This study describes the meaning of libertas as a political idea at Rome during the two hundred years or so between the Gracchi and Trajan, a period in which the Republican constitution gradually gave way and was finally superceded by the Principate which, in its own turn, considerably changed during the first century AD. Libertas, while identified with the republican constitution during the Republican period, continued to be a popular slogan and a constitutional principle under the Principate, and C H Wirszubski questions whether the political content of Roman libertas changed as the Roman...

The actual practice of the Romans with regard to property and investment must be distinguished from the formal rules of the emperors and the moralistic generalizations of the ancient writers. With this in mind the Cambridge Research Seminar in Ancient History spent two years examining various aspects of Roman property, investigating individual topics in greater detail than has been attempted before. The studies which make up this volume deal with Roman investment in property - scale and concentration of holdings, rural and urban property, methods of exploitation and how this was organized,...

The focus of this account is how myth and formal argument in the dialogue Phaedrus complement and reinforce each other in Plato's philosophy. Not only is the dialogue in its formal structure a joining of myth and argument, but the philosophic life that it praises is also shaped by the limitations of argument and the importance of mythical and poetic understanding. The book is written for anyone seriously interested in Plato's thought and in the history of literary theory or of rhetoric. No knowledge of Greek is required.

This study examines the literary complexities of the poetry Ovid wrote in Tomis, the poet's place of exile on the Black Sea after he was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus in A.D. 8. Exile transforms Ovid into a melancholic poet of despair who claims that his creative faculties are in terminal decline. These claims are contested in this study through close and original analysis of the literary maneuvers that contradict Ovid's pose. The evidence thus revealed counteracts traditional scholarly antipathy to these poems.

Demos is a study of a classical city-state. It is the first attempt to provide an integrated account which gives due attention to the countryside as well as the urban areas of a polis. Concentrating on classical Athens, for which the literary and archaeological evidence is richest, Dr Osborne establishes the nature of settlement in the countryside and explores how this relates to the farming of the land, the exploitation of mineral resources, and the nature of political participation in both local and central politics. Further studies reveal the way in which the countryside was structured by...

This is a study of the first book of poems by the Roman poet Tibullus. By undertaking a poem-by-poem reading of Elegies Book One, the author explores the subtle, many-faceted interplay of power within the text. He brings a variety of literary and cultural theories to bear on the work and the result is a portrait of the poet and text far removed from the bland, safe and urbane Tibullus of previous criticism.

Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon has long been regarded as the most controversial of the ancient Greek novels. This extended study on Achilles Tatius explores Leucippe and Clitophon in its literary and visual contexts, presenting fresh insights into the work's narrative complexities and its obsessions with the eye. The book is written for non-specialists and all Greek is translated or paraphrased. It will be of value to readers with interests in feminist literary criticism, as well as ancient novels.

This is the first study to examine in detail the role and character of Homer's people (Greek laoi) in Homeric storytelling, arguing that Homeric poetry is crucially concerned with the people as a basis for communal life. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are read as sustained meditations on the processes involved in protecting and destroying the people. The investigation draws on a wide range of approaches from formulaic analysis to the study of early performance contexts.

Were acts of sex which we would call rape and regard as a criminal offence similarly regarded in classical Athens? That is the main question posed in this book, the first in-depth study of the topic ever to be undertaken. It considers the legal terminology for rape and discusses exactly what these different terms describe. It also examines literary stories where rape and/or seduction feature as plot devices and looks at different characters' responses to them. The book's presentation makes it accessible to a wider readership of non-classicists.

In contrast to earlier scholarly work on Achilles of the Homeric epics, this study examines how one of the most popular figures of Greek mythology was portrayed on the tragic stage of fifth-century Athens. Pantelis Michelakis asserts that dramatists persistently appropriated Achilles to address concerns ranging from heroism and education to individualism and gender. The book considers the complete corpus of extant Greek tragedy, with particular attention paid to Aeschylus' Myrmidons and Euripides' Hecuba and Iphigenia at Aulis.