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  3. Cambridge Classical Studies

A series of monographs on all aspects of classical learning: literature, philosophy, history and archaeology. Most of the books arise from work done at Cambridge University.

  • General Editors: J. P. T. Clackson, University of Cambridge, G. Betegh, University of Cambridge, S. P. Oakley, University of Cambridge, R. G. Osborne, University of Cambridge, M. J. Squire, University of Cambridge, C. Vout, University of Cambridge, T. J. G. Whitmarsh, University of Cambridge

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95 results in Cambridge Classical Studies

Page 3 of 5

M. I. Finley
  • An Ancient Historian and his Impact
  • Edited by Daniel Jew, Robin Osborne, Michael Scott
  • Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    13 October 2016
  • M. I. Finley (1912–86) was the most famous ancient historian of his generation. He was admired by his peers, and was Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. His unmistakable voice was familiar to tens of thousands of radio listeners, his polemical reviews and other journalism were found all over the broadsheets and weeklies, and his scholarly as well as his popular works sold in very large numbers as Penguin paperbacks. Yet this was also a man dismissed from his job at Rutgers University when he refused to answer the question of whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. This pioneering volume assesses Finley's achievements and analyses the nature of the impact of this charismatic individual and the means by which he changed the world of ancient history.

Reviving Roman Religion
  • Sacred Trees in the Roman World
  • Ailsa Hunt
  • Published online:
    05 September 2016
    Print publication:
    12 September 2016
  • Sacred trees are easy to dismiss as a simplistic, weird phenomenon, but this book argues that in fact they prompted sophisticated theological thinking in the Roman world. Challenging major aspects of current scholarly constructions of Roman religion, Ailsa Hunt rethinks what sacrality means in Roman culture, proposing an organic model which defies the current legalistic approach. She approaches Roman religion as a 'thinking' religion (in contrast to the ingrained idea of Roman religion as orthopraxy) and warns against writing the environment out of our understanding of Roman religion, as has happened to date. In addition, the individual trees showcased in this book have much to tell us which enriches and thickens our portraits of Roman religion, be it about the subtleties of engaging in imperial cult, the meaning of numen, the interpretation of portents, or the way statues of the Divine communicate.

Revisiting Delphi
  • Religion and Storytelling in Ancient Greece
  • Julia Kindt
  • Published online:
    05 September 2016
    Print publication:
    26 September 2016
  • Revisiting Delphi speaks to all admirers of Delphi and its famous prophecies, be they experts on ancient Greek religion, students of the ancient world, or just lovers of a good story. It invites readers to revisit the famous Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, along with Herodotus, Euripides, Socrates, Pausanias and Athenaeus, offering the first comparative and extended enquiry into the way these and other authors force us to move the link between religion and narrative centre stage. Their accounts of Delphi and its prophecies reflect a world in which the gods frequently remain baffling and elusive despite every human effort to make sense of the signs they give.

Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion
  • Edited by Esther Eidinow, Julia Kindt, Robin Osborne
  • Published online:
    05 August 2016
    Print publication:
    03 August 2016
  • Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.

Oscan in the Greek Alphabet
  • Nicholas Zair
  • Published online:
    05 February 2016
    Print publication:
    01 February 2016
  • Oscan was spoken in Southern Italy in the second half of the first millennium BC. Here, for the first time, all the evidence for the spelling of Oscan in the Greek alphabet is collected and examined. Understanding the orthography of these inscriptions has far-reaching implications for the historical phonology and morphology of Oscan and the Italic languages (for example providing unique evidence for the reconstruction of the genitive plural). A striking discovery is the lack of a standardised orthography for Oscan in the Greek alphabet, which seriously problematises attempts to date inscriptions by assuming the consistent chronological development of spelling features. There are also intriguing insights into the linguistic situation in South Italy. Rather than a separate community of Oscan-speakers who had adopted and subsequently adapted the Greek alphabet in isolation, we should posit groups who were in touch with contemporary developments in Greek orthography due to widespread Greek-Oscan bilingualism.

Aristotle on Female Animals
  • A Study of the Generation of Animals
  • Sophia M. Connell
  • Published online:
    18 December 2015
    Print publication:
    14 January 2016
  • Aristotle's account of female nature has received mostly negative treatment, emphasising what he says females cannot do. Building on recent research, this book comprehensively revises such readings, setting out the complex and positive role played by the female in Aristotle's thought with a particular focus on the longest surviving treatise on reproduction in the ancient corpus, the Generation of Animals. It provides new interpretations of the nature of Aristotle's sexism, his theory of male and female interaction in generation, and his account of inherited features. It also discusses a range of more general issues which can and should be re-examined in light of Aristotle's account of female animals: his methodology, hylomorphism, teleology and psychology. Aristotle on Female Animals will be valuable to all those interested in Aristotle's philosophy and the history of gender.

Latin Literature and its Transmission
  • Edited by Richard Hunter, S. P. Oakley
  • Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    26 November 2015
  • This is a series of innovative studies in the textual and literary criticism of Latin literature, exploring how these two branches of the discipline are mutually supportive. The contributors include many leading scholars in the field. Individual essays are devoted to Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, Tacitus and Virgil, and there are also essays on the Renaissance reception of Virgil and on principles of editorial practice. The collection celebrates the extraordinary contribution which Michael Reeve has made and continues to make to Latin studies.

Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily
  • Evaluating Language Contact in a Fragmentary Corpus
  • Katherine McDonald
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    01 October 2015
  • In pre-Roman Italy and Sicily, dozens of languages and writing systems competed and interacted, and bilingualism was the norm. Using frameworks from epigraphy, archaeology and the sociolinguistics of language contact, this book explores the relationship between Greek and Oscan, two of the most widely spoken languages in the south of the peninsula. Dr McDonald undertakes a new analysis of the entire corpus of South Oscan texts written in Lucania, Bruttium and Messana, including dedications, curse tablets, laws, funerary texts and graffiti. She demonstrates that genre and domain are critical to understanding where and when Greek was used within Oscan-speaking communities, and how ancient bilinguals exploited the social meaning of their languages in their writing. This book also offers a cutting-edge example of how to build the fullest possible picture of bilingualism in fragmentary languages across the ancient world.

Justice and Reciprocity in Aristotle's Political Philosophy
  • Kazutaka Inamura
  • Published online:
    05 September 2015
    Print publication:
    17 September 2015
  • This book illustrates how Aristotle's ethical concepts such as justice, reciprocity and friendship offer a basis for his political philosophy. In particular, it points out the importance of Aristotle for articulating the concept of a civic relationship and developing a theory of integration, by exploring how he includes a wide variety of people within the deliberative and judicial processes. Comparisons between Aristotle's own thought and present-day 'Aristotelian' political theories, such as communitarianism, civic republicanism and the capabilities approach, are also among the unique approaches offered by the book and are used to illustrate his original vision of politics. They can also, however, offer new insights into the problems of how to read his texts appropriately in their context and why we now need to read them, not only out of an antiquarian interest but also out of our concern for politics.

Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's Georgics
  • Llewelyn Morgan
  • Published online:
    05 July 2015
    Print publication:
    02 September 1999
  • At the time of this book's first publication in 1999, orthodoxy interpreted the Georgics as a statement of profound ambivalence towards Octavian and his claim to be Rome's saviour after the catastrophe of the civil wars. This book takes issue with the model of the subtly subversive poet. It argues that in the turbulent political circumstances which obtained at the time of the poem's composition, Virgil's preoccupation with violent conflict has a highly optimistic import. Octavian's brutal conduct in the civil wars is subjected to a searching analysis, but is ultimately vindicated, refigured as a paradoxically constructive violence analogous to blood sacrifice or Romulus' fratricide of Remus. The vindication of Octavian also has strictly literary implications for Virgil. The close of the poem sees Virgil asserting his mastery of the Homeric mode of poetry and the providential world-view it was thought to embody.

The Origin of Roman London
  • Lacey M. Wallace
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    08 January 2015
  • In this book Dr Wallace makes a fundamental contribution to the study of urbanism in the Roman provinces. She attempts for the first time to present a detailed archaeological account of the first decade of one of the best-excavated cities in the Roman Empire. Delving into the artefact and structural reports from all excavations of pre-Boudican levels in London, she brings together vast quantities of data which are discussed and illustrated according to a novel methodology that address both the difficulties and complexity of 'grey literature' and urban excavation.

Performing Citizenship in Plato's Laws
  • Lucia Prauscello
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    13 November 2014
  • In the Laws, Plato theorizes citizenship as simultaneously a political, ethical, and aesthetic practice. His reflection on citizenship finds its roots in a descriptive psychology of human experience, with sentience and, above all, volition seen as the primary targets of a lifelong training in the values of citizenship. In the city of Magnesia described in the Laws erôs for civic virtue is presented as a motivational resource not only within the reach of the 'ordinary' citizen, but also factored by default into its educational system. Supporting a vision of 'perfect citizenship' based on an internalized obedience to the laws, and persuading the entire polity to consent willingly to it, requires an ideology that must be rhetorically all-inclusive. In this city 'ordinary' citizenship itself will be troped as a performative action: Magnesia's choral performances become a fundamental channel for shaping, feeling and communicating a strong sense of civic identity and unity.

Playing Hesiod
  • The 'Myth of the Races' in Classical Antiquity
  • Helen Van Noorden
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    15 December 2014
  • This book offers a new description of the significance of Hesiod's 'myth of the races' for ancient Greek and Roman authors, showing how the most detailed responses to this story go far beyond nostalgia for a lost 'Golden' age or hope of its return. Through a series of close readings, it argues that key authors from Plato to Juvenal rewrite the story to reconstruct 'Hesiod' more broadly as predecessor in forming their own intellectual and rhetorical projects; disciplines such as philosophy, didactic poetry and satire all engage in implicit questions about 'Hesiodic' teaching. The first chapter introduces key issues; the second re-evaluates the account in Hesiod's Works and Days. A major chapter outlines Plato's use of Hesiod through close study of the Protagoras, Republic and Statesman. Subsequent chapters focus on Aratus' Phaenomena and Ovid's Metamorphoses; the final chapter, on the Octavia attributed to Seneca and Juvenal's sixth Satire, broadens ideas of Hesiod's reception in Rome.

Menander, New Comedy and the Visual
  • Antonis K. Petrides
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
  • This book argues that New Comedy has a far richer performance texture than has previously been recognised. Offering close readings of all the major plays of Menander, it shows how intertextuality - the sustained dialogue of New Comedy performance with the diverse ideological, philosophical, literary and theatrical discourses of contemporary polis culture - is crucial in creating semantic depth and thus offsetting the impression that the plots are simplistic love stories with no political or ideological resonances. It also explores how the visual aspect of the plays ('opsis') is just as important as any verbal means of signification - a phenomenon termed 'intervisuality', examining in particular depth the ways in which the mask can infuse various systems of reference into the play. Masks like the panchrēstos neaniskos (the 'all-perfect youth'), for example, are now full of meaning; thus, with their ideologically marked physiognomies, they can be strong instigators of literary and cultural allusion.

Apuleius' Platonism
  • The Impersonation of Philosophy
  • Richard Fletcher
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    17 July 2014
  • Apuleius of Madauros, writing in the latter half of the second century CE in Roman North Africa, is best known to us today for his Latin fiction, the Metamorphoses aka The Golden Ass, about a man who turned into a donkey and back again. However, he was also a Platonic philosopher, who, even though many of his writings are lost, wrote a range of rhetorical and philosophical works which survive to this day. This book examines these works to reveal how Apuleius' Platonism is a result of his 'impersonation of philosophy', that is, a rhetorically powerful methodological tool that allows him to 'speak' on behalf of Plato and his philosophy. This book is the first exploration of the full scope of his idiosyncratic brand of Platonism across his multifarious literary corpus and is a major contribution to the study of the dynamic between literature and philosophy in antiquity and beyond.

Expressions of Time in Ancient Greek
  • Coulter H. George
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    26 June 2014
  • How did Ancient Greek express that an event occurred at a particular time, for a certain duration, or within a given time frame? The answer to these questions depends on a variety of conditions - the nature of the time noun, the tense and aspect of the verb, the particular historical period of Greek during which the author lived - that existing studies of the language do not take sufficiently into account. This book accordingly examines the circumstances that govern the use of the genitive, dative, and accusative of time, as well as the relevant prepositional constructions, primarily in Greek prose of the fifth century BC through the second century AD, but also in Homer. While the focus is on developments in Greek, translations of the examples, as well as a fully glossed summary chapter, make it accessible to linguists interested in the expression of time generally.

Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy
  • Johanna Hanink
  • Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    19 June 2014
  • Through a series of interdisciplinary studies this book argues that the Athenians themselves invented the notion of 'classical' tragedy just a few generations after the city's defeat in the Peloponnesian War. In the third quarter of the fourth century BC, and specifically during the 'Lycurgan Era' (338–322 BC), a number of measures were taken in Athens to affirm to the Greek world that the achievement of tragedy was owed to the unique character of the city. By means of rhetoric, architecture, inscriptions, statues, archives and even legislation, the 'classical' tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) and their plays came to be presented as both the products and vital embodiments of an idealised Athenian past. This study marks the first account of Athens' invention of its own theatrical heritage and sheds new light upon the interaction between the city's literary and political history.

Studies in The Language of Homer
  • 2nd edition
  • G. P. Shipp
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    04 May 1972
  • Professor Shipp's purpose in the first edition of this book (published in 1953) was 'to examine in as much detail as possible the development of the language of the Iliad in some of its typical features, with careful attention to the spoken dialects involved and to the influence of metre'. In the second edition he widens the scope of his work to examine the Odyssey as well as the Iliad, and he extends its detail to include syntax as well as grammatical forms and to cover questions of vocabulary more comprehensively. The author's earlier conclusions are shown to be confirmed, and an important further result for the Odyssey has been to show the typical lateness of the language of moralizing passages.

Imperialism in the Ancient World
  • The Cambridge University Research Seminar in Ancient History
  • Edited by P. D. A. Garnsey, C. R. Whittaker
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    18 January 1979
  • The economics of imperialism, its political background and institutional frameworks, the material benefits it conferred, the ideologies of ruler and ruled - these are some of the more important aspects of imperialism discussed in this volume. In presenting the evidence for ancient imperialims and suggesting concepts and methods of interpretation these articles, which are the work of the Cambridge University Research Seminar in Ancient History, range from New Kingdom Egypt and Carthage, through the classical Greek world of Athens and Sparta, to Macedonia and Rome. This book will be particularly useful to ancient historians but should also interest historian of other periods as well as students of politics.

A Study of Daphnis and Chloe
  • R. L. Hunter
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    08 September 1983
  • This 1983 book provides a serious modern literary treatment of perhaps the best known of all surviving works of ancient Greek fiction. Dr Hunter demonstrates the sophistication of this pastoral romance, a sophistication which he maintains has often been assumed but never properly discussed. Evidence for the identity of the author and the date of composition are also considered.

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