Loeb Classical Library – serie

Cyclic verse.Greek epics of the archaic period include poems that narrate a particular heroic episode or series of episodes and poems that recount the long-term history of families or peoples. They are an important source of mythological record. Here is a new text and translation of the examples of this poetry that have come down to us. The heroic epic is represented by poems about Heracles and Theseus, and by two great epic cycles: the Theban Cycle, which tells of the failed assault on Thebes by the Seven and the subsequent successful assault by their sons; and the Trojan Cycle, which includes Cypria, Little Iliad, and The Sack of Ilion. Among the genealogical epics are poems in which Eumelus creates a prehistory for Corinth and Asius creates one for Samos. In presenting the extant fragments of these early epic poems, Martin West provides very helpful notes. His Introduction places the epics in historical context.

Cult classics.Orpheus is familiar from Greek mythology as a peerless bard, the Thracian son of a Muse with superhuman musical abilities that enabled him to win the release of his young wife Eurydice from Hades, only to lose her on the way back. But he was also considered an authentic poet preceding Hesiod and Homer and on a par with Musaeus, and was credited with poems, oracles, and the foundation of rituals in a tradition that remained vital and creative from Archaic Greece through to the Roman Empire and beyond. Essentially Dionysiac, but without the violence and blood sacrifice, and with a focus on theogony, cosmogony, and the origin and destiny of souls, Orphism was at once a distinctive and an open tradition, with significant change and development over time but with features that made the works and rituals cumulatively attributed to Orpheus identifiable to followers. This tradition endowed them with a lasting coherence despite the absence of dogma or control by priests. Although Orphism departed in profound and fascinating ways from conventional accounts, it proved highly adaptable to various religious and philosophical systems, especially Pythagorean and Neoplatonist but also Judaic and Christian.This edition collects works representing the most ancient Orphic literature, excluding later mythological, scientific, and pseudo-scientific poems opportunistically attributed to him.

Stoic musings of a philosopher-emperor at war.Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, born at Rome, received training under his guardian and uncle emperor Antoninus Pius (reigned 138–161), who adopted him. He was converted to Stoicism and henceforward studied and practiced philosophy and law. A gentle man, he lived in agreement and collaboration with Antoninus Pius. He married Pius’ daughter and succeeded him as emperor in March 161, sharing some of the burdens with Lucius Verus.Marcus’ reign soon saw fearful national disasters from flood, earthquakes, epidemics, threatened revolt (in Britain), a Parthian war, and pressure of barbarians north of the Alps. From 169 onwards he had to struggle hard against the German Quadi, Marcomani, Vandals, and others until success came in 174. In 175 (when Faustina died) he pacified affairs in Asia after a revolt by Avidius. War with Germans was renewed during which he caught some disease and died by the Danube in March 180.The famous Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (not his title; he simply calls them “The matters addressed to himself”) are reflections written in periods of solitude during the emperor’s military campaigns. Originally intended for his private guidance and self-admonition, the Meditations have endured as a potent expression of Stoic belief. It is a central text for students of Stoicism as well as a unique personal guide to the moral life.

A sweeping chronicle from Aeneas to Alexander Severus.Dio Cassius (Cassius Dio), circa AD 150–235, was born at Nicaea in Bithynia in Asia Minor. On the death of his father (Roman governor of Cilicia) he went in 180 to Rome, entered the Senate, and under the emperor Commodus was an advocate. He held high offices, becoming a close friend of several emperors; he was made governor of Pergamum and Smyrna; consul in 220; proconsul of Africa; governor of Dalmatia and then of Pannonia; and consul again in 229.Of the eighty books of Dio's great work Roman History, covering the era from the legendary landing of Aeneas in Italy to the reign of Alexander Severus (AD 222–235), we possess Books 36–60 (36 and 55–60 have gaps), which cover the years 68 BC–AD 47. The missing portions are partly supplied, for the earlier gaps by Zonaras, who relies closely on Dio, and for some later gaps (Book 35 onwards) by John Xiphilinus (of the eleventh century). There are also many excerpts. The facilities for research afforded by Dio's official duties and his own industry make him a very vital source for Roman history of the last years of the republic and the first four emperors.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Dio Cassius is in nine volumes.

Three plays by ancient Greece’s third great tragedian.One of antiquity’s greatest poets, Euripides has been prized in every age for the pathos, terror, and intellectual probing of his dramatic creations. The new Loeb Classical Library edition of his plays is in six volumes.In Volume I of the edition are Cyclops, the only complete satyr play that has survived from antiquity; Alcestis, the story of a woman who agrees, in order to save her husband’s life, to die in his place; and Medea, a revenge tragedy in which Medea kills her own children to punish their father.

The philosopher-statesman on ethics and rhetoric.Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician, and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, fifty-eight survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

Antiquity’s most influential account of life’s Supreme Good.Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, born at Stagirus in 384 BC, was the son of a physician. He studied under Plato at Athens and taught there (367–347); subsequently he spent three years at the court of a former pupil in Asia Minor. After some time at Mitylene, in 343–342 he was appointed by King Philip of Macedon to be tutor of his teen-aged son Alexander. After Philip’s death in 336, Aristotle became head of his own school (of “Peripatetics”), the Lyceum at Athens. Because of anti-Macedonian feeling there after Alexander’s death in 323, he withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322.Nearly all the works Aristotle prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as follows:I Practical: Nicomachean Ethics; Great Ethics (Magna Moralia); Eudemian Ethics; Politics; Economics (on the good of the family); On Virtues and Vices.II Logical: Categories; Analytics (Prior and Posterior); Interpretation; Refutations used by Sophists; Topica.III Physical: Twenty-six works (some suspect) including astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc.IV Metaphysics: on being as being.V Art: Rhetoric and Poetics.VI Other works including the Constitution of Athens; more works also of doubtful authorship.VII Fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and of treatises on rhetoric, politics, and metaphysics.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes.

Meditative missives.Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) ca. 4 BC, of a prominent and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt’s care. He became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial service. After some disgrace during Claudius’ reign he became tutor and then, in AD 54, advising minister to Nero, some of whose worst misdeeds he did not prevent. Involved (innocently?) in a conspiracy, he killed himself by order in 65. Wealthy, he preached indifference to wealth; evader of pain and death, he preached scorn of both; and there were other contrasts between practice and principle.We have Seneca’s philosophical or moral essays (ten of them traditionally called Dialogues)—on providence, steadfastness, the happy life, anger, leisure, tranquility, the brevity of life, gift-giving, forgiveness—and treatises on natural phenomena. Also extant are 124 epistles, in which he writes in a relaxed style about moral and ethical questions, relating them to personal experiences; a skit on the official deification of Claudius, Apocolocyntosis (in LCL 15); and nine rhetorical tragedies on ancient Greek themes. Many epistles and all his speeches are lost.The 124 epistles are collected in Volumes IV–VI of the Loeb Classical Library’s ten-volume edition of Seneca.

A late epic bridge between Homeric masterpieces.Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica, the only long mythological epic to survive in Greek from the period between Apollonius’ Argonautica (3rd century BC) and Nonnus’ Dionysiaca (5th century AD), fills in the whole story of the Trojan expedition between the end of Homer’s Iliad and the beginning of the Odyssey, which had been treated only episodically by earlier epic and dramatic poets. Composing sometime between the late second and mid-fourth centuries AD, Quintus boldly adapts Homeric diction and style to suit the literary, moral, religious, rhetorical, and philosophical culture of the high Roman Empire, and does not hesitate to diverge from the usual versions of the story in order to craft his own narrative vision.This edition of the Posthomerica replaces the earlier Loeb Classical Library edition by A. S. Way (1913) with an updated text based on that of F. Vian, and fresh translation, introduction, and bibliography that take account of more than a century of intervening scholarship.

A chronicle of Rome in crisis.The History of Herodian (born ca. AD 178–179) covers a period of the Roman empire from the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 180) to the accession of Gordian III (238), half a century of turbulence, in which we can see the onset of the revolution which, in the words of Gibbon, “will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.” In these years, a succession of frontier crises and a disastrous lack of economic planning established a pattern of military coups and increasing cultural pluralism.Of this revolutionary epoch we know all too little. The selection of chance has destroyed all but a handful of the literary sources that deal with the immediate post-Antonine scene. Herodian’s work is one of the few that have survived, and it has come down to us completely intact. Of the author we know virtually nothing, except that he served in some official capacity in the empire of which he wrote. His History was apparently produced for the benefit of people in the Greek-speaking half of the Roman empire. It betrays the faults of an age when truth was distorted by rhetoric and stereotypes were a substitute for sound reason. But it is an essential document for any who would try to understand the nature of the Roman empire in an era of rapidly changing social and political institutions.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Herodian is in two volumes.

The “Father of History.”Herodotus the great Greek historian was born about 484 BC, at Halicarnassus in Caria, Asia Minor, when it was subject to the Persians. He traveled widely in most of Asia Minor, Egypt (as far as Aswan), North Africa, Syria, the country north of the Black Sea, and many parts of the Aegean Sea and the mainland of Greece. He lived, it seems, for some time in Athens, and in 443 went with other colonists to the new city Thurii (in South Italy), where he died about 430. He was “the prose correlative of the bard, a narrator of the deeds of real men, and a describer of foreign places” (Murray).Herodotus’ famous history of warfare between the Greeks and the Persians has an epic dignity which enhances his delightful style. It includes the rise of the Persian power and an account of the Persian empire; a description and history of Egypt; and a long digression on the geography and customs of Scythia. Even in the later books on the attacks of the Persians against Greece there are digressions. All is most entertaining and produces a grand unity. After personal inquiry and study of hearsay and other evidence, Herodotus gives us a not uncritical estimate of the best that he could find.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Herodotus is in four volumes.

Chronicles of a Caesarean partisan.Sallust, Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86–35 BC), a Sabine from Amiternum, acted as tribune against Cicero and Milo in 52, joined Caesar after being expelled from the Senate in 50, was restored to the Senate by Caesar and took part in his African campaign as praetor in 46, and was then appointed governor of New Africa (Numidia). Upon his return to Rome he narrowly escaped conviction for malfeasance in office, retired from public life, and took up historiography. Sallust’s last work, the annalistic Histories in five books, is much more expansive than his monographs on Catiline and Jugurtha (LCL 116), treating the whole of Roman history at home and abroad in the post-Sullan age. Although fragmentary, it provides invaluable information and insight about a crucial period of history spanning the period from 78 to around 67 BC.Although Sallust is decidedly unsubtle and partisan in analyzing people and events, his works are important and significantly influenced later historians, notably Tacitus. Taking Thucydides as his model but building on Roman stylistic and rhetorical traditions, Sallust achieved a distinctive style, concentrated and arresting; lively characterizations, especially in the speeches; and skill at using particular episodes to illustrate large general themes.For this volume, which completes the Loeb Classical Library edition of Sallust’s works, John T. Ramsey has freshly edited the Histories and the two pseudo-Sallustian Letters to Caesar, supplying ample annotation.

An antiquarian’s festival.The Saturnalia, Macrobius’ encyclopedic celebration of Roman culture written in the early fifth century AD, has been prized since the Renaissance as a treasure trove of otherwise unattested lore. Cast in the form of a dialogue, the Saturnalia treats subjects as diverse as the divinity of the Sun and the quirks of human digestion while showcasing Virgil as the master of all human knowledge from diction and rhetoric to philosophy and religion. The new Latin text is based on a refined understanding of the medieval tradition and improves on Willis’ standard edition in nearly three hundred places. The accompanying translation—only the second in English and the only one now in print—offers a clear and sprightly rendition of Macrobius’ ornate Latin and is supplemented by ample annotation. A full introduction places the work in its cultural context and analyzes its construction, while indexes of names, ancient works cited in both text and notes, and topics make the work more readily accessible than ever before.

Eclectic essays on ethics, education, and much else besides.Plutarch (Plutarchus), ca. AD 45–120, was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia in central Greece, studied philosophy at Athens, and, after coming to Rome as a teacher in philosophy, was given consular rank by the emperor Trajan and a procuratorship in Greece by Hadrian. He was married and the father of one daughter and four sons. He appears as a man of kindly character and independent thought, studious and learned.Plutarch wrote on many subjects. Most popular have always been the forty-six Parallel Lives, biographies planned to be ethical examples in pairs (in each pair, one Greek figure and one similar Roman), though the last four lives are single. All are invaluable sources of our knowledge of the lives and characters of Greek and Roman statesmen, soldiers and orators. Plutarch’s many other varied extant works, about sixty in number, are known as Moralia or Moral Essays. They are of high literary value, besides being of great use to people interested in philosophy, ethics, and religion.The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Moralia is in fifteen volumes, volume XIII having two parts. Volume XVI is a comprehensive Index.

The first comprehensive history of early Christianity.Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. AD 260–340), born in Palestine, was a student of the presbyter Pamphilus, whom he loyally supported during Diocletian’s persecution. He was himself imprisoned in Egypt, but became Bishop of Caesarea around 314. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 he sat by the emperor, led a party of moderates, and made the first draft of the famous creed.Of Eusebius’ many learned publications we have the Martyrs of Palestine and the Life of Constantine; several apologetic and polemic works; parts of his commentaries on the Psalms and Isaiah; and the Chronographia, known chiefly in Armenian and Syriac versions of the original Greek. But Eusebius’ chief fame rests on the History of the Christian Church in ten books, published in 324–325, the most important ecclesiastical history of ancient times, a great treasury of knowledge about the early Church.

The first comprehensive history of early Christianity.Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. AD 260–340), born in Palestine, was a student of the presbyter Pamphilus, whom he loyally supported during Diocletian’s persecution. He was himself imprisoned in Egypt, but became Bishop of Caesarea around 314. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 he sat by the emperor, led a party of moderates, and made the first draft of the famous creed.Of Eusebius’ many learned publications we have the Martyrs of Palestine and the Life of Constantine; several apologetic and polemic works; parts of his commentaries on the Psalms and Isaiah; and the Chronographia, known chiefly in Armenian and Syriac versions of the original Greek. But Eusebius’ chief fame rests on the History of the Christian Church in ten books, published in 324–325, the most important ecclesiastical history of ancient times, a great treasury of knowledge about the early Church.

Rome, from the beginning.Livy (Titus Livius), the great Roman historian, was born at or near Patavium (Padua) in 64 or 59 BC; he may have lived mostly in Rome but died at Patavium, in AD 12 or 17.Livy’s only extant work is part of his history of Rome from the foundation of the city to 9 BC. Of its 142 books, we have just thirty-five, and short summaries of all the rest except two. The whole work was, long after his death, divided into Decades or series of ten. Books 1–10 we have entire; books 11–20 are lost; books 21–45 are entire, except parts of 41 and 43–45. Of the rest only fragments and the summaries remain. In splendid style Livy, a man of wide sympathies and proud of Rome’s past, presented an uncritical but clear and living narrative of Rome’s rise to greatness.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Livy is in fourteen volumes. The last volume includes a comprehensive index.

Topics in Stoicism.Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) ca. 4 BC, of a prominent and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt’s care. He became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial service. After some disgrace during Claudius’ reign he became tutor and then, in AD 54, advising minister to Nero, some of whose worst misdeeds he did not prevent. Involved (innocently?) in a conspiracy, he killed himself by order in 65. Wealthy, he preached indifference to wealth; evader of pain and death, he preached scorn of both; and there were other contrasts between practice and principle.We have Seneca’s philosophical or moral essays (ten of them traditionally called Dialogues)—on providence, steadfastness, the happy life, anger, leisure, tranquility, the brevity of life, gift-giving, forgiveness—and treatises on natural phenomena. Also extant are 124 epistles, in which he writes in a relaxed style about moral and ethical questions, relating them to personal experiences; a skit on the official deification of Claudius, Apocolocyntosis (in LCL 15); and nine rhetorical tragedies on ancient Greek themes. Many epistles and all his speeches are lost.His moral essays are collected in Volumes I–III of the Loeb Classical Library’s ten-volume edition of Seneca.

A paperback anthology of essential Greek and Latin texts with facing English translations.“It is ideal reading for bar, bus, bed or beach. Everyone, teacher and taught alike, should have one. It is this year’s must-have present.”—The Journal of Classics TeachingThis selection of lapidary nuggets drawn from thirty-three of antiquity’s major authors includes poetry, dialogue, philosophical writing, history, descriptive reports, satire, and fiction—giving a glimpse at the wide range of arts and sciences, thought and styles, of Greco-Roman culture.The selections span twelve centuries, from Homer to Saint Jerome. The texts and translations are reproduced as they appear in Loeb volumes.The Loeb Classical Library is the only existing series that, through original text and English translation, gives access to all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. A Loeb Classical Library Reader offers a unique sampling of this treasure trove.In these pages you will find, for example: Odysseus tricking the Cyclops in order to escape from the giant’s cave; Zeus creating the first woman, Pandora, cause of mortals’ hardships ever after; the Athenian general Nicias dissuading his countrymen from invading Sicily; Socrates, condemned to die, saying farewell; a description of Herod’s fortified palace at Masada; Cicero’s thoughts on what we owe our fellow men; Livy’s description of the rape of the Sabine women; Manilius on the signs of the zodiac; and Pliny’s observation of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.Here you can enjoy looking in on people, real and imaginary, who figure prominently in ancient history, and on notable events. Here, too, you can relish classical poetry and comedy, and get a taste of the ideas characteristic of the splendid culture to which we are heir.

The conquest that begot the Roman Empire.Caesar (C. Iulius, 102–44 BC), statesman and soldier, defied the dictator Sulla; served in the Mithridatic wars and in Spain; entered Roman politics as a “democrat” against the senatorial government; was the real leader of the coalition with Pompey and Crassus; conquered all Gaul for Rome; attacked Britain twice; was forced into civil war; became master of the Roman world; and achieved wide-reaching reforms until his murder. We have his books of commentarii (notes): eight on his wars in Gaul from 58–52 BC, including the two expeditions to Britain in 55–54, and three on the civil war of 49–48. They are records of his own campaigns (with occasional digressions) in vigorous, direct, clear, unemotional style and in the third person.Although the Gallic War in particular is carefully designed to present Caesar in the most favorable light as both commander and Roman citizen, it has long been revered as exemplary military history and a model of Latin prose style.This edition of the Gallic War replaces the earlier Loeb Classical Library edition by H. J. Edwards (1917) with new text, translation, introduction, and bibliography. In the Loeb Classical Library edition of Caesar, Volume II is his Civil War; Volume III consists of Alexandrian War, African War, and Spanish War, commonly ascribed to Caesar by our manuscripts but of uncertain authorship.

A central work in the history of rhetoric.Quintilian, born in Spain about AD 35, became a widely known and highly successful teacher of rhetoric in Rome. The Orator’s Education (Institutio Oratoria), a comprehensive training program in twelve books, draws on his own rich experience. It is a work of enduring importance, not only for its insights on oratory, but for the picture it paints of education and social attitudes in the Roman world. Quintilian offers both general and specific advice. He gives guidelines for proper schooling (beginning with the young boy); analyzes the structure of speeches; recommends devices that will engage listeners and appeal to their emotions; reviews a wide range of Greek and Latin authors of use to the orator; and counsels on memory, delivery, and gestures. Donald Russell’s five-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of The Orator’s Education, which replaces an eighty-year-old translation by H. E. Butler, provides a text and facing translation that are fully up to date in light of current scholarship and well tuned to today’s manner of expression. Russell also provides unusually rich explanatory notes, which enable full appreciation of this central work in the history of rhetoric.

A central work in the history of rhetoric.Quintilian, born in Spain about AD 35, became a widely known and highly successful teacher of rhetoric in Rome. The Orator’s Education (Institutio Oratoria), a comprehensive training program in twelve books, draws on his own rich experience. It is a work of enduring importance, not only for its insights on oratory, but for the picture it paints of education and social attitudes in the Roman world. Quintilian offers both general and specific advice. He gives guidelines for proper schooling (beginning with the young boy); analyzes the structure of speeches; recommends devices that will engage listeners and appeal to their emotions; reviews a wide range of Greek and Latin authors of use to the orator; and counsels on memory, delivery, and gestures. Donald Russell’s five-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of The Orator’s Education, which replaces an eighty-year-old translation by H. E. Butler, provides a text and facing translation that are fully up to date in light of current scholarship and well tuned to today’s manner of expression. Russell also provides unusually rich explanatory notes, which enable full appreciation of this central work in the history of rhetoric.

A central work in the history of rhetoric.Quintilian, born in Spain about AD 35, became a widely known and highly successful teacher of rhetoric in Rome. The Orator’s Education (Institutio Oratoria), a comprehensive training program in twelve books, draws on his own rich experience. It is a work of enduring importance, not only for its insights on oratory, but for the picture it paints of education and social attitudes in the Roman world. Quintilian offers both general and specific advice. He gives guidelines for proper schooling (beginning with the young boy); analyzes the structure of speeches; recommends devices that will engage listeners and appeal to their emotions; reviews a wide range of Greek and Latin authors of use to the orator; and counsels on memory, delivery, and gestures. Donald Russell’s five-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of The Orator’s Education, which replaces an eighty-year-old translation by H. E. Butler, provides a text and facing translation that are fully up to date in light of current scholarship and well tuned to today’s manner of expression. Russell also provides unusually rich explanatory notes, which enable full appreciation of this central work in the history of rhetoric.

A central work in the history of rhetoric.Quintilian, born in Spain about AD 35, became a widely known and highly successful teacher of rhetoric in Rome. The Orator’s Education (Institutio Oratoria), a comprehensive training program in twelve books, draws on his own rich experience. It is a work of enduring importance, not only for its insights on oratory, but for the picture it paints of education and social attitudes in the Roman world. Quintilian offers both general and specific advice. He gives guidelines for proper schooling (beginning with the young boy); analyzes the structure of speeches; recommends devices that will engage listeners and appeal to their emotions; reviews a wide range of Greek and Latin authors of use to the orator; and counsels on memory, delivery, and gestures. Donald Russell’s five-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of The Orator’s Education, which replaces an eighty-year-old translation by H. E. Butler, provides a text and facing translation that are fully up to date in light of current scholarship and well tuned to today’s manner of expression. Russell also provides unusually rich explanatory notes, which enable full appreciation of this central work in the history of rhetoric.

Antiquity’s original didactic poet.Hesiod describes himself as a Boeotian shepherd who heard the Muses call upon him to sing about the gods. His exact dates are unknown, but he has often been considered a younger contemporary of Homer.The first volume of this revised Loeb Classical Library edition offers Hesiod’s two extant poems and a generous selection of testimonia regarding his life, works, and reception. In Theogony, Hesiod charts the history of the divine world, narrating the origin of the universe and the rise of the gods, from first beginnings to the triumph of Zeus, and reporting on the progeny of Zeus and of goddesses in union with mortal men. In Works and Days, Hesiod shifts his attention to humanity, delivering moral precepts and practical advice regarding agriculture, navigation, and many other matters; along the way he gives us the myths of Pandora and of the Golden, Silver, and other Races of Men.The second volume contains The Shield and extant fragments of other poems, including the Catalogue of Women, that were attributed to Hesiod in antiquity. The former provides a Hesiodic counterpoint to the shield of Achilles in the Iliad; the latter presents several legendary episodes organized according to the genealogy of their heroes’ mortal mothers. None of these is now thought to be by Hesiod himself, but all have considerable literary and historical interest.Glenn W. Most has thoroughly revised his edition to take account of the textual and interpretive scholarship that has appeared since its initial publication.

Antiquity’s original didactic poet.Hesiod describes himself as a Boeotian shepherd who heard the Muses call upon him to sing about the gods. His exact dates are unknown, but he has often been considered a younger contemporary of Homer.The first volume of this revised Loeb Classical Library edition offers Hesiod’s two extant poems and a generous selection of testimonia regarding his life, works, and reception. In Theogony, Hesiod charts the history of the divine world, narrating the origin of the universe and the rise of the gods, from first beginnings to the triumph of Zeus, and reporting on the progeny of Zeus and of goddesses in union with mortal men. In Works and Days, Hesiod shifts his attention to humanity, delivering moral precepts and practical advice regarding agriculture, navigation, and many other matters; along the way he gives us the myths of Pandora and of the Golden, Silver, and other Races of Men.The second volume contains The Shield and extant fragments of other poems, including the Catalogue of Women, that were attributed to Hesiod in antiquity. The former provides a Hesiodic counterpoint to the shield of Achilles in the Iliad; the latter presents several legendary episodes organized according to the genealogy of their heroes’ mortal mothers. None of these is now thought to be by Hesiod himself, but all have considerable literary and historical interest.Glenn W. Most has thoroughly revised his edition to take account of the textual and interpretive scholarship that has appeared since its initial publication.

Ancient Egyptian history in Greek.Manetho was an Egyptian of the third century BC. Born probably at Sebennytus in the Delta, he became a priest or high priest at Heliopolis. Apparently he and a Greek Timotheus did much to establish the cult of Serapis in Egypt. Eight works or parts of works were ascribed to him, all on history and religion and all apparently in Greek: Aegyptiaca, on the history of Egypt; The Sacred Book on Egyptian religion; An Epitome of Physical Doctrines; On Festivals; On Ancient Ritual and Religion; On the Making of Kyphi (an incense); The Criticisms of Herodotus; and the spurious Book of Sôthis. These survive only as quoted by other writers. This volume also contains the doubtful Kings of Thebes (in Egypt) and the Old Chronicle.

Two rollicking Roman satires.The Satyrica (Satyricon liber), a comic-picaresque fiction in prose and verse traditionally attributed to the Neronian Petronius (d. AD 66) but possibly of Flavian or Trajanic date, survives only as fragments of a much larger whole. It takes the form of a first-person narrative by the endearing ne’er-do-well Encolpius, a brilliant storyteller, parodist, and mimic who recalls episodes from his past life as a wandering bohemian, living by his wits on the margins of society in Greek southern Italy and encountering a vividly realized array of characters from the early imperial demimonde, including the wealthy freedman Trimalchio, one of the most unforgettable characters in all of Latin literature.Paired with the Satyrica, and likewise in prose and verse, is the Apocolocyntosis (Pumpkinification), a short satirical pamphlet lampooning the death, apotheosis, and attempt to enter heaven of the emperor Claudius (reigned 41–54). If the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC–AD 65), better known for his austere Stoic moralism, its sarcastic wit and rollicking humor were no doubt inspired by bitterness over his exile at Claudius’ hands in 41–49.For this Loeb edition the Latin texts have been freshly edited and translated, with ample introductions and explanatory notes.

A sweeping chronicle from Aeneas to Alexander Severus.Dio Cassius (Cassius Dio), circa AD 150–235, was born at Nicaea in Bithynia in Asia Minor. On the death of his father (Roman governor of Cilicia) he went in 180 to Rome, entered the Senate, and under the emperor Commodus was an advocate. He held high offices, becoming a close friend of several emperors; he was made governor of Pergamum and Smyrna; consul in 220; proconsul of Africa; governor of Dalmatia and then of Pannonia; and consul again in 229.Of the eighty books of Dio's great work Roman History, covering the era from the legendary landing of Aeneas in Italy to the reign of Alexander Severus (AD 222–235), we possess Books 36–60 (36 and 55–60 have gaps), which cover the years 68 BC–AD 47. The missing portions are partly supplied, for the earlier gaps by Zonaras, who relies closely on Dio, and for some later gaps (Book 35 onwards) by John Xiphilinus (of the eleventh century). There are also many excerpts. The facilities for research afforded by Dio's official duties and his own industry make him a very vital source for Roman history of the last years of the republic and the first four emperors.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Dio Cassius is in nine volumes.