R. L. Hunter – författare

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.

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.

The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, composed in the third century BC and the only extant Greek epic between Homer and the later Roman empire, tells of Jason's successful expedition with the Argonauts to recover the Golden Fleece from Colchis on the Black Sea. Book III relates the story of Jason and Medea, a young Colchian princess who falls in love with Jason and helps him by magic to survive the ordeals imposed by her father. The description of Medea's emotional suffering exercised a profound influence on subsequent writers and especially on Virgil in his account of Dido and Aeneas. Dr Hunter's edition provides a full introduction to the poem and its poet, an up-to-date text of Book III and a full commentary which covers problems of language and translation as well as dealing with the poetic meaning of the work and Apollonius' creative use of the Homeric heritage. It is the first full-scale treatment in English of Book III to be written in the modern period of renewed interest in Hellenistic poetry. This edition makes Argonautica III available to students of Greek at university and in the upper forms of schools, but scholars of Greek and Latin, especially those interested in Hellenistic literature and in epic, will also find it valuable.

Dr Hunter presents here a critical edition, with Introduction and explanatory commentary, of the fragments of Eubulus, a comic poet of the fourth century B.C. This is the first modern edition in any language of the fragments of any poet of the so-called Middle Comedy (that is, the comedy of the central part of the fourth century). The introduction discusses not only Eubulus' life and work, but also the genre of Middle Comedy as a whole and the commentary is particularly concerned with tracing in the fragments themes which are found also in both the earlier comedy of Aristophanes and the later works of Menander, Plautus and Terence. This book will be of value to those interested in ancient comedy and its development during the Hellenistic period.