M. K. Hopkins – författare

This study describes the meaning of libertas as a political idea at Rome during the two hundred years or so between the Gracchi and Trajan, a period in which the Republican constitution gradually gave way and was finally superceded by the Principate which, in its own turn, considerably changed during the first century AD. Libertas, while identified with the republican constitution during the Republican period, continued to be a popular slogan and a constitutional principle under the Principate, and C H Wirszubski questions whether the political content of Roman libertas changed as the Roman constitution was transformed. He explores the general characteristics of libertas before engaging with both the background and the major points that were at issue, concluding his analysis with consideration of libertas in the context of the Principate. Originally published in the 1950s, Wirszubski's classic study has been digitally reprinted for a new generation of scholars.

This 1983 book provides a serious modern literary treatment of perhaps the best known of all surviving works of ancient Greek fiction. Dr Hunter demonstrates the sophistication of this pastoral romance, a sophistication which he maintains has often been assumed but never properly discussed. Evidence for the identity of the author and the date of composition are also considered.

Demos is a study of a classical city-state. It is the first attempt to provide an integrated account which gives due attention to the countryside as well as the urban areas of a polis. Concentrating on classical Athens, for which the literary and archaeological evidence is richest, Dr Osborne establishes the nature of settlement in the countryside and explores how this relates to the farming of the land, the exploitation of mineral resources, and the nature of political participation in both local and central politics. Further studies reveal the way in which the countryside was structured by religious institutions and cults and by the nature of the family.

This study, first published in 1998, explores the subtle, many-faceted interplay of power in Tibullus' first book of elegies. A series of power relationships are created by the text (lover and beloved, poet and patron) and the processes through which power of various sorts can be exercised are brought to the foreground. Such power-play within the text of Tibullus I has ramifications well beyond the erotic sphere. Gender categories, rural life, religion, militia, patronage are among the areas subsumed within and determined by the operation of power dynamics in this consistently underrated Augustan text. As secure meaning becomes elusive, the reader is also drawn into this nexus of power-play. Taking a linear reading of Book One as its basis, this study uncovers the shifting, unstable ground of Tibullan elegy. The result is a picture of the poet and text of Book I far removed from the bland, safe and urbane 'Tibullus' of previous criticism.

This book examines the role and character of Homer's people, laoi, in Homeric story-telling, arguing that Homeric poetry is crucially concerned with the people as a basis for communal life. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey are read as sustained meditations on the processes involved in protecting and destroying the people. The investigation draws on a wide range of approaches from formulaic analysis to the study of early performance contexts. From a close reading of the Homeric epics, Homer's people emerge as a community without effective social structures. When this is viewed from the perspective of Homeric performances in the polis, a contrast between Homer's laoi and the founding people of ritual emerges. While the former typically perish, the survival of the latter is secured by the establishment of successful institutions.