Malcolm Davies – författare

This is the first of a four-volume edition of Greek lyric fragments which takes account of recent papyrus finds and new editions of those works in which the fragments are preserved. A brief exegetical commentary and a more general testimonia vitae atque artis illuminate these often corrupt texts.

Sophocles' Trachiniae (`Women of Trachis') is named after the chorus of this tragedy which is concerned with the innocent and ill-fated attempt of Deianeira to win back her husband Heracles after he has sacked the city of Oechalia and fallen in love with the daughter of the defeated king.Over the years, the play has suffered sustained criticism because of the difficulties it presents of reconciling the plot, language, and characterization with Sophocles' other works. Recently, however, much work has been done to achieve a better understanding of the play in isolation and to increase modern regard for it.In a thought-provoking introduction, Dr Davies discusses the merits of the play, the question of its unity, its treatment of the hero Heracles, the story's pre-sophoclean tradition, and the evidence of contemporary art. In the commentary itself he discusses textual problems that arise from a frequently corrupt and uncertain text, as well as wider issues of interpretation. the text which is reproduced and presupposed in the commentary is the recently established Oxford Classical Text of Lloyd-Jones and Wilson

An authoritative commentary on the surviving fragments of Greek lyric poetry up to the death of Aristotle. No comparable work exists, partly because these fragments are usually small, textually corrupt and difficult to interpret. But they cast light on several aspects of Greek culture: for example, religion and prayer formulae (many of them take the form of hymns), the symposium (they include a collection of scolia), and the development of the so-called 'New School' of poetry and music. They also include fragments of poems by Telesilla and Praxilla, two of the rare band of female poets of antiquity other than Sappho, and Philoxenus' Deipnon, which puts into dactylo-epitrite metre the contents of an imaginary banquet, including long list of different types of food. Our knowledge of Euripides and Aristotle is expanded by the preservation of a quotation from a victory ode the former wrote for Alcibiades, and of an entire lyric eulogy for a dead friend composed by the latter. Also extended is our knowledge of that tantalising and in many ways baffling period of Greek literature between the death of Sophocles and the death of Aristotle. Nor should one forget the scurrilous verse of Timocreon, which extends our awareness of the capabilities of fifth century literary invective, and its capacity for parody and inversion of the topoi of praise poetry.

Punishing Criminals is about sentencing theory and policy and the attempt to identify punishments other than imprisonment. Davies argues for the need to develop more credible and effective community-based intermediate sanctions that have the confidence of the public and the officials in the criminal system. He shows how focus groups can be used to improve the process of consultation. He sees the need to locate sentencing policy decisions within the wider context of the criminal justice process and presents empirical evidence from ten years study of the California criminal justice system. He sets out a denunciatory-retributive rationale for punishment which links sentencing aims with a community's confidence in different forms of punishment.

It may seem odd to devote an entire book, however short, to a lost epic of which hardly any fragments (as normally defined) survive. The existence of a late prose summary of the epic’s contents hardly dispels that oddness. One (rather long) word may supply justification: Neoanalysis.This once influential theory held that motifs and episodes in the Iliad derive from the Aethiopis, called thus after an Ethiopian prince who allied with Troy against the Greeks, only to be killed by the Greeks’ greatest hero, Achilles. The death of that hero himself, at the hands of Paris, was then described, followed by the suicide of Ajax and preparations for the sack of Troy. The prose summary thus suggests a sequel to Homer’s poem, rather than its source, and for various reasons, especially the theory’s apparent failure to allow for the concept of oral composition, Neoanalysis fell into disfavor. Its recent revival in subtler form, given its vast potential implications for the Iliad’s origins, has inspired this volume’s critical reappraisal of that theory’s more sophisticated reincarnation. In addition, even more than with other lost early epics, the possibility that Greek vase paintings may reflect episodes of the poem must be examined.

The Cypria, so named because its poet supposedly came from the island of Cyprus, was an early Greek epic that is known to us primarily through quotations and references to passages by later authors, as well as through a prose summary of its plot and contents.Malcolm Davies uses linguistic evidence from the available verbatim fragments, along with other considerations, to suggest that the Cypria was written after Homer and was intended as a sort of prequel to the plot of the Iliad. In light of this evidence, it is noteworthy that many of the incidents described in the Cypria seem markedly un-Homeric; to give just one example, the Judgment of Paris, a popular subject in later Greek literature and art, most likely received its first detailed treatment in the Cypria, whereas the Iliad mentions it only fleetingly.Here Davies collects and translates the extant fragments of the Cypria and provides a commentary that anchors it in the Homeric context as well as in the broader world of ancient Greek art and literature.

The Epic Cycle Concludes deals with the two separate epics that related the sack of Troy and with the two that recounted the returns home of the victorious Greek heroes and the further adventures and death of the most famous of those surviving heroes, Odysseus (the Nostoi and the Telegony, respectively). This volume completes a set of four commentaries by Malcolm Davies on the poems of the Epic Cycle, published within the Hellenic Studies series, which began with The Theban Epics and continued with The Aethiopis and The Cypria.As with the Cypria, those of the Little Iliad’s fragments which consist of verses quoted verbatim are sufficient in quantity to supply convincing linguistic evidence that the poem was post-Homeric in date. The smaller number of verbatim fragments from the Iliupersis and the Nostoi confirm the like conclusion. No verbatim fragments survive from the Telegony, but a late prose summary of its contents suggests both that it was intended as a sequel to the Odyssey; but also that, like the other epics analyzed in The Epic Cycle Concludes, it was strikingly un-Homeric in several of its subjects.

In antiquity, the story of the failed assault of the Seven against Thebes ranked second only to the Trojan War. But whereas the latter was immortalized by Homer’s Iliad, the account of the former in the epic Thebais survives only in fragments preserved in later authors. The same is true of the Oedipodeia and Epigoni, which dealt respectively with events leading up to the Seven’s campaign and with the successful assault on the city in the next generation. The Thebais was probably the most important of the three—certainly more and longer fragments of it have survived—and it has been alleged that its recovery would tell us more about Homer than any comparable discovery.Paradoxically, these fragments suggest very un-Homeric content and style (in particular its detail of the hero Tydeus forfeiting immortality by gnawing on the head of a dying enemy). The same is true of the epic Alcmaeonis, named after one of the Epigoni, whose few surviving fragments pullulate with un-Homeric features. Malcolm Davies provides the first full commentary on all four epics’ fragments. He attempts to set them in context and examines whether artistic depictions of the relevant myths can help reconstruct the lost epics’ contents.

Davies, Croall & Tyrer's Criminal Justice, 6th edition, offers a comprehensive introduction to the criminal justice system in England and Wales. The perfect companion for anyone studying criminal justice as part of a Law or Criminology degree, this resource is designed to ensure that you understand:

The criminal justice process, institutions, personnel and agencies which work within it; The purpose and role of the criminal justice system in the 21st century; The different models of criminal justice and the underlying theories and perspectives that underpin them; The current criminal justice laws and policies.

This new updated edition has been fully revised to cover important topics including policing priorities, hate crimes, ethnicity, victims, cultural complexities, resource constraints, domestic and international crime, court delays, the Sentencing Bill 2025 and a potential paradigm shift in sentencing away from the use of imprisonment towards community sentences. Also new to this edition is a ninth model of justice – the asymmetric model.

In the wake of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey", poets of the seventh and sixth centuries BC composed epics which covered other parts of the Trojan War story or different areas of Greek mythology. Quotations from them and other testimonies as to their content survive in later authors and the evidence thus assembled allows us to reconstruct something of the poems' contents. Collectively these poems came to be known by Hellenistic scholars in Alexandria as 'The Epic Cycle'. With their often grotesque and fantastic tales, the cyclic poems were an important source for later writers of epic. Yet they also present a wealth of fascinating mythological details in their own right and provide absorbing variation on the traditional themes presented in Homer. Why are certain themes frequently used, while others are neglected in various poems? Such considerations enhance an overall appreciation of epic theme and outlook. This short study provides an introduction to the Cycle for students and scholars of Greek epic, and of Classical civilisation and mythology more generally. All quotations are translated, making the material accessible to those with little or no Greek.