In this collected volume fourteen experts in the fields of Classics and Ancient History study the textual strategies used by Herodotus and Livy when recounting the disastrous battles at Thermopylae and Cannae. Literary, linguistic and historical approaches are used (often in combination) in order to enhance and enrich the interpretation of the accounts, which for obvious reasons confronted the authors with a special challenge. Chapters drawing a comparison with other battle narratives and with other genres help to establish genre-specific elements in ancient historiography, and draw attention to the particular techniques employed by Herodotus and Livy in their war narratives.

Emotions are at the core of much ancient literature, from Achilles’ heartfelt anger in Homer’s Iliad to the pangs of love of Virgil’s Dido. This volume applies a narratological approach to emotions in a wide range of texts and genres. It seeks to analyze ways in which emotions such as anger, fear, pity, joy, love and sadness are portrayed. Furthermore, using recent insights from affective narratology, it studies ways in which ancient narratives evoke emotions in their readers. The volume is dedicated to Irene de Jong for her groundbreaking research into the narratology of ancient literature.

This book explores the imaginative processes at work in the artefacts of Classical Athens. When ancient Athenians strove to grasp ‘justice’ or ‘war’ or ‘death’, when they dreamt or deliberated, how did they do it? Did they think about what they were doing? Did they imagine an imagining mind? European histories of the imagination have often begun with thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. By contrast, this volume is premised upon the idea that imaginative activity, and especially efforts to articulate it, can take place in the absence of technical terminology. In exploring an ancient culture of imagination mediated by art and literature, the book scopes out the roots of later, more explicit, theoretical enquiry. Chapters hone in on a range of visual and verbal artefacts from the Classical period. Approaching the topic from different angles – philosophical, historical, philological, literary, and art historical – they also investigate how these artefacts stimulate affective, sensory, meditative – in short, ‘imaginative’ – encounters between imagining bodies and their world. The Imagination of the Mind in Classical Athens offers a ground-breaking reassessment of ‘imagination’ in ancient Greek culture and thought: it will be essential reading for those interested in not only philosophies of mind, but also ancient Greek image, text, and culture more broadly.

The book lays bare the narrative form of Silius’ text. It focuses on the phenomenon of ambiguity due to the epic’s constant oscillation between fact and fiction, highlighting Roman triumph in defeat and defeat through triumph.

Plundering and taking home precious objects from a defeated enemy was a widespread activity in the Greek and Hellenistic-Roman world. In this volume literary critics, historians and archaeologists join forces in investigating this phenomenon in terms of appropriation and cultural change. In-depth interpretations of famous ancient spoliations, like that of the Greeks after Plataea or the Romans after the capture of Jerusalem, reveal a fascinating paradox: while the material record shows an eager incorporation of new objects, the texts display abhorrence of the negative effects they were thought to bring along. As this volume demonstrates, both reactions testify to the crucial innovative impact objects from abroad may have.

This book examines passages in Plutarch’s works that foil expectations and whose silence invites closer examination. The contributors question omissions of authors, works, people, and places, and they examine Plutarch’s reticence to comment where he usually would.

This book considers cultural identity and power relations in early fourth-century BCE Greece through a reading of Xenophon's historical narratives, the Hellenica, Anabasis and Cyropaedia. These texts depict conflicts between Greek states, conflicts between Greeks and non-Greeks, and relations between the elite individual and society. In all three texts, politically significant moments are imagined in visual terms. We witness spectacles of Spartan military victory, vistas of Asian landscape or displays of Persian imperial pomp, and historical protagonists are presented as spectators viewing and responding to events. Through this visual form of narration, the reader is encouraged imaginatively to place themselves in the position of the historical protagonists. In viewing events from different perspectives, and therefore occupying multiple, often conflicting political positions, the reader not only experiences the problems faced by historical actors, but becomes engaged in the political conflicts acted out in the narratives. The reader is prompted to take pleasure in the sight of Panhellenic achievement, but also to witness the divisions and conflicts between Greeks on class and ethnic lines. Similarly the reader is invited to identify with spectacular Greek and non-Greek figures of power as emblems of Greek imperial potential, but also to see through the eyes of those communities subjugated at their hands. The depiction of spectacles and spectators draws the reader into an active participation in the ideological contradictions of their time, in a period when Panhellenic aspiration co-existed with hegemonic competition between Greek states, and when Greeks could be both beneficiaries and victims of imperialism.

'An exciting, highly informative and also enjoyable read: Shepherd writes with clarity and verve... this book should find its way into the hands of all schools, universities and lovers of Herodotus.' - Peter Jones, Classics for All Weaving together the accounts of the ancient historian Herodotus with other ancient sources, this is the engrossing story of the triumph of Greece over the mighty Persian Empire. The Persian War is the name generally given to the first two decades of the period of conflict between the Greeks and the Persians that began in 499 BC and ended around 450. The pivotal moment came in 479, when a massive Persian invasion force was defeated and driven out of mainland Greece and Europe, never to return. The victory of a few Greek city-states over the world's first superpower was an extraordinary military feat that secured the future of Western civilization. All modern accounts of the war as a whole, and of the best-known battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, depend on the ancient sources, foremost amongst them Herodotus. Yet although these modern narratives generally include numerous references to the ancient authors, they quote little directly from them. This is the first book to bring together Herodotus' entire narrative and interweave it with other ancient voices alongside detailed commentary to present and clarify the original texts. The extracts from other ancient writers add value to Herodotus' narrative in various ways: some offer fresh analysis and credible extra detail; some contradict him interestingly; some provide background illumination; and some add drama and colour. All are woven into a compelling narrative tapestry that brings this immense clash of arms vividly to life. 'Distinguished military historian of the Persian Wars William Shepherd [...] shows himself to be also a most sensitive interpreter of those Wars' original historian Herodotus. With Shepherd as our guide and Herodotus by our side this key moment in West-East relations is given its full cultural and strategic due.' Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge

This handbook brings together 42 contributions by leading narratologists devoted to the study of narrative devices in European literatures from antiquity to the present. Each entry examines the use of a specific narrative device in one or two national literatures across the ages, whether in successive or distant periods of time. Through the analysis of representative texts in a range of European languages, the authors compellingly trace the continuities and evolution of storytelling devices, as well as their culture-specific manifestations. In response to Monika Fludernik’s 2003 call for a "diachronization of narratology," this new handbook complements existing synchronic approaches that tend to be ahistorical in their outlook, and departs from postclassical narratologies that often prioritize thematic and ideological concerns. A new direction in narrative theory, diachronic narratology explores previously overlooked questions, from the evolution of free indirect speech from the Middle Ages to the present, to how changes in narrative sequence encoded the shift from a sacred to a secular worldview in early modern Romance literatures. An invaluable new resource for literary theorists, historians, comparatists, discourse analysts, and linguists.

Explores the relationship between the present tense and the conceptualisation of 'presence' in Greek from a cognitive perspective.