, Mesoamerican, Jewish, and Babylonian calendars differ from Christian calendars? The answers to these and hundreds of other intriguing questions about the way humans have marked and measured time over the millennia can be found in The Oxford Companion to the Year.
The desire to set aside certain periods of time to mark their significance is a transhistorical, transcultural phenomena. Virtually all cultures have marked special days or periods: the feast day of a saint, the...

Aulus Gellius originated the modern use of "classical" and "humanities." His Attic Nights contains information on many aspects of antiquity, and preserve much early Latin literature that would otherwise be lost; they also offer personal reminiscences and vignettes of life in the second century AD. This comprehensive study examines his life and writings. It has been fully revised in the light of recent work.

This is the first collection of essays in any language on Aulus Gellius. Its contributors, both established and younger scholars, include Gellian experts looking out with specialists in other fields looking in; they combine traditional and new approaches. Subjects range from the bilingual culture in which Gellius wrote, through his stylistic judgements, his skills in etymology and narrative, his relation to the antiquarian tradition, the generic expectations of miscellany, his claim to educate his readers, the theory of "Gellian humanism," and his attitude towards intellectuals, to his...

Aulus Gellius originated the modern use of "classical" and "humanities." His Attic Nights contains information on many aspects of antiquity, and preserves much early Latin literature that would otherwise be lost; it also offers personal reminiscences and vignettes of life in the second century AD. This comprehensive study examines his life and writings. It has been fully revised in the light of recent work.

Between 1485 and 1492 Cardinal Ascanio Sforza was the recipient of a music treatise composed for him by "Florentius Musicus" (Florentius de Faxolis), who had served him in Naples and Rome. Now in Milan, the richly illuminated small parchment codex bears witness to the musical interests of the cardinal, himself an avid singer taught by Duke Ercole d'Este. Florentius, whose treatise, found in no other source, is edited here for the first time, evidently took the cardinal's predilections into account, for the Book on Music is unusual for its emphasis on "the praises, power, utility,...