Early Skepticism and its founder, Pyrrho of Elis, were introduced to the world by the poet and philosopher Timon of Phlius. This is the first book-length study of Timons work in English, and includes a new reconstruction of his most influential poem Silloi . All of the extant fragments are translated and discussed as literature rather than as source material for the history of philosophy. The book concludes with a definition of "skeptical aesthetics" that demonstrates the importance of Timon and early Skepticism to the most influential Hellenistic poets: Callimachus, Theocritus and.

Presents a history of early Buddhism based solely on dateable artefacts and archaeology rather than received tradition, much of which data is provided by studying Pyrrho's history

Recreates the world of ancient Egypt, describes how the Library of Alexandria was created, and speculates on its destruction.

This volume offers the first bilingual edition of a major text in the history of epistemology, Diogenes Laertius's report on Pyrrho and Timon in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Leading experts contribute a philosophical introduction, translation, commentary, and scholarly essays on the nature of Diogenes's report as well as core questions in recent research on skepticism.

Ancient philosophers were very interested in questions about laughter, humor and comedy. They theorized about laughter and its causes, moralized about the appropriate uses of humor and what it is appropriate to laugh at, and wrote treaties on comedic composition. This volume explores themes that were important for ancient philosophers: the psychology of laughter, the ethical and social norms governing laughter and humor, and the philosophical uses of humor and comedic technique.

In Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles, Ashley L. Bacchi reclaims the importance of the Sibyl as a female voice of prophecy, revealing intertextual references and political commentary on second-century events in Ptolemaic Egypt.

This collection of twenty essays examines the art, profession and idea of the actor in Greek and Roman antiquity, and has been commissioned and arranged to cast as much interdisciplinary and transhistorical light as possible on these elusive but fascinating ancient professionals. It covers a chronological span from the sixth century BC to Byzantium (and even beyond to the way that ancient actors have influenced the arts from the Renaissance to the twentieth century) and stresses the huge geographical spread of ancient actors. Some essays focus on particular themes, such as the evidence for women actors or the impact of acting on the presentation of suicide in literature; others offer completely new evidence, such as graffiti relating to actors in Asia Minor; others ask new questions, such as what subjective experience can be reconstructed for the ancient actor. There are numerous illustrations and all Greek and Latin passages are translated.

Callimachus has usually been seen as the archetypal ivory-tower poet, the epitome if not the inventor of the concept of art for art's sake, author of erudite works written to be read in book form by fellow poets and scholars. Abundant evidence, much of it assembled here for the first time, suggests a very different story: a world of civic festivals rather than books and libraries, a world in which poetry and poets played a central and public role. In the course of the argument, Cameron casts fresh light on the lives, dates, works, and interrelationships of most of the other leading poets of the age. Another axiom of modern scholarship is that the object of Callimachus's literary polemic was epic. Yet Cameron shows that the thriving school of epic poets celebrating the wars of Hellenistic kings that has so dominated modern study simply never existed. Elegy was the fashionable genre of the age, and the bone of contention between Callimachus and his rivals (all fellow elegists) was the nature of elegiac narrative. A final chapter sketches some of the implications of this revised view of Callimachus and his world for the interpretation of Roman, especially Augustan, poetry. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Flying to Heaven to demand an end to war, building Cloudcuckooland in the sky, descending to Hades to retrieve a dead tragedian - such were the cosmic missions on which Aristophanes, the father of comedy, sent his heroes of the classical Athenian stage. The wit, intellectual bravura, political clout and sheer imaginative power of Aristophanes' quest dramas have profoundly influenced humorous literature and satire, but this volume, which originated at an international conference held at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University in 2004, is the first interdisciplinary study of their seminal contribution to the evolution of comic performance. Interdisciplinary essays by specialists in Classics, Theatre, and Modern Literatures trace the international performance history of Aristophanic comedy, and its implication in aesthetic and political controversies, from antiquity to the twenty-first century. The story encompasses Jonson's satire, Cromwell's Ireland, German classicism, British Imperial India, censorship scandals in France, Greece and South Africa, Brechtian experiments in East Berlin, and musical theatre from Gilbert and Sullivan to Stephen Sondheim.