Classic Commentaries – serie

With its savage indictment of the horrors of war as they affect women and children on the losing side, Euripides Troades has been one of the most regularly read, performed and adapted of Greek tragedies. It was first produced in 415 BC just after the Athenians slaughter of the male population of Melos and at the point where they were sending out the ambitious Sicilian expedition. It therefore has major contemporary political significance. Like Aeschylus Eumenides, it was performed as the third play in a thematically linked trilogy and, though the other two plays survive only in fragments, important inferences can be drawn about our interpretation of the surviving play and Euripides use of the trilogy form. Lee’s edition, first published in the famous "red Macmillan" series in 1976, is the most recent scholarly edition in English. The detailed commentary discusses text, language, interpretation and metre; there is a full introduction and for this paperback edition there is an additional up-to-date bibliography.

Empedocles (c. 494-434 B.C.) achieved legendary status as a philosopher, scientist, healer, poet and orator. He made important contributions to the developments of European thought with his theory of the four elements, his detailed work on perception, respiration and cognition, and his understanding in the kinship in structure and form of the hierarchy of living creatures.Now available in paperback, this is the first full-scale edition this century of the extant fragments, which are grouped into two poems -- Physics and Katharmoi. In her Introduction, Professor Wright surveys the evidence for Empedocles’ life and writings, and gives a clear account of the main lines of thought within a framework common to the poems. The fragments are presented in their contexts in a new ordering with full critical apparatus; they are followed by a translation and commentary on each, in which the linguistic, philosophical and scientific questions relevant to the text are examined. The Indexes cover sources, passages cited and subject matter, as well as a comprehensive concordance of Empedocles’ vocabulary. This new in paperback edition has been updated with a bibliographic commentary covering the last fifteen years of Empedoclean scholarship, and is part of the Classic Latin and Greek texts series.

Tacitus's Germania has been an abiding interest for all who study the Roman world from a northern European perspective. Anderson’s edition, first published in 1938, was designed to replace that of Furneaux and to take particular account of the light thrown by archaeology on Tacitus's account of the Germanic peoples. It is so thorough an edition, it has never been replaced, and is reprinted now in paperback. The commentary gives comprehensive cover of matters historical-archaeological and linguistic. Updated to include the findings of archaeological investigation over the century, it serves to lift the veil that shrouded the pre-history of the Germanic peoples and the process of their expansion over central Europe.

Based on Ziegler's revised text, this book provides a commentary on Plutarch's "Life of Alexander". It devotes most of its space to historical matters, comparing Plutarch's narrative at every point with the sources. In addition, it adds a fresh introduction and select bibliographies on Plutarch and on Alexander himself.

The Roman poet Statius' 4th book of "Silvae", published in AD 95, follows its preface with nine poems celebrating occasions from the building of a road to the gift-giving Saturnalian festival. This edition provides the first commentary since Vollmer's of 1898, and covers textual, linguistic, literary and historical questions. The introduction covers Statius' career, the book's chronology and its textual tradition, and the book contains new text, full critical apparatus and facing prose English translation.