Tragedy was central to the experience of being a fifth-century Athenian citizen. Tragedy explored fundamental issues of religion, of ethics, of civic ideology, and we should expect it to be a central source for the reconstruction and analysis of the Athenian thought and world. This collection of eleven papers investigates the methods and pitfalls of using tragedy to illuminate fifth-century thought, culture, and society.

This volume aims to provide a survey of the ways in which non-historical texts, as well as historical ones, can be used to construct Greek history. The author introduces the book with a chapter on the inventiveness of ancient authors and explores the genres of literature from which we construct our accounts of ancient history. He examines the fifth century authors Demosthenes, Lysias and Thucydides, as well as Greek tragedy and comedy, to show the different kinds of historical information that can be extracted from apparently recalcitrant texts.

This is a collection of studies on ancient (especially Latin) poetry and historiography, concentrating especially on the impact of rhetoric on both genres, and on the importance of considering the literature to illuminate the historical Roman context and the historical context to illuminate the literature. It takes the form of a tribute to Tony Woodman, Gildersleeve Professor of Latin at the University of Virginia, for whom twenty-one scholars have contributed essays reflecting the interests and approaches that have typified Woodman's own work. The authors that he has continuously illuminated...

Plutarch's Life of Caesar deals with the best known Roman of them all, Julius Caesar, and his vivid narrative covers most of the major events of the last generation of the Republic, as well as painting an insightful picture of this man who sacrificed everything for power. Pelling's volume gives a new translation of the Life together with a full introduction and running commentary on the events it describes. Culminating in the crossing of the Rubicon, Caesar's victory in the Civil War, and finally his assassination on the Ides of March, 44 BC, it goes on to trace the first stages of the new...

Much of ancient history can only be written thanks to evidence supplied by Plutarch. The historical methods and qualities of this vital source were for long subjected to little systematic analysis. However, over the last two decades an authoritative and profoundly influential set of studies has appeared in the field, the work of Christopher Pelling. Dispersed until now in a wide range of international journals and symposia, these fifteen studies are here published in a single volume, revised by the author with up-to-date annotations and bibliography. Together with three new studies, they form...

Twelve Voices from Greece and Rome is a book for all readers who want to know more about the literature that underpins Western civilization. Chistopher Pelling and Maria Wyke provide a vibrant and distinctive introduction to twelve of the greatest authors from ancient Greece and Rome, writers whose voices still resonate strongly across the centuries: Homer, Sappho, Herodotus, Euripides, Thucydides, Plato, Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, and Tacitus.

To what vital ideas do these authors give voice? And why are we so often drawn to what they say even in modern times?...

Maps dominate the modern sense of place and geography. Yet, so far as we can tell, maps were rare in the Greco-Roman world and, when mentioned in sources, are mistrusted and criticized. Today, technological advances have brought to the fore an entirely new set of methods for representing and interacting with space. In contrast to traditional "topographic" perspectives, the territorial extent of economic and political realms is increasingly conceived though a "topological" lens, in which the nature and frequency of links among different sites matter more than the physical distances between...

Treats Herodotus' compelling narrative of the Battle of Marathon. Detailed commentary will aid both translation and literary and historical appreciation.

Treats Herodotus' compelling narrative of the Battle of Marathon. Detailed commentary will aid both translation and literary and historical appreciation.