Bristol Classical Paperbacks – serie

This is a literary explication to the Odyssey. The book includes a chronology, extensive notes, and suggestions for further reading.

E. T. Owen discusses what makes the Iliad such an enduring work of art. He discusses narrative technique, imagery, and characterization, and shows how each incident contributes to the overall emotional effect of the poem.

Originally published over 50 years ago as "Vita Romana", this work covers every aspect of Roman life: the architecture and layout of the city; the home, clothes, travel, sports and pastimes; the role of women; industry, education, law, culture and medicine. It covers the entire history of Rome to the invasions of the Goths and the Vandals, and then assesses Rome's subsequent architectural decay and recent restoration.

Anderson's text includes examinations of each of the books, notes, suggestions for further reading, and a Vergil chronology.

"The Satyricon" of Petronius and the "Metamorphoses" (or "The Golden Ass") of Apuleius are the only novels written at Rome before AD 200 to have survived. The genre is the comic romance, the literature of relaxation in the ancient world. This study defines the genre and sets it in the context of other forms of fiction of the period. It shows that both Petronius and Apuleius introduced important innovations into the traditional comic romance. A critical study of "The Satyricon" is included, with a separate chapter on Trimalchio's feast, a central comic episode of the book. "The Golden Ass" is similarly examined, again with special analysis of its centre piece, the story of Cupid and Psyche. The book assesses the later influence of the two novels on the mainstream of European picaresque fiction.

The remains of classical literature contain a good deal of scattered literary theory, however difficult it may be to divine a consistent view among the conflicting interests of scholars, moralists and teachers of rhetoric. This book attempts to analyze the main themes against their historical background. It discusses ancient beliefs and theories relating to inspiration, the poet's message, imitation, the rhetorical approach to literature, classification of literary genres and the ancient sense of literary history. Aristotle, the Alexandrians, Longinus, Horace and other ancient critics have defined and influenced a critical terminology and technique for later generations of writers and critics. This edition should prove valuable to students of modern literary criticism and students of Greek and Latin.

The origins both of modern science and modern philosophy lie in Greek civilization of the 5th and 6th centuries B.C. It was then that a series of thinkers, usually known as "the Presocratic philosophers", created ways of looking at the world that were fundamentally new. In the middle of social and political changes, and exposed to intellectual influences from the Near East as well as to traditional Greek ideas, the first Presocratics, Thales and Anaximander of Miletus, had a vision of a universe governed by absolute and impartial law. In terms of this idea they and their successors tried to account for the observed structure of the physical world. An increasing awareness of the philosophical problems invloved in this attempt led to the striking and enigmatic pronouncements of Heraclitus, and to the struggle to escape from self-contradiction in which Parmenides created the first philosophical arguments and the beginnings of conceptual analysis. By 450 B.C. the thought of these men was having repercussions in wider areas of Greek culture, and was an important factor in the great outburst of intellectual energy in the "sophistic age" - the last half of the 5th century.This book presents a picture of these developments, using, wherever possible, translations of the surviving fragments of the Presocratics as a foundation for the discussion.

This volume, published in 1968, was the first critical study of Persius in English. This new edition offers a close reading within the framework of criticism which led classics in the 1960s. Cynthia Dessen emphasizes the distinction between persona and poet and argues that Persius's satires, far from being "difficult" are unified and comprehensible through their controlling metaphors, their dominant imagery and word-repetition.

Lucan's epic on the Civil War has dodged in and out of fashion. Widely admired in the 17th and 18th centuries, it came in the 19th and 20th to be criticised by comparison with Virgil's Aeneid. The latter was established as the standard by which all other epic poets fail. Lucan's besetting "fault" was seen as his reliance on rhetoric. This work sets out to consider the rules of ancient rhetoric as learned by Lucan and applied in his epic. Four themes commmon to poetry and to the declamatory schools (tyranny, storms, the occult and dreams) are closely analyzed in relation to the poem, and the poem is itself set in the context of the Neronian age.

A general introduction to the Hellenistic philosophy of Cynicism. In the BRISTOL CLASSICAL PAPERBACK series.

The political aspects of Augustan poetry have attracted much academic interest. The aim of this study is to take account of the effects of Augustan propaganda not only on the work of contemporary Roman writers, but also on the critical tradition itself. The six essays presented in this volume explore the political themes in the work of major poets such as Virgil, Ovid, Horace and Propertius. Using traditional as well as post-structuralist approaches, the essays examine the controversies of the Civil Wars, the emerging issues of treason and free speech and changing representations of Cleopatra and female power.