Ancient & Classical

A Theban adventure from the master of Science-Fiction, here proving himself adept at imagining historical worlds. Part of the Brian Aldiss Collection. In Jocasta, Aldiss brings vividly to life the ancient world of dreaming Thebes: a world of...

On the creation of the world, and the destruction of Atlantis.Plato, the great philosopher of Athens, was born in 427 BC. In early manhood an admirer of Socrates, he later founded the famous school of philosophy in the grove Academus. Much else...

The works collected in this volume have profoundly shaped the history of criticism in the Western world: they created much of the terminology still in use today and formulated enduring questions about the nature and function of literature. In Ion, Plato...

This is the first comprehensive and accessible survey in English of Old Norse eddic poetry: a remarkable body of literature rooted in the Viking Age, which is a critical source for the study of early Scandinavian myths, poetics, culture and society...

The OCR-endorsed publication from Bloomsbury for the Greek AS and A-Level set text prescriptions for examination in 2017-2019, giving full Greek text, commentary and vocabulary and a detailed introduction for each text that also covers the prescription...

(Thg., Chrm., Laches, Lysis: Euthd., Prot., Gorg., Meno; Hp. Ma. et Min., Io, Mnx.) Edited by J. Burnet.Book InformationISBN 9780198145424Author J. BurnetFormat HardbackPage Count 520Imprint Oxford University PressPublisher Oxford University...

The Old English poems attributed to Cynewulf, who flourished some time between the eighth and tenth centuries, are unusual because most vernacular poems in this period are anonymous. Other than the name, we have no biographical details of Cynewulf, not...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780679433132Author Dante AlighieriFormat HardbackPage Count 960Imprint Everyman's Library USAPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 828gDimensions(mm)...

This is a study of Greek mythology in relation to its original contexts. Part one deals with the contexts in which myths were narrated: the home, public festivals, the lesche. Part two, the heart of the book, examines the relation between the realities...

The philosopher's toolkit.Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, born at Stagirus in 384 BC, was the son of a physician. He studied under Plato at Athens and taught there (367-347); subsequently he spent three years ...

Final thoughts on an ideal constitution.Plato, the great philosopher of Athens, was born in 427 BC. In early manhood an admirer of Socrates, he later founded the famous school of philosophy in the grove Academus. Much else recorded of his life is...

Homer Vol. I. Iliad (Books I-XII)ReviewsExcellent standard text. * Jeanne G. Kurtz, University of New Hampshire *Book InformationISBN 9780198145288Author D. B. MonroFormat HardbackPage Count 304Imprint Clarendon PressPublisher Oxford University...

In this new translation of Hesiod, Barry B. Powell gives an accessible, modern verse rendering of these vibrant texts, essential to an understanding of early Greek myth and society. With stunning color images that help bring to life the contents of the...

In Book I of the "Aeneid", Aeneas is shipwrecked on the coast of North Africa, near where the Phoenician queen Dido is building a city that will become Carthage. Aeneas and Dido meet. Their doomed love is set against Aeneas' destiny as founding father of...

Sallust, Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86-35 BCE), a Sabine from Amiternum, acted as tribune against Cicero and Milo in 52, joined Caesar after being expelled from the Senate in 50, was restored to the Senate by Caesar and took part in his African campaign...

Longus' Daphnis and Chloe is arguably our finest surviving Greek novel. Written under the Roman Empire and engaging with romantic, pastoral and rhetorical themes, the story and characterisation have captured the imaginations of artists over the centuries...

These new translations present Plato's remarkable dramatization of the momentous events surrounding the trial of Socrates in 399 BC, on charges of irreligion and corrupting the young. The Euthyphro, Defence of Socrates, and Crito form a dramatic and...

Aristotle De Arte PoeticaBook InformationISBN 9780198145646Author Rudolf KasselFormat HardbackPage Count 96Imprint Oxford University PressPublisher Oxford University PressDimensions(mm) 195mm * 128mm * 11mm

How to Read Middle English Poetry guides readers through poetry between 1150 and 1500, for study and pleasure. Chapters give down-to-earth advice on enjoying and analyzing each aspect of verse, from the choice of single words, through syntax, metre,...

Spurious composition.Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106-43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and...

This pivotal book of the "Aeneid" has Aeneas - like Odysseus in "Odyssey XI" - visiting the Underworld. He is poised, as it were, between the world of his 'Homeric' past, the wanderings he has undergone in the poem's first half, and the destiny mapped...

The master of Old Comedy.Aristophanes of Athens, one of the world's greatest comic dramatists, has been admired since antiquity for his iridescent wit and beguiling fantasy, exuberant language, and brilliant satire of the social, intellectual, and...

Rome's foreign wars, nation by nation.Appian (Appianus) is among our principal sources for the history of the Roman Republic, particularly in the second and first centuries BC, and sometimes our only source, as for the Third Punic War and the destruction...

The medieval Norse-Icelandic saga is one of the most important European vernacular literary genres of the Middle Ages. This Introduction to the saga genre outlines its origins and development, its literary character, its material existence in manuscripts...

The story of Maecenas and his role in the evolution and continuing legacy of ancient Roman poetry and cultureAn unelected statesman with exceptional powers, a patron of the arts and a luxury-loving friend of the emperor Augustus: Maecenas was one of the...

The saintly austerities of Mary of Egypt so impressed early monks that they recorded her life to edify their brethren. Many versions circulated and the tale traveled from Palestine to Europe, from Greek to Latin to French to Spanish, from prose to...

Juvenal's sixth Satire is a masterpiece of comic hyperbole, an outrageous rant against women and marriage which, in its breadth and density, represents the high point of the misogynistic literature of classical antiquity. The Introduction situates...

Epic history.Lucan (M. Annaeus Lucanus, AD 39-65), son of wealthy M. Annaeus Mela and nephew of Seneca, was born at Corduba (Cordova) in Spain and was brought as a baby to Rome. In AD 60 at a festival in Emperor Nero's honor Lucan praised him in a...

Fallacies, contraries, consistencies.Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, born at Stagirus in 384 BC, was the son of a physician. He studied under Plato at Athens and taught there (367-347); subsequently he spent three...

In this informal history of Roman civilization, Edith Hamilton vividly depicts the Roman life and spirit as they are revealed in the greatest writers of the time. Among these literary guides are Cicero, who left an incomparable collection of letters;...

A biography of Vergil, Rome's greatest poet, by the acclaimed translator of the Aeneid "Ms. Ruden has converted the writer of the Aeneid from a noble and stodgy 'ancient' into our contemporary . . . persuasively re-imagined [as] a sympathetic,...

Here, for the first time in English, is celebrated French classicist Jacques Jouanna's magisterial account of the life and work of Sophocles. Exhaustive and authoritative, this acclaimed book combines biography and detailed studies of Sophocles' plays,...

'Book InformationISBN 9780231096287Author MacrobiusFormat PaperbackPage Count 278Imprint Columbia University PressPublisher Columbia University Press

Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides are often described as the greatest tragedians of the ancient world. Of these three pivotal founders of modern drama, Euripides is characterized as the interloper and the innovator: the man who put tragic verse into the...

Brilliantly adapting Greek New Comedy for Roman audiences, the sublime comedies of Plautus (c. 254 -184 bc ) are the earliest surviving complete works of Latin literature. The four plays collected here reveal a playwright in his prime, exploring classic...

Virgil, Horace and Ovid are often cited as the three great canonical poets of classical Roman literature. And of the three, arguably it is Ovid (43 BCE-CE 17/18) who has the most enduring legacy. Carole Newlands introduces her subject as an ancient...

All of us are faced countless times with the challenge of persuading others, whether we're trying to win a trivial argument with a friend or convince our coworkers about an important decision. Instead of relying on untrained instinct--and often...

Cicero was one of classical antiquity's most prolific, varied and self-revealing authors. His letters, speeches, treatises and poetry chart a political career marked by personal struggle and failure and the collapse of the republican system of government...

In How to Kill a Dragon Calvert Watkins follows the continuum of poetic formulae in Indo-European languages, from Old Hittite to medieval Irish. He uses the comparative method to reconstruct traditional poetic formulae of considerable complexity that...

Hellenistic history.The historian Polybius (ca. 200-118 BC) was born into a leading family of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese (Morea) and served the Achaean League in arms and diplomacy for many years, favoring alliance with Rome. From 168 to 151 he was...