Search results for ""Classical Press of Wales""

Xenophon has long been identified as a chief contemporary source, if not the chief source, for the history of classical Sparta. But his information has commonly been treated in restricted ways. Scholars who have studied Xenophon's oeuvre have tended to apply a knowledge of Athenian history and of general Greek literature rather than a specialist knowledge of Sparta. And specialist students of Sparta have commonly `mined' elements of Xenophon's work without sufficient regard either for the author's general characteristics and biases or for the variety of his literary genres. In this volume, 12 internationally-recognised experts on Sparta examine the quality of Xenophon's information on central topics of Laconian history, in the light of the author's political, literary and intellectual characteristics. This book is the first of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales will apply to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome's revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods. This book is the first of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales will apply to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome's revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods.

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Plutarch (born before AD 50, died after AD 120) is the ancient author who has arguably contributed more than any other to the popular conception of Sparta. Writing under the Roman Empire, at a time when the glory days of ancient Sparta were already long in the past, Plutarch represents a milestone in Sparta’s mythologisation, but at the same time is a vital source for our historical understanding of Sparta. In this volume, eight scholars from around the world come together to consider Plutarch’s understanding and presentation of Sparta, his flaws and significance as an historical source, and his development of Sparta as a resonant subject and theme within his best-known work, the Parallel Lives. This book is the latest in a series which the Classical Press of Wales is publishing on major sources for Sparta. Volumes on Xenophon and Sparta (Powell & Richer 2020) and Thucydides and Sparta (Powell & Debnar 2021) have already been released, and a further volume on Herodotus and Sparta is currently in preparation.

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Thucydides is widely seen as the most dispassionate and reliable contemporary source for the history of classical Sparta. But, compared with partisan authors such as Xenophon and Plutarch, his information on the subject is more scattered and implicit. Scholars in recent decades have made progress in teasing out the sense of Thucydides' often lapidary remarks on Sparta. This book takes the process further. Its eight new studies by international specialists aim to reveal coherent structures both in Thucydidean thought and in Spartan reality. This volume is the second of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales applies to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome's revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods.

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Plutarch's writings, for a long time treated in a fragmentary way as a source for earlier periods and authors, are now studied in their own right. The thirteen original essays in this volume range over Plutarch's relations with his contemporaries and his engagement in philosophical debate, his views on social issues such as education and gender, his modes of expression and his construction of argument. Also treated here are Plutarch's understanding and use of his antecedents, literary and historical, and the sophisticated techniques with which he conveyed his own historical vision. It is a theme of the present book that the writings of Plutarch should be seen as the product of a single, extraordinarily capacious, intelligence.

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Here a team of young, established scholars offers new perspectives on poetic texts of wisdom, learning and teaching related to the great line of Greek and Latin poems descended from Hesiod. In previous scholarship, a drive to classify Greek and Latin didactic poetry has engaged with the near-total absence in ancient literary criticism of explicit discussion of didactic as a discrete genre. The present volume approaches didactic poetry from different perspectives: the diachronic, mapping the development of didactic through changing social and political landscapes (from Homer and Hesiod to Neo-Latin didactic); and the comparative, setting the Graeco-Roman tradition against a wider backdrop (including ancient near-eastern and contemporary African traditions). The issues raised include knowledge in its relation to power; the cognitive strategies of the didactic text; ethics and poetics; the interplay of obscurity and clarity, playfulness and solemnity; the authority of the teacher.

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One of classical Greece's most worldly and lucid writers, Xenophon across his many works gave a restless criticism of power: democratic, oligarchic and autocratic. From military campaigns (in which he took part), through the great powers of his day (Sparta, Persia, Athens) to modes of control within the household, he observed intimately and often with partisan passion. In this work a leading French Hellenist, Vincent Azoulay, analyses across Xenophon's diverse texts the techniques by which the Greek writer recommends that leaders should manipulate. Through gifts and personal allure, though mystique, dazzling appearance, exemplary behaviour, strategic absences – and occasional terror, Xenophon analyses ways in which a powerful few might triumphantly replace the erratic democracies and selfindulgent oligarchies of his day.

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This volume builds bridges between usually separate social groups, between different methodologies and even between disciplines. The experimental method is privileged in academic institutions and thus perhaps is subject to clear definitions. It tends to be associated with the scientific and technological. In opposition, the experiential is more rarely defined and is usually associated with schoolchildren, museums and heritage centres; it is often criticised for being unscientific. The introductory chapter of this volume examines the development of these traditionally-assumed differences, giving for the first time a critical and careful definition of the experiential in relation to the experimental. The two are seen as points on a continuum with much common ground. This claim is borne out by succeeding chapters, which cover such topics as textiles, woodworking and stoneworking. The volume, however, is important not only for Egyptology but for archaeological method more generally. It illuminates the pioneering of individuals who founded modern archaeological practice.

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The words 'aristocrats', 'aristocracy' and 'aristocratic values' appear in many a study of ancient history and culture. Sometimes these terms are used with a precise meaning. More often they are casual shorthand for 'upper class', 'ruling elite' and 'high standards'. This book brings together 12 new studies by an impressive international cast of specialists. It demonstrates not only that true aristocracies were rare in the ancient world, but also that the modern use of 'aristocracy' in a looser sense is misleading. The word comes with connotations derived from medieval and modern history. Antiquity, it is here argued, was different. Aristocracy in Antiquity explores and challenges the common assumption that hereditary 'aristocrats' who derive much of their status, privilege and power from their ancestors are identifiable at most times and places in the ancient world. They question, too, the related notion that deep ideological divisions existed between 'aristocratic values', such as hospitality, generosity and a disdain for commerce or trade, and the norms and ideals of lower or 'middling' classes. They do so by detailed analysis of archaeological and literary evidence for the rise and nature of elites and leisure classes, diverse elite strategies, and political conflicts in a variety of states across the Mediterranean. Chapters deal with archaic and classical Athens, Samos, Aigina and Crete; the Greek 'colonial' settlements such as Sicily; archaic Rome and central Italy; and the Roman Empire under the Principate.

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One of the most fertile and fast-developing themes of recent historiography is treated by the 10 new papers in this volume. The history of the ancient world has traditionally been studied with a view to tracing the origins of those grand developments which eventually occurred. The writing of history is often simplified, by modern scholars as by some ancient sources, so as to read almost teleologically. 'Who', it may have been asked, 'wants to understand what did not happen?' But the most respected of our ancient sources, Herodotos, Thucydides, Tacitus and others, frequently describe the actors in their narratives as guided by fears and hopes concerning developments which did not happen, or by reflection on events which had happened but which subsequently did not play out as anticipated. As Tacitus wrote of Boudicca's revolt, the Britons were motivated by past Roman offences 'and the fear of worse'. Such - superficially - sterile, even vague, expectations tend to be neglected in scholarly discourse. But not only were unfulfilled expectations facts in themselves; they generated real actions. Further, even real and quite grand events - such as a battle won in a campaign eventually unsuccessful - are likely to be neglected if they do not seem to have led to larger developments still: in short, if they are inconvenient for a grand narrative or a syllabus. Yet, history cannot be understood without such things. Restoring them to their due prominence offers scope for a wide-ranging scholarly activity which is not only legitimate but necessary.

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Includes essays that examine the techniques of Cicero's verbal aggression.

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Features 17 essays considering the text, interpretation and cultural context of Greek tragedy. This book includes studies of single plays, of major themes in each of the three tragedians, of modern approaches to tragic text and interpretation, and of the genre's social, political and religious background.

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Includes essays from a distinguished international cast that treat Spartas most famous area of activity. This title explores the paradox that Spartas cavalry was an undistinguished institution.

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"New Essays on Plato" assembles nine original papers on the language and thought of the Athenian philosopher. The collection encompasses issues from the Apology to the Laws and includes discussions of topics in ethics, political theory, psychology, epistemology, ontology, physics and ancient literary criticism. The contributions by an international team of scholars deliberately represent a spectrum of diverse traditions and approaches and offer new solutions to a selection of specific problems. Themes include the Happiness and Nature of the Philosopher-Kings, Law and Justice, the Tripartition of the Soul, Appearance and Belief, Image Recognition, the Reality of Change and Changelessness, Time and Eternity, and Aristotle on Plato.

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In this book, a distinguished international cast of scholars discusses models of gesture and non-verbal communication as they apply to Greek and Roman culture, literature and art. Topics include dress and costume in the Homeric poems; the importance of looking, eye-contact, and face-to-face orientation in Greek society; the construction of facial expression in Greek and Roman epic; the significance of gesture and body language in the visual meaning of ancient sculpture; the evidence for gesture and performance style in the texts of ancient drama; the erotic significance of feet and footprints; and, the role of gesture in Roman law. The volume seeks to apply a sense of history as well as of theory in interpreting non-verbal communication. It looks both at the cross-cultural and at the culturally specific in its treatment of this important but long-neglected aspect of Classical Studies.

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This is the latest volume from the International Sparta Seminar, in the series founded by Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson. Figueira is here the editor of sixteen papers; among the authors are most of the world's leading authorities on the history of Sparta. There are particular concentrations of papers on Spartan women; the economy of Sparta; helots and Messenians; Xenophon and Sparta.

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Greek women routinely wore the veil. That is the unexpected finding of this major study. The Greeks, rightly credited with the invention of civic openness, are revealed as also part of a more eastern tradition of seclusion. From the iconography as well as the literature of Greece, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones shows that fully veiling of face and head was commonplace. He analyses the elaborate Greek vocabulary for veiling, and explores what the veil was meant to achieve. He also uses Greek and more recent - mainly Islamic - evidence to show how women could exploit and subvert the veil to achieve eloquent, sometimes emotional, communication.

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Cremna, a ruined city of southern Turkey, has one of the most spectacular sites in Asia Minor, high in the Taurus mountains. For long a stronghold of hellenised Pisidians, Cremna was re-founded as a veteran colony by the emperor Augustus. From the age of Hadrian until the early third century ad the colony enjoyed a boom in public buildings, whose remains still adorn the site. Disaster struck in the late third century when Cremna became the centre for a regional insurrection against Roman rule. Roman forces staged a major siege of the city, and recaptured it in AD 278. A bishopric in Late Antiquity, Cremna was abandoned in the sixth or seventh century. This book gives a detailed reconstruction of Cremna's life and history, based on an intensive survey of the archaeological remains between 1985 and 1987. There is a lively account of the survey itself. The book also traces the story of the rediscovery of the site in 1833 and the contributions of early travellers and archaeologists. There is a full study of the public building programme of Cremna from the first century BC to the third century AD; of the aqueduct, water supply and domestic housing; and of church building in Late Antiquity. The highlight of the archaeological survey was the discovery of numerous remains of the Roman siege of AD 278. The siege of Cremna demonstrates classical techniques of Roman siege warfare, which hitherto were best known from Josephus' account of the Jewish Revolt in AD 66-73. Cremna in Pisidia is written in a style accessible to general readers as well as to specialists. It is not only a definitive account of an important city of the Roman East. It is also a case study exploring many of the common characteristics of civic life in the Roman world.

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How and why did the Greek city-states come into being? The study of Greece in the Archaic period is changing due to new discoveries and interpretations. The 14 essays presented here explore many aspects of this rapidly changing world. The essays detail re-interpretations of archaeological material, emphasize the diversity in patterns of settlement, sancturies and burial practices of the Greek-speaking world and trace the complex trends and motivations underlying the expanding exchange of goods and the settlement of new communities. Local studies of archaeology and iconography revise our image of the peculiarity of Spartan society, and texts, from Homer and Hesiod to a newly discovered poem of Simonides, are given fresh interpretations, as are significant developments in maritime warfare, the roles of literacy and law-making in Crete, the emergence of a less violent lifestyle and the articulation of rational political thought.

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The culture of ancient Greece was thronged with personifications. In poetry and the visual arts, personified figures of what might seem abstractions claim our attention. The Greeks, in Dr Johnson's phrase, 'shock the mind by ascribing effects to non-entity'. This study examines the logic, the psychology and the practice of Greeks who worshipped these personifications with temples and sacrifices, and beseeched them with hymn and prayers. Dr Stafford conducts case-studies of deified 'abstractions', such as Peitho (Persuasion), Eirene (Peace) and Hygieia (Health). She also considers general questions of Greek psychology, such as why so many of these figures were female. Modern scholars have asked, "Did the Greeks believe their own myths?" This study contributes to the debate, by exploring widespread and creative popular theology in the historical period.

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The plays of Seneca the Younger, minister and philosopher under Nero, are today increasingly studied, appreciated - and performed. Here, in a collection of papers from an international cast, scholars explore both established questions, such as the playwright's subtleties of characterisation, his relation to contemporary Roman spectacle and art - and the problems arising in translating him to modern text or stage.

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The Ciris is a small scale epic poem which relates the myth of Scylla, daughter of king Nisus of Megara, who betrayed her homeland for love, and was transformed into a sea-bird. It is one of the poems in the Appendix Vergiliana, a collection that has been ascribed to Virgil as his carmina minora. Earlier scholarship has mostly been concerned to prove that the Ciris is not by Virgil, and then to demonstrate that it is a late and derivative composition of little intrinsic merit. The present book argues that Ciris was composed by a contemporary of Virgil, a product of the golden age of Latin poetry. It aims to bring the poem to the attention of modern readers and to rescue it from ill-deserved neglect. The introduction presents detailed linguistic, literary and historical arguments in support of this early composition date and offers a state-of-the-art account of the textual witnesses and the manuscript tradition. The critical text and apparatus are based on a systematic, first-hand analysis of manuscript evidence as well as the rigorous application of text-critical methods. The new text, as close to the original Ciris as can be achieved, includes over one-hundred and fifty changes from previous editions. By engaging with textual scholarship on the poem from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century, the line-by-line commentary provides a comprehensive guide to the numerous textual problems, and is an important contribution to the stylistic and linguistic analysis of golden-age Latin poetry.

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The pioneering ideas of John Kenyon Davies, one of the most significant Ancient Historians of the past half century, are celebrated in this collection of essays. A distinguished cast of contributors, who include Alain Bresson, Nick Fisher, Edward Harris, John Prag, Robin Osborne, and Sally Humphreys, focus tightly on the nexus of socio-political and economic problems that have preoccupied Davies since the publication of his defining work Athenian Propertied Families in 1971. The scope of Davies’ interest has ranged widely in conceptual, and chronological, as well as geographical terms, and the essays here reflect many of his long-term concerns with the writing of Greek history, its methods and materials. The pioneering ideas of John Kenyon Davies, one of the most significant Ancient Historians of the past half century, are celebrated in this collection of essays. A distinguished cast of contributors, who include Alain Bresson, Nick Fisher, Edward Harris, John Prag, Robin Osborne, and Sally Humphreys, focus tightly on the nexus of socio-political and economic problems that have preoccupied Davies since the publication of his defining work Athenian Propertied Families in 1971. The scope of Davies’ interest has ranged widely in conceptual, and chronological, as well as geographical terms, and the essays here reflect many of his long-term concerns with the writing of Greek history, its methods and materials.

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Greeks – in later times – saw Athens as 'the Hellas of Hellas', but in the classical period many Athenians thought otherwise. Athens might be a school of Hellas, but the school of Hellas was Sparta. Militarily and morally, Sparta was supreme. This book explores how Athenians – ordinary citizens as well as writers and politicians – thought about Sparta's superiority. Nine new studies from an international cast examine how Athenians might revere Sparta even as they fought her. This respect led to Plato's literary creation of fantasy cities (in the Republic and Laws) to imitate Spartan methods. And, after its military surrender in 404 BC, ruling Athenian politicians claimed that their city was to be remodelled as itself a New Sparta.

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Hellenistic courts were centres of monarchic power, social prestige and high culture in the kingdoms that emerged after the death of Alexander. They were places of refinement, learning and luxury, and also of corruption, rivalry and murder. Surrounded by courtiers of varying loyalty, Hellenistic royal families played roles in a theatre of spectacle and ceremony. Architecture, art, ritual and scholarship were deployed to defend the existence of their dynasties. The present volume, from a team of international experts, examines royal methods and ideologies. It treats the courts of the Ptolemies, Seleucids, Attalids, Antigonids and of lesser dynasties. It also explores the influence, on Greek-speaking courts, of non-Greek culture, of Achaemenid and other Near Eastern royal institutions. It studies the careers of courtesans, concubines and 'friends' of royalty, and the intellectual, ceremonial, and artistic world of the Greek monarchies. The work demonstrates the complexity and motivations of Hellenistic royal civilisation, of courts which governed the transmission of Greek culture to the wider Mediterranean world - and to later ages.

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In recent decades, international research on Virgil has been marked, if not dominated, by the ideas of the 'Harvard school' and similar trends, according to which the poet was engaged in an elaborate work of subtle subversion, directed against the new ruler of the Roman world, Octavian-Augustus. Much of Virgil's oeuvre consists prima facie of eulogy of the ruler, and of emphatic prediction of his enduring success: this is explained by numerous modern critics as generic convention, or as studied ambiguity, or as irony.This paradoxical position, which runs against ancient - as well as much modern - interpretation of the poet, continues to create widespread unease. Stahl's new monograph is the most thorough study so far to question modern Virgilian criticism on philological grounds. He bases himself on the internal logic and rhetoric of the Aeneid, and considers also political, historical, archaeological and philosophical subjects addressed by the poem. He finds that the poet has so presented the morality of his central figure, Augustus' supposed ancestor Aeneas, and of those who (eventually) clash with him, Turnus and Dido, as to make it certain that Roman readers and hearers of the poem were meant to conclude in Aeneas' favour. Virgil's intention emerges from Stahl's thorough, ingenious and original argumentation as decisively pro-Augustan. Stahl's work, in short, will not only enliven debate on current critical hypotheses but for many will enduringly affect their credibility.

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Appian of Alexandria lived in the early-to-mid second century AD, a time when the pax Romana flourished. His Roman History traced, through a series of ethnographic histories, the growth of Roman power throughout Italy and the Mediterranean World. But Appian also told the story of the civil wars which beset Rome from the time of Tiberius Gracchus to the death of Sextus Pompeius Magnus. The standing of his work in modern times is paradoxical. Consigned to the third rank by nineteenth-century historiographers, and poorly served by translators, Appian's Roman History profoundly shapes our knowledge of Republican Rome, its empire and its internal politics. We need to know him better. This book studies both what Appian had to say and how he said it; and engages in a dialogue about the value of Appian's text as a source of history, the relationship between that history and his own times, and the impact on his narrative of the author's own opinions - most notably that Rome enjoyed divinely-ordained good fortune. Some authors demonstrate that Appian's text (and even his mistakes) can yield significant new information; others re-open the question of Appian's use of source material in the light of recent studies showing him to be far more than a transmitter of other people's work.

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The Hellenistic courts and monarchies have in recent years become one of the most intensively studied areas of ancient history. Among the most influential pioneers in this process has been the American historian Elizabeth Carney. The present book collects for the first time in a single volume her most influential articles. Previously published in a range of learned journals, the articles are here re-edited, each with a substantive Afterword by the author bringing the discussion up to date and adding new bibliography. The main themes of this volume include Macedonian monarchy in practice and as an image; the role of conspiracies and violence at court; royal women; aspects of court life and institutions.

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Our ideas about ancient Athens are constructed very largely from the writings of Athenian authors. Relatively rare are our sources for how others - whether Greeks, Asiatics or Romans - saw Athens from the outside. Yet we can see that not only did many across the Mediterranean world resist the political power of Athens in countless wars over several centuries, but that there existed an intriguing variety of anti-Athenian ideologies. This volume traces negative thinking about Athens from the late archaic period to Roman times. It challenges the easy modern supposition that Athens was generally seen as the cultural emblem of Greece, and casts light on the thinking of ancient peoples who - nowadays - tend to exist in Athens' shadow.

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First launched at the time of the Athens Olympics, "Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World" has become a classic study in its field. The 15 illustrated chapters of this collection not only explore many aspects of the ancient Olympics and the rich programme of competitive festivals in democratic Athens but also the broader religious, social and political contexts in which sport and festival flourished in ancient Greece. The book shows how the values of sport pervaded Greek society and helped to create fundamental practices of ancient Greek democracy.

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Features the papers that form a case for viewing competition for superiority as a major force in ancient history, including the earliest human societies and the Assyrian and Aztec empires.

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Reveals that at the beginnings of Greek literature Homer's audience is expected to appreciate psychology and self-control of a very high order. This book is suitable for literary analysts, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. It can help them learn about the general level of sophistication of the historic and prehistoric societies.

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A generation ago the Achaemenid Empire was a minor sideshow within long-established disciplines. For Greek historians the Persians were the defeated national enemy, a catalyst of change in the aftermath of the fall of Athens or the victim of Alexander.

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Herakles and Hercules: two names for a figure of pervasive appeal in Antiquity. He was a hero of myth and a god with cult associations. He was ancestor of Macedonian kings, patron of Carthaginian generals and of Roman emperors, and a role model for Stoic philosophers.

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Sparta was admitted by Greeks generally, even by its Athenian enemies, to be the School of Hellas. This title collects, translates and evaluates the sources for Spartan education.

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A substantial collection of original work from an authoritative international cast. Main themes are: the detail and development of Athenian law; the life and work of the Attic orators in their political contexts; the implications of recent papyrus discoveries for the texts of major authors; the intersection of Attic Old Comedy with Athenian law, politics and society.

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This volume offers new research on an essential but often controversial aspect of life in Dynastic Egypt. Its originality lies in combining research which uses Egyptologys traditional strengths, philological and iconographic, with reflections on material culture and on the discipline of Egyptology itself.

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Magic, dreams, and prophecy played important roles in ancient Egypt, as recent scholarship has increasingly made clear. In this volume, eminent international Egyptologists come together to explore such divination across a wide period.

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Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire had far-reaching impact, in space and time. But Macedonian power also brought with it Greeks and Greek culture. This book explores the creation of this Hellenistic world, its cultural, political and economic transformations, and how far these were a consequence of Alexander's conquests.

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Both in antiquity and in modern scholarship, classical Sparta has typically been viewed as an exceptional society, different in many respects from other Greek city-states. This view has come under challenge from revisionist historians, led by Stephen Hodkinson. This book focuses on this historical controversy.

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'The Tiber has been joined by the Orontes'. So wrote the Roman satirist Juvenal, in a complaint about immigration to the Empire's capital. Rome was constantly sustained by immigrants. Some were voluntary: craftworkers, soldiers, teachers and intellectuals. Countless others came as slaves. What happened to them after their arrival? Did they try to keep contact with their homelands? Did they form distinctive communities within Rome? This book is a systematic study of Rome's foreign-born element. The author uses inscriptions and literature to explore the experiences of newcomers to the capital. The results are compared with the colourful Roman stereotypes of different immigrant groups.

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Research into the mechanisms and the morality of Athenian hegemony is now perhaps livelier than ever. Of particular importance are the methods by which Athens drew money from the Aegean world with which to fund a vast fleet, to facilitate her own demokratia and to create ambitious public buildings still visible today. This collection of new studies, inspired and guided by an internationally acknowledged authority on ancient finance, Thomas Figueira, by focusing on how Athens raised finance, sheds light on more familiar questions: How oppressive, or otherwise, was Athens to fellow-Greeks and how did her demands vary over time? Contributors here suggest that Athens may have exercised hegemonic ambitions for longer than usually thought, applying greater experience, and more sensitivity to individual communities.

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The Seleukids, the easternmost of the Greekspeaking dynasties which succeeded Alexander the Great, were long portrayed as weak, doomed to decline after the death of their first king, Seleukos. Yet they succeeded in ruling much of the Near and Middle East for over two centuries. In this book international scholars argue that in the decades after Seleukos the empire developed flexible structures that successfully bound it together in the face of a series of catastrophes. The strength of the Seleukid realm lay not simply in its vast swathes of territory, but rather in knowing how to tie the new, frequently non-Greek, nobility to the king through mutual recognition of sovereignty.

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Existing treatments of Peloponnesian history are fragmented by poleis and period. This book offers a comprehensive narrative of the political history of the entire Peloponnese from 371 to 146 BC, using both literary and epigraphic evidence. In the Hellenistic Peloponnese a long shadow was cast by the geo-political changes of the 4th century. Many continuities trace back to the forty years after Leuktra (371-330). Internal divisions and alliances are interwoven with the interventions of external powers: Thebans, Macedonian rulers, and finally the Romans. The author's findings reveal remarkable consistencies in the history of the Peloponnese. After Sparta's long-invincible army was defeated at the battle of Leuktra, there was much in Sparta's influence which was far from crushed. Not only did Sparta's confidence persist, as she agitated for centuries to renew her power; other states of the Peloponnese conducted their own foreign policies in reaction either to Sparta's decline or, especially, to her resurgence - and to the prospect of further resurgence still. The book reveals continuity as regards Sparta in the foreign policies of Elis, most of Arkadia, Messenia, and the Achaian Confederacy. These definite patterns formed Peloponnesian history far beyond the narrow relation of each community to Sparta: they also shaped the relation of most major Peloponnesian powers to each other.

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The Ancient Lives of the poet Virgil, written in prose (and sometimes in verse), have long enjoyed great, though controversial, influence. Modern critics have often been scornful of these Lives, for trying to construct biography of the poet from allegorical reading of his verse. Yet some elements of the Lives are trusted, and quietly adopted as canonical, most notably the dating of Virgil's death. Some vignettes in the Lives have been cherished for their image of an emotive poet, as when Virgil, by evoking in verse the premature death of Augustus' nephew Marcellus, caused the young man's bereaved mother to faint. Less romantic detail from the Lives, as of Virgil's privileged material circumstances at the heart of the Augustan regime, has been less regarded. The present volume, from a distinguished international team, aims to revalue the Ancient Lives of Virgil from a variety of angles and in a variety of scholarly genres. The allegory within the Lives is here studied for its own sake, and shown to be part of a developed Graeco-Roman school of interpretation. The literary character of the verse Life attributed to Phocas is respectfully analysed. Certain political references within the best-known prose Life, the Suetonian-Donatan', are shown to be apparently independent of allegory, and to be worth prospecting for new information on the poet's personal history. And ideas of Virgil received and developed with brio in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are here traced back to the Ancient Lives of the poet composed in Antiquity.

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