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© 2016,G.W. Bowersock, The New York Review of Books "There is scarcely anything on which he does not offer an original aperçu, sometimes illuminating, sometimes simply provocative, but always worth reading... Jenkyns's view of ancient literature is Olympian." The writings of the Greeks and Romans form the bedrock of Western culture. Inventing the molds for histories, tragedies, and philosophies, while pioneering radical new forms of epic and poetry, the Greeks and Romans created the literary world we still inhabit today. Writing with verve and insight, distinguished classicist Richard Jenkyns explores a thousand years of classical civilization, carrying readers from the depths of the Greek dark ages through the glittering heights of Rome's empire. Jenkyns begins with Homer and the birth of epic poetry before exploring the hypnotic poetry of Pindar, Sappho, and others from the Greek dark ages. Later, in Athens's classical age, Jenkyns shows the radical nature of Sophocles's choice to portray Ajax as a psychologically wounded warrior, how Aeschylus developed tragedy, and how Herodotus, in "inventing history," brought to narrative an epic and tragic quality. We meet the strikingly modern figure of Virgil, struggling to mirror epic art in an age of empire, and experience the love poems of Catullus, who imbued verse with obsessive passion as never before. Even St. Paul and other early Christian writers are artfully grounded here in their classical literary context. A dynamic and comprehensive introduction to Greek and Roman literature, Jenkyns's Classical Literature is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the classics--and the extraordinary origins of Western culture. Library Journal, STARRED review "[R]ich, witty, perceptive, and brief... One of the best introductions available to the general reader." Christopher B. Krebs (author of A Most Dangerous Book ), The Wall Street Journal "[A]ccessible and enjoyable... few scholars are better positioned to embark on such a journey than Mr. Jenkyns.
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© 2013,One of the remarkable facts about the history of Western culture is that we are still in a position to read large amounts of the literature produced in classical Greece and Rome despite the fact that for at least a millennium and a half all copies had to be produced by hand and were subject to the hazards of fire, flood, and war. This book explains how the texts survived and gives an account of the reasons why it was thought worthwhile to spend the necessary effort to preserve them for future generations. In the second edition a section of notes was included, and a new chapter was added to deal with some aspects of scholarship since the Renaissance. In the third edition (1991), the authors responded to the urgent need to take account of the very large number of discoveries in this rapidly advancing field of knowledge by substantially revising or enlarging certain sections. The last two decades have seen further advances, and this revised edition is designed to take account of them.
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© 2002,A chronological guide to influential Greek and Roman writers, Fifty Key Classical Authors is an invaluable introduction to the literature, philosophy and history of the ancient world. Including essays on Sappho, Polybius and Lucan, as well as on major figures such as Homer, Plato, Catullus and Cicero, this book is a vital tool for all students of classical civilization.
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© 1998,This authoritative and highly browsable guide to Latin phrases provides a concise and enlightening account of the meaning and history of Latin words and expression which have entered the English language, including ad lib, carpe diem, and compos mentis.
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© 2014,Twelve Voices from Greece and Rome is a book for all readers who want to know more about the literature that underpins Western civilization. Chistopher Pelling and Maria Wyke provide a vibrant and distinctive introduction to twelve of the greatest authors from ancient Greece and Rome, writerswhose voices still resonate strongly across the centuries: Homer, Sappho, Herodotus, Euripides, Thucydides, Plato, Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal and Tacitus. To what vital ideas do these authors give voice? And why are we so often drawn to what they say even in modern times? Twelve Voices investigates these tantalizing questions, showing how these great figures from classical antiquity still address some of our most fundamental concerns in the worldtoday (of war and courage, dictatorship and democracy, empire, immigration, city life, art, madness, irrationality, and religious commitment), and express some of our most personal sentiments (about family and friendship, desire and separation, grief and happiness). These twelve classical voices can sound both compellingly familiar and startlingly alien to the twenty-first century reader. Yet they remain suggestive and inspiring, despite being rooted in their own times and places, and have profoundly affected the lives of those prepared to listen to them rightup to the present day.
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© 2003,You don t have to be a Greek student to understand biblical Greek. If you d love to learn Greek so you can study your Bible better, but you can t spare two years for college or seminary courses, then Greek for the Rest of Us is for you. Developed by renowned Greek teacher William Mounce, this revolutionary crash-course on baby Greek will acquaint you with the essentials of the language and deepen your understanding of God s Word. You ll gain a sound knowledge of basic Greek, and you ll learn how to use tools that will add muscle to your Bible studies. In six sections, Greek for the Rest of Us will help you: Recite the Greek alphabet Read and pronounce Greek words Learn the Greek noun and verbal system Conduct Greek word studies Decipher why translations are different Read better commentaries Greek for the Rest of Us broadens your knowledge still further with an appendix on biblical Hebrew."
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© 2014,In recent decades literary approaches to drama have multiplied: new historical, intertextual, political, performative and metatheatrical, socio-linguistic, gender-driven, transgenre-driven. New information has been amassed, sometimes by re-examination of extant literary texts and materialartifacts, at other times from new discoveries from the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, art history, and literary studies. The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy marks the first comprehensive introduction to and reference work for the unified study of ancient comedy. From the birth ofcomedy in Greece to its end in Rome, from the Hellenistic diffusion of performances after the death of Menander to its artistic, scholarly, and literary receptions in the later Roman Empire, no topic is neglected. 41 essays spread across Greek Comedy, Roman Comedy, and the transmission and reception of Ancient comedy by an international team of experts offer cutting-edge guides through the immense terrain of the field, while an expert introduction surveys the major trends and shifts in scholarly study ofcomedy from the 1960s to today. The Handbook includes two detailed appendices that provide invaluable research tools for both scholars and students. The result offers Hellenists an excellent overview of the earliest reception and creative reuse of Greek New Comedy, Latinists a broad perspective ofthe evolution of Roman Comedy, and scholars and students of classics an excellent resource and tipping point for future interdisciplinary research.
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© 2013,The mother tongue of the Roman Empire and the lingua franca of the West for centuries after Rome's fall, Latin survives today primarily in classrooms and texts. Yet this "dead language" is unique in the influence it has exerted across centuries and continents. Jürgen Leonhardt has written a full history of Latin from antiquity to the present, uncovering how this once parochial dialect developed into a vehicle of global communication that remained vital long after its spoken form was supplanted by modern languages. Latin originated in the Italian region of Latium, around Rome, and became widespread as that city's imperial might grew. By the first century BCE, Latin was already transitioning from a living vernacular, as writers and grammarians like Cicero and Varro fixed Latin's status as a "classical" language with a codified rhetoric and rules. As Romance languages spun off from their Latin origins following the empire's collapse--shedding cases and genders along the way--the ancient language retained its currency as a world language in ways that anticipated English and Spanish, but it ceased to evolve. Leonhardt charts the vicissitudes of Latin in the post-Roman world: its ninth-century revival under Charlemagne and its flourishing among Renaissance writers who, more than their medieval predecessors, were interested in questions of literary style and expression. Ultimately, the rise of historicism in the eighteenth century turned Latin from a practical tongue to an academic subject. Nevertheless, of all the traces left by the Romans, their language remains the most ubiquitous artifact of a once peerless empire.
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© 2011,Why do students today find Greek and Latin so difficult and frustrating to learn? Perhaps the primary barrier preventing us from learning another language successfully is that we often subconsciously believe that English is the standard for the way languages must express ideas, and therefore we unwittingly try to fit the new language into the structure of English. This book seeks to break students out of ¿English mode¿ as soon as possible, at the very beginning of study. Rather than constantly relating Greek and Latin to English, the book starts with a big-picture discussion of what any language must do in order to facilitate communication. It then explains how Indo-European languages in general accomplish the tasks of communication, and how Greek and Latin in particular do so. Understanding Language includes major sections on the noun and verb systems of the classical languages. In both cases, the book deals first with function (what nouns and verbs must do) and then explains how the forms of Greek and Latin achieve the needed functions. As a result, the book helps to make the hard tasks of memorizing forms and learning syntax easier and more enjoyable. Students gain a broad understanding of the way the classical languages work before they begin the details.
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© 2013,Three millennia after the myth of Helen, our relationship to female beauty remains deeply ambivalent, fraught with both desire and danger. We worship and fear it, advertise it everywhere yet try desperately to control and contain it.In Helen of Troy Ruby Blondell investigates the origins of our persistent anxiety about female beauty, focusing on this key figure from ancient Greek culture in a way that both extends our understanding of that culture and provides a useful perspective on our own. Moving from Homer and Hesiod toSappho, Aeschylus, Euripides, and others, Blondell offers a fresh examination of the paradoxes and ambiguities that Helen embodies. Other mythic women may be more violent but none wreaks more havoc than Helen. She is simultaneously the most desirable and most destructive. She causes the greatest war of all time when she elopes with the Trojan prince Paris, bringing her Greek husband, Menelaus, and thousands of Greek warriors inhot pursuit. Blondell shows that this is Helen's mythic essence: the beauty is inalienable, the destruction inevitable. For ancient Greeks, female beauty is an awe-inspiring, supremely desirable gift from the gods, essential to the perpetuation of a man's name through reproduction; yet it alsogrants women terrifying power over men, posing a threat inseparable from its allure. Three thousand years later, contemporary culture remains almost obsessively preoccupied with all the power and danger of female beauty and sexuality that Helen represents.Considering all aspects of the Helen myth - including the archaeological record, which contains evidence of her status as a cult figure, worshipped by maidens and newlyweds alike - Helen of Troy holds up a fascinating mirror to our own time.