Even in its incomplete form (the final volume is still in preparation), the Commentary on the Amores of Ovid has become a scholarly standard. The introductions to each elegy are succinct, readable and original, and take careful account of relevant modern discussions. The commentary is full of meticulous detail. McKeown's Ovid retains his lightness of touch, however, and poet and commentator share an interest in the wit arising from situation and word-play.

This volume describes the pottery-making depot attached to the pre-Flavian vexillation fortress of Longthorpe near Peterborough and and throws light on the problems of supply of the Roman army during the conquest campaigns. It contains a detailed report on excavations at a group of sites lying east and south-east of the Roman fortress of Longthorpe, Cambridgeshire. A second section reports on the finds from the excavations.

The first volume of this major commentary begins appropriately with Prolegomena, before offering a text of Ovid's Amores . The Prolegomena has eight chapters: Tenerorum Lusor Amorum; Doctrina; Recitation; Chronology; The Arrangement of the Poems; The Title; Metre; The Text. Succinct, clear and learned, these chapters alone form an excellent all-round introduction to Ovid as a love-poet, and touch on many aspects of more general relevance to Augustan and Hellenistic poetry. Even in its incomplete form (the final volume is still in preparation), the Commentary on the Amores of Ovid has become a scholarly standard. The introductions to each elegy are succinct, readable and original, and take careful account of relevant modern discussions. The commentary is full of meticulous detail. McKeown's Ovid retains his lightness of touch, however, and poet and commentator share an interest in the wit arising from situation and word-play.

Phaedra, a disturbing drama of unnatural love, violence, and perverted loyalty, is one of eight surviving tragedies written by the millionaire philosopher and littérateur Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca 1 B.C. - A. D. 65), chief minister to the Emperor Nero. A.J. Boyle's penetrating introduction and extensive notes show why Seneca so deeply influenced Renaissance drama: psychological insight, vivid and powerful verse, highly effective staging (although the question of performance is controversial), and an intellectually demanding conceptual framework. The translation, printed facing the Latin text, aims at verbal and stylistic fidelity. The book is suitable for class use at senior school and undergraduate level, for students of Latin and of classical civilisation/literature in translation. Students of English and of drama will also find it of value.

Aulus Persius Flaccus (A.D. 34-62) wrote in racy conversational Latin six satires countering contemporary vice with Stoic morality; he died young. This is not easy poetry, with its sudden shifts of tone, switches of speaker and situation, vivid evocation of the everyday roman background, and confident handling of philosophical positions. But it is still a good read. This edition prints the Latin text faced with a brilliant verse translation by Guy Lee. The introduction and commentary provided by William Barr make it a suitable class text.

Arnaldo Momigliano is the greatest contemporary scholar of the history and historiography of classical civilization. M.I. Finley has written in the New Statesman that "there is no one alive today who knows the subject as he does."On Pagans, Jews, and Christians is an important addition to his masterly work, bringing together nineteen essays written in the past five years from sources such as The New York Review of Books, The American Scholar, and the Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. It is written with literate clarity and elegance, humane wisdom, and breadth of intellect. The focus of this book is the secular cultures of pagan Greece and imperial Rome, and the religious cultures of Judaism and Christianity which, in turn, grew from and influenced them and the modern world. For Momigliano, religion, secular ideology, and politics live in and illuminate the present. Chapters include "The Jews of Italy" (history viewed in the autobiographical perspective of the Momigliano family), "The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a Universal State," "How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans," and "The Theological Efforts of the Roman Upper Classes in the First Century B.C."A new book by Arnaldo Momigliano is always a scholarly event.

In this volume (in Italian), Professor Marco Fantuzzi presents a critical text of the Adonidis Epitaphium by the Hellenistic Greek poet Bion of Smyrna, who worked between 130-120 BC and 57-55 BC. The text is accompanied by the first major commentary on this poet. The Adonidis Epitaphium , a lament for the 'dying god' Adonis, exercised literary influence both in its own time and during the Renaissance and later. In his detailed line-by-line commentary and three Appendixes Marco Fantuzzi examines Bion's language, metrics, literary antecedents (which range from Homer and the lyric poets through tragedy to Callimachus, Apollonius and the epigrammatists), and finally 'generic' aspirations.

Latin is at the cultural and linguistic heart of Western Europe and the Americas. Learning Latin offers senior school and adult beginners access to this shared heritage. John Randall, over two decades of teaching Latin to beginners at Lancaster University, developed techniques to encourage a rapid grasp of Latin sentence-construction without distortion of the natural Latin word-order. The Learning Latin course evolved from his teaching experience. He collaborated in the final stages of its development with two other experienced Latinists, Jonathan Foster and Duncan Kennedy, who gave the course further rigorous testing at Liverpool University. The course uses only the real Latin of classical authors, both prose and poetry, right from the very first sentence: homo hic ebrius est, from the comic playwright Plautus. Where (minimal) adaptations have been made to the Latin, this is signalled and the original form given in an appendix. The grammatical terminology is traditional, with the addition of two concepts from modern linguistics - 'kernelling' and 'metaphrasing'. The forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs are listed in tables. Learning Latin consists of 25 chapters, for each of which around two hours instruction is envisaged. Its aim is to enable students to make sure progress in the structure of the language, so that after completing the course they can handle Latin prose and simple Latin verse confidently with the aid of standard reference works.

Volume 5 of PLLS was the last of the Liverpool series of seminar volumes. Between 1975 and 1985 the Liverpool Latin Seminar held 52 ordinary meetings and 4 colloquia, involving altogether 156 papers and participants from all over the world. Although many diverse approaches were represented in the Seminar, it was underpinned by two underlying convictions: first, that ancient literature functions at the highest intellectual level and deserves to be studied at that level; and second, that the ancient literatures can only be understood properly against the background of the societies in which they originated.

Composition is so vast that no single book -- let alone a slender volume like this one -- can cover it exhaustively. The principles and views presented here are representative of a variety of approaches to visual design: some are concerned exclusively with form; others with the psychology of form; and still others with ideological properties thought to be inherent in particular choices of visual pattern.

The turning of biblical texts into Latin poetry - biblical paraphrase - was a significant literary activity in late antiquity (third to sixth centuries AD). The most important surviving examples of this form are Juvencus and Sedulius (of the Gospels), Arator (of Acts), "Cyprianus Gallus" (Genesis to Judges), Claudius Marius Victorius (Genesis) and Avitus (parts of Genesis and Exodus). Generally described as biblical epics because they are written in hexameters and imitate pagan epic (especially Virgil), they have also been widely recognized to have drawn for their technique of composition on the rhetorical school exercise of paraphrase. Dr. Roberts analyses in convincing detail how the epic genre interacted with the biblical text through the medium of paraphrase to produce a distinctively Christian literature. He begins by offering the first modern study of paraphrase; two chapters describe its theory and practice, taking into account the standard rhetorical handbooks and recently discovered papyrological evidence. From this perspective, he analyses the types of alterations biblical epic writers made to the biblical text, thereby demonstrating the literary effects they were trying to achieve.

Full report on the 1962-6 excavations of the villa and on the finds, with discussion of the region.

Almost all of the very little we know of Menander comes from the preface of his History. Having studied the law, Menander did not become an advocate, preferring instead to become a 'man-about-town'. He was saved from this life of degradation by the accession of the poetry and history enthusiast Emperor Maurice, and the rewards that being a writer could now bring. Whether his History was commissioned by the Emperor is not known, but he was certainly given some high-level encouragement. Menander's portrayal of Justin is more even-handed than most, but his approval of Tiberius is much more effusive, especially with regard to his Persian policy. Overall, Menander's main interest seems to have been Roman relations with foreign peoples - Persians and Avars, particularly - and his depiction of the Persian state as being equal to Rome was prophetic, both empires disappearing less than a century after he was writing.

The Bellum Jugurthinum is the second historical monograph (the other is the Catilina) written by C. Sallustius Crispus (probably 86-35 B.C. ), a senator, Caesarian general and historian whose political and literary career spanned the violent years which saw the end of the Roman Republic. The Bellum Jugurthinum describes an earlier war fought in North Africa at the end of the 2nd century B.

Sextus Aurelius Victor was an imperial bureaucrat whose life spanned most of the fourth century AD. Harry Bird describes how Victor, a man of humble African origin, acquired by virtue of his education and personal qualities a consular governorship in Pannonia and the urban prefecture at Rome. Victor's short historical monograph, the De Caesaribus , reveals his attitudes towards education, culture, history and politics - attitudes which probably reflect those of a considerable segment of fourth-century society. We can therefore glimpse how the emperors, the senate, the army and the bureaucracy were perceived, how the changing role of Rome was regarded by many in the West, what was thought of certain provinces and their inhabitants and what was considered to be the raison d'être of the writing of history. All these, together with other minor topics, are explored in Harry Bird's thorough investigation into Victor's life and work. This book will interest students of late Latin literature and thought and those involved in late imperial and early medieval history. It should also appeal to scholars engaged in the study of the Historia Augusta, whether they agree with its findings or not.