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This is the first study of Sergei Eisenstein's relationship to classical antiquity. Eisenstein regarded the cinema as a Gesamtkunstwerk and considered the ancient Greeks among its ancestors. He detected what he called “cinematism” in Homer, the Laocoon sculpture group, the Acropolis, and elsewhere. The book interprets Eisenstein's chief concept, montage, as a visual analogy to clever juxtapositions in Roman poetry and examines his conflicts with Stalin and the Communist Party over Bezhin Meadow and Ivan the Terrible alongside the classical rhetorical strategy of formidable speaking in the face of absolute power and the Russian practice of Aesopian language. Eisenstein also influenced the design of the New Acropolis Museum via an essay about the Acropolis' architectural promenade and his epic Alexander Nevsky. The cinematism of the Parthenon Frieze, American cinema architecture modeled on the Parthenon, and Eisenstein's image of the cinema as a temple reinforce his importance within the classical tradition.
'Hipponax the poet' is an elusive figure. Stories about him abounded already in antiquity, at least in part extrapolated from the stories about himself that abounded in his poems. But what distinguishes him from other Greek lyric poets is the manner in which his corpus suggests a strategy of mischievousness around self-presentation: a deliberate confounding of expectations, the projecting of a pointedly strange and untrustworthy authorial persona. This is the first book-length literary study of Hipponax for almost half a century. It is written by an international team of scholars, who tackle various topics such as his relationship with social mores, performance practices, earlier and later poetry, and the visual arts. Contributors apply a range of perspectives for a richer understanding of Hipponax's poetics and provide close readings of several key texts. The volume is suitable for scholars and students of literature and all the Greek is translated.
This book proposes that Sophoclean tragedy is a distinctive form of religious discourse concerned with exploring the relationship between humans and gods. Building on recent scholarship that has begun to reintegrate literature within the study of Greek religion after decades of neglect, Alexandre Johnston positions Sophocles' seven extant plays within a vibrant tradition of early Greek theology, literature and philosophy that cuts across modern disciplinary boundaries. Blending an overarching thematic approach with detailed analysis of key case studies, he argues that tragedies such as Antigone and Electra were at once poetic works and religious artefacts that engaged profoundly with contemporary intellectual culture. Through their narrative structure and performance, these tragedies allow spectators privileged insights into the workings of an obscure, unstable world dominated by inscrutable gods, offering distinctive, sometimes radical visions of the divine and its impact on the existence of mortals.
What was fiction in the Roman world – and how did ancient readers learn to make sense of it? This book redefines ancient fiction not as a genre but as a sociocultural practice, governed by the institutions of Greco-Roman education. Drawing on modern fiction theory, it uncovers how fables, epic, and rhetorical training cultivated “fiction competence” in readers from childhood through advanced studies. But it also reveals how the ancient novels – including Greek romance, fictional biography, and the fragmentary novels – subverted the very rules of fiction pedagogy they inherited. Through incisive close readings of a wide array of canonical and paraliterary texts, this book reframes the classical curriculum as the engine of literary imagination in antiquity. For classicists, literary theorists, and anyone interested in ancient education, it offers a provocative reassessment of fiction's place in cultural history – and of how readers learned to believe, disbelieve, and decode narrative meaning.
Interest in the relationship between Paul's letter openings and Koine Greek letter-writing conventions has been steady for over a century, but little new data has emerged in recent years. In this study, Gillian Asquith offers a fresh perspective on Paul's epistolary practice by adopting a multidisciplinary method that synthesises sociolinguistics and lexicography. Comparing the language of Paul's letter openings with the register of language in documentary papyri, she demonstrates that high-register language in Koine Greek epistolary formulae contributes to warm and friendly relations between correspondents. Asquith argues that Paul creatively modifies epistolary norms by using unexpected, high-register language in the remembrance motif and litotic disclosure formula. Such usage, she posits, emphatically reassures Paul's recipients of his pastoral concern for them and heightens the persuasive force of his letters. Asquith's nuanced analysis contributes valuable new data to long-running debates around Paul's practice of prayer and the structure of his letters.
Latin poetry is defined by its relationships with poetry in other languages. It was originally constituted by its relation to Greek, and in later times has been constituted by its relation to the European vernaculars. In this bold and innovative book, distinguished Latinist Stephen Hinds explores these relationships through a series of vignettes. These explore ancient conversations between Latin and Greek verse texts, followed by modern (especially early modern) conversations between Latin and European vernacular verse texts, reflecting the linked stories of reception that make up the so-called 'classical tradition': conversations across language, across period, and sometimes both at the same time. The book's range is expansive, ranging from Homer through Virgil and the Augustans to late antiquity, the Renaissance, Romanticism and on to Seamus Heaney. There is an especial focus on the parallel vernacular and Latin output of Milton and Marvell in England and Du Bellay in France.
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.