Virgil's Aeneid, an epic which tells the story of Aeneas' flight from burning Troy, his adventures on the high seas and eventual arrival in Italy, thereby founding the Roman race, is one of the most influential works of Roman literature. This edition of the first two books is designed for those who have completed an introductory course in Latin and aims to help such users to enjoy one of Latin literature's greatest masterpieces. The text is accompanied by a running vocabulary, learning vocabulary, full grammatical help and notes. Essays at the end of each passage are designed to encourage appreciation of Virgil's plot-handling, poetic art and rich understanding of humanity, and there are references throughout to the most helpful modern thinking about the poem and its significance. No other intermediate text is so carefully designed to provide all the help that is needed to make reading Virgil a pleasure.
Widely acknowledged as the most authoritative Victorian study of ancient Greece, George Grote's twelve-volume work, begun in 1846, established the view of Greek history which still prevails in textbooks and popular accounts of the ancient world today. Grote employs direct and clear language to take the reader from the earliest times of legendary Greece to the death of Alexander and his generation, drawing upon epic poetry and legend, and examining the growth and decline of the Athenian democracy. The work explains Greek political constitutions and philosophy, and interwoven throughout are the important but outlying adventures of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. John Stuart Mill said of Grote that 'his familiarity both with the great highways and the obscurest bypaths of Grecian literature and antiquity, has seldom been equalled', and the book remains required reading for historians and students of ancient Greece and Greek philosophy.
Apuleius' story of Cupid and Psyche, the relationship of the human Soul with divine Love, is one of the great allegories of world literature. It forms an integral part of and profoundly illuminates the message of his novel Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, which relates the adventures of a young man and his spiritual fall and redemption. To enrich and deepen his basic plot, the origins of which are obscure, Apuleius has combined poetic sources, Platonic philosophy and popular iconography in an unprecedented tour de force of literary creation. This edition sensitively elucidates the subtle art with which this transformation has been accomplished, and comprehensively illustrates both Apuleius' inventive handling of his various models and sources and the exuberant and idiosyncratic Latinity with forms the vehicle for it. It places in a fresh light the results of recent work on the ancient Novel and on Apuleius himself, and offers a stimulating, occasionally provocative, reading of his much
This handy guide to The Odyssey will introduce students to a text, which has been fundamental to literature for nearly 3000 years. Readers will be introduced to the world in that the Odyssey was produced, to the text itself and to its origins in oral poetry. This volume gives a summary of the poem and examines its structure. The unity, values and techniques of the poem are clearly outlined, as are the reasons for its longstanding appeal. This guide delves into the diverse world of the story; that of monsters, gods, and enchantresses which interacts with the very different world of the home, marriage and the family. Students will be introduced to the essential themes of loyalty and betrayal, and guided through the narrative of Odysseus' adventures, which also illustrate the workings of the world and the justice of heaven. Readers will also find a very helpful guide to further reading.
