Böcker i Oxford Classical Monographs-serien

Can a speaker's words ever be faithfully reported? This discussion of Latin literature offers an original contribution to current debates about discourse and representation. Ancient texts are discussed in conjunction with examples from modern literature to highlight what happens when speech itself becomes the subject of a story.

This volume provides the first English translation of Consentius's Ars de barbarismis et metaplasmis, the most extensive ancient treatise on deviations from 'standard' Latin, both errors (barbarisms) and poetic licenses (metaplasms). Mari prvides a new critical edition, drawing on new evidence on its textual transmission.

The control over marble and metal resources was of major importance to the Roman Empire. Alfred Hirt's comprehensive study defines the organizational outlines and the internal structures of the mining and quarrying ventures under imperial control.

The first investigation of the relationship between the chorus of Greek tragedy and other types of choral song in Greek society. L. A. Swift not only provides new insights into individual plays, but also enriches our understanding of the role poetry and song played in ancient Greek life.

Dr Allan has produced a fundamental reappraisal of one of Euripides' most problematic and neglected tragedies. The close study of a single play is used to test, and to escape, many standard assumptions about Euripidean tragedy. The Andromache is shown to be a powerful and stimulating drama.

A study of the representation of human motivation in Herodotus' Histories. Emily Baragwanath's focus is upon the sophisticated narrative techniques with which Herodotus represents this elusive kind of historical knowledge.

The speeches of Demosthenes and other 4th-century BC Athenian orators have long been recognized as a source of information about the mindset and life of ordinary Athenians. This book contributes to an understanding of religion in the public discourse by studying references to religious beliefs, institutions, and events in the oratorical corpus.

This study of Cicero's political oratory and Roman imperialism in the late Republic offers new readings of neglected speeches. C.E.W. Steel examines the role and capacities of political oratory and puts Cicero's attitude to empire, with its limitations and weaknesses, in the context of wider debates among his contemporaries on the problems of empire.

Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory (first century BC) is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. This commentary seeks to locate Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts.

This edition of Book 5 of Statius' Silvae includes an introduction, translation, and full literary and cultural commentary, enabling readers to engage with the work of this learned and increasingly popular poet.

Blighted and accursed families are an inescapable feature of Greek tragedy. N.J. Sewell-Rutter gives the familiar issues of inherited guilt, curses, and divine causation a fresh appraisal, with particular reference to Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes and the Phoenician Women of Euripides. All Greek quotations are translated.

A fresh approach to the old problem of the nature of individual liberty in ancient Athens. Using modern political theory as a springboard, Peter Liddel argues that the ancient Athenians held liberty to consist of the substantial obligations (political, financial, and military) of citizenship.

A full account of the reception of the second-century prose fiction The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses) of Apuleius, which has intrigued readers as diverse as St Augustine, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Robert H. F. Carver traces readers' responses to the novel from the third to the seventeenth centuries.

An original and wide-ranging study of the Greek lyric poet Bacchylides, exploring his engagement with poetic tradition and evaluating the complex relationship of the poetry to its multiple contexts of performance.

The first comprehensive treatment of Latin extra-paradigmatic verb forms, that is, verb forms which cannot easily be assigned to any particular tense in the Latin verbal system.

A study of the history of the Aegean islands and changing concepts of insularity, with particular emphasis on the fifth century BC. Island connectivity was expressed on many levels - Constantakopoulou investigates island interaction in the areas of religion and imperial politics in particular.

In a critique of Max Weber's influential ideas about the Mediterranean region in late antiquity, Jairus Banaji shows that the fourth to seventh centuries were in fact a period of major social and economic change, bound up with an expanding circulation of gold.

How did early Christians give comfort to the bereaved? This examination of one of the most important early Christian letters of consolation shows how Christian consolers adopted many of the approaches used by their pagan predecessors. The book includes both a text and translation of the letter.

A study of the reception of Euripides' tragedy The Madness of Herakles from late antiquity to the present day. Kathleen Riley examines changing ideas of Heraklean madness and, consequently, of the Heraklean hero.

Talks about the importance of gifts to the poor for Christians in the later Roman empire. This title is about what was given, how it was given, who was helped, and how preachers sought to shape these practices.

Seneca the Younger's tragedies are adaptations from the Greek. C. A. J. Littlewood emphasizes the place of these plays in the Latin literature and in the philosophical context of the reign of the emperor Nero.

This book is a study of the transformation of the landscape, civic life, and moral values of the pagan city of Rome following the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century. It examines the effects of the rise of Christianity and the decline of paganism in the later Roman empire.

The transformation of human beings into animals, plants and stones is one of the most characteristic themes of Greek mythology. This study argues that attempts to explain away these myths as relics of long-forgotten rituals ignores their most interesting trait - their appeal as stories.

This is a critical analysis of the pervasive theme of historical myths used by some of the best-known writers of the Late Republic and Augustan periods - from Cicero in the "De Republica" and the first book of Livy to Ovid's "Fasti".

This text offers an integrated interpretation of Homeric man. The author starts with the working hypothesis that, in this poetry, the human being is not divided into two parts - inner and outer; body and soul; flesh and spirit - but stands as an indivisible unity.

The book explores the cultural interaction between Rome and the various native groups found in Baetica (ancient Andalusia). It examines the degree to which Rome wished to change the area, how far our available evidence will allow us to see the outcome of such attempts, and the varied reactions of the native populations to the Roman presence.

Thomas Harrison presents a study of the religious beliefs of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus - his beliefs in divine retribution, in oracles and divination, in miracles or in fate. The author shows not only how such beliefs were central to his work, but also how they were compatible with lived experience.

What was happening in Rome when Homer was writing the Iliad in Greece? This book is the first detailed account in English to study both the earliest archaeological and literary evidence of Rome's earliest history, going right back to the Late Bronze Age. The book is also unique in setting the development of civilization in the context of the Mediterranean as a whole.

This is the first study of emperor worship among the Romans themselves, in Rome and its heartland Italy. It argues that emperor worship was indeed perfectly in keeping with Roman religious tradition, which has been generally misunderstood by a posterity imbued with radically different notions of the relationship between humans and the divine.

By examining the literary evidence relating to the historical, ethnographic, and geographic writings of Greeks and Romans focussing on invasion and conflict, this work attempts to answer the questions how and why the Gauls became the deadly enemy of the Romans.