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Ammianus' Julian: Narrative and Genre in the Res Gestae

Alan J. Ross

This book presents a re-examination of Ammianus Marcellinus’ agenda and methods in narrating the reign of the emperor Julian (355–63). Ammianus’ Res Gestae provides the fullest extant narrative of ... More

This book presents a re-examination of Ammianus Marcellinus’ agenda and methods in narrating the reign of the emperor Julian (355–63). Ammianus’ Res Gestae provides the fullest extant narrative of Julian, and holds a prominent position in modern studies of the last ‘pagan’ emperor. This book suggests that the Res Gestae presents a Latin-speaking, western audience with an idiosyncratic and ‘Romanized’ depiction of the philhellene emperor. Consciously exploiting his position as a Greek writing in Latin, and as a contemporary of Julian, Ammianus wished the Res Gestae to be considered a culminating and definitive account of Julian. The volume examines several key episodes from Books 14–25—Gallus and Silvanus, Julian’s appointment as Caesar, the battle of Strasbourg, his acclamation as Augustus, and the Persian campaign of 363. Building on recent advances in literary approaches to historical texts, it evaluates Ammianus’ presentation of Julian in each episode by considering the Res Gestae within three interrelated contexts: as a work of Latin historiography, which sets itself within a classical and classicizing tradition; in a more immediate literary and political context, as the final contribution by a member of an ‘eyewitness’ generation to a quarter century of intense debate over Julian’s legacy by several authors who had lived through the reign and had been in varying degrees of proximity to Julian; and as a narrative text, in which narratorial authority is closely associated with the persona of the narrator, both as an external narrating agent and an occasional participant in the text.Less

An Ancient Dream Manual: Artemidorus' The Interpretation of Dreams

Peter Thonemann

Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (‘The Interpretation of Dreams’) is the only dream-book which has been preserved from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Composed around AD 200, it is a treatise and manual on dreams, ... More

Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (‘The Interpretation of Dreams’) is the only dream-book which has been preserved from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Composed around AD 200, it is a treatise and manual on dreams, their classification, and the various analytical tools which should be applied to their interpretation. Artemidorus travelled widely through Greece, Asia, and Italy to collect people’s dreams and record their outcomes, in the process casting a vivid light on social mores and religious beliefs in the Severan age. This book aims to provide the non-specialist reader with a readable and engaging road-map to this vast and complex text. It offers a detailed analysis of Artemidorus’ theory of dreams and the social function of ancient dream-interpretation; it also aims to help the reader to understand the ways in which Artemidorus might be of interest to the cultural or social historian of the Graeco-Roman world. The book includes chapters on Artemidorus’ life, career, and worldview; his conceptions of the human body, sexuality, the natural world, and the gods; his attitudes towards Rome, the contemporary Greek polis, and the social order; and his knowledge of Greek literature, myth and history. The book is intended to serve as a companion to the new translation of The Interpretation of Dreams by Martin Hammond, published simultaneously with this volume in the Oxford World’s Classics series.Less

Appian: Wars of the Romans in Iberia

Appian wrote his Roman History in the second century AD as a series of books arranged geographically to chronicle the rise of the Roman Empire. His Iberike, of which this is the first translation ... More

Appian wrote his Roman History in the second century AD as a series of books arranged geographically to chronicle the rise of the Roman Empire. His Iberike, of which this is the first translation with historical commentary in English, deals with the Romans' wars in the Iberian peninsula from the third to the first centuries BC. It is the only continuous source for much of the history of this crucial period in one of the earliest regions of Rome's imperial expansion, and so fills in the gap made by the loss of Livy's later books. He describes the major campaigns of the conquest from the defeat of the Carthaginians by Scipio Africanus, the wars against the Celtiberians, the war against the Lusitanians under Viriathus and the siege of Numantia. The value of the text is not merely as a chronicle of otherwise obscure events, Appian was an historian who deserves to be studied in his own right. This scholarly edition presents the Greek text with facing-page English translation, accompanied by an introduction, historical commentary and copious notes.Less

Aristotle's Lost Homeric Problems: Textual Studies

Robert Mayhew

This volume consists of a set of studies focused on various aspects of a relatively neglected subject: a lost work of Aristotle entitled Homeric Problems. Most of the evidence for this lost work ... More

This volume consists of a set of studies focused on various aspects of a relatively neglected subject: a lost work of Aristotle entitled Homeric Problems. Most of the evidence for this lost work consists mainly of ‘fragments’ surviving in the Homeric scholia (comments in the margins of the medieval manuscripts of the Homeric epics, mostly coming from lost commentaries on these epics). But other sources have been neglected. The book has three parts. The first deals with preliminary issues: the relationship of this lost work to the Homeric scholarship that came before it, and to Aristotle’s comments on the Homeric epics in his extant Poetics; the evidence concerning the possible titles of this work; a neglected early edition of these fragments. In the second part, our knowledge of the Homeric Problems is expanded through an examination in context of quotations from (or allusions to) Homer in Aristotle’s extant works, and specifically in the History of Animals, the Rhetoric, and Poetics 21 (to each of which a chapter is devoted). Part III consists of four studies on select (and in most cases neglected) fragments. The volume intends to show (inter alia) that Aristotle in the Homeric Problems aimed to defend Homer against his critics, but not slavishly and without employing allegorical interpretation.Less

Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose

Tobias Reinhardt, Michael Lapidge, and J. N. Adams (eds)

Twenty chapters from two often-dissociated areas of Latin studies, classical and medieval Latin, examine continuities and developments in the language of Latin prose from its emergence to the twelfth ... More

Twenty chapters from two often-dissociated areas of Latin studies, classical and medieval Latin, examine continuities and developments in the language of Latin prose from its emergence to the twelfth century. Language is not understood in a narrowly philological or linguistic sense, but as encompassing the literary exploitation of linguistic effects and the influence of formal rhetoric on prose. Key themes explored throughout this book are the use of poetic diction in prose, archaism, sentence structure, and bilingualism. Chapters cover a comprehensive range of material including studies of individual works, groups of authors such as the Republican historians, prose genres such as the ancient novel or medieval biography, and linguistic topics such as the use of connectives in archaic Latin or prose rhythm in medieval Latin.Less

Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and his Achievement

Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Aulus Gellius originated the modern use of ‘classical’ and ‘humanities’. His Attic Nights, so named because they began as the intellectual pastime of winter evenings spent in a villa outside Athens, ... More

Aulus Gellius originated the modern use of ‘classical’ and ‘humanities’. His Attic Nights, so named because they began as the intellectual pastime of winter evenings spent in a villa outside Athens, are a mine of information on many aspects of antiquity and a repository of much early Latin literature that would otherwise be lost; he took a particular interest in questions of grammar and literary style. The whole work is interspersed with interesting personal observations and vignettes of second-century life that throw light on the Antonine world. This study, the most comprehensive of Gellius in any language, examines his life, his circle of acquaintances, his style, his reading, his scholarly interests, and his place in literary tradition parentage; reference is made to his reception in later antiquity and beyond. It covers many subject areas such as language, literature, law, rhetoric, and medicine; it also examines Gellius's attitudes to women and the relation considered between the literary trends of Latin (the so-called archaizing movement) and Greek (Atticism) in the second century AD. The text, sense, and content of numerous individual passages are considered, and light shed on a wide range of problems in Greek as well as Latin authors.Less

A Casebook on the Roman Law of Contracts

Bruce W. Frier

This Casebook explores the writings of Roman lawyers on the law of contracts, a rich and hugely influential area of Roman private law. The 235 “Cases” are actual texts deriving, for the most part, ... More

This Casebook explores the writings of Roman lawyers on the law of contracts, a rich and hugely influential area of Roman private law. The 235 “Cases” are actual texts deriving, for the most part, from the Digest of Justinian (535 ce), but written hundreds of years earlier during the Classical era of Roman law. These Cases give a fairly complete view of the concepts and methods used to create rules and judge contract cases in Roman courts. The Casebook concentrates especially on two central Roman contracts, stipulation and sale; but all other contracts and contract-related issues are discussed, as well as Roman legal thinking on unjustified enrichment.Less

Changing Names: Tradition and Innovation in Ancient Greek Onomastics

Robert Parker (ed.)

Changing Names investigates, in relation to the ancient Greek world, the ways in which preferences in personal name-giving change: through shifts in population, cultural contact and imperialism, the ... More

Changing Names investigates, in relation to the ancient Greek world, the ways in which preferences in personal name-giving change: through shifts in population, cultural contact and imperialism, the popularity of new gods, celebrity status of individuals, increased openness to external influence, and shifts in local fashion. Several major kinds of change due to cultural contact occurred: Greek names spread in regions outside Greece that were subject to Greek cultural influence (and later conquest), while conversely the Roman conquest of the Greek world led to various degrees of adoption of the Roman naming system; late in antiquity, Christianisation led to a profound but rather gradual transformation of the name stock. Individuals in culturally mixed societies sometimes bore two names, one for public or official use, one more domestic; but women of non-Greek origin were more likely to stick with indigenous names. 'Structural' changes (such as the emergence of the English surname) did not occur, though in late antiquity an indication of profession tended to replace the father's name as a secondary identifier; in some regions 'second' names became popular, perhaps in imitation of the longer Roman naming formulae. The volume is arranged partly thematically, partly through regional case studies (from within and beyond old Greece). Individuals who change their names (typically slaves after manumission) are also considered, as is the possibility that a name might change its 'meaning'.Less

Childhood and the Classics: Britain and America, 1850-1965

Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts

This book explores the childhood reception of classical antiquity in Britain and the United States over a century-long period beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, with a focus on two genres of ... More

This book explores the childhood reception of classical antiquity in Britain and the United States over a century-long period beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, with a focus on two genres of children’s literature– the myth collection and the historical novel—and on adults’ literary responses to their own childhood encounters with antiquity. The book recognizes the fundamental role in writing for children of adults’ ideas about what children want or need, but also attends to the ways in which child readers make such works their own. The authors first trace the tradition of myths retold as children’s stories (and as especially suited to children) from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Kingsley to Roger Lancelyn Green and Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire, treating both writers and illustrators. They then turn to historical fiction, particularly to the roles of nationality and of gender in the construction of the ancient world for modern children. They conclude with an investigation of the connections between childhood and antiquity made by writers for adults, including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Naomi Mitchison, and H.D., and with a reading of H.D.’s novella The Hedgehog as a text on the border between children’s and adult literature that thematizes both the child’s special relation to myth and the adult’s stake in children’s relationship to the classics. An epilogue offers a brief overview of recent trends, which reflect both growing uncertainty about the appeal of antiquity to modern children and an ongoing conviction that the classical past is of perennial interest.Less

Cicero the Advocate

Jonathan Powell and Jeremy Paterson (eds)

This book considers Cicero's forensic speeches as acts of advocacy, that is, designed to ensure that the person he represents is acquitted or that the person he is prosecuting is found guilty. It ... More

This book considers Cicero's forensic speeches as acts of advocacy, that is, designed to ensure that the person he represents is acquitted or that the person he is prosecuting is found guilty. It sets the speeches within the context of the court system of the Late Roman Republic and explores the strategies available to Roman advocates to win the votes of jurors. The book deals with issues concerning the general nature of advocacy, the court system in ancient Rome as compared with other ancient and modern systems, the Roman ‘profession’ of advocacy and its etiquette, the place of advocacy in Cicero's career, the ancient theory of rhetoric and argument as applied to courtroom advocacy, and the relationship between the published texts of the speeches as we have them and the speeches actually delivered in court. Other topics covered by the book include legal procedure in Cicero's time, Cicero's Italian clients, Cicero's methods of setting out or alluding to the facts of a case, his use of legal arguments, arguments from character, invective, self-reference, and emotional appeal. Some particular speeches are discussed as case studies covering the period of the height of Cicero's career, from 70 BC, when he became acknowledged as the leading Roman advocate, to 49 BC when Julius Caesar's dictatorship required Cicero to adapt his well-tried forensic techniques to drastically new circumstances. Those speeches contain arguments on a wide range of subject matter, including provincial maladministration, usurpation of citizenship rights, violent dispossession, the religious law relating to the consecration of property, poisoning, bribery, and political offences.Less

Cicero, Greek Learning, and the Making of a Roman Classic

Caroline Bishop

The Roman statesman, orator, and author Marcus Tullius Cicero is the embodiment of a classic. His works have been read continuously from antiquity to the present, his style is considered the model ... More

The Roman statesman, orator, and author Marcus Tullius Cicero is the embodiment of a classic. His works have been read continuously from antiquity to the present, his style is considered the model for classical Latin, and he deeply influenced Western ideas on the value of humanistic pursuits and the liberal arts. In Cicero, Greek Learning, and the Making of a Roman Classic, Caroline Bishop demonstrates that no one is more responsible for Cicero’s transformation into a classic than Cicero himself, and that in his literary works he laid the groundwork for the ways that he is still remembered today. Cicero achieved this goal, as Bishop shows, through his strategic use of the Greek classical canon. Cicero’s career coincided with the growth of Greek classicism, and he clearly grasped the benefits of the movement both for himself and for Roman literature. By selectively adapting classic texts from the Greek world—and incorporating into his adaptations the interpretation of the Hellenistic philosophers, poets, rhetoricians, and scientists who had helped enshrine these works as classics—Cicero could envision and create texts with classical authority for a parallel Roman canon. Bishop’s study ranges across a wide span of Cicero’s works, moving from his early translation of Aratus’ poetry (and its later reappearance through self-quotation) to Platonizing philosophy, Aristotelian rhetoric, Demosthenic oratory, and even a planned Greek-style letter collection. Part detailed intellectual history of Hellenistic Greece, part close study of Cicero’s literary works, this book offers a welcome new account of Greek intellectual life and its effect on Roman literature.Less

Cicero: Verrines II.I

Cicero's first major triumph was the prosecution of Caius Verres for misgovernment in Sicily. This speech was given in the second part of the trial and shows the development of Cicero's rhetoric. ... More

Cicero's first major triumph was the prosecution of Caius Verres for misgovernment in Sicily. This speech was given in the second part of the trial and shows the development of Cicero's rhetoric. This edition communicates the literary flavour of the original and discusses the historical and political background to the trial, with examination of noteworthy textual cruces and problems of interpretation. The book presents Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.Less

Cicero's Catilinarians

D. H. Berry

The Catilinarians are a set of four speeches that Cicero, while consul in 63 BC, delivered before the senate and the Roman people against the conspirator Catiline and his followers. Or are they? ... More

The Catilinarians are a set of four speeches that Cicero, while consul in 63 BC, delivered before the senate and the Roman people against the conspirator Catiline and his followers. Or are they? Cicero did not publish the speeches until three years later, and he substantially revised them before publication, rewriting some passages and adding others, all with the aim of justifying the action he had taken against the conspirators and memorializing his own role in the suppression of the conspiracy. How, then, should we interpret these speeches as literature? Can we treat them as representing what Cicero actually said? Or do we have to read them merely as political pamphlets from a later time? This first book-length discussion of these famous speeches clarifies what the speeches actually are and explains how we should approach them. In addition, the book contains a full and up-to-date account of the Catilinarian conspiracy and a survey of the influence that the story of Catiline has had on writers such as Sallust and Virgil, Ben Jonson and Henrik Ibsen, from antiquity to the present day.Less

Classical Commentaries: Explorations in a Scholarly Genre

Christina S. Kraus and Christopher Stray (eds)

This book consists of twenty-six chapters on classical commentaries which deal with commentaries from the ancient world to the twentieth century. The book contributes to the interface between two ... More

This book consists of twenty-six chapters on classical commentaries which deal with commentaries from the ancient world to the twentieth century. The book contributes to the interface between two emerging fields of study: the history of scholarship and the history of the book. It builds on earlier work on this area by paying particular attention to: (1) specific editions, whether those regarded as classics in their own right, or those that seem representative of important trends or orientations in scholarship; (2) traditions of commentary on specific classical authors; and (3) the processes of publishing and printing as they have related to the production of editions. The book takes account of the material form of commentaries and of their role in education: the chapters deal both with academic books and also with books written for schools, and pay particular attention to the role of commentaries in the reception of classical texts.Less

Classics and National Cultures

Susan A. Stephens and Phiroze Vasunia (eds)

Numerous nations have in one way or another engaged with the cultures of classical Greece and Rome. What impact does the classical past have on ideas of the nation, nationhood, nationality, and what ... More

Numerous nations have in one way or another engaged with the cultures of classical Greece and Rome. What impact does the classical past have on ideas of the nation, nationhood, nationality, and what effect does the national space have on classical culture? How has classical culture been imagined in various national traditions, what importance has it had within them, and for whom? This collection of essays by an international team of experts tackles the vexed relationship between Classics and national cultures, presenting essays on many regions, including China, India, Mexico, Japan, and South Africa, as well as Germany, Greece, and Italy. It poses new questions for the study of antiquity and for the history of nations and nationalisms.Less

Crafting Characters: Heroes and Heroines in the Ancient Greek Novel

Koen De Temmerman

Despite the resurgence of interest in representations of character in literary studies generally and Classical studies in particular, and despite the goldrush towards ancient fiction in the last two ... More

Despite the resurgence of interest in representations of character in literary studies generally and Classical studies in particular, and despite the goldrush towards ancient fiction in the last two decades, no volume has yet been devoted to exploring character and characterization in ancient Greek novels. This award-winning study analyses the characterization of the protagonists in the five extant, so-called ‘ideal’ Greek novels (i.e. those of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, and Heliodorus). The book offers close readings of techniques of characterization in each novel individually and thereby combines modern (mainly, but not exclusively, structuralist) narratology and ancient rhetoric, the latter of which was the predominant literary theory in the heydays of the Greek novels. The book argues that three conceptual couples central to ancient theory of character—typification/individuation, idealistic/realistic characterization, and static/dynamic character—construct character in these narratives more ambiguously, more elusively and in more complex ways than has been realized so far. The book explores to what extent and how the novelists construct individuating characteristics for their characters alongside typification; it also suggests that ‘ideal’ is probably not the most felicitous label to refer to these novels, as the abilities of their protagonists to acquire and develop rhetorical control over others thematizes psychologically realistic issues rather than idealistic ones; and it challenges the widely-held view of static character in these novels by tracing character development in a number of protagonists. It also makes clear how intimately presentations of character are intertwined with self-portrayal and performance of the self.Less

Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero's Speeches

Ingo Gildenhard

This book argues that a distinctive hallmark of Cicero's oratory is a conceptual creativity that one may loosely characterize as philosophical. A range of case studies show how this creativity ... More

This book argues that a distinctive hallmark of Cicero's oratory is a conceptual creativity that one may loosely characterize as philosophical. A range of case studies show how this creativity manifests itself in striking and original views on human beings and being human, politics, society, and culture, and the sphere of the supernatural. After an introduction that defines the outlook of Cicero's philosophical oratory and addresses methodological issues, the volume contains three parts with four chapters each, devoted, respectively, to the anthropology, the sociology, and the theology contained within his speeches. Each of the three parts begins with a substantial introduction that situates Cicero's thought within its wider historical and intellectual context, not least by identifying where and how he departed from the established habits of thought in the late‐republican field of power. The nature of the argument requires close philological study of key terms or concepts including natura, humanitas, tyrannus, and conscientia as well as attention to larger figures of thought, such as agency and accountability, the ethics of happiness, laws vs. justice, the enemy within, civilization vs. barbarity, the problem of theodicy, and life after death. Examples are drawn from the entire corpus of Ciceronian oratory, from the pro Quinctio to the Philippics, with in‐depth analysis of a representative cross‐section of particularly relevant speeches. Overall, the book offers a fundamental reappraisal of a canonical body of texts and should appeal not just to scholars of Cicero and Latin literature, but also Roman historians, and students of the history of rhetoric.Less

Demosthenes of Athens and the Fall of Classical Greece

Ian Worthington

Demosthenes' resolute and courageous defiance of Philip II of Macedonia earned for him a reputation as one of history's outstanding patriots. He also enjoyed a brilliant and lucrative career as a ... More

Demosthenes' resolute and courageous defiance of Philip II of Macedonia earned for him a reputation as one of history's outstanding patriots. He also enjoyed a brilliant and lucrative career as a speechwriter, and is regarded as Greece's greatest orator, as proved by the rhetorical style of his surviving speeches. Yet he was a sickly child who suffered from several physical and speech impediments, had an interrupted education, and was swindled out of much of his family estate by unscrupulous guardians. His story is certainly one of triumph over adversity. Demosthenes has been lauded as Greece's greatest patriot and condemned as an opportunist who misjudged situations and contributed directly to the end of Greek freedom. This book aims to determine which of these two people he was: self-serving cynic or patriot—or both. The book discusses Demosthenes' troubled childhood and youth, the obstacles he faced in his public career, his successes and failures, and even his posthumous influence as a politician and orator. The book offers new insights into Demosthenes' motives and how he shaped his policy to achieve political power, set against the history of Greece and Macedonia. The book gives extensive quotations in translation from his speeches to sum up their main points and help to illustrate his rhetorical style, which the book also discusses.Less

Demosthenes the Orator

Douglas M. MacDowell

Concentrating on Demosthenes' texts rather than his politics, this book describes and assesses all his speeches, including those for the lawcourts as well as the addresses to the Ekklesia. Besides ... More

Concentrating on Demosthenes' texts rather than his politics, this book describes and assesses all his speeches, including those for the lawcourts as well as the addresses to the Ekklesia. Besides the genuine speeches, it also covers those which probably are wrongly ascribed to Demosthenes, such as those written for delivery by Apollodoros. It considers the Epistles, the Prooimia, and the Erotic Speech. The arguments of each speech are analysed. The question whether the texts reproduce accurately what was actually spoken is approached cautiously. There is a short survey of Demosthenes' prose style, with examples quoted in Greek. In the rest of the book quotations are given in the author's own translations, with the Greek words added in footnotes where appropriate.Less

The Elegiac Passion: Jealousy in Roman Love Elegy

Ruth Rothaus Caston

The passions were a topic of widespread interest in antiquity. This is a study on their role in Roman love elegy (1st c. BCE), a genre rife with passions and jealousy in particular. Jealousy does ... More

The passions were a topic of widespread interest in antiquity. This is a study on their role in Roman love elegy (1st c. BCE), a genre rife with passions and jealousy in particular. Jealousy does appear in a number of earlier genres, but never with the centrality and importance it has in elegy. This book offers an exceptional opportunity to investigate the ancient representation of jealousy in its Roman context, as well as its significance for Roman love elegy itself. The narrators portray themselves as poets and as experts of love, championing a view of love that stands in marked contrast to the criticisms that Stoic and Epicurean philosophers had raised. Elegy provides rich evidence of the genesis and development of erotic jealousy: we find suspicions and rumors of infidelity, obsessive attention to visual clues, and accusations and confrontations with the beloved. The Roman elegists depict the susceptibility and reactions to jealousy along gendered lines, with an asymmetric representation of skepticism and belief, violence and restraint. But jealousy has ramifications well beyond the erotic affair. Underlying jealousy are fears about fides or trust and the vulnerability of human relations. These are prominent in love relationships, of course, but the term has broader application in the Roman world, and the poetic narrator often extends his fears about trust into many other dimensions of life, including friendship, religion, and politics. The infidelity rampant in the love affair indicates a more general breakdown of trust in other human relations. All of these features have implications for the genre itself. Many of the distinctive elements of Roman elegy—its first-person narration, obsessive recordkeeping, and role-playing—can be seen to derive from the thematic concern with jealousy. As such, jealousy provides a new way of understanding the distinctive features of Roman love elegy.Less