Ancient & Classical

Three plays by ancient Greece's third great tragedian.One of antiquity's greatest poets, Euripides has been prized in every age for the pathos, terror, and intellectual probing of his dramatic creations. The new Loeb Classical Library edition of his...

Greek mercenaries on the march.Xenophon (ca. 430 to ca. 354 BC) was a wealthy Athenian and friend of Socrates. He left Athens in 401 and joined an expedition including ten thousand Greeks led by the Persian governor Cyrus against the Persian king...

Since their composition almost 3,000 years ago the Homeric epics have lost none of their power to grip audiences and fire the imagination: with their stories of life and death, love and loss, war and peace they continue to speak to us at the deepest...

What do we mean by 'tragedy' in present-day usage? When we turn on the news, does a report of the latest atrocity have any connection with the masterpieces of Sophocles, Shakespeare and Racine? What has tragedy been made to mean by dramatists,...

Parting company with the trend in recent scholarship to treat the subject in abstract, highly theoretical terms, Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome proposes that the magic-working of antiquity was in reality a highly pragmatic business, with very clearly...

In his reflections on Christianity, Saint Thomas Aquinas forged a unique synthesis of ancient philosophy and medieval theology. Preoccupied with the relationship between faith and reason, he was influenced both by Aristotle's rational world view and by...

The clarity of Joyce's translation highlights the poem's superb versification, sophisticated use of intertextuality, and bold formal experimentation and innovation. A substantial introduction and annotations make this epic accessible to students of all...

In addition to its many topical references to social life, religion, and politics in classical Athens, the Lysistrata is one of our best sources for the life of women in antiquity: unlike epic, tragedy, and oratory, Attic comedy draws its characters and...

Pro Marco Caelio is perhaps Cicero's best-loved speech and has long been regarded as one of the best surviving examples of Roman oratory. Speaking in defence of the young aristocrat Marcus Caelius Rufus on charges of political violence, Cicero scores his...

This book consists of Gregory Vlastos' studies on a variety of themes in Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy. Although many of the essays have appeared in various philosophical and classical journals or symposia, new in the...

This handy guide to The Odyssey will introduce students to a text, which has been fundamental to literature for nearly 3000 years. Readers will be introduced to the world in that the Odyssey was produced, to the text itself and to its origins in oral...

Antiquity's imperial biographer par excellence.Suetonius (C. Suetonius Tranquillus, born ca. AD 70), son of a military tribune, was at first an advocate and a teacher of rhetoric, but later became the emperor Hadrian's private secretary, 119-121. He...

This version of Goodwin's text is the one enlarged in 1899 from its original 1860 form. The aim of this paperback edition is to make the work available to new generations of Greek scholars who should find its comprehensiveness, clarity and its profusion...

This is the first balanced introduction to Plato's work to bringing Plato himself alive, as well as discussing the importance of his works. In so doing, it allows a better understanding of who he was, what sort of world he inhabited, why his works were...

Thoroughly revised and expanded, Introduction to Attic Greek, 2nd Edition gives student and instructors the most comprehensive and accessible presentation of ancient Greek available. The text features: full exposure to the grammar and morphology that...

Plotinus (204/5-270 CE) was the first and greatest of Neoplatonic philosophers. His writings were edited by his disciple Porphyry, who published them many years after his master's death in six sets of nine treatises each (the Enneads).Plotinus regarded...

Austere apologetics.Q. Septimus Florens Tertullianus (ca. AD 150-222) was born a soldier's son at Carthage, educated in Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and medicine, and later studied law to became a pleader, remaining a clever and often tortuous...

A detailed introduction to Moliere and his plays, this Companion evokes his own theatrical career, his theatres, patrons, the performers and theatre staff with whom he worked, and the various publics he and his troupes entertained with such success. It...

John Scattergood's 'The Complete English Poems of John Skelton', originally published in 1983 and long out of print, was the leading academic edition with comprehensive notes. Students are currently limited to searching for Skelton's poems in anthologies...

Plato is a philosophical writer of unusual and ingenious versatility. His works engage in argument but are also full of allegory, imagery, myth, paradox and intertextuality. He astutely characterises the participants whom he portrays in conversation...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781645423768Author Intelligent EducationFormat PaperbackPage Count 208Imprint DexterityPublisher DexterityWeight(grams) 245gDimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm *...

Herodotus' Histories can be read in many ways. Their literary qualities, never in dispute, can be more fully appreciated in the light of recent developments in the study of pragmatics, narratology, and orality. Their intellectual status has been...

An unrivaled compendium of ancient Roman knowledge.Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23-79), a Roman of equestrian rank of Transpadane Gaul (N. Italy), was uncle of Pliny the letter writer. He pursued a career partly military in Germany, partly...

The premier scholar-poet of the Hellenistic age.Callimachus (ca. 303-ca. 235 BC), a proud and well-born native of Cyrene in Libya, came as a young man to the court of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, where he composed poetry for the royal family; helped...

Horace's first book of Satires is his debut work, a document of one man's self-fashioning on the cusp between republic and empire, and a pivotal text in the history of Roman satire. It wrestles with the problem of how to define and assimilate satire and...

Statius' Achilleid is perhaps the most remarkable of all Latin epic poems. Its project - to tell the whole life of Achilles - was cut short by the poet's untimely death. Yet the completed first book and the earliest part of the second have a charm and...

Aeschylus (525-c.456 bc) set his great trilogy in the immediate aftermath of the Fall of Troy, when King Agamemnon returns to Argos, a victor in war. Agamemnon depicts the hero's discovery that his family has been destroyed by his wife's infidelity and...

Aristophanes, the Athenian comic dramatist, remains popular despite historical changes in attitude and belief. Placing the plays in their total civic, religious and dramatic context, this account explores their significance for contemporary audiences,...

Funny happenings.The rollicking comedies of Plautus, who brilliantly adapted Greek plays for Roman audiences ca. 205-184 BC, are the earliest Latin works to survive complete and are cornerstones of the European theatrical tradition from Shakespeare and...

This work is addressed to students of Virgil and of literature in general, including those who may be approaching the "Aeneid" for the first time. It attempts through discussion of particular topics to convey a balanced impression of the nature of the...

Livy's first book covers the 'mythical' period of Rome, from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy, including the founding of Alba Longa and Rome, the lives of Romulus and Remus, and the period of Kingship up to the banishment of the last of the seven kings,...

Homer's great epic, The Odyssey, is perhaps Western literature's first adventure story, and certainly remains one of its finest. It describes King Odysseus of Ithaca's epic, ten-year quest to return home after the Trojan War. He encounters giants,...

The paramount historian of the early Roman empire.Tacitus (Cornelius), famous Roman historian, was born in AD 55, 56 or 57 and lived to about 120. He became an orator, married in 77 a daughter of Julius Agricola before Agricola went to Britain, was...

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT is one of the most important alliterative poems of Medieval literatureNow a major film THE GREEN KNIGHT starring Dev PatelFrom the north-west midlands, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight dates from the second half of the 14th...

L.A Wilding's Latin Course for Schools, published in three parts, is well established as an excellent introduction to the language, providing details of grammar and syntax in an ordered and easily assimilable sequence. Continuous translation from...

The comic playwright Menander was one of the most popular writers throughout antiquity. This book reconstructs his life and the legacy of his work until the end of antiquity employing a broad range of sources such as portraits, illustrations of his...

"The classic of all Europe." -T. S. EliotVirgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) was born in 70 BC near Mantua and was educated at Cremona, Milan, and Rome. Slow in speech, shy in manner, thoughtful in mind, weak in health, he went back north for a quiet life...

'Immensely informative, wrapped in an engagingly casual tone, complemented by more than a dash of the bizarre. You'd be barking to miss it.' Professor Michael Scott Can you tell your Odysseus from your Oedipus? In this unique introduction, Philip...

In his Bellum Catilinae, C. Sallustius Crispus or Sallust (86-35/34 B.C.E.) recounts the dramatic events of the year 63 B.C.E. when a disgruntled and impoverished nobleman, L. Sergius Catilina, after two electoral defeats, made himself the leader of a...

'Delia, when flames engulf my bier you'll weep for me, and then you'll mix your kisses with sad tears.' Tibullus (?55-18 BC) was one of a group of poets known as the Latin elegists, whose number included Ovid and Propertius. Living in the age of...