A companion to the study of Virgil /
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This book is not yet another introduction to Virgil's poetry. The editor and three contributors offer a guide to the key problems and to the most intelligent discussions. They do not hesitate to point out what we do not know, and where more work needs to be done. Apart from ample discussion of the poems and the main issues they raise, the book offers chapters on the life of Virgil, his style, and his influence on late Latin epic.
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1 online resource (xiv, 330 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004217591 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Gellius the satirist : Roman cultural authority in Attic nights /
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This monograph presents an original portrait of the second-century miscellanist Aulus Gellius, based on a detailed reading of Attic Nights against its contemporary background. Highlighting Gellius' use of humour and irony in his portrayals of controversial celebrities such as Favorinus and Herodes Atticus, the book provides a necessary corrective to interpretations of Gellius as an uncritical philhellene or an apolitical bookworm. Distinguishing Gellius' various literary personae (the youthful sectator, the independent researcher, the mature writer and adviser), the book uncovers the many-layered sophistication of Gellius' self-presentation. Noting previously unrecognised allusions to literary works and contemporary events, it offers a fresh perspective on Gellius as a satirical writer, whose Roman cultural programme reflects the ambiguities and complexities of Antonine intellectual life.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [323]-332) and indexes. :
9789047443421 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Lygdamus : Corpus Tibullianum III. 1-6: Lygdami elegiarum liber /
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This volume is an in-depth study of the short poetic cycle of Lygdamus, one of the authors included in Book III of the Corpus Tibullianum . The Introduction analyzes the controversial quaestio Lygdamea (identity and dating of the poet), the relationship between Lygdamus and his beloved, Neaera, the incorporation of his poems into the Corpus Tibullianum , and the manuscript tradition. This is followed by a rigorous critical edition (taking fully into account the earliest editions and conjectures). Finally, there is a detailed and exhaustive line-by-line and word-by-word commentary on each poem, paying particular attention to elegiac terms and motifs. This is the first comprehensive study of the work of Lygdamus, considered as a poet with his own literary identity.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--University of Seville), 1993. :
1 online resource (627 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 531-550) and index. :
9789004329805 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Caesar's Civil War : historical reality and fabrication /
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In Caesar's Civil War: Historical Reality and Fabrication , Westall combines literary analysis of Caesar's Bellum Civile with a concern for the socio-economic history of the Roman empire. The Bellum Gallicum and the Shakespearean play are better known, but Caesar's partisan account of the Roman civil war culminating in the battle of Pharsalus offers a historical text of perennial interest and relevance. Two introductory chapters contextualize this book and offer a traditional narrative of political and military history for 49-48 BCE. There follow seven chapters that are dedicated to each of the geographical theatres of civil war. These chapters show how Caesar's testimony sheds important light upon the nature of Roman rule in the Mediterranean, but also explore the problems to be encountered in using potentially tendentious testimony.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004356153 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Brill's companion to Lucan /
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Although it was labeled an anti-epic for trumping the celebratory scope of the Roman national epos, Lucan's Bellum Civile is a hymn to lost republican liberty composed under Nero's tyrannical empire. Lucan lost his life in a foiled conspiracy to replace the emperor, but his poem survived the wreckage of antiquity and enjoyed uninterrupted readership. The present collection samples the most current approaches to Lucan's poem, its themes, its dialogue with other texts, its reception in medieval and early modern literature, and its relevance to audiences of all times.
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1 online resource (xxi, 625 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004217096 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Greek world of Apuleius : Apuleius and the second sophistic /
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The first three chapters of this book elucidate the scholastic goals of both classical cultures during the Roman Imperial period. Apuleius' works share the stage in these chapters with representatives of the second-century Greek cultural paradigm. They define patterns of discourse and fit selected examples of analogous Apuleian strategies into the broader cultural framework. Subsequent chapters focus closely on the complete Apuleian corpus under the general headings of Apuleius in the roles of orator, philosopher and novelist. Two of Apuleius' philosophical works and his novel the Golden Ass provide an unparalleled opportunity to analyze the methods of translation and adaptation employed by the major Latin writer of the second half of the second century.
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1 online resource (x, 276 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-263) and indexes. :
9789004330320 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Chaonian dove : studies in the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid of Virgil /
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This is the first book-length critical study of the three Virgilian works to be published in English for twenty years. It examines in detail the thematic design and intent of the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid , and documents the development of their political, moral and poetic pessimism. It presents the interrelationship of the three texts, their intertextuality, as integral to their meaning. The book is in three main parts - 'Pastoral Meditation', 'Didactic Paradox', 'Epic Vision' - corresponding to the three Virgilian works. A brief introductory chapter is concerned with questions of method and the problem of Virgil misread. A chief focus of the book is Virgil's preoccupation with the relationship between poetry, art - art's values, perceptions, visions - and the political/historical world, and the changing nature of Virgil's attitude to the socio-moral responsibilities of Rome. The evolution of Vergil's presentation both of Roman imperium and of man's place in nature and history is carefully delineated. With close scrutiny of the language, imagery, structures and design of the three texts and of their verbal and thematic interrelationship, the book offers a substantial reassessment of the major political, psychological and moral ideas of Virgil's poetic oeuvre . An intricate and persuasive picture emerges of Virgil's intellectual and poetic development and a radically new conception of Virgil's image of himself as poet. The provision of translations makes the book accessible to the Latinless reader.
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Includes indexes. :
1 online resource (x, 196 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-183). :
9789004328297 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Textual strategies in ancient war narrative : Thermopylae, Cannae and beyond /
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In this collected volume fourteen experts in the fields of Classics and Ancient History study the textual strategies used by Herodotus and Livy when recounting the disastrous battles at Thermopylae and Cannae. Literary, linguistic and historical approaches are used (often in combination) in order to enhance and enrich the interpretation of the accounts, which for obvious reasons confronted the authors with a special challenge. Chapters drawing a comparison with other battle narratives and with other genres help to establish genre-specific elements in ancient historiography, and draw attention to the particular techniques employed by Herodotus and Livy in their war narratives.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004383340
Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian's History of the Empire /
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In the process of recording the history of the Roman Empire, from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the accession of Gordian III, Herodian makes his characters respond to the same situations in similar or different ways. This book shows that each reign in Herodian's History is creatively mapped onto ever-recurring narrative patterns. It argues that patterning is not simply decorative in Herodian's work but constitutes a crucial conceptual and methodological tool for writing interpretative history. Herodian deserves credit as an original and independent author. A careful consideration of the formulaic nature of his historiography indicates that there is more artistry in his composition than had previously been discerned.
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This book argues that Herodian uses an orderly and coherent historiographical form to reconfigure and explicate a most chaotic period of Roman history. Through patterning he offers a distinctive interpretative framework in which successive reigns and individual emperors need to be read in a dovetailed way. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004516922
9789004516892