This is the first compendium of the extant remains of the important Hellenistic poet and mythographer, Parthenius of Nicaea, reputed to have been Virgil's tutor in Greek and a major literary figure in his own right. The book includes a newly-edited text, translation, commentary, and contextual study of the whole of the writer's extant works, including the poetic fragments and his love stories.

This is the first detailed study of an eyewitness account (attributed to Lucian of Samosata) of the Holy City of Hierapolis in northern Syria. This text, which is presented both in the original Greek and in translation, is one of the most important literary sources for a religion of the Roman Near East in its native setting. The introduction and commentary for the first time combine literary-historical, philological, textual, and archaeological approaches.

In this book, J. L. Lightfoot throws a bridge between two mutually ignorant areas: pagan oracles and Judaeo-Christian studies. The Sibyl was a legendary figure in Greco-Roman antiquity who was credited with verse prophecies, often of an apocalyptic character. Lightfoot describes how she was taken over by Jews in the Hellenistic period, and later by Christians, as a vehicle for their own understandings of prophecy. She explores what those understandings were, and describes how the message was then clothed in the very distinctive and mannered pagan idiom that was the hallmark of Sibylline...

This volume presents a selection of Hellenistic prose and poetry, ranging chronologically from Philitas of Nicaea, whose mythography 'Sufferings in Love' is the major work in the collection.

In this volume, Lightfoot offers a detailed study of an ancient Greek geographical poem by Dionysius, a scholar-poet who flourished in Alexandria during the reign of Hadrian, which describes the world as it was then known. In antiquity, it was widely read and extremely influential, both in the schoolroom and among later poets. Translated into Latin, the subject of commentaries, and popular in Byzantium, it offers insights into multiple traditions of ancient geography, both literary and more scientific, and displays interesting affiliations to the earlier school of Alexandrian poets.
The...