Bücher der Reihe Cambridge Classical Studies

This 2002 book explores the neglected question of the ancestry of the Epicurean philosophical system by tracing its origins in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. An important contribution is thereby made to the philosophical interpretation of Epicureanism, especially on its ideal of tranquillity and the relation of ethics to physics.

Professor Shipp's purpose in the first edition of this book (published in 1953) was 'to examine in as much detail as possible the development of the language of the Iliad in some of its typical features, with careful attention to the spoken dialects involved and to the influence of metre'. In the second edition he widens the scope of his work to examine the Odyssey as well as the Iliad, and he extends its detail to include syntax as well as grammatical forms and to cover questions of vocabulary more comprehensively. The author's earlier conclusions are shown to be confirmed, and an important further result for the Odyssey has been to show the typical lateness of the language of moralizing passages.

A critical study of Persius' poetic aims, aversions and techniques, based mainly on an extended analysis of Satires I. John Bramble shows how Persius' discontent with conventional literary language led him to compress the existing satiric idiom and create a powerful individual style. The author situates Persius' work in the tradition of Roman satire, and shows how he takes the concepts and metaphors of literary criticism back to their physical origins, to indict moral and literary decadence through a series of images connected with, for example, gluttony and sexual excess. This is a model study of a classical text, which makes consistent sense of a difficult and subtle manner, and answers questions posed by the potentially constricting nature of Roman poetic form. It also reconstructs the referential framework of ideas and associations upon which a sophisticated writer addressing a discriminating audience could draw.

Prometheus Bound was accepted without question in antiquity as the work of Aeschylus, and most modern authorities endorse this ascription. But since the nineteenth century several leading scholars have come to doubt Aeschylean authorship. Dr Griffith here provides a thorough and wide-ranging study of this problem.

Our knowledge of Alexander the Great is derived from the widely varying accounts of five authors who wrote three and more centuries after his death. The value of each account can be determined in detail only by discovering the source from which it drew, section by section, whether from a contemporary document, a memoir by a companion of Alexander, a hostile critique or a romanticizing narrative.

With his extensive knowledge of the ways in which Plato was read and invoked as an authority in late antiquity Dr Tarrant builds a most impressive reconstruction of Philo of Larissa's brand of Platonism and of its arrival in Middle Platonism, particularly that of Plutarch, long after the Academy's institutional demise.

Argues that Propertius' third book re-invents Latin love-elegy, in competition with Horatian lyric and Virgilian epic, as part of an ambitious claim to Augustan pre-eminence. Uses detailed readings of individual elegies to explore elegy's engagement with emerging Augustan mores.

Leading scholars explore how ancient Greek and Roman philosophy developed over its long history a sense in which philosophers might acknowledge the authority of some other philosopher or group of philosophers, as well as a number of canonical texts whose discussion itself became a mode of philosophical debate.

This is the first comprehensive study of the sublime in Lucan. Drawing upon renewed literary-critical interest in the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, Henry Day argues that the category of the sublime offers a means of moving beyond readings of Lucan's Bellum Civile in terms of the poem's political commitment or, alternatively, nihilism. Demonstrating in dialogue with theorists from Burke and Kant to Freud, Lyotard and Ankersmit the continuing vitality of Longinus' foundational treatise On the Sublime, Day charts Lucan's complex and instructive exploration of the relationship between sublimity and ethical discourses of freedom and oppression. Through the Bellum Civile's cataclysmic vision of civil war and metapoetic accounts of its own genesis, through its heated linguistic texture and proclaimed effects upon future readers and, most powerfully of all, through its representation of its twin protagonists Caesar and Pompey, Lucan's great epic emerges as a central text in the history of the sublime.

Written for scholars and advanced students working in both classics and political theory, this book provides a new interpretation of Cicero's central works of political philosophy. It demonstrates that Cicero's Republic and Laws are critical for understanding the history of the concepts of rights, the mixed constitution and natural law.

Theodosius II was the longest reigning Roman emperor. Although often dismissed as mediocre and ineffectual, he ruled an empire which retained its vitality and integrity while the West was broken up by barbarian invasions. This book explores Theodosius' success in a century that stands between the classical world and Byzantium.

Cicero's letters are saturated with learned philosophical allusions and arguments. This innovative study shows just how fundamental these are for understanding Cicero's philosophical activities and for explaining the enduring interest of his ethical and political thought. Dr McConnell draws particular attention to Cicero's treatment of Plato's Seventh Letter and his views on the relationship between philosophy and politics. He also illustrates the various ways in which Cicero finds philosophy an appealing and effective mode of self-presentation and a congenial, pointed medium for talking to his peers about ethical and political concerns. The book offers a range of fresh insights into the impressive scope and sophistication of Cicero's epistolary and philosophical practice and the vibrancy of the philosophical environment of the first century BC. A new picture emerges of Cicero the philosopher and philosophy's place in Roman political culture.

Offers scholars of Greek literature new evidence of Aristophanes' polemical use of philosophy in poetic competition; ancient philosophers new evidence of the popular reception of Parmenides; and scholars in theatre studies new evidence that explicit theorizing about theatre begins with a comic appropriation of Eleatic ideas about reality and illusion.

How did Ancient Greek express that an event occurred at a particular time, for a certain duration, or within a given time frame? The answer to these questions depends on a variety of conditions - the nature of the time noun, the tense and aspect of the verb, the particular historical period of Greek during which the author lived - that existing studies of the language do not take sufficiently into account. This book accordingly examines the circumstances that govern the use of the genitive, dative, and accusative of time, as well as the relevant prepositional constructions, primarily in Greek prose of the fifth century BC through the second century AD, but also in Homer. While the focus is on developments in Greek, translations of the examples, as well as a fully glossed summary chapter, make it accessible to linguists interested in the expression of time generally.

This book consists of two closely related parts. Volume I publishes fifty-four Ptolemaic papyri from the Fayum and Middle Egypt, with English translations and extensive commentaries. Volume II uses these texts, created for purposes of taxation, to provide historical studies analysing fundamental aspects of Ptolemaic Egypt.

A study of a small agricultural village in the Fayum as a social and economic unit towards the end of the second century BC, which was a period of civil unrest and economic disruption in Egypt. The book is based on papyrus documents from the archive of the village scribe.

A 1976 study of the organization and tactics of the Seleucid armies from 312 to 129 BC. Dr Bar-Kochva discusses the numerical strength of the armies, their sources of manpower and their equipment and historical development, and also reconstructs the great campaigns in order to examine the Seleucid tactics.

Ancient Greek expressed the agents of passive verbs by a variety of means, and this work explores the language's development of prepositions which marked the agents of passive verbs. After an initial look at the pragmatics of agent constructions, it turns to this central question: under what conditions is the agent expressed by a construction other than hupo with the genitive? The book traces the development of these expressions from Homer through classical prose and drama, paying attention to the semantic, syntactic, and metrical conditions that favoured the use of one preposition over another. It concludes with a study of the decline of hupo as an agent marker in the first millennium AD. Although the focus is on developments in Greek, translation of the examples should render it accessible to linguists studying changes in prepositional systems generally.

Theodosius II was the longest reigning Roman emperor. Although often dismissed as mediocre and ineffectual, he ruled an empire which retained its vitality and integrity while the West was broken up by barbarian invasions. This book explores Theodosius' success in a century that stands between the classical world and Byzantium.

Ovid, a poet unashamedly in love in poetry, including his own, has enjoyed a recent renaissance in popularity. Yet there is still a certain tendency amongst critics to withhold from his writing the close, word-by-word, engagement which is its due. The primary aim of The Metamorphosis of Persephone is to celebrate this poet's detailed verbal art.

This book reconstructs the life and workings of the Appianus estate in the Fayum district of Egypt under Roman rule in the third century AD. Basing his study on the extensive documentary evidence of the Heroninos archive, consisting of hundreds of letters and accounts on papyrus, Dr Rathbone examines the nature of rural society at the time.

In Aristotle's view, Anaxagoras stood out from the other Presocratics as a sober man among the incoherent. This book explores the fragmentary evidence both for Anaxagoras' concept of mind - to which Aristotle was particularly referring - and for his subtle, complex and elusive theory of matter and change.

The first comprehensive account of syllabic writing in ancient Cyprus, tackling epigraphic, archaeological and historical problems relating to the island's writing systems in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, and challenging some longstanding or traditional views. Invaluable for scholars studying Cypriot epigraphy or archaeology.

This interpretation of Plato's dialogue, the Sophist, shows how important the issues concerning the sophist are to the possibility of philosophy. Plato is seen to struggle with difficult philosophical issues in a single line of inquiry and, in defining the sophist, to reveal his conception of the authentic philosopher.

An interpretation of Hellenistic and Roman education. Teresa Morgan draws on evidence from all over the classical world, including papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, to re-examine one of the institutions which made that world an entity, and which was one of its most influential legacies to the west.

Demos is a study of a classical city-state, providing an integrated account which gives due attention to the countryside as well as urban areas of a polis. Concentrating on classical Athens, it establishes the nature of settlement in the countryside and how it relates to farming, mineral mining and political participation in local and central politics.

By analysing a selection of speeches of the Athenian orator Andokides and the decisions reached by his audience on each occasion, Dr Missiou demonstrates that the orator had divergent perceptions, values and attitudes from those of his audience on a number of issues. By this means she challenges the criticism that the decisions of the Assembly during this period were irresponsible and irrational.

This study examines the literary complexities of the poetry which Ovid wrote in Tomis, his place of exile after his banishiment from Rome. The author contests Ovid's claims of the terminal decline of his art through close analysis of the literary manoeuvres contradicting his prose, counteracting traditional scholarly antipathy to these poems.

This book is a philosophical analysis of Plato's dialogue, the Statesman. Dr Lane finds that rather than being transitional between the Republic and the Laws, the Statesman deserves a special place of its own - the dialogue emerging as a text which proposes an alternative conception of knowledge, authority, and the relationship between them.