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1130 results in Classical literature

Page 1 of 57

Studies in Greek Literature
  • Volume 2, Early Greek Literature, Reception, Ancient and Modern Scholarship
  • P. E. Easterling
  • Prepared for publication by Felix Budelmann, Eveline Krummen
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    February 2026
    Print publication:
    28 February 2026
  • Pat Easterling's articles are fundamental to her status as one of the most influential Hellenists of her generation. Characterised by unostentatious astuteness and an arresting capacity for observation, they put forward tersely considered arguments that have the weight of much longer discussions. Exacting attention to language and detail combines with clear-sighted openness to new developments within and beyond the discipline to allow the texts to speak in deeply human terms. This collection gathers significant articles from all stages of Easterling's career, many of them major points of reference. Volume 1 is devoted to Greek tragedy, and represents in particular her great affinity for Sophocles. Volume 2 presents work on other Greek literature, acting, transmission, scholia, reception, history of scholarship. Reflecting Easterling's extensive academic ties, several of the articles were originally published in less well-known volumes and are here made more widely available.

Studies in Greek Literature
  • Volume 1, Greek Tragedy
  • P. E. Easterling
  • Prepared for publication by Felix Budelmann, Eveline Krummen
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    February 2026
    Print publication:
    28 February 2026
  • Pat Easterling's articles are fundamental to her status as one of the most influential Hellenists of her generation. Characterised by unostentatious astuteness and an arresting capacity for observation, they put forward tersely considered arguments that have the weight of much longer discussions. Exacting attention to language and detail combines with clear-sighted openness to new developments within and beyond the discipline to allow the texts to speak in deeply human terms. This collection gathers significant articles from all stages of Easterling's career, many of them major points of reference. Volume 1 is devoted to Greek tragedy, and represents in particular her great affinity for Sophocles. Volume 2 presents work on other Greek literature, acting, transmission, scholia, reception, history of scholarship. Reflecting Easterling's extensive academic ties, several of the articles were originally published in less well-known volumes and are here made more widely available.

A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC
  • Volume 1, The Theatre Festivals of Athens: Documents with Translation and Commentary
  • Eric Csapo, Peter Wilson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • This is the first volume of A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC and focuses exclusively on the theatre festivals in the city of Athens. It presents and discusses in detail all the documentary and material evidence for the Dionysia in the city of Athens, the Lenaea and the Anthesteria. It is the first comprehensive reappraisal of the Athenian theatre festivals undertaken in over seventy years and the first ever to attempt a history of the Athenian theatre as an institution which recognises the social and economic forces that underpinned it. All texts are translated and made accessible to non-specialists and specialists alike. The volume will be a fundamental work of reference for all classicists and theatre historians interested in ancient theatre and its wider historical contexts.

Latin Texts on Papyrus and the Study of Classics
  • Edited by Maria Chiara Scappaticcio
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • This volume gathers 25 chapters focused on Latin texts on papyrus, exploring them from multi- and cross-disciplinary perspectives. It serves as a companion to the texts published in The Corpus of Latin Texts on Papyrus (Cambridge, forthcoming). The chapters provide in-depth analyses of the chosen texts from literary, philological, linguistic, and historical perspectives, or offer methodological reflections on Latin texts on papyrus, promoting innovative approaches. They cover topics ranging from palaeography and philology to Latin literature and from ancient law to ancient and medieval history, and brilliantly demonstrate the potential of Latin texts on papyrus to inspire and illuminate the field of Classics.

A Narratological Commentary on Herodotus' Histories
  • Edited with Introduction and Notes by Irene J. F. de Jong
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • The narrative art of Herodotus' Histories has always been greatly admired, but it has never received an in-depth and systematic analysis. This commentary lays bare the role of the narrator and his effective handling of time, focalization, and speech in all the famous and much-loved episodes, from Croesus, via the Ionian Revolt, to the climax of Xerxes' expedition against Greece. In paying close attention to the various ways in which Herodotus structures his story, it offers crucial help to get a grip on the at first sight bewildering structure of this long text. The detailed analysis of Herodotus' narration shows how his masterful adoption and expansion of the epic toolbox endowed the new genre of historiography with the same authority as its illustrious predecessor. The commentary is suitable for all readers of Herodotus' Greek text: students, teachers, and scholars.

Poetic Desire and Literary Thievery
  • Economies of Intertextuality in Arabic Literature
  • Muhsin J. al-Musawi
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2025
    Print publication:
    30 November 2025

Herodotus and the Greek Poetic Tradition

The Gospel of Truth
  • Francis Watson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    30 November 2025
  • The Gospel of Truth is an early Christian homily in which an anonymous and independent-minded teacher communicates his understanding of the core Christian message to his own immediate circle and a wider audience elsewhere. For this author, the gospel is the good news that in the person of Jesus, the divine Father has made himself known to his elect, calling them out of a nightmare-like existence in ignorance and illusion into the knowledge of himself. In this volume, Francis Watson provides a new and accessible translation of this text, along with a thorough analysis of it, both in its own terms and in its reception by later readers. He argues that its closest affinities lie with New Testament texts such as the Gospel of John and the Pauline letters. Watson also demonstrates how The Gospel of Truth is a work of literary quality and theological originality and why it deserves the attention of all students and scholars of early Christianity.

The Secret Book of John
  • M. David Litwa
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    30 November 2025
  • In this volume, David Litwa offers a fresh introduction to the 'gnostic Bible,' arguably the most significant and widely read of all gnostic Christian texts ever written. Providing a fresh introduction to a particular version of the Secret Book of John, namely the shorter version that is found in Nag Hammadi Codex III, his study includes a new translation of this text and an extensive commentary in which he introduces the notable features of this codex and interrogates whether the Secret Book emerged from an actual gnostic community. Litwa also posits solutions to many questions related to this text, notably: its date and find spot, its relationship to the treatise known and summarized by Irenaeus in the late second century, its interpretation and re-creation of the book of Genesis for Christian readers, its novel interpretation of Greco-Roman philosophy, its foundations in apostolic authority, and the reception of the Secret Book of John in late antiquity, well into the fifth century CE.

The Narrative Conflict of Traditions in the Late Antique World
  • Cyril versus Julian
  • Part 1
  • Brad Boswell
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    01 October 2026
  • Intellectual conflict between Early Christians and pagans was not uncommon during the first centuries of the Christian era, as is amply reflected in writings from this period. In this study, Brad Boswell deepens our understanding of the nature and aims of such conflict through a study of two key texts: Against the Galileans, by Roman Emperor Julian 'the Apostate,' and Against Julian, by bishop Cyril of Alexandria written nearly a century later. Drawing from Alasdair MacIntyre's  philosophy of conflict between traditions, he explores how both texts were an exercise in 'narrative conflict' whose aim was to demonstrate the superior explanatory power of their respective traditions' narrative. Acknowledging the shared cultural formation between a pagan like Julian and a Christian like Cyril, Boswell challenges interpretive models emphasizing the points of commonality between the traditions. He offers a fresh approach to Julian's anti-Christian writings, provides the foundational  analysis of Cyril's little-studied treatise, and invites reconsideration of the emerging Christian tradition within its intellectual contexts.

The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature
  • Volume 1
  • Edited by Gavin Kelly, Aaron Pelttari
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • Histories of Latin literature have often treated the period from the second to the seventh centuries as an epilogue to the main action – and yet the period includes such towering figures as Apuleius, Claudian, Prudentius, Augustine, Jerome, Boethius, and Isidore. The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature, with fifty chapters by forty-one scholars, is the first book to treat the immensely diverse literature of these six centuries together in such generous detail. The book shows authors responding to momentous changes, and sometimes shaping or resisting them: the rise of Christianity, the introduction of the codex book, and the end of the western Roman Empire. The contributors' accounts of late antique Latin literature do not shy away from controversy, but are always clear, succinct, and authoritative. Students and scholars wanting to explore unfamiliar areas of Late Antiquity will find their starting point here.

The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature
  • Volume 2
  • Edited by Gavin Kelly, Aaron Pelttari
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • Histories of Latin literature have often treated the period from the second to the seventh centuries as an epilogue to the main action – and yet the period includes such towering figures as Apuleius, Claudian, Prudentius, Augustine, Jerome, Boethius, and Isidore. The Cambridge History of Later Latin Literature, with fifty chapters by forty-one scholars, is the first book to treat the immensely diverse literature of these six centuries together in such generous detail. The book shows authors responding to momentous changes, and sometimes shaping or resisting them: the rise of Christianity, the introduction of the codex book, and the end of the western Roman Empire. The contributors' accounts of late antique Latin literature do not shy away from controversy, but are always clear, succinct, and authoritative. Students and scholars wanting to explore unfamiliar areas of Late Antiquity will find their starting point here.

God, Slavery, and Early Christianity
  • Divine Possession and Ethics in the Shepherd of Hermas
  • Chance E. Bonar
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • Ancient Christians understood themselves to be enslaved to God, an attitude that affected their ethics, theology, and self-understanding. This widespread belief is made especially clear in the Shepherd of Hermas, an overlooked early Christian text written by an enslaved person, which was nearly included in the New Testament. In this book, Chance Bonar provides a robust analysis of the ancient discourses and practices of slavery found in the Shepherd of Hermas. He shows how the text characterizes God's enslaved persons as useful, loyal property who could be put to work, surveilled, and disciplined throughout their lives – and the afterlife. Bonar also investigates the notion that God enslaved believers, which allowed the Shepherd to theorize key early Christian concepts more deeply and in light of ancient Mediterranean slavery. Bonar's study clarifies the depth to which early Christians were entrenched – intellectually, practically, and theologically – in Roman slave society. It also demonstrates how the Shepherd offers new approaches to early Christian literary and historical interpretation.

The Ancient Scholia to Homer's Iliad
  • A Translation
  • Volume 1, Books 1-2
  • Edited and translated by Bill Beck
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • With roots in the Homeric scholarship produced in the Library of Alexandria in the third and second centuries BCE, the ancient scholia to the Iliad constitute the richest and most extensive collection of ancient criticism on the most widely read poem in Greco-Roman antiquity. Excerpted from lost works of ancient scholarship and transmitted as marginal and interlinear comments in medieval manuscripts of the Iliad, these scholia contain a remarkable wealth of insights into the constitution of the Homeric text, the readings and editorial principles of ancient grammarians, the literary interpretations of ancient critics, and the lessons that ancient readers took from Homer. This volume provides the first English translation of the ancient scholia to Iliad books 1–2. With a clear and accessible introduction, extensive explanatory notes, and a glossary of ancient scholars, this book serves as the ideal guide to this complex and fascinating tradition.

Ovid and Plato
  • Disturbing Realities
  • Peter Kelly
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • The Roman poet Ovid, while sailing across the Black Sea to Tomis, considered his exile to have cosmic proportions; in the surging waves he sees his world seemingly veering back towards primordial chaos. Throughout his work Ovid seeks to depict the vast heterogeneity of the world, its creation and destruction, and the interconnection between humans and their unstable environment. This book explores how Ovid turns to philosophy, and especially the dialogues of Plato, to find meaning in a world that is fluid, uncertain, and dangerous. Rather than seeking recourse in an exact science of knowledge or a world of Forms beyond the here and now, Ovid sets himself apart from the philosophers. Instead, he highlights the limits of philosophy to capture the changing nature of reality and realigns the boundaries between poetry and science so as to create a more suitable medium for representing our entanglement with this complex world.

The Life of Jesus in the Writings of Origen of Alexandria
  • Samuel B. Johnson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • Origen of Alexandria stands at the headwaters of the entire history of Gospel reading. In this study of the earliest extant Gospel commentaries, Samuel Johnson explores questions, often associated with modern Gospel criticism, that were already formative of the first moments of the Christian interpretative tradition. Origen's approach to the Gospels in fact arose from straightforward historical and literary critical judgments: the Gospel narratives interweave things that happened with things that did not. Origen discerned that the Gospels depict events in Jesus's life not merely as matters of historical fact, but also figuratively. He did not just interpret the Gospels allegorically. Johnson demonstrates that Origen believed the Gospel writers themselves were figurative readers of the life of Jesus. Origen thus found no contradiction between discerning the truth of the Christian Gospels and facing the critical challenges of their literary form and formation. Johnson's study shows how they constitute a single unified vision.

Aggregation and Antithesis in Ancient Greece
  • Richard Seaford
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • What is the relationship between forms of thought in literature, philosophy and visual art in ancient Greece, and how are these forms related to their socio-political and economic context? This is the question raised by Richard Seaford in his final book. His answer is framed in terms of the relationship between aggregation and antithesis. In Greece between the eight and fourth centuries BCE, Seaford traces a progressive and complex shift from aggregation to antithesis in literature, philosophy and visual art, and correlates this with the shift from a pre-monetary and pre-polis society to a monetised polis. In the Platonic metaphysics of being, he identifies a further move, the negation of antithesis, which he links with the non-circulating possession of money. In this characteristically ambitious and challenging study, Richard Seaford extends his socio-economic analysis of Greek culture to visual art and includes contrasts with Near Eastern society and art.

Mycenaean Civilization
  • Dora Vassilikou
  • Translated by Doniert Evely, Colin MacDonald
  • Foreword by Yannis Galanakis
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • The Bronze Age of Greece was unknown until the end of the nineteenth century, when Heinrich Schliemann's excavations stunned the world by bringing to light the glamour of Mycenaean elite society. This book, by one of Greece's most distinguished archaeologists, provides a complete introduction to Mycenaean life and archaeology. Through both chronological and thematic chapters, it examines the main Mycenaean centres, the palaces and kingship, the social structure, writing, religion and its political implications, and the contacts and relations of the Mycenaeans with neighbouring countries, especially Asia Minor, Egypt, the coast of Syria–Palestine, and Italy. Attention is paid to the distinctive Mycenaean art, including monumental architecture, gold and silver metalwork, and jewellery, and the book is supported by over 300 colour illustrations. Dora Vassilikou concludes by examining the simultaneous catastrophes that brought the Bronze Age of the Eastern Aegean to its end and opened up a new era.

The World of Homer
  • Archaeology, Social Memory, and the Emergence of Greek Epic Poetry
  • Michael B. Cosmopoulos
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • Epic poetry, notably the Iliad and the Odyssey, stands as one of the most enduring legacies of ancient Greece. Although the impact of these epics on Western civilization is widely recognized, their origins remain the subject of heated debate. Were they composed in a single era or over the course of centuries? Were they crafted  by one or by many poets? Do they reflect historical reality? These and other important questions are answered in this book. Using a fresh, dynamic approach, Michael Cosmopoulos reconstructs the world of the Homeric poems and explores the interplay between poetry, social memory, and material culture. By integrating key insights from archaeology, philology, anthropology, and oral tradition, he offers a nuanced perspective of the emergence and early development of Greek epic. His wide-canvas approach enables readers to appreciate the complexity of the Homeric world and gain a deeper understanding of the intricate factors that shaped these magnificent poems.

Cicero: Divinatio in Q. Caecilium
  • Edited with Introduction and Notes by C. B. Watson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • This is the first scholarly commentary on Cicero's Divinatio in Caecilium and the first new critical edition in over 100 years. The commentary demonstrates that the Divinatio was atypical of the genre. In both form and content, the speech is styled as a forensic prosecution rather than a pre-trial deliberation. It also functions as an effective piece of literary criticism and a pedagogical treatise to preface the Verrine corpus. Consequently scholars are encouraged to reconsider how published oratory in Rome functioned as teaching aid, personal propaganda, historical record, and literary production. The Divinatio touches on issues with strong resonance for contemporary society: the responsibility of the government to represent and defend marginalised communities, cultural identity and integration in a multi-ethnic society, the perils of persuasive speech, abuses of political and military power, due process of law, and changing notions of intellectual and cultural property.

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