In the first collection to be devoted to this subject, a distinguished cast of contributors explores expurgation in both Greek and Latin authors in ancient and modern times. The major focus is on the period from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, with chapters ranging from early Greek lyric and Aristophanes through Lucretius, Horace, Martial and Catullus to the expurgation of schoolboy texts, the Loeb Classical Library and the Penguin Classics. The contributors draw on evidence from the papers of editors, and on material in publishing archives. The introduction discusses both the different types of expurgation, and how it differs from related phenomena such as censorship.

In the first collection to be devoted to this subject, a distinguished cast of contributors explores expurgation in both Greek and Latin authors in ancient and modern times. The major focus is on the period from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, with chapters ranging from early Greek lyric and Aristophanes through Lucretius, Horace, Martial and Catullus to the expurgation of schoolboy texts, the Loeb Classical Library and the Penguin Classics. The contributors draw on evidence from the papers of editors, and on material in publishing archives. The introduction discusses both the different types of expurgation, and how it differs from related phenomena such as censorship.

This volume is the first to adopt systematically a comparative approach to the role of ancient texts and traditions in early modern scholarship, science, medicine, and theology. It offers a new method for understanding early modern knowledge.

In 1679 Hadriaan Beverland (1650-1716) was banished from the province of Holland. Why was this humanist scholar exiled from one of the most tolerant parts of Europe in the seventeenth century? To answer this question, this book places Beverland’s writings on sex, sin, and scholarship in their historical context for the first time. Beverland argued that sexual lust was the original sin and highlighted the importance of sex in human nature, ancient history, and his own society. His audacious works hit a raw nerve: Dutch theologians accused him of atheism, he was abandoned by his humanist colleagues, and he was banished by the University of Leiden. By positioning Beverland’s extraordinary scholarship in the context of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, this book examines how his radical studies challenged the intellectual, ecclesiastical, and political elite, providing a fresh perspective upon the Dutch Republic in the last decades of its Golden Age.

The Classics were core to the curriculum and ethos of the intensely homosocial Victorian and Edwardian public schools, yet ancient homosexuality and erotic pedagogy were problematic to the educational establishment, which expurgated classical texts with sexual content. This volume analyses the intimate and uncomfortable nexus between the Classics, sex, and education primarily through the figure of the schoolmaster Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge (1890-1918), whose clandestine writings not only explore homoerotic desires but also offer insightful comments on Classical education. Now a marginalized figure, Bainbrigge's surviving works - a verse drama entitled Achilles in Scyros featuring a cross-dressing Achilles and a Chorus of lesbian schoolgirls, and a Latin dialogue between schoolboys - vividly demonstrate the queer potential of Classics and are marked by a celebration of the pleasures of sex and a refusal to apologize for homoerotic desire. Reprinted here in their entirety, they are accompanied by chapters setting them in their social and literary context, including their parallels with the writings of Bainbrigge's contemporaries and near contemporaries, such as John Addington Symonds, E. M. Forster, and A. E. Housman. What emerges is a provocative new perspective on the history of sexuality and the place of the Classics within that history, which demonstrates that a highly queer version of Classics was possible in private contexts.

It is unusual for a single scholar practically to reorient an entire sub-field of study, but this is what Chris Stray has done for the history of UK classical scholarship. His remarkable combination of interests in the sociology of scholars and scholarship, in the history of the book and of publishing, and (especially) in the detailed intellectual contextualisation of classical scholarship as a form of classical reception has fundamentally changed the way the history of British classics and its study is viewed. A generation ago the history of classical scholarship still consisted largely of accounts of particular scholars and groups of scholars written by other scholars from a broadly biographical and ‘heroic individual’ perspective. In these works scholars often sought to find their own place in the great tradition, choosing to praise or blame those whose work they admired or deprecated, and to identify with particular schools or trends, and there were few attempts to provide a broader and less prosopographical perspective. Almost all the chapters in the volume originated as papers at a conference in honour of the honorand, and have been improved both by discussion there and by the rigorous peer-review process conducted by the two experienced editors. It covers various aspects of classical reception, with a particular focus on the history of scholars, their institutions, and their writings; the main focus is on the UK, but there are also substantial engagements with continental Europe and (especially) the USA; the period covered runs from the Renaissance to the present. The cast contains a number of world-famous names. Unusually, the volume also contains an essay by the honorand, but we are very keen to include this, especially as it focusses on the topic of scholarly collaboration.

Classics in Extremis reimagines classical reception. Its contributors explore some of the most remarkable, hard-fought and unsettling claims ever made on the ancient world: from the coal-mines of England to the paradoxes of Borges, from Victorian sexuality to the trenches of the First World War, from American public-school classrooms to contemporary right-wing politics. How does the reception of the ancient world change under impossible strain? Its protagonists are 'marginal' figures who resisted that definition in the strongest terms. Contributors argue for a decentered model of classical reception: where the 'marginal' shapes the 'central' as much as vice versa – and where the most unlikely appropriations of antiquity often have the greatest impact. What kind of distortions does the model of 'centre' and 'margins' produce? How can 'marginal' receptions be recovered most effectively? Bringing together some of the leading scholars in the field, Classics in Extremis moves beyond individual case studies to develop fresh methodologies and perspectives on the study of classical reception.

Greek and Roman Classics in the British Struggle for Social Reform presents an original and carefully argued case for the importance of classical ideas, education and self-education in the personal development and activities of British social reformers in the 19th and first six decades of the 20th century. Usually drawn from the lower echelons of the middle class and the most aspirational artisanal and working-class circles, the prominent reformers, revolutionaries, feminists and educationalists of this era, far from regarding education in Latin and Greek as the preserve of the upper classes and inherently reactionary, were consistently inspired by the Mediterranean Classics and contested the monopoly on access to them often claimed by the wealthy and aristocratic elite. The essays, several of which draw on previously neglected and unpublished sources, cover literary figures (Coleridge, the 'Cockney Classicist' poets including Keats, and Dickens), different cultural media (burlesque theatre, body-building, banner art, poetry, journalism and fiction), topics in social reform (the desirability of revolution, suffrage, poverty, social exclusion, women's rights, healthcare, eugenics, town planning, race relations and workers' education), as well as political affiliations and agencies (Chartists, Trade Unions, the WEA, political parties including the Fabians, the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Labour Party). The sixteen essays in this volume restore to the history of British Classics some of the subject's ideological complexity and instrumentality in social progress, a past which is badly needed in the current debates over the future of the discipline. Contributors include specialists in English Literature, History, Classics and Art.

Horace’s book of seventeen iambi (by convention called ‘Epodes’) contains some of the most complex and controversial poetry of his entire career. This new interpretation exposes a poet in the throes of the torment of writing. Horace crafts an artwork which reveals the agony of expressing agony. He struggles to find the words as he gives voice to the anticipation of grief. The poet’s inner demons conspire against him. Anything that could go wrong, does go wrong. At the end we realise that Horace might have never wanted to write this book in the first place. But the fate of this writer is to be forever persecuted by his own writing. Horace’s iambi are methodically stitched together. Meter, intertextuality, wordplay, and theme combine strategically to provide an utterly compelling and vivid watercolor in words. It is a work of art which is able to hold its place amongst any top tier poetry, in any language, in any era.

For much of western history, the achievements of classical antiquity were seen as unsurpassable, and works by Latin and Greek authors were viewed as treasure troves of information still useful for contemporary society. By the late seventeenth century, however, the progress of scientific discoveries and the new paradigms of rationalism and empiricism meant the authority of the ancients was called into question. Those working on the classical past and its literature debated new ways of defending their relevance for society. The different approaches to classical literature defended in these debates explain how the writings of ancient Greece and Rome could become a vital part of eighteenth-century culture and political thinking. Floris Verhaart analyses these eighteenth-century debates about the value of classics, arguing that the Enlightenment, though often seen as an age of reason and modernity, in fact continuously sought inspiration from preceding traditions and ages such as Renaissance humanism and classical antiquity. The volume offers an interesting parallel with the modern day, in which the relationship between 'experts' and the general public has become the topic of debate and many academics, especially in the humanities, face pressure to explain how their work benefits society at large.