Sensing Greek Drama explores ancient Greek tragedy and comedy through the lens of the senses. It works within and beyond a number of recent developments in the scholarship of Classics and related fields. The essays within the volume engage with the senses in drama in manifold ways: through various theoretical frameworks borrowed from kindred fields in the humanities and sciences - postmodernism, humanism, feminism, phenomenology, cognitive theory and neuroscience, to name a few - as well as through the more traditional approaches within Classics of philology, historicism, performance studies and reception. The essays cover a relatively narrow range of tragic and comic plays, instead of encompassing the entirety of ancient drama, in order to foster meaningful links throughout the volume and to exemplify the value of engaging with the senses to produce new understandings of drama - and of the senses themselves. As a result of the volume, the study of Greek drama will be opened up for further research. This will not only appeal to Classicists interested in the meaning of the comedies and tragedies of the fifth century BC, but it will also be of interest to scholars interested in sensory approaches to literature. Above all, Sensing Greek Drama will serve as a call to “to recover our senses”, as Susan Sontag wrote in her famous essay “Against Interpretation”, in a modern age characterized by sensory overload and deprivation.

Colin Austin (1941–2010), Professor of Greek at Cambridge and distinguished editor of poetic texts, was renowned for the precision and brilliance of his scholarship. This collection of studies, offered by some of his pupils, aims to honour his memory. The papers combine philology and textual criticism with a strong interest in setting the works under examination in their literary and cultural context. Individual contributions are devoted to the establishment of the text of the comic poet Menander and the epigrammatist Posidippus of Pella, while one chapter offers a new critical edition of and the first detailed commentary on a number of erotic epigrams. Other essays explore poetic, performative and narratological features in Socratic works of Plato and Xenophon. The volume also includes an analysis of the trope of pathetic fallacy in the bucolic poem Epitaph for Bion and a study of the concept of ‘frigidity’ in ancient literary criticism.

This monograph uses the life and work of ground-breaking female classicist, Wilmer Cave Wright, to examine several questions about the rise of women in that discipline. First, what went into the creation of a classics scholar under circumstances that would seem to preclude that? Second, why was it arguably Wright’s time in Chicago that was her formative experience and period? Third, why did Wright want so desperately to leave Bryn Mawr, and then stay and pour herself into her students? Fourth, through what lens did she approach the evidence of classical literature, and did it make a difference? Fifth, how did Wright survive the Thomas years at Bryn Mawr? Sixth, why did she abruptly abandon her long-term project on Libanius of Antioch? Seventh, what led her to suddenly switch from classical Greek literature to translating medieval Latin medical texts? Wright's journey from Mason College to Girton College, Cambridge, the University of Chicago, and Bryn Mawr College is placed into historical context. Throughout, the significance of Wright’s work, particularly on the life of the Emperor Julian, is assessed. The author is a research fellow at the University of St Andrews, and the author of Julian and Christianity (Cornell) as well as numerous articles in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Classical Quarterly, and Classical Philology.

The canon of classical Greek and Latin poetry is built around big names, with Homer and Virgil at the centre, but many ancient poems survive without a firm ascription to a known author. This negative category, anonymity, ties together texts as different as, for instance, the orally derived Homeric Hymns and the learned interpolation that is the Helen episode in Aeneid 2, but they all have in common that they have been maltreated in various ways, consciously or through neglect, by generations of readers and scholars, ancient as well as modern. These accumulated layers of obliteration, which can manifest, for instance, in textual distortions or aesthetic condemnation, make it all but impossible to access anonymous poems in their pristine shape and context. The essays collected in this volume attempt, each in its own way, to disentangle the bundles of historically accreted uncertainties and misconceptions that affect individual anonymous texts, including pseudepigrapha ascribed to Homer, Manetho, Virgil and Tibullus, literary and inscribed epigrams, and unattributed fragments. Poems without Poets will be of interest to students and scholars working on any anonymous ancient texts, but also to readers seeking an introduction to classical poetry beyond the limits of the established canon.

Simonides of Keos was one of the most important praise-poets of the early fifth century BCE, ranking alongside Pindar and Bacchylides. In Simonides Lyricus, a group of leading international experts revisit familiar questions about his lyric poetry, and pose new ones. Themes discussed include textual criticism and attribution of fragments; poetic genre and the place of the poet’s melic fragments in his larger oeuvre; the historical, cultural and political background of the poems; and Simonides’ afterlife in the biographical and anecdotal traditions that formed around his name. The volume makes a substantial contribution to modern discussions of Simonides’ place in Greek literary and cultural history and to the understanding of this poet’s often fragmentary and difficult texts.

Augustus and the Destruction of History explores the intense controversies over the meaning and profile of the past that accompanied the violent transformation of the Roman Republic into the Augustan principate. The ten case studies collected here analyse how different authors and agents (individual and collective) developed specific conceptions of history and articulated them in a wide variety of textual and visual media to position themselves within the emergent (and evolving) new Augustan normal. The chapters consider both hegemonic and subaltern endeavours to reconfigure Roman memoria and pay special attention to power and polemics, chaos, crisis and contingency – not least to challenge some long-standing habits of thought about Augustus and his principate and its representation in historiographical discourse, ancient and modern. Some of the most iconic texts and monuments from ancient Rome receive fresh discussion here, including the Forum Romanum and the Forum of Augustus, Virgil’s Aeneid and the Fasti Capitolini.

This volume of essays is intended to commemorate the eminent Latin scholar David West, best known for his work on Lucretius, Horace, Virgil and Shakespeare. The contributors – Francis Cairns, Ian Du Quesnay, Bruce Gibson, Alex Hardie, Stephen Harrison, John Moles and Tony Woodman – have aimed to produce close readings of classical texts, paying due attention to historical context and literary tradition in the manner adopted by David West himself. The authors covered are Empedocles, Antisthenes, Callimachus, Lutatius Catulus, Catullus, Horace (Epodes and Odes), Propertius, Virgil (Aeneid), Dio Chrysostom and Hildebert of Lavardin.

Sir Richard Jebb (1841–1905) was the most celebrated classical scholar in late Victorian Britain: his edition of Sophocles, which remains a classic, brought him a knighthood. Professor of Greek at Cambridge from 1889, and MP for the University from 1891 until his death, Jebb became a national spokesman for the humanities. “Sophocles’ Jebb” charts his career through 275 newly discovered letters, presented here with introductions and full annotation. By allowing Jebb and his contemporaries to speak in their own words, it enables a significant reassessment of a key cultural figure of late Victorian Britain and sheds fresh light on public and academic debate of the time. The volume ends with a new, comprehensive list of Jebb’s publications. Christopher Stray is Honorary Research Fellow, Department of History and Classics, Swansea University, and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

Colin Austin, Professor of Greek at Cambridge University 1998–2008, was one of the world’s foremost experts in the reconstruction and interpretation of Greek comedy. When he died in August 2010, he was working towards a new edition of Menander for the series Oxford Classical Texts, for which he had completed only the shorter pieces: Dis Exapaton, Encheiridion, Georgos, Heros, Karchedonios, Kitharistes, Koneiazomenai, Leukadia, Perinthia, Phasma and Theophoroumene. The present volume contains the papyri and book fragments of these eleven plays, edited by Colin Austin.

Since 1966, when James Diggle was elected to his Fellowship at Queen's College, Cambridge, his teaching and scholarly example have inspired many of his pupils to embark on their own academic careers. In this volume fourteen former pupils have contributed essays to mark his retirement. The contributions cover many of the diverse disciplines of Classics: Greek literature, Greek language, Latin literature, Textual Criticism, Greek and Roman Culture and the History of Scholarship. James Diggle has always excelled in the teaching of Greek and Latin composition and included are two offerings in Greek verse by former pupils. The volume concludes with a bibliography of the honorand's published writings.

Unclassical Traditions. Volume II: Perspectives from East and West in Late Antiquity is the second of two collections of essays by leading scholars discussing the nature and extent of the late-antique engagement with the classical past. Rather than concentrating on developments at the centre of empire (the focus of a previous volume, Unclassical Traditions I ), the aim here is to present a set of views from the margins: social, political, religious, literary, geographical and linguistic. Ranging from Armenian ecclesiastical histories, Egyptian alchemy and Jewish power politics, across the Mediterranean to the challenges raised by shifting circumstances in 5th-century North Africa and Ostrogothic Italy, the eight papers in this volume seek to establish the persistent importance of the classical tradition throughout a broadly defined late antiquity. Despite the divergent forms taken by these various responses, they are united by a common preoccupation with that still authoritative past. From these eastern and western perspectives - often peripheral and sometimes isolated - the classical past appears neither monolithic nor inflexible but as offering a set of assumptions or conventions that might be opposed or accepted, subverted or ignored or reworked into a striking variety of newly imagined worlds. Like its predecessor, this volume will be of interest to anyone concerned with the history, literature and culture of the later Roman empire. It stems from an international conference held in Cambridge in 2009, generously supported by the Faculty of Classics and the Henry Arthur Thomas Fund.

Unclassical Traditions: Alternatives to the Classical Past in Late Antiquity is the first of two collections of essays by leading scholars discussing the nature and extent of the late-antique engagement with its classical heritage. This issue has long been at the heart of modern historical debate and, as this volume demonstrates, it was no less a matter of concern among authors and audiences in the period itself. From the Chronological Tables of Eusebius of Caesarea to the Brevarium of Festus and from the imperial panegyric to the Byzantine liturgy, eight papers explore how the persistence, dominance and normative nature of the classical tradition in its various forms could be negotiated, undermined, ironised or even flatly denied. Whether in the hands of Christian bishops such as Ambrose of Milan or Basil of Caesarea, or in the poetry of Ausonius or in the lives of the saints, many central aspects of late-antique culture here emerge as the product of a combination of authoritatively classical and avowedly unclassical traditions.

This volume presents new work exploring how the study of historical linguistics can advance our understanding of Greek and Latin and, conversely, how the classical languages can help us to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European and the culture of its speakers. Classical and Indo-European linguistics have been particularly exciting areas of research in recent years, and this book is intended to provide insight into some of the main areas of current debate. It stems from an international conference held in Cambridge in 2005 and includes contributions from keynote speakers Andreas Willi and Joshua Katz. The book covers a wide range of topics: phonology (the accentuation of Greek monosyllables, the development of laryngeals in Greek, and typological discussion of the glottalic theory); morphology (the prehistory of the past-tense augment, the iteratives and causatives of the Latin second conjugation, the origin of the Latin prefix co(m)- , Indo-European root nouns and s-stem neuters, Greek and Latin reflexive pronouns, the Greek comparative suffix); the etymologies of etymos , Achilles, adulare , and a Macedonian gloss; the significance of the Greek particle tar; and comparisons of Sanskrit matrimonial names and poetic terminology with their Greek counterparts. Greek and Latin from an Indo-European Perspective demonstrates the continuing relevance of linguistics for the study of ancient languages and literature, and will be of interest to classicists, Indo-European linguists, and historical linguists generally.

Ennius Perennis: the Annals and Beyond is a collection of eight essays by an international group of scholars on different aspects of the poetry and legacy of Quintus Ennius (239-169 BC). Ennius' epic poem the Annals and his many other works, including tragedies, satires and epigrams, survive only in mystifying fragments, but his influence on Latin poetry was enormous. He is now beginning to be appreciated, thanks both to excellent critical editions and to more enlightened literary and historical approaches, as a complex and varied poet and a fascinating representative of an era of intense cultural and political change. While they acknowledge the extent to which later authors are responsible for creating a misleading perception of Ennius as monolithic, jingoistic and clumsy, these essays also reflect on what can be said about the nature and aims of his work, given the limitations of our evidence. Subjects discussed include Cicero's "invention" of Ennius, the part played by the cor (heart) in unifying Ennius' literary project, the possibility of "further voices" and a role for women in Ennius, Virgil's fraught "father-son" relationship with his epic predecessor and Ennius' later reincarnation in the works of Horace and Petrarch. The collection is likely to appeal to all who are interested in Latin literature, literary history or reception studies.

This is the first extended study in English of Theophrastus' Characters , one of the briefest but also most influential works to survive from classical antiquity. Since the seventeenth century, the Characters has served as a model and an inspiration for authors as diverse as La Bruyère, Thackeray, George Eliot and Elias Canetti. This study aims to locate Theophrastus and his Characters with respect to the political and philosophical worlds of Athens in the late fourth century, focusing on later imitators in order to provide clues to reading the Theophrastan original. Special attention is paid to the problems and possibilities of the Characters as testimony to the culture and society of contemporary Athens, integrating the text into the extensive fragments and testimonia of Theophrastus' other writings. The implications for the historian of the elusive humour of the Characters , dependent in large measure on the device of caricature, are explored in detail. What emerges is a picture of the complex etiquette appropriate for upper-class citizens in the home, the streets and other public places in Athens where individuals were on display. Through their resolutely shaming behaviour, the Characters illuminate the honour for which citizens should, by implication, be striving. A key theme of the study is Theophrastus' ambivalent position in Athens: a distinguished philosopher and head of the Lyceum, yet still subject to the disabilities of his metic status.

Karl Marx observed that "just when people seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves..