James Diggle – författare

A discussion of the text or interpretation of passages from six plays by Euripides edited by the author for Oxford Classical Texts: Supplices, Electra, Heracles, Troades, Iphigenia in Tauris, Ion. In addition, if James Diggle has already discussed a passage from these plays in a published article, he has incorporated a reference to that discussion at the appropriate place, often adding new material. But the book is designed not only as a contribution to the amendment and interpretation of particular passages in these plays. Many of the notes are used as a basis for pursuing topics (whether linguistic or metrical) which are of general interest, and as a result the book will be of value to all future commentators on Greek tragedy.

James Diggle is well known among classicists as one of the foremost Euripidean scholars of our time. His ground-breaking studies on the text of Euripides, culminating in his new edition of the complete plays in the Oxford Classical Texts series, have won him a wide reputation as one of the leading authorities on Euripides. This collection comprises forty one papers and reviews (including five papers not previously published) designed as a companion to the Oxford Text. The published papers and reviews have been lightly revised and updated and equipped with copious cross-references. There are full indexes. The collection not only offers a commentary on an extensive range of problematic passages in the plays; it also provides an up-to-date grammar of Euripidean usage - linguistic, stylistic, and metrical - and deals with many aspects of the manuscript tradition. It will be an indispensable handbook for all future serious students of Euripides.

Euripides Fabulae: Vol. II (Sup., El., Her., Tro., Iph.Tau., Ion)

Text, Notes and Preface in Latin.

Praise for Vols. I and II: `The virtues of this first-rate edition are too numerous to catalogue, and in any case,since they will stand enshrined in what is undoubtedly to be the standard text of Euripides for the next generation or two, they will receive as their just requital the gratitude of countless scholars and students in the future.' Classical Philology 1984`D. is to be congratulated for the high achievement represented by this volume ... We look forward to the third ... and are tempted to wish for a fourth.' Classical Philology 1986This volume brings to completion James Diggle's major new edition of all the surviving plays of Euripides. It supersedes the third volume of Murray's Oxford Text of 1909. The work is based on new collations of all the relevant manuscripts and incorporates many new ideas for the improvement of the text suggested by recent scholars and the editor himself.

Orestes, produced in 408 BC towards the end of Euripides' life, was one of the most popular Greek tragedies in antiquity, and was consequently preserved in a large number of medieval manuscripts. Having investigated about sixty of the most important, James Diggle explains the complicated relationships which exist among them. He also examines afresh the contribution of the papyri and quotations which preserve parts of the play. In the course of these analyses he throws much light on problems of text and interpretation, on metre, and on the activities of Byzantine scholars.This examination of Orestes is the last major task in the completion of the study of the Euripidean manuscript tradition. As such it will be indispensable to all students of the transmission of Greek tragedy.

More than forty years have passed since the publication of volume II of James Diggle's Oxford Classical Text of Euripides (1981). That volume was the first to be published of the three volumes of the OCT edition: volumes I and III followed in 1984 and 1994. This second edition has been re-typeset to correct some deficiencies in the first edition, and updated to take into account developments in scholarship. Since the plays contained in volume II are transmitted in a much more corrupt state than most of those in the other volumes and pose far more problems, the editor has rethought every problem afresh, introducing many changes in the text. This volume includes an entirely new apparatus criticus, reassigning a large number of conjectures to their correct authors, and incorporating many new proposals. Re-examination of the manuscripts by autopsy has provided fuller and more precise details of manuscript readings, in particular of readings introduced by the hands which corrected manuscripts L and P. This new edition also incorporates the evidence of newly published papyri.

Last Thoughts on Euripedes is a companion to the second edition of volume II of the Oxford Classical Text of Euripides, which contains a radically revised text and apparatus criticus of six textually problematic plays. Its purpose is to explain and justify the choices which the author has made in that second edition, to assess what others have achieved or have failed to achieve in the more than forty years since the first edition was published, and to advance a number of new proposals concerning the plays. This volume shares its format with the author's Studies on the Text of Euripides (1981), which accompanied the first edition, but it comprehends a much large number of passages. Wherever possible, the discussions are used as a basis for pursuing topics of wider interest (linguistic, stylistic, or metrical), which will be of value not just to future commentators on the six plays but to readers and scholars of Euripides and Greek tragedy more generally. In a final chapter, the author advances arguments for a new identification of the corrector of one of the manuscripts.

Theophrastus' Characters is a collection of 30 short character-sketches of various types of individuals who might be met in the streets of Athens in the late fourth century BC. It is a work which had a profound influence on European literature, and this is a detailed and elaborate treatment of it. This edition presents an improved text, a translation which is designed both to be readable and to bring out fully the nuances of the very difficult Greek, and a commentary which covers every feature of the text and its interpretation and offers particularly full elucidation of the often enigmatic references to contemporary social practices and historical events. There is also a lengthy introduction, which discusses the antecedents and affiliations of the work, its date, its purpose, and the manuscript tradition. Extensive indexes are also provided, including an Index Verborum.

The Iohannis, an epic poem of the mid-sixth century, narrates the wars of a Roman general against Berber rebels in north Africa. The subject-matter is of considerable interest both for the history of the period and for what it reveals of the ethnography of north Africa in late antiquity. The poem is also of literary interest because of its numerous debts to earlier Latin poetry. It is in the establishment of a reliable text, however, in the field emendatio, that the importance of this 1970 edition lies. The editors have purged the text so far as possible from error; and in their numerous conjectures they have had to decide what abnormalities should be ascribed to the changed Latinity of the age, what to scribal error. The apparatus is thus full of imaginative and scholarly touches: it can be approached as a 'bank' of ideas and suggestions for scholars of late Latin. There are a short praefatio on the history of the text and the usual indexes.

James Diggle was the official Orator of the University of Cambridge from 1982 to 1993. This book presents a selection of fifty of the Latin speeches which he delivered during those years in praise of a variety of distinguished people on the occasion of their receiving Honorary Degrees. The graduands range from writers (Borges, Gordimer, Ted Hughes, Iris Murdoch) to scientists (Stephen Hawking, James Watson) to musicians (Janet Baker, Jessye Norman) to sculptors (Anthony Caro, Elisabeth Frink) to actors (Alec Guinness) and royalty (the King of Spain), to philosophers (Jacques Derrida) and many others. The speeches themselves, models of wit and verbal dexterity, demonstrating the adaptability of Latin to the expression of modern ideas, are accompanied by English versions of complementary skill. The volume opens with an essay on the history and nature of the office of Orator in Cambridge.

The surviving text of the fragmentary Phaethon of Euripides depends chiefly on two sources: two pages from a Euripidean manuscript, written about A.D. 500, and a papyrus of the third century B.C., which contains a substantial part of the parodos. These sources are supplemented by a number of citations in classical authors and by a recently published fragmentary hypothesis. Professor Diggle has examined all the manuscript evidence and offers many decipherments. He gives a text of the play and of the hypothesis, an exegetical commentary, prolegomena and appendices, in which he discusses the treatment of the Phaethon myth in classical literature and attempts a reconstruction of the plot of the play.

The Aetna is something of a curiosity: a didactic poem on the nature and causes of volcanic activity. In antiquity it was ascribed by some to Virgil; modern scholars reject this and, although unable to agree upon a date, favour the first century A.D. The text itself presents many problems in reading and interpretation, arising partly from corruptions in the manuscripts, partly from obscurities in the subject-matter. These difficulties are increased by the nature of the author's style: it is terse and elliptical, and at the same time loaded with scientific detail and mythological allusion. Dr Goodyear's edition provides a long introduction, a text with critical apparatus, a commentary, bibliography and indexes. The text is more reliable than any published hitherto.

Posidonius was one of the most important philosophers and intellectuals writing in the Greco-Roman world of the first half of the first century B.C. This book is a commentary on the surviving testimonia and fragments of his work collected in volume 1. Its purpose is to explicate and understand the evidence of these fragments, which must form the basis for any estimate of Posidonius' contribution to the learning of his time in the history of ideas. Since Posidonius was reported by at least sixty different writers, an attempt has been made to disentangle what Posidonius said, as distinct from the interpretations and distortions of his reporters. Posidonius wrote at length not only on philosophy, but also on the sciences, and a large History, and Professor Kidd has assessed Posidonius' work against the background of the philosophical, scientific and historical writings of his predecessors, contemporaries amd followers; for this many other related passages are cited and examined.

These two volumes form the first part of Dr Shackleton Bailey's long-awaited edition of the Atticus letters. The introduction (printed in volume I only) deals successively with the historical background and Cicero's relations with Atticus, manuscripts. The text, with selective apparatus, is printed with Dr Shackleton Bailey's translation on facing pages. The volumes end with commentaries, appendices and indices.

Theophrastus' Characters is a collection of 30 short character-sketches of various types of individuals who might be met in the streets of Athens in the late fourth century BC. It is a work which had a profound influence on European literature, and this is a detailed and elaborate treatment of it. This edition presents an improved text, a translation which is designed both to be readable and to bring out fully the nuances of the very difficult Greek, and a commentary which covers every feature of the text and its interpretation and offers particularly full elucidation of the often enigmatic references to contemporary social practices and historical events. There is also a lengthy introduction, which discusses the antecedents and affiliations of the work, its date, its purpose, and the manuscript tradition. Extensive indexes are also provided, including an Index Verborum.

Theophrastus:Characters is a collection of thirty short character-sketches of various types of individuals who might be met in the streets of Athens in the late fourth century BC. It is a unique work which has had a profound influence on European literature. This edition aims to make it accessible to students, by offering a radically improved text and a commentary which brings out the meaning and nuances of the dazzling but sometimes difficult Greek and offers full elucidation of the often enigmatic references to contemporary social practices and historical events. There is also a full introduction, which discusses the antecedents and affiliations of the work, its date, its purpose, and its literary qualities.