M. L. West - Böcker

Greek Metre

The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women Its Nature, Structure and Origins

In this new and third edition, the additional fragments contained in the appendix of the second edition have been incorporated in the main text. Some further discoveries have been included, and reference has been made to the results of recent research on the relative placing of certain papyrus fragments. The index of names has been brought up to date.

Oxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

The poet of the Odyssey was a seriously flawed genius. He had a wonderfully inventive imagination, a gift for pictorial detail and for introducing naturalistic elements into epic dialogue, and a grand architectural plan for the poem. He was also a slapdash artist, often copying verses from the Iliad or from himself without close attention to their suitability. With various possible ways of telling the story bubbling up in his mind, he creates a narrative marked by constant inconsistency of detail. He is a fluent composer who delights in prolonging his tale with subsidiary episodes, yet his deployment of the epic language is often inept and sometimes simply unintelligible.The Making of the Odyssey is a penetrating study of the background, composition, and artistry of the Homeric Odyssey. Martin West places the poem in its late seventh-century context in relation to the Iliad and other poetry of the time. He also investigates the traditions that lie behind it: the origins of the figure of Odysseus, and folk tales such as those of the One-eyed Ogre and the Husband's Return.

This abridged version of the author's comprehensive Greek Metre will provide students with a more easily approachable and digestible introduction to the subject. The explanations of basic matters have been simplified, and additional examples have been included to illustrate the commoner metres.

W. S. Barrett (1914-2001) was one of the finest Hellenists of the second half of the twentieth century, known above all for his celebrated edition of Euripides' Hippolytus. This volume of his collected scholarly papers includes five articles published between 1954 and 1978, together with a much larger number of others that remained unpublished in his lifetime and are made known here for the first time. They deal mainly with Greek lyric poetry (Stesichorus, Pindar, Bacchylides) and Tragedy. Students of Greek literature will welcome this unexpected posthumous addition to Barrett's oeuvre, as well as the reappearance of the published articles.

The Indo-Europeans, speakers of the prehistoric parent language from which most European and some Asiatic languages are descended, most probably lived on the Eurasian steppes some five or six thousand years ago. Martin West investigates their traditional mythologies, religions, and poetries, and points to elements of common heritage. In The East Face of Helicon (1997), West showed the extent to which Homeric and other early Greek poetry was influenced by Near Eastern traditions, mainly non-Indo-European. His new book presents a foil to that work by identifying elements of more ancient, Indo-European heritage in the Greek material. Topics covered include the status of poets and poetry in Indo-European societies; metre, style, and diction; gods and other supernatural beings, from Father Sky and Mother Earth to the Sun-god and his beautiful daughter, the Thunder-god and other elemental deities, and earthly orders such as Nymphs and Elves; the forms of hymns, prayers, and incantations; conceptions about the world, its origin, mankind, death, and fate; the ideology of fame and of immortalization through poetry; the typology of the king and the hero; the hero as warrior, and the conventions of battle narrative.

Hesiod, who lived in Boetia in the late eighth century BC, is one of the oldest known, and possibly the oldest of Greek poets. His Theogony contains a systematic genealogy of the gods from the beginning of the world and an account of the struggles of the Titans. In contrast, Works and Days is a compendium of moral and practical advice on husbandry, and throws unique and fascinating light on archaic Greek society. As well as offering the earliest known sources for the myths of Pandora, Prometheus and the Golden Age, Hesiod's poetry provides a valuable account of the ethics and superstitions of the society in which he lived. Unlike Homer, Hesiod writes about himself and his family, and he stands out as the first personality in European literature. This new translation, by a leading expert on the Hesiodic poems combines accuracy with readability. It is accompanied by an introduction and explanatory notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Greek lyric, elegiac, and iambic poets of the two centuries from 650 to 450 BC - Archilochus and Alcman, Sappho and Mimnermus, Anacreon, Simonides, and the rest - produced some of the finest poetry of antiquity, perfect in form, spontaneous in expression, reflecting all the joys and anxieties of their personal lives and of the societies in which they lived. This new poetic translation by a leading expert captures the nuances of meaning and the whole spirit of this poetry as never before. It is not merely a selection but covers all the surviving poems and intelligible fragments, apart from the works of Pindar and Bacchylides, and includes a number of pieces not previously translated. The Introduction gives a brief account of the poets, and explanatory Notes on the texts will be found at the end. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Indo-Europeans, speakers of the prehistoric parent language from which most European and some Asiatic languages are descended, most probably lived on the Eurasian steppes some five or six thousand years ago. Martin West investigates their traditional mythologies, religions, and poetries, and points to elements of common heritage. In The East Face of Helicon (1997), West showed the extent to which Homeric and other early Greek poetry was influenced by Near Eastern traditions, mainly non-Indo-European. His new book presents a foil to that work by identifying elements of more ancient, Indo-European heritage in the Greek material. Topics covered include the status of poets and poetry in Indo-European societies; metre, style, and diction; gods and other supernatural beings, from Father Sky and Mother Earth to the Sun-god and his beautiful daughter, the Thunder-god and other elemental deities, and earthly orders such as Nymphs and Elves; the forms of hymns, prayers, and incantations; conceptions about the world, its origin, mankind, death, and fate; the ideology of fame and of immortalization through poetry; the typology of the king and the hero; the hero as warrior, and the conventions of battle narrative.

The Making of the Iliad is intended for readers who have some knowledge of Greek and of Homer. After introductory chapters on the poet of the Iliad's date and homeland, the poetic traditions known to him, the way in which his work developed, and its early reception, Martin West provides a running commentary on the epic, distinguishing the different stages of the poet's workings, illuminating his aims and methods, and identifying techniques and motifs derived from ancestral Indo-European tradition or imported from the Near East.

Martin West is internationally known as one of the outstanding Classical scholars of our time, and one of the most prolific. Hellenica is a three-volume selection of ninety or so of his more notable papers relating to Greek literature and thought. This first volume, Epic, contains thirty essays, including two previously unpublished. It is devoted to early epic, from its Mycenaean and pre-Mycenaean roots to its later manifestations in the Homeric Hymns and the poetry ascribed to Eumelus of Corinth. There are pieces on the myths of Helen and the Trojan War, on the transition from oral to written epic, and on the relationship of the Iliad and Odyssey to other lost poems. Spanning forty years of scholarship, the collection as a whole presents a powerful and coherent individual vision of the emergence of heroic epic in the archaic age of Greece. The second and third volumes, to appear at yearly intervals, will contain papers on the lyric poets, tragedy, philosophy, music, metre, and other miscellaneous topics. Each volume will contain a preface, an index, and a full list of the author's other writings relating to the areas in question.

Martin West is internationally known as one of the outstanding Classical scholars of our time, and one of the most prolific. Hellenica is a three-volume selection of ninety or so of his most notable papers relating to Greek literature and thought. This second volume contains thirty-one items chosen from over four decades of publication. It is devoted to the lyric poets and tragedy; there are papers on Archilochus, Alcman, Sappho, Stesichorus, Simonides, Pindar, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Corinna, among others, and the collection includes a previously unpublished lecture on Zeus in Aeschylus. Connoisseurs of Greek verse composition will relish the appendix containing a college dinner menu transformed into a hilarious parody of the Cassandra scene from the Agamemnon. The first volume is devoted to early epic and the third volume will contain papers on philosophy, music, metre, and other miscellaneous topics. Each volume contains a preface, indexes, and a full list of the authors other writings relating to the areas in question.

Martin West is internationally known as one of the outstanding Classical scholars of our time, and one of the most prolific. Hellenica is a three-volume selection of ninety or so of his most notable papers relating to Greek literature and thought. This third volume contains thirty-three pieces chosen from over four decades of publication, and one hitherto unpublished. Eleven items fall under the heading of philosophy and ten under that of music and metre. Most of the remainder are on literary texts and topics; they include an English version of the author's Teubner Lecture on the role and image of the Greek poetess, and obituaries of two Oxford Regius Professors of Greek. The volume is rounded off with a provocative collection of Obiter Dicta culled from the whole body of the author's output.The first volume is devoted to early epic and the second to the lyric poets and tragedy. Each volume contains a preface, indexes, and a full list of the author's other writings relating to the areas in question. This third one also contains an index of the publications reproduced or excerpted in Hellenica I-III.

The Iliad and Odyssey do not cover the main story of the Trojan War. The whole saga, which includes Zeus' plan to reduce the world's population, the Judgment of Paris and seduction of Helen, the start of the campaign, the Wooden Horse, the fall of Achilles, the homecoming of Agamemnon, and the eventual death of Odysseus, was related in six other epics, dating from 630-560 BCE, that were influential for lyric poets, tragedians, and artists of the classical age but are known to us only through fragments and brief prose summaries. In this book Martin West presents all the source material and provides the first comprehensive commentary on it, making full use of iconographic as well as literary evidence. Discussing the individual fragments and testimonia, he endeavours to reconstruct the connections between them, so far as possible, and to build up a picture of the plan and course of each poem. In a substantial introduction he addresses general issues, including the nature and formation of the Epic Cycle, the status of the summaries of the Troy epics preserved under the name of Proclus, the validity of the attested ascriptions to particular poets, the reflexes of the Cycle in early art and literature, and its fortunes in and after the Hellenistic period.

If not the profoundest of Greek tragedies, Orestes is certainly one of the most exuberant and entertaining. Euripides stands traditional legend on its head to forge a melodrama full of varied action, emotion, and novel theatrical effects, with a succession of crises crowned by a spectacular happy ending. Produced in 408 B.C., the play marks the culmination of Euripides' development, and in antiquity it surpassed all other tragedies in popularity. No study of Greek drama should neglect it. For this volume, Professor West has prepared a new edition of the Greek text with a selective apparatus. Greek text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.