Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Οδυσσέας Γκιλής. Encyclopedia Ancient Literature. Απoσπάσματα. Θεσσαλονίκη 2008
Οδυσσέας Γκιλής. Encyclopedia Ancient Literature. Απoσπάσματα. Θεσσαλονίκη 2008
Οδυσσέας Γκιλής
Επιμέλεια συλλογής, επεξεργασίας και ταξινόμησης υλικού
ENCYCLOPEDIA
ANCIENT
LITERATURE
ΑΠΟΣΠΑΣΜΑΤΑ
ΜΕ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ
ΚΕΙΜΕΝΑ
Θεσσαλονίκη 2008
2
Index 695
Ancient 2008 21
Ancient Greek 43
Aristottle 135
2008 αναφορές 23
Greek αναφορές 1324
Greek language 32
Greek literature 18
Greek word 5
Helleistic-sm 36
Herodotus 169
Homer 235
Plato 201
Thucidides 14
Word economy 12
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Press, 2006.
Lind, Richard E. Ā e Seat of Consciousness in
Ancient Literature. Jeff erson, N.C.: McFarland &
Company, 2007.
Louden, Bruce. Ā e Iliad: Structure, Myth, and
Meaning. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006.
MacDonald, Marianne, and J. J. Michael Walton.
Ā e Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman
Ā eater. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Marcus, Joyce. Mesoamerican Writing Systems: Propaganda,
Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1992.
1935.
Fung, Sydney S. K., and S. T. Lai. 25 Tang Poets:
Index to En glish Translations. Hong Kong: Chinese
University Press, 1984.
Gonda, Jan, ed. A History of Indian Literature. 10
vols. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1973– [work
ongoing]. [Vols. 1–3 deal with the literature of
ancient India.]
Hospers, J. H., ed. A Basic Bibliography for the Study
of Semitic Languages. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1973–
74. [Contains sections of interest to literary
scholars about such languages as Akkadian,
Sumerian, Anatolian, Ancient Persian, dialects
of Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic, among others,
together with bibliographies of studies of literary
works in the Semitic languages. Th e second volume
focuses on Arabic in all its varieties in all
times and places.]
Kai- chee Wong, Pung Ho, and Shu- leung Dang. A
Research Guide to En glish Translation of Chinese
Verse (Han Dynasty to T’ang Dynasty). Hong
Kong: Chinese University Press, 1977.
L’Année philologique: Bibliographie critique et analytique
de l’antiquité gréco- latine. Edited by J.
Marouzeau et al. Paris: Societe d’Éditions Les
Belles Lettres, 1928–. [Th e most complete source
for scholarly literature concerning the Greek and
Latin classical world, this bibliography has been
published annually since 1928. Starting with volume
36, an American branch commenced publication
at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Notes to
the entries in the American version appear in
En glish.]
Lynn, Richard John. Guide to Chinese Poetry and
Drama. 2nd ed. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984.
Mamola, Claire Zebroski. Japa nese Women Writers
in En glish Translation: An Annotated Bibliography.
2 vols. New York: Garland, 1989–92. [Volume
1 addresses belle lettres composed between
794 and 1987 c. e.]
Marks, Alfred H., and Barry D. Bort. Guide to Japanese
Prose. 2nd ed. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984.
Miner, Earl Roy, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E.
10
__
James Wyatt Cook
Encyclopedia of Ancient Literature
Copyright © 2008 by James Wyatt Cook
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in
any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information
storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the
publisher. For
11
information contact:
Facts On File, Inc.
An imprint of Infobase Publishing
132 West 31st Street
New York NY 10001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cook, James Wyatt.
Encyclopedia of ancient literature / James Wyatt Cook.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8160-6475-5 (hc : alk. paper) 1. Literature,
Ancient—Encyclopedias. I. Title.
PN621.C66 2008
809'.1—dc22 2007016016
Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in
bulk quantities for
businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our
Special Sales
Department in New York at (212) 967- 8800 or (800) 322- 8755.
You can Ā nd Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http:// www
.factsonĀ le .com
Text design by Rachel L. Berlin
Cover design by Salvatore Luongo
Printed in the United States of America
VB BVC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Th is book is printed on acid- free paper and contains 30% post-consumer
recycled content.
For our newest granddaughter,
Shaina Anne Cook
__
__ CONTENTS
Ac know ledg ments v
Introduction vii
Writers Covered, by
Language of Composition xi
Authors’ Time Line xv
Entries A to Z 1
Selected Bibliography 691
Index 695
v
__ AC KNOW LEDG MENTS
Large projects need lots of help. As is always the
12
xi
__
WRITERS COVERED,
BY LANGUAGE OF
COMPOSITION
GREEK
19
Achilles Tatius
Ælius Aristides
Aeschines
Aeschylus
Aesop
Agathias of Myrina
Alcaeus (Alkaios)
Alkman (Alcman)
Andocides (Andokides)
Antiphon of Rhamnus
Anyte
Apollonius of Rhodes (Apollonius Rhodius)
Aratus of Soli (Aratos of Soli)
Archestratus
Archilochus
Archimedes
Aristides of Miletus
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arrian (Flavius Arianus)
Athanasius
Athenaeus
Barnabas
Basil, St.
Bion of Smyrna
Callimachus
Callinus of Ephesus
Chrysostom, St. John
Clemens Romanus
Ctesias of Cnidos
Demosthenes
Dinarchus
Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus
Diodorus Siculus
Diogenes Laertius
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Diphilus
Donatus, Ælius
Empedocles
Epicharmus of Cos
Epicurus
Epigenes the Sicyonian
Eratosthenes
20
Erinna
Euclid
Euhemerus
Euripides
Eusebius of Caesarea
Flavius Josephus (Josephus, Joseph ben Matthias)
Galen (Claudius Galenus)
Gorgias of Leontium
Gregory of Nazianzen, St.
Hanno
Hecatæus of Miletus
Hedyla
Heliodorus of Emesa
Hephæstion of Alexandria
Hermes
Heraclitus of Ephesus
Herodotus
Hesiod
Homer
Iambichlus of Syria
Ignatius
Isæus
ISocrates
Jerome, St. (Eusebius Hieronymus Stridonensis)
Julian (Flavius Claudius Julianus, Julian the
Apostate)
Julius Pollux (Polydeuces of Naucratis, Egypt)
Korinna
Leonidas of Tarentum
Libanius of Antioch
Longus
Lucian of Samosata
Lycophron
Lysias
Meleager of Gadara (Meleagros)
Melinno
Menander
Mimnermus of Colophon
Moiro
Moschus of Syracuse
Musæus 1
Musæus 2
Nicander of Colophon
21
Nossis
Oppian of Corycus
Origen
Orpheus
Palæphatus
Papias
Parthenius of Nicaea
Pausanias
Philemon
Philetas of Cos (Philitas of Cos)
Philostratus, L. Flavius (Philostratus the
Athenian)
Photius
Phrynicos of Athens
Pindar
Plato
Plotinus
Polyænus
Polycarp
Porphyry
Praxilla
Proclus of Byzantium
xii Encyclopedia of Ancient Literature
Procopius
Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus)
Pythagoras of Samos
Quadratus
Sappho
Simonides of Ceos
Socrates
Solon
Sophocles
Strabo
Telesilla
Th aletus of Crete
Th emistius Euphrades
Th eocritus
Th eognis
Th eophrastus of Eresus
Th espis of Ikaria
Th ucydides
Tyrtaeus
Xenophon of Athens
22
Xenophon of Ephesus
Zosimus
Writers Covered, by Language of Composition xiii
Tacitus
Terence (Publius Terentius Afer)
Tibullus, Albius
Turnus
Valerius Flaccus
Valerius Maximus
Varro, Marcus Terentius
Virgil
AUTHORS’
TIME LINE
Dates Author
Before 2350 b.c.e. Anon. Egyptian Book
of the Dead (Reu Nu
Pert Em Hru [Chapters
of Coming Forth by
Day])
ca. 2300 b.c. e. Anon. Ā e Gilgamesh
Epic (Sumerian
language)
ca. 2250 b.c. e. Hammurabi, King of
Babylon
fl . ca. 1500 b.c. e. Vyāsa (Krishna
Dvaipāyana, Vedavyā)
ca. 1300 b.c.e. Ā e Gilgamesh Epic
(Akkadian Language)
fl . ca. 1250 b.c. e. Orpheus
fl . eighth Homer
century b.c.e. Hesiod
fl . seventh Alkman
century b.c.e. Th aletas of Crete
fl . ca. 684 b.c. e Callinus of Ephesus
fl . ca. 680 b.c. e. Archilochos
b. ca. 650 b.c. e. Sappho (Psappho)
fl . ca. 647 b.c. e. Tyrtaeus
ca. 630–ca. 580 b.c. e. Alcaeus (Alkaios)
ca. 630–ca. 553 b.c.e. Zoroaster (Zarathustra
Spitama)
Dates Author
fl . sixth century b.c. e. Aesop
Epigenes
23
the Sicyonian
Musæus 1
Th espis of Ikaria
ca. mid- sixth century Th eognis
b.c.e.
fl . ca. 594 b.c. e. Solon
fl . ca. 590 b.c. e. Mimnermus of
Colophon
ca. 563–ca 483 b.c. e. Buddha
ca. 556–468 b.c. e. Simonides of Ceos
551–479 b.c.e. Confucius
fl . ca. 550–500 b.c. e. Pythagoras of Samos
fl . ca. 536 b.c. e. Anacreon
525–455 b.c.e. Aeschylus
ca. 518–ca. 438 b.c. e. Pindar
512–476 b.c. e. Phrynicos of Athens
fl . 500 b.c. e. Hanno
Hecatæus of Miletus
Heraclitus of Ephesus
fl . ca. late sixth Epicharmus of Cos
or early Ā ft h (Epicharmus of Sicily)
century b.c.e
ca. Ā ft h century b.c.e. Myrtis
Korinna
Dates Author
Praxilla
Telesilla
496–406 b.c.e. Sophocles
fl . ca. 485– Gorgias of Leontium
ca. 380 b.c. e. (Leontini, Sicily)
484 or 480–406 b.c.e. Euripides
ca. 480–ca. 425 b.c.e. Herodotus (Herodotos)
ca. 480–ca. 411 b.c.e. Antiphon of Rhamnus
ca. 480–390 b.c. e. Mozi (Modi, Moti,
Mo Tzu)
469–399 b.c.e. Socrates
ca. 468–ca. 396 b.c.e. Andocides (Andokides)
ca. 460–ca. 401 b.c. e. Th ucydides
458–379 b.c.e. Lysias
ca. 448–ca. 380 b.c.e . Aristophanes
fl . ca. 440 b.c. e. Empedocles
ca. 436–338 b.c. e. ISocrates
ca. 429–ca. 357 b.c.e. Xenophon of Athens
24
Moiro
Moschus of Syracuse
Nossis
fl . ca. 294– Leonidas of Tarentum
ca. 281 b.c. e.
fl . ca. 290–223 b.c. e. Song Yu (Sung Yü)
ca. 287–212 b.c. e. Archimedes
ca. 285–194 b.c.e. Eratosthenes
254–184 b.c. e. Titus Maccius Plautus
239–169 b.c. e. Quintus Ennius
fl . ca. 230 b.c. e. Livius Andronicus
fl . 225–200 b.c. e. Pictor, Quintus Fabius
201–169 b.c.e. Jia Yi
ca. 200–ca. 118 b.c. e. Polybius
fl . second or third Xenophon of Ephesus
century b.c.e
fl . second Melinno
century b.c.e
ca. 195–ca. 159 b.c. e. Terence (Publius Terentius
Afer)
ca. 180–102 b.c. e. Lucilius
177–119 b.c.e. Sima Xiangru (Ssŭ- ma
Hsiang- ju)
d. 149 b.c. e. Mei Sheng
fl . ca. 146 b.c. e. Nicander of Colophon
xvi Encyclopedia of Ancient Literature
Dates Author
ca. 145–86 b.c.e. Sima Qian (Ssŭ- ma
Ch’ien)
116–27 b.c.e. Marcus Terentius Varro
106–43 b.c.e. Marcus Tullius Cicero
ca. 100–44 b.c. e. Gaius Julius Caesar
(Gaius Iulius Caesar)
fl . ca. 100 b.c. e. Bion of Smyrna
Meleager of Gadara
(Meleagros)
fl . Ā rst century b.c.e. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus
Sulpicia
Turnus
Valerius Maximus
ca. 99–55 b.c. e. Lucretius (Titus
Lucretius Carus)
26
Dates Author
ca. 660–ca. 733 c. e. Yamanoue no Okura
ca. 718–785 c. e. Ōtomo no Yakamochi
fl . seventh Kakinomoto no
century c.e. Hitomaro
fl . seventh Princess Nukata
century c.e. Yosami
ca. 810–ca. 893 c. e. St. Photius
fl . eighth century c. e. Lady Kasa
Authors’ Time Line xix
Book 12
Book 12, opens with Turnus’s raging. He is anxious
to confront Aeneas and settle the matter of
his marriage to Lavinia once and for all. King
Latinus attempts, not for the fi rst time, to dissuade
Turnus. Ā e king patiently explains that
fate has already determined the outcome of the
entire matter, that it is fruitless to off er further
re sis tance to the Trojans, and Latinus blames
himself for letting Turnus and the queen dissuade
him from a course of action upon which he had
already embarked. Turnus, however, will not turn
aside from his own fatal course and insists on a
duel. Even Queen Amata tries to stop him, but to
no avail. Turnus sends his challenge to Aeneas:
Let the issue be decided by single combat.
Now, however, Juno intervenes once more. She
counsels a minor deity, the Italian goddess of
fountains, Juturna—who is also Turnus’s sister—
to save her brother. Ā is Juturna does by making
a sign appear in the skies. A Latin soothsayer,
Aeneid 19
Tolumnius, interprets the sign to mean that the
Latins will defeat the Trojans, and he summons
the Latins to battle, upsetting the preparations for
the single combat. Virgil takes an authorial gamble
in once more deferring the climax of the
action. As the battle begins to rage, Aeneas tries
to calm his Trojans by saying that the right of battle
is now his and his alone. At that moment,
however, an arrow pierces the Trojan commander.
Aeneas quits the fi eld to tend his wound, and
the battle once more rises to fever pitch amid
scenes of mayhem and carnage. Turnus deals out
death across the plain.
Distressed by her son’s wound, Venus heals
Aeneas magically. Totally restored to full strength,
Aeneas arms for battle and, seeking out Turnus,
sends one Latin hero aft er another to the world of
shadows. Juturna tries to protect her brother by
becoming his charioteer and keeping him away
from Aeneas, and many a Trojan and Latin fall as
the heroic enemies, hindered by their divine protectors,
63
the case was not heard for six years, it had the
practical eff ect of blocking Demosthenes’ honor.
When the case did fi nally reach the docket, however,
the court dismissed its technical correctness
and found for Demosthenes on grounds of pop ular
sympathy.
Disappointed and exasperated, Aeschines left
Athens and died in exile. In the judgment of history,
despite genuine abilities and an accurate
view of long- range Greek aff airs, Aeschines
allowed his vanity and his admiration for Philip
and his son Alexander to cloud his judgment and
render him ineff ectual.
Bibliography
Aeschines. Aeschines. Translated by Chris Carey.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
———. Ā e Speeches of Aeschines. Translated by
Charles Darwin Adams. New York: G. P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1919.
Harris, Edward Monroe. Aeschines and Athenian
Politics. New York: Oxford University Press,
1995.
Aeschylus (525–455) Greek dramatist
Born to a distinguished Athenian family in an
era before Athens achieved preeminence in the
Grecian world, Aeschylus, who fl ourished during
the rise of Athens, performed notable military
ser vice at the battles of Salamis (480 b.c. e.)
and Marathon (490 b.c .e.). What little we know
Aeschylus 21
of his life is contained in a short biographical
preface to a manuscript of one of his plays.
Beyond the information included there, a small
body of unconfi rmed tradition also surrounds
his personal history. He is thought, perhaps on
the basis of the focus on religion and philosophy
that one fi nds in his works, to have been a member
of the Pythagorean brotherhood—a group
interested in science, philosophy, and religion.
He may have been initiated into the secrets of
the Eleusinian mysteries in connection with the
worship of the god Dionysus, and may also have
been charged with impiety for having revealed
67
28 Akkadian
name is more widely recognized than that of
Alcaeus, more of the latter’s poetry has survived.
Ā e fragmentary remains of Alcaeus’s verse suggest
that he did not principally celebrate the passion
of love, as did his more famous female
contemporary. Instead, in addition to the hymns
that he addressed to Apollo, Hermes, Hephaestus,
and the demi- gods Castor and Polydeuces,
we fi nd fragments of po liti cal verse written to
oppose the despotic ruler Myrsilus. Ā is po litical
stand resulted in a period of exile for the
poet. Aft er Myrsilus was overthrown, however,
Alcaeus’s friend Pittakos came to power. Criticizing
his erstwhile comrade’s exercise of authority
resulted in two more periods of exile for the
poet, though in the end Pittakos and Alcaeus
apparently reconciled.
In addition to his po liti cal diatribes, some of the
fragments of Alcaeus’s verse celebrate the joys of
wine and drinking. Wine, he suggests, is an antidote
to grief. A soldier’s delight in weaponry also
appears in descriptions contained in a fragment of
verse called “Ā e Armory.” In it Alcaeus describes
“shining helmets” with “horse- hair plumes.” He
details polished bronze armor designed to protect
the chest and back and also that worn on the lower
leg. Ā e armor is “strong to stop arrows and spears.”
He cata logues broad swords and shields in the
same fragment of verse (Z 34).
A celebrated description of a shipwreck in a
storm survives in a pair of fragments preserving
parts of the same poem: “Ā e Ship: I and II.”
Alcaeus invented a three- line stanza—the alcaic
stanza. (See qua nt it at ive ve r se.)
Alcaeus also produced mythological narratives
drawn from the familiar material surrounding
the Trojan War. An especially long (49- line)
middle section of such a narrative survives in
which the poet recounts the violation of the Trojan
princess and priestess Cassandra by the Greek
warrior Ajax.
Ā e fact that Sappho and Alcaeus were contemporaries
82
alphabet
Originally developed to represent the consonant
sounds of ancient Hebrew and related tongues
like Phoenician, Moabite, and Aramaic, the
alphabet, which fi rst appeared around 1000 b.c.e.,
achieved a distinct advantage over other systems
of writing such as c uneif or m and hier ogl yphs.
Using a fi nite number of symbols to represent,
fi rst, the consonants and initial vowels of a language
and later the interior and fi nal vowels as
well, the alphabet proved much more effi cient
than systems of writing that represented ideas, as
did many hieroglyphs and cuneiform markings;
that used symbols that represented syllables; or
that combined all three systems. Instead of needing
thousands of ideograms, as Chinese did and
does, for instance, to represent words and phrases,
the alphabet can infi nitely recombine its relatively
few symbols to represent all the possible
sound combinations of a language.
From its place of origin in the vicinity of ancient
Israel, the alphabet seems to have been carried by
Phoenician traders and others throughout the
Mediterranean world, eventually becoming the
accepted system for representing languages as disparate
as Greek, Latin, Hungarian, Rus sian, Arabic,
and Korean. Over time, the forms of letters
modifi ed, and additions were introduced to represent
sounds that occurred in some languages but
had been absent from the tongues earlier represented.
Ā us, though the alphabet was invented
once and once only, those who later adopted it
made modifi cations. St. Cyril, for example, changed
the form of some letters and introduced some new
ones when he brought his Cyrillic alphabet to the
speakers of Slavic languages, including Rus sian.
Sometimes, too, the form of letters modifi ed, or
the sounds they represented shift ed, as was the
case in the development of the runic alphabet to
represent the Scandinavian languages of the Germanic
heroic age.
Writing seems to have been twice introduced
into the ancient Greek language. It appeared fi rst
87
Bibliography
Davenport, Guy, trans. Archilocus, Sappho, Alkman:
Ā ree Lyric Poets of the Late Greek Bronze Age.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Lattimore, Richmond. Greek Lyrics. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1960.
Will, Frederic. Archilochos. New York: Twayne Publishers,
1969.
Archimedes (ca. 287–212 BC) Greek prose
writer
Ā e ancient Greeks ascribed a broader purview to
the fi eld of literature than we moderns are accustomed
to do, and writers on astronomy, physics,
and mathematics were numbered among those
whose works the ancients considered literary. A
giant among the early practitioners of those sciences
was Archimedes.
He was born at Syracuse on Sicily, and his
genius served his native city and posterity in
practical as well as theoretical ways. On the theoretical
side, Archimedes discovered the mathematical
relationship between the volumes of the
cylinder and the sphere and the way to mea sure
the circle; he wrote about the spiral, about cones
and spheres, and on statics and hydrostatics as
well. He also calculated the value of pi (π), working
it out to many places.
To assist in the study of astronomy, Archimedes
invented and fabricated a pair of astronomical
globes. One was apparently stationary; the
other appears to have been mechanized and to
have illustrated the movements of the heavens
as Archimedes understood them. Ā is globe was
taken as booty by the Roman general Marcellus
aft er the sack of Syracuse in 212 b.c. e.
In an ancient shipwreck discovered off the
Mediterranean Island of Antikythera in 1971, a
mechanism for a similar moving globe was found.
Studied by Derek De Solla Price, the “Antikythera
mechanism,” as it is known, proved to be
“an arrangement of diff erential gears inscribed
and confi gured to produce solar and lunar positions
in synchronization with the calendar year.”
142
lovers.
Ovid is fair- minded as he advises women
about amatory matters. He instructs them to
avoid the very men for whom the fi rst two books
of Ā e Art of Love proff ers advice. If, however, a
woman has taken a lover, Ovid counsels her to
address him as “she.” Women should also avoid
appearing melancholy; lovers do not fancy melancholy
mistresses.
Changing subjects, Ovid declares that, just as
a lawyer’s business is the law, a poet’s business is
love. Ā erefore, women should be kind to poets.
Ā ey should also encourage their lovers’ ardor
by assuring them that rivals for their aff ections
exist.
Ā e poet also instructs women in the art of
deceiving any watchers their husbands may set
over them. Letters written in invisible ink made
from milk exemplify such a tactic. Others include
messages composed in the bath and concealed in
one’s bosom. Watchers, moreover, can be drugged,
Ovid suggests.
Ovid interrupts his advice to women to recount
the monitory episode of Procris, who became
jealous of the breeze when she heard her husband
call upon it by its name, Aura. Ā inking the cooling
wind her rival, the jealous Procris followed
her husband Cephalus on the hunt and surprised
him in the bush. Ā inking her an animal, Cephalus
accidentally slew her. Avoid jealousy, Ovid
implies.
Returning to his task, Ovid advises women to
delay granting their lovers their favors. When
delay is past, however, he off ers advice concerning
the positions that women of diff erent sizes
and shapes might most eff ectively choose for
lovemaking. He concludes by advising his female
pupils to acknowledge him by his name—
“Naso”—as their master.
Bibliography
Ovid. Ā e Art of Love and Other Poems. Translated
by J. H. Mozeley. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1947.
167
seek truth, those who seek bliss, and those who are
wise. Few people achieve wisdom. Ā ose who do
achieve it recognize that all things come into being
during the eons- long “day of Brahman,” and all
things cease to be during the eons- long “night of
Brahman.”
Now Krishna reveals to Arjuna his true nature,
at once immanent and transcendent. He describes
himself as “the ritual . . . the sacred gift . . . the
holy food . . . the sacred fi re . . . and off ering . . .
the father and mother of the world . . . the goal
of knowledge . . . Om . . . the supporter . . . the
refuge . . . the lord . . . the silent witness . . . the
origin . . . the dissolution . . . the store house and
the seed . . . death and salvation . . . what is and
what is not.”
All who worship, Krishna says, even though
they may not know it, worship him. Ā erefore
Arjuna should immerse himself in thoughts of
Krishna.
Convinced by what Krishna has taught him,
Arjuna confesses his faith. Yet he still wishes
to know more and asks Krishna to explain his
divine powers. Krishna agrees to explain them
“in orderly form.” Ā ese powers are many,
involving numerous manifestations in the form
of gods, scriptures, such human faculties as
intelligence, and such animal faculties as consciousness.
Krishna is priest and worshipper, the
sun and the ocean, the Himalayas, the fi g tree,
the best of horses, the strongest of elephants, the
thunderbolt, the crocodile, the Ganges, the fi rst
principle, and so forth. It is suffi cient for Arjuna,
however, simply to know that Krishna exists and
that he sustains the world.
Converted now, Arjuna prays that Krishna
will reveal himself in his supreme form. Krishna
Bhagavad Gita 89
endows Arjuna with godlike vision so that he
may see Krishna in his true form and glory. In the
lengthy passage that follows, Arjuna describes
what he sees, and the awesome nature of his
vision destroys the inner peace he had achieved,
205
historians.
Ā e cruelty of punishment in the Roman
world, especially as it was practiced by deranged
biography, Greek and Roman 91
men such as the tyrant emperor Nero, gave rise to
another subcategory of biography—works focusing
on the fortitude of the martyred as they died.
Oft en, as in the case of Christian martyrs, these
works expanded to include discussion of the
exemplary lives the faithful led before being crucifi
ed, torn by wild beasts, burned, or sacrifi ced
in unequal contests against professional gladiators.
Not all martyrs, however, were by any means
Christian. Death was a regular part of Roman
spectacle, and philosophical pagan martyrs had
also died during the pre- Christian era. Accounts
of such heroic passings became pop u lar, and
when the arenas did not fulfi ll the public appetite
for stories of martyrdom, the genre moved from
biography to fi ctive romance.
Bibliography
Caesar, Julius. Ā e Conquest of Gaul. Translated by
F. P. Long. New York: Barnes and Noble Books,
2005.
———. Ā e Gallic War. Translated by H. J. Edwards.
Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2006.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Cicero on Oratory and Orators.
Translated and edited by J. S. Watson. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois Press, 1986.
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers
[Greek and En glish]. Translated by R. D. Hicks. 2
vols. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925.
Jerome, Saint. On Illustrious Men. Translated by
Ā omas P. Halton. Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 1999.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Translated by Maxwell
Stansforth. London and New York: Penguin
Books, 2005.
Nepos, Cornelius. A Selection, Including the Lives of
Cato and Atticus. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Pelling, C. B. R. “Biography, Greek” and “Biography,
Roman.” In Ā e Oxford Classical Dictionary,
210
defect.
Ā e fourth document in the ancient corpus of
essential Confucian thought is a historical text
chronicling important events that occurred in the
feudal fi efdoms of China between the years 722
and 481 b.c. e. Ā is work suff ered the same fate at
the hands of the fi rst Qin emperor as did the Book
of History. Portions survived, however. Ā e principle
surviving section is entitled Spring and
Autumn Annals (Chunqiu). Other portions of the
original document are preserved in the sixth
chapter of Grand Rec ords of the Historian, or Shiji.
A historian, Sima Q ia n (Ssu- ma Ch’ien), compiled
these rec ords about 100 b.c. e. Bits of this
document have also been recovered from tombs
and elsewhere as inscriptions on bamboo strips.
Apart from Confucius, the most respected of
the ancient Chinese ethical thinkers is Mencius
(Mengzi or Meng Tzu). Mencius diff ered from
Confucius in that the former thought that human
nature was fundamentally good while Confucius
thought it bad but remediable. Like Confucius,
Mencius traveled about looking unsuccessfully
for a ruler willing to implement his social programs.
Also like Confucius, Mencius’s followers
compiled a posthumous anthology of his sayings,
Ā e Mencius (Mengzi), and recorded his conversations
with rulers. Not highly regarded at fi rst,
Mencius came to be ranked second only to Confucius
among the ancient sages, and the record
of his life and sayings came to be viewed as an
ancient Chinese classic. His life overlapped that
of Pl at o in the West for a period of some two
de cades.
Ā e names of some other ancient Chinese
writers and the subjects they wrote about have
survived. Ā ese include SunZi, KuanZi, WuZi,
and WenZi—writers on war, po liti cal philosophy,
and related subjects. Although the extant documents
bearing the names of these authors have
been shown to be forgeries written long aft er
their ostensible authors had died, the forgeries
prove instructive nonetheless.
270
in En glish translation.
Bibliography
Chrysostom, St. John. Apologist: John Chrysostom.
In Ā e Fathers of the Church. Vol. 48. Translated
by Margaret A. Schatkin and Paul W. Harkins.
New York: Ā e Fathers of the Church, 1980.
———. Commentary on St. John the Apostle and Evangelist,
Homilies 1–47. In Ā e Fathers of the Church.
Vols. 33 and 41, 1957–1960. Translated by Sister
Ā omas Aquinas Goggin. Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 2000.
———. Discourses against Judaizing Christians. In
Ā e Fathers of the Church. Vol. 68. Translated by
Paul. W. Harkins. Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 1984.
———. Homilies on Genesis 18–45. Translated by
Robert C. Hill. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University
of America Press, 1986.
———. On Repentance and Almsgiving. Translated
by Gus George Christo. Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 1998.
Laistner, Max Ludwig Wolfram. Christianity in
Pagan Culture in the Later Roman Empire,
Together with St. John Chrysostom’s Address on
Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring
up their Children. Translated by Max Ludwig
Wolfram. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1951.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106–43 BC)
Roman prose writer and poet
Cicero was the eldest son of a well- to- do landowning
family of Roman citizens of the knightly
class at Arpinum in Volscia. Nevertheless, he did
not belong to the class of hereditary aristocrats,
the optimates, from which members of the Roman
Senate were customarily drawn. Following a fi rstrate
education in philosophy and rhetoric at Rome
and in 2008 , and following a period of military
ser vice, Cicero entered fi rst the Roman court system
and then senatorial politics. He did so as a
“new man”—someone principally supported by
his merits rather than by his lineage. He subsequently
rose to become respected and revered as a
278
Book 3
As book 3 opens and the fl eet sails eastward, Pompey
watches Italy recede. Overwhelmed with weariness,
he falls asleep, and a frightful vision of his
deceased but still jealous spouse, Caesar’s daughter
Julia, visits him. She tells him that she has special
permission to dog his footsteps wherever they
may lead until he rejoins her in the underworld,
leaving behind his current wife, Cornelia.
Having safely crossed the Adriatic, Pompey
reaches Epirus—a country to the northwest of
ancient 2008 . Lucan now turns his attention to
Caesar. First Caesar sends a fl eet with infantry
and cavalry to pacify Sicily, for Rome’s supply of
grain depended on Sicilian production. Ā en
Caesar marches his forces toward the almost
deserted city of Rome. Such senators as are still in
residence assemble to hear a “private citizen’s”
demands. Lucan sneeringly reports their cowardice.
Ā ey are willing to make Caesar a king or
a god and to subscribe to any cruelty he might
infl ict. Lucan, who hates Caesar, notably remarks
that Caesar is ashamed to impose things that
Rome would have assented to.
Metellus the tribune, however, does try to
stop Caesar’s raiding the Temple of Saturn and
confi scating its trea sure. Lucan, sneering again,
notes that no degree of honor could rouse the
Romans to resist, but money has found a defender.
Caesar refuses to have Metellus killed, and
the consul Cotta fi nally dissuades Metellus from
continuing his futile eff orts. Caesar then pillages
the temple of the accumulated Roman wealth of
centuries.
Civil War 129
Now Lucan lists the allies who have rallied to
Pompey’s cause throughout the eastern Mediterranean,
Asia, and North Africa, salting his
account with ethnographic and geographic details
about the peoples in his cata logue. He credits the
Phoenicians, in passing, for the invention of the
al phab et . News of the Civil War has spread as
far as India. Once again, however, the poet sounds
287
earlier.
Ā e infl uence of Greek and Roman comedy
has survived, informing the theater of both the
Middle Ages and the Eu ro pe an Re nais sance. It
remains alive and well today, as one can observe
in tele vi sion’s situational comedy and, on Broadway,
in such productions as A Funny Ā ing Happened
on the Way to the Forum.
Bibliography
Charney, Maurice, ed. Comedy: A Geographic and
Historical Guide. Westport, Conn.: Praeger,
2005.
150 comedy in 2008 and Rome
Conte, Gian Biagio. Latin Literature: A History.
Translated by Joseph B. Solodow, Don Fowler,
and Glenn W. Most. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994.
Eschenburg, J. J. Manual of Classical Literature.
Translated by N. W. Fiske. Philadelphia: E. C.
and J. Biddle, 1850.
Henderson, Jeff rey, ed. and trans. Aristophanes. 4
vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1998–2002.
Menander of Athens. Dyskolos, or Ā e Man who
didn’t Like People. Translated by W. G. Arnott.
London: University of London, Athelone Press,
1960.
Slavitt, David R., and Palmer Bowie, eds. Plautus: Ā e
Comedies. 4 vols. Translated by Constance Carrier
et al. Complete Roman Drama in Translation.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Terence. Works: En glish and Latin. Translated by
John Barsby. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2001.
Wilson, Peter. “Powers of Horror and Laughter: Ā e
Great Age of Drama.” In Literature in the Greek
and Roman Worlds: A New Perspective. Edited
by Oliver Taplin. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Commentary on the Gallic Wars Julius
Caesar (ca. 50 . . )
Jul ius Ca esa r ’s own account of his campaigns
against the Celtic tribes of Gaul, apart from being
332
state.
A master of ritual, music, and statecraft , Confucius
rose through a succession of increasingly
responsible positions in state government and
also founded a school that accepted promising
children even if they could not pay tuition. Civil
strife in Lu prompted Confucius to seek more
peaceable circumstances in the state of Qi (Chi)
(517 b.c.e.). Ā ere he sometimes taught and sometimes
consulted with the local grandee. Lack of
regular employment, however, constrained him
to wander with his disciples in search of patronage
for a period of 14 years. He traveled to the
states of Wei, Chen, Cai, Chu, and Song. Confucius
had hoped to fi nd a nobleman somewhere
who would be willing to implement Confucian
theories of statecraft , but in that hope he was
disappointed.
Finally, in 484 b.c .e, Confucius was recalled
to Lu. Ā ere too, however, his hopes to fi nd a
government willing to follow his precepts were
disappointed. He spent the rest of his life teaching
and perhaps editing older writings, though it
166 Confucius
is not altogether clear whether or not he himself
wrote down his own teachings. Aft er his death,
certainly, his students collected his precepts and
reminiscences about his actions in what became
known as the Anal ec t s of Confucius.
Confucius’s personal life during his last few
years was tragic. Both his wife and his only child,
a son named Li, predeceased him, in 485 and 483
b.c .e., respectively, as did two of his closest disciples,
Yan Hui and Zi- lu. Li’s son Zi- si, however,
survived his father, and through him until at
least the year 1997, the direct line of Confucius
survived through 77 generations. It may still
survive.
Aft er Confucius’s death in 479, all of his disciples
save one observed a three- year period of
mourning. One disciple, Zi- gong, maintained a
solitary vigil in a shack at Confucius’s graveside
for three additional years.
365
Book 5
As Book 5 gets underway, Boethius asks about
chance and has Lady Philosophy resolve an issue
that forever troubles the minds of faithful believers.
How can a God who is all good and all powerful
allow awful things, like the death that awaits
Boethius, to happen to good people, one of whom
Boethius knows himself to be?
With respect to chance, Lady Philosophy
denies that there is any such thing as a causeless
event. At the same time, she defi nes chance as an
unexpected event arising as a result of a coincidence
of unrelated causes. She also defends the
notion of freedom of the human will, which, if it
chooses to follow the path established for it by
Divine Providence, paradoxically achieves greater
freedom. If, however, it pursues a lesser good—
its own will for itself—it paradoxically loses
freedom.
Boethius then turns to a vexing perplexity.
How can one reconcile the freedom of the human
will and God’s universal foreknowledge? Ā e
answer, again, has to do with the diff erence
between the perceptions of the creature, living in
time, and the Creator, extant in an extratemporal
and changeless now. For the creature, existence
has a beginning and an end, and the events of life
proceed serially. For the Creator, existence is and
simultaneously was and will always be. Ā us,
events pass before the mind of the creature as fi lm
passes through a camera, one frame at a time, so
to speak. For the Creator, instead, all events are
always there, and because of the Creator’s goodness,
all apparent evil and injustice are always
and continually reconciled into the good and justice
of a perfect creation. Ā e concept of foreknowledge,
therefore, is a function of the creature’s
perception of the passage of time. Ā e Creator’s
knowledge is at the same time perfect, timeless,
170 Consolation of Philosophy, The
and immediate. Evil, fi nally, is nothing—a shadow,
an appearance.
Ā us, Lady Philosophy has consoled Boethius.
373
No delay is possible.
Socrates, however, has already thought through
his circumstances and is proof against Crito’s
importunities. He argues that what the many
have to say is of no consequence and that what
Crito and Socrates must decide is whether or not
it is right for Socrates to escape. Crito concurs.
Socrates then leads Crito to see that, even if the
law has condemned the phi los o pher in error,
since he has agreed to abide by the judgment of
the law, it is still a wrong to evade the law’s force.
Socrates assumes the justice of the laws of
Athens, and points out that, if the now condemned
man fi nd the laws of Athens onerous, he
has had 70 years to pull up stakes and look for a
more congenial dwelling. Since he has not, indeed
since he prefers death to exile, he has supported
the Athenian law and must perforce obey it. If he
fails to do so, Socrates thinks, by his example he
will make himself guilty of just what he has been
charged with—corrupting the youth.
Having fi nished his arguments, Socrates
invites Crito to speak if he has anything further
to say in objection to what the phi los o pher has
said. Crito can off er no argument. Socrates advises
that they continue along the way that God has
led them.
Bibliography
Plato. “Crito.” In Plato with an En glish Translation.
Translated by Harold North Fowler. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952.
Ctesias of Cnidos (fl. ca 400 BC) Greek
historian
Born in Asia Minor, the Greek physician Ctesias
practiced for an extended period at the Persian
court at Susa. He also undertook to write a history
of Assyria and Persia and another of India,
all in the Ionian dialect of Greek. Ā ough fragments
of his single- scroll Indica and his 23- scroll
Persica survive, we know his work principally
from an abstract prepared in the late ninth century
c .e. by the patriarch of Constantinople,
Photius.
379
216 Dyskolos
speaks the epilogue, calling on the audience to
applaud.
Dyskolos is the only virtually complete example
of Greek New Comedy to survive. It confi rms
scholary conclusions already reached on the basis
of surviving lists of stage props and on surviving
imitations of Greek comedies by such Roman
comic writers as Pla utu s and Ter ence. Th e
plots of the plays oft en involved more- or- less
clueless young people in love but faced with diffi -
culties oft en posed by members of the older generation.
Th ey and the minor characters were
drawn from a reservoir of such stock characters
as cooks, slaves, parasites, and diffi cult old persons.
A good deal of slapstick, like that in the
fi nal act of Dyskolos, was also featured in the
plays. All diffi culties were always resolved by a
happy ending. Th e frequent rediscovery of fragments
of new comedy off er hope that other, more
complete examples will be discovered.
See also c omedy in Greece a nd Rome.
Bibliography
Handley, E. W., ed. Th e Dyskolos of Menander.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1965.
Menander of Athens. Dyskolos, or Th e Man who
Didn’t Like People. Translated by W. G. Arnott.
London: University of London, Athelone Press,
1960.
Dyskolos 217
218
E
Eclogues Virgil (37 . . )
A collection of 10 dactylic hexameter (see qua ntit
ati v e ve r se) poems in the pa sto r a l mode,
most of Vir gil ’s Eclogues celebrate the attractions
of a stylized, poetic, and largely mythical rural
life. Th e fi rst and the ninth of them, by contrast,
are autobiographical in their content. Following
Jul ius Ca esa r ’s assassination, the Roman conspirators
against him, Brutus and Cassius, were
defeated at Philippi. To pay the victorious troops,
469
Bibliography
Callimachus. Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select
Fragments. Translated by Stanley Lombardo and
Diane Rayor. Baltimore, Md., and London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1988.
230 epigram, Greek and Latin
Eschenburg, J. J. Manual of Classical Literature.
Philadelphia: E. C. & J. Biddle, 1850.
Taplin, Oliver. Literature in the Greek and Roman
Worlds: A New Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Epigrams Callimachus (third century BC)
In his own epoch, Ca l l ima c hus was most
famous, though not universally admired, for his
epigr a ms. Of these brief, pithy, oft en humorous,
and always polished poems, 64 examples survive.
Th ese treat a broad array of subjects in an
equally broad spectrum of emotional registers
always perfectly suited to both the subject and
the way the poet handles it, as we see in examples
of brief epitaphs. Th e fi rst of these, epigram
1, evokes the poet’s sadness as he recalls his
friend and brother poet, Herakleitos of Halikarnassos,
whose poems are deathless “nightingales”
that are beyond the grasp of the king of
the underworld. Th e fourth of Callimachus’s
epigrams briefl y reports the pious act of Leontikos,
who found an anonymous body washed
up on the beach and, in an act of piety, buried it.
Th e tears Leontikos shed, however, were for his
own mortality.
Among the epitaphs in Callimachus’s collection
of funereal epigrams we fi nd number 16—an
epitaph for the common grave of the poet’s father
and son. It evokes sympathy for the poet’s ironic
double loss through its understatement. Th e following
epitaph, epigram 17, is Callimachus’s
own. In it, he reports: “. . . his line / was verse,
his diversion wine.” It is a nonsentimental, minimalist,
and amusing autobiographical verse
epitaph.
Some of the epigrams contain quite elaborate
jokes. In epigram 24, for instance, a passerby
496
Publishers, 1969.
epistles See fiction a s epistle, r omance,
and er otic p r ose.
“Epistle to Diognetus, The” (ca. 150–190
. .)
Not incorporated into the body of material comprising
the writings of the Apos to li c Fat her s
of t he Chr ist ian Chur c h until the 18th century,
the 12- chapter epistle to the pagan Diognetus
includes 10 chapters of a letter answering the
inquiries of its otherwise unknown addressee.
Diognetus wanted to know more about the Christians
and their God. He queried their reasons for
rejecting the religious observances of both the
Jews and the Greeks. He wondered why, if the
beliefs of the Christians were true, they had
appeared so comparatively late in history. Th e
polished answer to many of his questions is one of
the distinguished literary documents of late
second- century Christianity.
Chapters 11 and 12, however, were clearly written
by a diff erent though also uncertain author.
As historian of Christianity Bart D. Ehrman tells
us, they appear to derive from a homily rather
than from a letter. As compared with the epistle’s
earlier sections, chapters 11 and 12 take a more
generous view of the Jewish religion as a precursor
of Christianity, especially as regards the validity
of Jewish law and the prophets.
Aft er greeting Diognetus and encouraging
him to prepare his mind to receive information
that will make him a new person, the author
points out that the gods Diognetus currently
worships have been fabricated by artisans and
are deaf, blind, dumb, and decaying. Th ose made
of stone and ceramics, moreover, get neglected
while those made from precious metals are
safeguarded.
Th e letter’s author next points out where he
thinks the Jews go astray in such matters as “their
anxiety over food,” superstitions concerning the
Sabbath, and the practice of circumcision.
In the fi ft h chapter, the author enumerates the
503
divinity.
Th e Zoroastrian universe revealed in the
verses is a place of a positive, divinely burning
fi re. Yet the Zoroastrians also envision a hell—a
place of darkness inherited by the unrigh teous.
Th e prayers of the prophet are not limited to
requests for the souls of human beings. Th e souls
of “the mother cow” and of the ox are proper
objects of the deity’s concern and protection.
In a series of 20 questions with multiple parts,
Zoroaster raises the issues that have always concerned
people: Who ordered the stars in their
courses? Who keeps the earth in its place? Who
established the winds and the waters? On what
grounds do armies gain victories? Have false
gods ever been good masters?
In the same section, Zoroaster also raises some
questions that may imply a period of exile in his
own lifetime. He complains of being cast out and
prays for friends and succor. He prays that his
enemies’ hostility may recoil upon them. He
excoriates false gods, blaming them for defrauding
mankind of happiness and immortality.
Th e prophet also includes some private prayers,
invoking the deity in the hope that his daughter
and her husband will achieve happiness in their
marriage.
Bibliography
Th e Hymns of Zoroaster. Translated into French by
Jacques Duchesne- Guillemin and from French
to En glish by M. Henning. Boston: Beacon Press,
1963.
Geography (Geographika) Strabo
(ca. 7 . .)
Destined to become one of the premier geographers
of the ancient world, Strabo (ca. 64 b.c. e.–
ca. 24 c.e.) was born to a prominent family of
Roman citizens in the town of Amasia in Pontus.
He studied at Rome and traveled in Egypt, Italy,
2008 , and Asia, noting as he traveled some the
material that he would or ga nize into his valuable
Greek- language Geographika, or Geography.
Preserved in 17 books, with a short section
546
Geography 257
Central to Strabo’s thinking is the po liti cal fact
that the city of Rome holds sway over much of the
known world. Th us, a major geopo liti cal theme
runs through the whole of his work. He is an
imperial apologist who lived under the reigns of
August us Ca esa r and Tiberius. Moreover, the
audience that Strabo envisioned for his work was
one composed principally of civil servants with
administrative responsibilities for the areas he
discussed.
He admits the limitations under which he
labors. Th ough he says he has traveled further to
the east than any of his pre de ces sor geographers,
he confesses that some had been further west. He
has not traveled in Italy very far north of Rome,
and he has seen neither northern Eu rope nor Britain.
He neglects, moreover, most reliable, fi rsthand
Roman accounts of the places he discusses,
though he did look at Juliu s Ca esa r ’s work and
at a few others. His fi rsthand acquaintance with
2008 is likewise very limited.
Strabo concludes his second book by briefl y
noting nations, seas, and countries and by making
remarks on their climates. In the third book,
beginning in the west with Iberia, Strabo undertakes
his account of Europe—an account that will
occupy him through the 10th volume. He relies
chiefl y on sources external to himself. In the
fourth book, he turns his attention to Gaul. Th e
Roman administrative divisions of its Gallic
empire or ga nize his discussion. He also looks at
Britain, Th ule, and the Alps. Julius Caesar and
Pol ybius are his principal guides.
Italy and its outlying islands are the subjects of
Strabo’s fi ft h and sixth books. He ends this section
with a description of the magnitude of the
Roman Empire. One of Strabo’s modern translators,
W. Falconer, observes that the section on
Italy is marred by his failure to consult the best
authorities available to him.
In his seventh book, Strabo turns his attention
to the tribes whose homelands border the Danube.
548
and Roman
Greek and Roman knowledge of geography, at
fi rst undoubtedly local and very limited, expanded
with seafaring and with increasingly far- fl ung
military and trading expeditions. One can draw a
useful estimate of the ancient, well- informed,
Mediterranean dwellers’ assessment of the extent
and character of the world they lived in by considering
a map of the world drawn by the Egyptian
geographer and astronomer Pt ol emy in the
second century c.e.
On Ptolemy’s world map, the westernmost
landmarks are the Fortunate Isles (the Canary
Islands). In the northwest, Th ule is mentioned—
perhaps identical with the Shetland Islands,
though some have argued for Iceland. Much of the
Scandinavian peninsula is absent from Ptolemy’s
map, as are place names to the north of Scythia
(now Rus sia and former Soviet dependencies), a
region Ptolemy thought to be inhabited by a people
called the Hyperboreans, whom Vir gil mentions
in his Geo r gi c s. Amber traders from what is
today’s Lithuania had traveled south at least as far
as the edges of Greek and Roman spheres of infl uence
by Ptolemy’s time, but perhaps the scholar
was unaware of those merchants or of their
origins.
As one might expect, the Eu ro pe an and African
areas around the shores of the Mediterranean,
including Asia Minor, Eu rope as far north and
west as military expeditions had penetrated, and
Asia as far east as Persia (Iran), are fairly accurately
depicted on Ptolemy’s map. East from that point,
however, matters become a good deal more speculative.
Ptolemy at least has a notion of the locations
of places as far distant to the North and East as
Kashgar (now the Chinese city of Shufu) and
beyond that to the northwestern corner of China
near the terminus of the Great Wall. Th e most
easterly point on Ptolemy’s map is also the southernmost
point in Cambodia. Ptolemy had no idea
what ever of the existence of the Pacifi c Ocean.
Moving back west at a southerly latitude about
551
264 Georgics
the last eclogue to the fi rst and bringing his composition
full circle.
Bibliography
Virgil. Eclogues and Georgics. Translated by James
Rhodes. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications,
2005.
———. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI. Translated
by H. Rushton Fairclough. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1967.
Gilgamesh Epic, The (Sumerian language:
ca. 2300 BC; Akkadian language: ca. 1300
BC)
Among the remarkably diverse c uneif or m literary
remnants of ancient Sumer, both king lists
and fragments of stories attest to the historic
existence of Gilgamesh, a king of the Sumerian
city of Uruk. Th e state of development of those
fragmentary tales suggests that, even as early
2300 b.c. e., verse accounts of the historic activities
of Gilgamesh and mythical stories about his
superhuman accomplishments were beginning to
coalesce into a kind of proto-epic. Of this Sumerian
version, 175 lines survive. A millennium
later, the pro cess of development begun in Sumer
had resulted in a full- blown epic written in the
Akk a dian tongue. Episodes also appear in Hittite
poems.
Th e credit for preservation of Th e Gilgamesh
Epic belongs in large part to Assurbanipal, the last
great ruler of the Assyrian Empire. A formidable
military leader who subdued Egypt, he also was
intensely interested in antiquities—particularly
literary ones. He therefore dispatched scholars to
search the long- neglected and sometimes buried
libraries of Babylon, Nippur, and Uruk. Assurbanipal
commissioned his scholars to translate what
they discovered into the language he spoke, Akkadian.
Among the works thus preserved, of course,
was Gilgamesh. Except for the emendations of
modern scholars, who rediscovered the texts at
Nineveh in the 19th century and who continue to
work at correcting and enlarging them with newly
563
they kill all the robbers. He and his in- laws next
determine to reward Lucius. Th ey decide to set
him free so that he can roam about performing
stud ser vice, and they entrust a herdsman with
the task. Th e herdsman and his wife, however,
yoke Lucius to a grinding mill and set him to
crushing grain—including the barley that his
grateful would- be benefactors had meant for
Lucius’s feed.
Golden Ass, The 275
When Lucius is utterly worn out from overwork,
the herdsman at last sets him free. Just as
he is about to begin his career as a stud, however,
the resident stallions object and attack him. Th en
he is forced to carry wood down the mountain,
directed by an uncaring boy who overloads him,
beats him bloody, and ties a knot of thorns to his
tail so that his suff ering is constant. Th en the boy
sets Lucius on fi re, and only a puddle of muddy
water saves him.
Finally, the boy accuses Lucius of attempting
to rape human beings, and the herdsman instructs
the boy to destroy the ass. As the boy sharpens the
sacrifi cial axe, a more parsimonious country fellow
recommends castration instead. As the boy is
about to perform this offi ce, a she- bear attacks
him, and Lucius breaks away. A stranger fi nds him
and rides him straight into the midst of the herdsmen
who had ordained his emasculation. Th ey
accuse the rider of thievery and, fi nding the boy
dismembered by the bear, also of murder. Th e
boy’s parents schedule Lucius for death on the day
following, and during the night the mother tortures
him. Lucius saves himself by befouling her,
and Book 7 ends.
Book 8
Th e next morning, a groom arrives to announce
the untimely death of Charite, the maiden
Lucius had tried to rescue. Th e groom tells the
sad tale of how a rival and brother of Charite’s
husband, feigning friendship, had murdered the
husband on a boar hunt. On learning the news
of her husband’s death, Charite went mad. Th e
586
Bibliography
Plato. Dialogues of Plato. 2 vols. Translated by Benjamin
Jowett. New York: Washington Square
Press, 2001.
Gospel of Thomas, The (ca. first
century . .)
Th is nonbiblical gospel was discovered largely
intact among the Coptic Nag Hammadi manuscripts
in Egypt in 1945 (see Gnos ti c apocr ypha
a nd pseu depigr a ph a) and earlier in
extremely fragmentary condition in Greek at
Oxyr hynchus. Th e Gospel of Th omas is thought
to have been written in the Greek language in
Syria, perhaps at Edessa, where the bones of the
Christian apostle Th omas were venerated. Th e
work was subsequently translated into Coptic.
Th e author of the gospel was thought to have been
Didymos Judas Th omas, whom the Syrian church
considered to be both the twin brother of Jesus
and his apostle. While some scholars consider the
work a Gnostic document, others are only willing
to say that some infl uence of Gnostic theology is
apparent in it.
Th e importance of this document stems in
part from its containing otherwise unrecorded
sayings attributable with some confi dence to the
historical Jesus. Clear parallels appear between
many of the 114 sayings reported in the Gospel
of Thomas and those in the synoptic gospels
of the Christian New Test a ment . According,
though, to the scholar Helmut Koester of the
Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, the
forms of the parallel sayings suggest a greater
antiquity for Jesus’ remarks as they appear in
Th omas than in the synoptic gospels. Th at antiquity
may derive from the form of the remarks
originating in an earlier, thus far undiscovered
version of the Christian Gospels. Th e scholars
who posit it label this version “Q.” Alternatively,
the earlier form of the remarks may result from
their having been recorded by someone who had
heard Jesus speak.
Beyond this, Th omas’s importance also derives
599
Classics, 1995.
Kovacs, David, ed. and trans. Euripides, Vol. 5:
Helen, Phoenician Women; Orestes. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Heliodorus of Emesa See fiction a s
epistle, r omance, and er otic p r ose; Gr eek
prose r omance.
Hellenika Xenophon of Athens (ca. 380–350
BC)
Following the lead of Thuc ydides, Xenophon
of At hens picks up the history of the Peloponnesian
Wars where his pre de ces sor historian left
off —411 b.c.e.
In seven books, Xenophon chronicles the government
of Athens by a council of 30 aristocrats,
their overthrow as a result of Spartan intervention,
and the resultant restoration of Athenian
democracy in 403 b.c. e. He then recounts the history
of Sparta’s war against Persia and the Persians’
victory in 387 b.c.e. Xe nophon next fl ashes
back to recount the war that a league of Greek
states, led by Corinth, fought against Sparta in an
eff ort to rein in Sparta’s growing power on the
Grecian peninsula. Th at segment of Xenophon’s
story ends with the treaty of peace that the Spartan
envoy Antacidas negotiated with the Persian
king Artaxerxes II—a treaty the Persians imposed
on the warring Greeks, also in 387 b.c. e.
Xenophon then turns his attention to the
growing infl uence of the city of Th ebes and the
Hellenika 299
developing rivalry between Th ebes and Sparta.
Th is enmity soon developed into open warfare.
Th ebes emerged as the victors at the Battle of
Leuctra, where they mortally wounded the Spartan
King Cleombrotus.
Xenophon’s po liti cal preferences color his
historiography. He was strongly pro- Spartan, and
in his report of this battle, he neglects to mention
the name of the victorious Th eban general, Epanimondas.
Epanimondas does, however, subsequently
appear in the narrative as Xenophon
traces Th ebes’ domination of Grecian aff airs until
634
Press, 1998.
hieroglyphs
Used for representing the ancient Egyptian
language—Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian—
from as early as ca. 3100 b.c. e., hieroglyphic
writing employed pictorial symbols to convey
several categories of linguistic information.
Some of the symbols represented sounds. Called
phonograms, such symbols stood for one, two, or
three consonants. No symbols representing vowels
were employed. A second category of symbol,
the logogram represented an entire word. Logograms
were accompanied by a stroke called an
orthogram, which indicated an adjacent logogram.
Another sort of symbol, a taxogram, was
sometimes used to indicate the category to which
a word belonged. A man’s name, for instance,
might be accompanied by a symbol that determined
the category male for the preceding
word.
Both because of their pictorial quality and
because they could be written horizontally from
right to left or from left to right, or vertically,
hieroglyphs were aesthetically satisfying and,
together with pictures, made for pleasing decoration
upon any fl at surface, including walls, coffi
ns, or papyrus scrolls. Th ey could be carved,
painted, or written with a pen. For the sake of
scribal speed and con ve nience, a cursive form of
hieroglyphs developed as time went on. Th is form
of hieroglyphic writing, called hieratic script,
soon developed abbreviations and modifi ed forms
that replaced the aesthetically satisfying but more
cumbersome ancient system, in many cases rendering
the older texts virtually indecipherable to
later scribes, who wrote exclusively from right to
left . Hieratic script remained the standard manner
of representing Middle Egyptian from ca.
2160 to ca. 1780 b.c.e.
Th roughout this long stretch of time, not only
was the system of representing the language
changing, the language itself changed as well, and
around 1370 b.c.e.—the end of the 18th dynasty—
652
century BC)
Her odotu s of Halicarnassus undertook researching
and writing Th e Histories so that “men’s
actions” and the “great and wonderful accomplishments”
both “of Greeks and Barbarians”
would not in time be forgotten. He especially set
out to examine the causes of war between the
Greeks and the “Barbarians” (by whom he meant
persons who did not speak the Greek language).
As Herodotus’s work has come down to us, it
has been subdivided by later editors into nine
books, each of which those same editors have
provided with a chapter title bearing the name of
one of the nine Muses. Th e divisions of the chapters
do not always follow the or ga ni za tion of the
book’s subject matter and may have been predicated
on how much text the editor or scribe could
fi t on a single papyrus scroll.
Book 1
In the book named for the Muse of History, Clio,
Herodotus’s fi rst inquiry addresses the sources of
the ongoing enmity between the Greeks and the
Asians. He concludes the desire for women was at
the root of the hostility. Making it clear that he has
little confi dence in the historicity of the mythical
accounts preserved in the epic poems of his pre deces
sors and the folklore of places, he nonetheless
reports the kernel stories of those myths. He
chooses, however, to give Persian and Phoenician
versions of the stories as a corrective to the Greek
spin imparted to them by his countrymen.
Herodotus tells the Persian version of the
kidnapping of Io, a princess of Argos, by Phoenician
sailors and her subsequent appearance in
Egypt. He then tells the Phoenician version, in
which Io, pregnant by the Phoenician captain,
goes with him willingly to avoid the scandal on
Argos. Herodotus pointedly leaves out the part
of the story in which Io is beloved by the god
Zeus, who changes her into a heifer to avoid
Hera’s wrath (see Pr omet he us Bound). He
reports that Jason’s taking Medea from Colchis
was a kidnapping in retaliation for Io’s (see Th e
656
Egypt.
Shift ing his focus, Herodotus next cata logues
the distinguishing customs of the Ethiopians,
whose usual age at death he reports to be 120
years. Upon dying, Ethiopians were enclosed in
transparent, alabaster coffi ns, kept in their homes
for a year, and then set up around their cities as
monuments. Famine in the Persian army dissuaded
the Persians from undertaking the conquest of
Ethiopia.
Taking a closer look at Cambyses, Herodotus
reports several of the emperor’s mad acts, including
arranging the murder of his brother. When
Cambyses asked the supreme judges of Persia if,
contrary to custom, he could marry his sister, the
judges found an answer “both just and safe.”
Th ere was no law, they opined, that permitted
siblings to marry, but there was one allowing the
king of Persia to do what ever he wanted. Accordingly,
Cambyses married two of his sisters but
killed one of them.
Following a rehearsal of more insane royal
acts, Herodotus segues into a discussion of the
continual good fortune of Polycrates, the tyrant
(ruler) of the island of Samos, and of the way in
which he rid himself of his po liti cal enemies by
sending them on a mission in support of Cambyses
together with a secret request that Cambyses
not send his ambassadors back. Th is leads
Herodotus into a consideration of the po liti cal
alliances and notable crimes and activities among
the inhabitants of the Greek islands and citystates
and the role Polycrates of Samos played in
their aff airs. Herodotus justifi es his lengthy
digression on this subject by praising the Samians
for a series of notable feats of engineering: a system
of aqueducts, a harbor enclosure, and a temple
complex.
Cambyses died, Herodotus explains, when an
accidentally self- infl icted wound became gangrenous.
A Mede, a Magian named Smerdis, who
impersonated Cambyses’ murdered brother of
the same name, succeeded him on the throne.
665
at Ephesus.
At Athens, Herodotus interjects here, Phoenician
refugees led by Cadmus and arriving 60
years aft er the fall of Troy, fi rst introduced the
al phab et to the Greeks.
Herodotus then recounts the story of the way
the Athenians rid themselves of despots and
became a democracy. Aft er tracing the Athenians’
subsequent growth in power, Herodotus
concludes that equality of the citizenry is a more
eff ective civic arrangement than despotism
because of the impetus that democracy lends to
individual achievement.
Next come reports of the establishment of
despots in several cities; of oracles and their
interpretation; of the cold ghost of Melissa,
whose burial garment was stolen, and the ghost’s
advice to her husband; and, eventually, of the way
in which Hippias, a tyrant of Athens deposed in
510 b.c.e., encouraged the Persians to make war
on the Athenians. At about the same time, aft er
failing to interest the Spartans, Aristagoras the
Milesian encouraged the Athenians to intervene
against the Persians in Ionia in Asia Minor,
where Athenian settlers had colonized the country.
Persuaded, the Athenians sent 20 warships to
the region. Th ose ships, Herodotus darkly declares,
“were the beginning of trouble for Greeks and
foreigners,” for, encouraged by Athenian naval
support, the Ionians began a general revolution
against the Persians. Combined Athenian and
Ionian forces began that uprising by attacking
and destroying the Persian stronghold at Sardis.
Th at destruction hardened the Persian king Darius’s
resolve to punish the Athenians.
Assisted by the Phoenicians, who were the
Persians’ usual naval allies, Darius’s troops set off
to regain control. Th ey met forces of the Ionians
and the Cyprians at sea and on land. Th e Ionians,
encouraged by the courageous example of the
men of the Island of Samos, defeated the Phoenician
navy at sea. Despite the death of Artybius,
the Persian commander, however the land forces
673
(65 BC–8 . .)
Born Quintus Horatius Flaccus on December 8,
65 b.c .e., to the family of a manumitted slave in
the community of Venusia, south Italy, Horace
must have been a child of unusual promise. His
father collected payments at tax auctions, was
probably paid on commission, and apparently
accumulated a substantial estate. It was enough
that he could aff ord to give Horace a fi rst- rate
education, sending him fi rst to Rome, where he
studied with the teacher Orbilius Pupillus. Horace
reports that Orbilius did not spare the rod in
supervising the boy’s education.
Horace next traveled to Athens to continue his
studies. Th e Roman Civil Wars began while Horace
was there, and he joined the army of Marcus
Iunius Brutus, receiving a commission as a
tribune—a post that made him a commander of a
cohort of cavalry. When the forces of Mark Antony
and Octavian (later to become Rome’s fi rst
emperor, August us Ca esa r ) defeated Brutus at
Philippi in 42, Horace fl ed and, on his return to
Italy, formally submitted to the victors’ authority.
He did not escape punishment for having supported
the losing side and was stripped of all his
Venusian property.
Perhaps through his Roman connections, Horace
managed to secure a post as a clerk in the
Horace 327
offi ec of the q uaestor—a civic magistrate. He
began to supplement a slender income by publishing
verses. His success as a poet brought him
to the attention of Vir gil a nd of the tragedian
and epic poet Varius Rufus. Th ey in turn brought
Horace into the circle of poets generously patronized
by Augustus Caesar’s principal minister,
confi dante, and counselor, Gaius Maecenas.
Maecenas was an enlightened literary patron
who understood that gift ed authors need time
and leisure to write. Certain of Horace’s gift s
aft er the appearance of the fi rst book of the
poet’s Sati r es (35 b.c .e.), around 33 b.c .e. Maecenas
conferred on the young man an idyllic
693
336 Idylls
who has arrived aft er a three- day absence. Th e
poet observes that even a single day’s absence
“makes a lover old.” Aft er seeking to defi ne his
feelings through a series of comparisons, the poet
hopes that the god Love will “breathe equally” on
him and his beloved. Th at would become a matter
for a future song. He then prays that aft er 200
generations, a shade newly arrived in Hades will
tell his ghost that the story of his and his beloved’s
mutual aff ection will be on everyone’s lips—
especially on the young men’s.
In the poem’s fourth and last stanza, the poet
returns to the title issue of the poem. Th e poet
introduces an address to the oarsmen of the island
of Megara who honor the hero Diocles with a
competition to determine which of the local boys
has the sweetest kiss. Th at decision may baffl e the
judge who must decide, but, the poet implies, the
kiss of the addressee of the poem would resolve
the judge’s dilemma as easily as a legendary touchstone
in Lydia could identify “true gold.”
“Idyll 13: Hylas” belongs to the category of
Th eocritus’s work called half- or semi- epic. Hylas
was the pageboy and the beloved of the hero Heracles
(Hercules). Th e two had embarked together
with the Argonauts who accompanied Jason in
search of the Golden Fleece (see Th e Ar g onautik
a). When their ship anchored at the island of
Chios to replace a broken oar, Hylas went to fi nd
fresh water. Th e nymphs in the pool he found so
admired his beauty that they dragged him into the
water, where he drowned. Heracles in his grief
deserted the expedition to search for the boy.
Th eocritus addresses his poem to his own
beloved, Nicias. He says that when the two fi rst fell
in love, they thought love existed for them alone,
but this was wrong. Th ey are neither the fi rst nor
the last to love. Th e poet then makes a transition
to the love of Heracles for Hylas, and how in Heracles
the lad had the example of the hero on whom
to model the man he would become. But then the
poet tells the story of Hylas’s loss.
711
Books 13–14
Poseidon, the god of the sea and of earthquake,
however, assumes the form of the prophet Calchas
and heartens the Greek defenders, renewing
their strength and their resolve. Poseidon’s anger
against the Trojans increases when they kill his
346 Iliad, The
grandson, Amphimachus, in the melee. With his
encouragement, the Greeks begin to turn the tide
of the battle under the very sterns of their beached
vessels. Aft er underlining the intentions of the
two gods’ interventions in the fi ght, Homer returns
to his description of the carnage, evoking in his
verse not only the sights, vicissitudes, and confusion
of the battle, but sometimes its odors and
oft en its noise of shouting and the ringing of the
bronze and iron weapons as well.
Th e Trojan Polydamus perceives that despite
Trojan successes, the Greeks are beginning to roll
up the Trojan left fl ank. Polydamus therefore recommends
a council to consider whether to press
the attack or beat a tactical retreat. Hector agrees,
saying that he will continue the fi ght until Polydamus
has rounded up the commanders. Th e 13th
book ends with another surge in the fi ghting.
As the 14th book opens, Homer has shift ed the
scene to the tent of the ancient king Nestor, where
the old man is taking a break for wine. Th e
increasing noise of the battle makes the old king
cut short his respite, arm, and go in search of
Agamemnon. Nestor fi nds the king and the two
confer with Odysseus and Diomedes about how
to save an increasingly dangerous situation. Diomedes,
the youn gest man present, suggests that,
even though all four are wounded, they can still
urge the others on, and all four go to do so. In the
guise of an old man, Poseidon reminds Agamemnon
about Achilles and then the god rushes into
the fray with a great battle cry. Th e Greeks once
more take heart and redouble their eff orts.
Th e goddess Hera, in the meantime, approves
Poseidon’s action on the Greeks’ behalf and thinks
of a way she can keep Zeus occupied. She bathes
728
Bibliography
Liu Hsiang, ed. Chan- kuo tse [Intrigues of the Warring
States]. Translated by J. I. Crump, Jr. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970.
Mair, Victor H. Th e Columbia Anthology of Traditional
Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994.
Watson, Burton. Early Chinese Literature. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1962.
Ion Euripides (before 406 . . )
Th ought to be a late work by Eur ipides, the plot of
Ion treats matters that no other surviving Greek
drama handles. Moreover, Euripides develops that
material in an uncharacteristic way. Th e play
addresses the story of its title character, Ion, in a
manner that is potentially tragic but that in fact
proves to be comic. Th us the play both presages
the subsequent Greek New Comedy (see comedy
in Greece and Rome) in the resolution of its plot
and relies on the conventions of the older t r agedy
in establishing the audience’s expectations.
Hermes, the messenger of the gods, speaks the
prologue from the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Hermes reports that Apollo raped Creusa, the
daughter of a legendary king of Athens, Erechtheus.
As all unions of gods and human beings
were fruitful, Creusa conceived and eventually
352 Ion
bore a son, Ion, in secret. To hide her shame, she
left the child to die in a circular vase within a willow
basket, but she carefully clothed him and left
with him an ornament that she wore. Apollo sent
Hermes to carry the baby to Apollo’s temple at
Delphi. Th ere the priestess of the temple discovered
the baby and thought some nymph had
borne it and left it there. Th e priestess chose to
keep the child, and she reared him in the vicinity
of the temple.
In the meantime, Creusa married the Euboean
demigod Xuthus. Although the couple wanted
children, none came. Eventually, accompanied by
trains of servants portrayed by the c hor us, Creusa
and Xuthus traveled separately to Apollo’s temple
740
allegiance to Creusa.
Now Creusa enters. Her aged tutor accompanies
her. Th ey ask the women to share news of
the oracle’s answer. Th e women hesitate, but
then report the bad news. Creusa will not conceive
a child. Pressed for more, however, they
report that Xuthus has discovered his son. Creusa
is not pleased. She calls Xuthus a “wretch of a
husband.”
Th e tutor supports her in this view, fabricating
a fanciful history of Xuthus that presupposes him
to have known all along about Ion and to have
intentionally deceived Creusa throughout her
marriage. He advises Creusa to kill Ion—an
undertaking in which the tutor will happily cooperate.
Creusa responds to this with a lengthy
lament in which she blames Apollo for giving a
child to her husband while withholding the child
born to her union with the god. She then confesses
all to her tutor, and in a lengthy dialogue the
two determine to poison Ion at the party celebrating
the reunion of the putative father and son. She
gives the old tutor a box containing the poison,
but warns him that her husband must not drink
from the wine with which it is mixed.
Off stage, however, the plot fails. An attendant
enters to report the events. Th e god has provided
ill omens that Ion easily reads. He has all the celebrants
pour out their wine cups on the ground. A
fl ock of doves descends, and they drink from the
spilled wine. Th e only dove to die drinks from
Ion’s spillage. As everyone knows that the cup was
Creusa’s gift , the attendant predicts that she will
be executed for her attempt upon a sacred life.
Ion 353
Creusa rushes in, confi rming that the Pythian
council has sentenced her to death. Th e leader of
the chorus advises her to seek sanctuary at the
altar, where none can kill her. Ion and others
enter to carry out the sentence. He and Creusa
rancorously debate until he is about to tear her
from the altar and take her life.
At that moment, however, the priestess of
742
of Iphigenia.
She, however, has decided that dying in the
Greek cause is the right thing for her to do—
remarking at one point: “A thousand women are
not worth one man!” She counsels that the Greeks
should take her life and conquer Troy. Achilles
admires her courage and regrets losing her as his
bride.
Firm now in the rectitude of her sacrifi ce, Iphigenia
comforts her mother, who at last accepts
her daughter’s death as inevitable. Iphigenia bids
farewell to her baby brother, Orestes, and counsels
her mother not to hate Agamemnon, who is
acting against his own will. Clytemnestra rejects
those arguments.
In triumphant certainty, Iphigenia voluntarily
goes forth to meet her fate as the members of the
chorus celebrate her as the “conqueror of Troy.”
Bibliography
Euripides. Th e Complete Plays. Translated by Carl R.
Mueller. Hanover, N.H.: Smith and Kraus, 2005.
Grene, David, and Richmond Lattimore, ed. Euripides:
Th e Complete Greek Tragedies. Vol. 1. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1955.
Kovacs, David, ed. and trans. Euripides. Loeb Classical
Library. 5 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1994–2002.
Isæus (fl. fourth century BC) Greek prose
writer
An orator during the golden age of Greek oratory,
Isæus was born in Chalchis in Euboea. He
moved to Athens and studied oratory with Lysia s
and Isoc ra t es. In turn Isæus became the teacher
of the most distinguished of Greek orators,
Demost henes.
Although 50 of Isæus’s orations remained
extant as late as the ninth century c. e., only 11
now survive. Th ey are exclusively concerned with
the subject of inheritance. Isæus gave these speeches
before the Athenian tribunal concerned with
such matters. Isæus’s orations remain important
sources of historical information concerning the
Isæus 355
746
Press, 1958.
———. Th e Sixteen Satires. Translated by Peter
Green. London and New York: Penguin, 1998.
Juvenal 367
368
K
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (fl. seventh
century . .) Japa nese poet
We know little about the life of ancient Japan’s
best- known poet, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. We
do know that he served the widowed empress Jitō
(ruled 686–697, regent until 702) as her principal
court poet and that all of his poems with known
dates of composition appear in the second section
of the earliest and greatest of all collections of
Japa nese poetry, the Man’yōshū.
Hitomaro’s poetry refl ects his devotion to his
sovereign and to the imperial family. He apparently
believed ardently in the hereditary divinity
of the family’s members, and he frequently spoke
of the empress as a goddess—one whom the tutelary
deities of rivers and streams obey.
It fell to Hitomaro to compose eulogies for
members of the royal family. His el egy on the
death of Prince Takechi is the longest poem in the
entire collection and lauds the young man’s bravery
and prowess in battle. Hitomaro’s empress
had lost her husband, Emperor Temmu, and as a
devout and pious woman, she undertook religious
pilgrimages that Hitomaro also regularly memorialized
in his verse. It seems to have been the
poet’s task to assure that the members of the royal
family and their deeds be remembered through
all time.
Hitomaro’s work was not entirely governed by
his offi cial responsibilities, however. One of his
most deeply felt and moving elegies commemorates
the death of a stranger whose body lay abandoned
on a beach. Th e poet thinks about the
man’s absent wife, waiting at home for the husband
who will never return and whose fate will
remain forever unknown.
Bibliography
769
genealogy.
Many preliterate societies had specialists who
were trained in memorization to serve as the
repositories of the foundational poems, songs,
myths, and genealogies of their cultures, and
Hieda no Are seems to have been such a person.
Th e literary historian Donald Keene, whose
account I summarize here, tells us that Heida no
Are memorized anything he (or, as some argue,
she) read or heard on the fi rst encounter. Hieda
no Are’s work came to fruition in 712, when the
collection was presented at the emperor’s court.
Th e Kojiki transmitted the foundational myths of
the Japa nese tradition to the ages that followed.
Following a fl owery introduction by another
person, Ō no Yasumaro, who was the scribe who
wrote down what Hieda no Are dictated, the fi rst
book of the three- book work begins on the High
Plain of Heaven, where three gods pop into existence.
Th e earth below is not solid and drift s
about. It shows some signs of plant life.
Other gods come into being. Among them we
fi nd Izanagi and his wife, Izanami. Th ey are
charged with solidifying the fl uid land below and
with creating more solid earth. With a jeweled
spear, Izanagi stirs the mess below until it solidifi
es into a place where he and Izanami can copulate.
Th ey do this, and Izanami immediately gives
birth to monstrously misshapen off spring. Th e
pair keeps trying until they get it right, and now
Izanami gives birth to the principal islands of the
Japa nese archipelago and then to a number of
lesser islands.
Izanagi and Izanami keep at their task, and
she now bears the gods responsible for overseeing
such natural phenomena as winds, fi re, the sea,
and so forth. When she bears the fi re god, however,
Izanami is horribly burned. In the throes of
the consequent illness, she excretes and vomits,
and from the solid and fl uid results, more deities
come into being—35 in all. Th en Izanami dies.
Angered, Izanagi beheads and dismembers the
newborn fi re god. From his blood and body parts,
775
Philadelphians.
In general, Ignatius’s letters address matters of
great consequence to early Christians. He is concerned
with the authority of bishops and the preservation
of the apostolic succession that traces that
authority directly to Christ’s apostles and to Jesus
himself. Ignatius wants the church to speak with a
single voice on matters of doctrine and theology
and not to splinter on issues deemed heretical, such
as the proposed nonhumanity of Jesus or, even
among Christians, the then still- unsettled question
of Christ’s resurrection. Ignatius seems to see
both the Gnostic Christians and those who, though
believing Christ to be the Messiah, would nonetheless
follow the old Jewish law as threats to the
doctrinal Christianity of the true church. He is at
fi rst concerned about his home church in Antioch,
which was undergoing some sort of upheaval at the
time of his arrest. On later learning that this matter
had been resolved, Ignatius encourages other
churches to send representatives to participate in
the celebrations marking the end of internal confl
ict. It was in his letter to the church at Rome that
Ignatius requested there be no attempt to avert his
martyrdom. Rather, he explains, he will coax the
wild beasts to devour him.
In another letter included in the collection of
the Apostolic Fathers, the l et t er o f P ol yc a r p
to t he Phil ippia ns, we fi nd a reference to Ignatius’s
martyrdom, but no details about the manner
of his death. Later accounts of it are apparently
fi ctitious.
Bibliography
Ignatius. “Letters of Ignatius.” In Th e Apostolic
Fathers. Vol. 1. Translated and edited by Bart
D. Ehrman. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2003.
Letters of Ignatius, The 379
Libanius of Antioch (fl. fourth century
. .) Greek prose writer
A Sophist w ho wrote about, taught, and practiced
the art of public speaking, Libanius was the
most distinguished practitioner of his calling
790
1978.
Library Diodorus Siculus See Diod or ns
Sicul us.
Lie Yukou See Liezi .
Liezi (Lieh Tzu) (ca. 300 BC–300 . .)
A prose text of Daoism doubtfully attributed to
Lie Yukou (Lieh Yü- k’o)—an author who may
have lived a century before the version in which
the document has survived was written—Lieh
Tzu is reputed to be the easiest of all classical Taoist
texts to understand.
In its eight parts, divided into 150 sections,
the book explains such matters as the diff erences
between what is real and what is illusory. It
off ers theories about the origins of dreams. It is
something of a geography text when it discusses
strange foreign countries, and it is one of
numerous texts that make ste reo typical jokes
about foolish farmers from the region of Sung.
Th e work also contains pop u lar fables that convey
a moral. Th ese vary in the level of their
sophistication from very straightforward to
quite complex.
Th e translator A. C. Graham has provided an
example of the simpler sort—one whose title
Graham gives as “Th e Stupid Old Man Who
Moved a Mountain.” In it, an old man proposes
to level two mountains that are 700 miles square
and 700,000 feet tall. He means to carry away
their mass in baskets and dump the earth and
stones in a gulf. Aft er working for months on the
project with his son, his grandson, and a neighbor
child, the old man, whose name was Mister Simple,
starts for home. He encounters a neighbor
named Old Wiseacre, who reproves him for his
folly. Simple, however, explains that the moun-
380 Libanius of Antioch
tain will never grow any larger, whereas his
progeny will increase forever through the generations
and eventually accomplish the project.
Overhearing this, the mountain spirits become
concerned that Simple might really succeed in his
project, and they complain to God. Impressed
792
become Christian.
Speaking to two Greeks through an interpreter,
Anthony conducted a scathing critique of classical
Greek myth and its irrationality. He also
defended faith as a more reliable test of knowledge
than dialectic—that is, more reliable than
arguing according to formal systems of logic and
syllogism. He also pointed to the success of
Christianity in gaining converts as opposed to
the dying, polytheistic religions. He underscored
his point by casting out demons from several sufferers
brought to him for that purpose.
Sometimes when Anthony was speaking with
visitors, he would suddenly fall silent and seem
to be distracted. When this happened, he envisioned
things either occurring elsewhere or things
that would happen in the future. He predicted, for
instance, the coming temporary ascendancy of
the Arian heresy over orthodox Christianity.
Aft er recounting more of Anthony’s healings
and predictions, Athanasius turns to the manner
of his death, which the author also deems
remarkable. At age 105, as he felt the approach of
death, Anthony imparted his fi nal advice to his
visitors: Keep your soul from foul thoughts and
avoid falling victim to any of the heresies affl icting
orthodox Christianity. Concerned lest his
body be mummifi ed or otherwise treated in a
manner that he considered irreverent, he commanded
his followers to bury him secretly and
tell no one where, since at the day of judgment
he expected to resume his fl esh. He gave one of
his sheepskins and a worn- out cloak to Bishop
Athanasius.
To the monks for whom he had written this
life of Anthony, Athanasius addresses a fi nal
exhortation to share what he has written, not only
among themselves and with other Christians, but
also with pagans who may profi t from learning of
Anthony’s life and be converted.
Bibliography
Athanasius. Th e Life of Antony and the Letter to
Marcellinus. Translated by Robert C. Gregg. New
815
Metamorphoses 443
no woman had stood there. When her father discovered
her newly gained power, he sold her frequently,
and just as frequently she changed into
various shapes. When he had consumed everything
he could get by selling his daughter, Erysichthon
began to eat his own fl esh, but still derived
no benefi t and continued to starve.
As the book ends, the river- god host confesses
to his guests that even he possesses the power of
transformation. He regrets, however, that one of
his horns is missing.
Book 9
In an unpre ce dented transition, Ovid moves to
book 9 in mid- conversation. Th eseus asks the god
how he came to break his horn.
Sighing, the god confesses that he was among
those once enamoured of the lovely Deiaenira.
When, however, he asked her father for her hand,
Achelous discovered that Hercules (see Her acl
es) was a rival suitor. Th e two quarreled and
fought. Bested by Hercules, Achelous sought refuge
in a transformation and changed into a serpent.
Hercules, who as a baby had strangled more
dangerous snakes, remained unimpressed. Again
shiĀ ing his shape, the river god became a savage
bull. Hercules bested him and, adding insult to
injury, broke off one of his horns.
A nymph enters bearing the horn, fi lled with
apples to tempt Th eseus’s appetite. Ovid now
recounts the story of Hercules and the centaur
Nessus. Returning home with his new bride
Deianeira, Hercules fi nds their route blocked by
a swollen river. Nessus advises Hercules to swim,
promising that he, Nessus, will bear Deianeira
safely across. Trusting Nessus’s word, Hercules
does as he is advised. Nessus in the meantime
attempts to kidnap and rape Deianeira, who calls
for her husband’s aid. Hercules brings down the
centaur with an arrow. Nessus’s blood soaks his
tunic, and the centaur gives it to Deianeira as a
charm against the day that her husband’s love for
her diminishes. Th e blood contains an admixture
923
into a tree.
Th ere now appeared at Alcmena’s door an old
man, Iolaus, whose youth had been restored to
him. Learning of this giĀ , other gods began to
pester Jupiter to grant similar giĀ s to their favor-
444 Metamorphoses
ites. Jupiter, however, put them off by saying that
Fate, not he, was responsible for Iolaus’s rejuvenation.
Moreover, Jupiter himself was subject to
Fate’s operation.
Ovid now turns to the story of the twin children
of the nymph Cyane: Byblis and Caunus.
Byblis conceives an incestuous passion for Caunus
and dreams that her desire is fulfi lled. Deeply
torn between her ardor and her repulsion at the
thought of incest, Byblis fi nally yields to her
desire and writes a letter in which she confesses
her feelings and rationalizes them.
When a servant delivers the letter, Caunus is so
horrifi ed that he almost kills the messenger, who
reports the brother’s rejection to Cyane. Byblis,
however, again minimizes that response and seeks
other means of fulfi lling her forbidden desires. So
obsessed does she become that she convinces herself
that repeated overtures will overcome her
brother’s horror. Finally Caunus fl ees and founds
a new city elsewhere.
At his departure, Byblis loses her reason altogether.
Shrieking and howling, she pursues Caunus
through forests, over mountains, and across
rivers until she collapses, exhausted. Her sad
plight evokes the pity of neighboring nymphs as
Biblis lays weeping. She weeps until she dissolves
in her own tears and changes into a fountain.
Ovid next turns to the story of a poor man of
Crete, Ligdus, who instructs his wife that if their
soon- to- be born child is a daughter, she must be put
to death. But the Egyptian goddess appears to the
wife, Telethusa, and instructs her to ignore her husband
and to rear the daughter who will be born.
When a daughter is born in Ligdus’s absence,
Telethusa keeps the child’s sex a secret from its
father. Named Iphis, the child is reared as a boy
925
Th e Moz i.
Bibliography
Idema, Wilt, and Lloyd HaĀ . A Guide to Chinese Literature.
Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies,
University of Michigan, 1997.
Ivanhoe, Philip J., and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds.
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy. New
York and London: Seven Bridges Press, 2001.
Lowe, Scott. Mo Tzu’s Religious Blueprint for a Chinese
Utopia: Mo Di the Will and the Way. Lewiston,
Me.: E. Mellen Press, 1992.
Mozi. Mo Tzu: Basic Writings. Translated by Burton
Watson. New York: Columbia University Press,
1963.
Mozi, The (The Mo Tzu) Mozi (ca. fifth
century BC)
Originally a work in 15 books or ga nized into 71
chapters, Th e Mozi has come down to us in an
incomplete state. Some 18 of the chapters are
missing altogether. Given the repetitive nature of
the work—at least insofar as its central tenets are
concerned—this loss probably does not much
aff ect our knowledge of the text. Some of its
chapters, however, are considered to be the work
of others.
Cast in the form of a series of questions and
answers or as a series of pronouncements by the
phi los opher and utopian sect leader Mozi, the
work pursues issues dear to his heart. Th e opening
discussion addresses an issue of concern to Mozi.
Th e state must be at pains to take care of its learned
persons and foster education. Such persons are
less likely to try to manipulate the state’s leader
with fl attery and to give him farsighted and stern
advice.
Th e second chapter suggests that superior
people will be “incorruptible in poverty” and
“righ teous when wealthy.” Th e third chapter, “On
Dyeing,” is demonstrably a late addition, though
Mozi might have been struck with the potency of
dyes during his lifetime. Th e chapter’s advice is
moral: one must be careful what one becomes
involved in.
947
Bibliography
Amit, Yairah. Reading Biblical Narratives: Literary
Criticism and the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2001.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Th e Bible. New York: Chelsea
Publications, 2006.
Th e New En glish Bible: Th e New Testament. Oxford
and Cambridge: Oxford University Press and
Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Norton, David. A History of the Bible as Literature.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Sypherd, Wilbur Owen. Th e Literature of the En glish
Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1938.
466 New Testament
Nicander of Colophon (fl. ca. 146
BC) Greek poet
A Greek physician, grammarian, and poet of the
Helle nisti c Age, Nicander’s work survives in a
pair of didactic, hexameter epic s, the Th eriaka
(on poisonous serpents and beasts and remedies
for wounds received from them) and Alexipharmaka
(on antidotes). Nonetheless, the surviving
titles of his otherwise lost works suggest that his
poems may have been important sources for such
later Latin poets as Ov id, Vir gil , and others.
Nicander is known to have penned a mythological
epic that Ovid used in his Met amorp hoses, a
poem on farming later refl ected in Virgil’s Geo r -
gi c s, a poem concerning Aetolia (Aetolika), and a
poem on beekeeping.
Bibliography
Nicander of Colophon. Th e Poems and Poetical
Fragments. Edited by A. S. F. Gow and A. F.
Scholfi eld. New York: Arno Press, 1979.
Nicomachean Ethics, The Aristotle (ca.
323 BC)
Ari st ot l e’s son Nichomachus probably compiled
Th e Nicomachean Ethics—one of three ethical
treatises deriving from the thought of Aristotle—
shortly aĀ er the phi los o pher’s death. Th ough a
specifi c date cannot be ascertained, Nicomachus
himself is known to have died young in battle, and
he must have done the work fairly soon aĀ er his
970
O
Octavia Seneca (ca. 65 . .)
Th ough posterity has preserved fragmentary evidence
for a dozen Roman plays on native Roman
subjects, only one such play survives in its entirety.
Th at play, Octavia, has customarily been listed
among the works of Senec a , though a scene that
accurately describes the death of the Roman
emperor Nero, whom Seneca predeceased, makes
Seneca’s authorship unlikely.
Th e history of the Roman imperial family has
regularly provided grist for the mills of writers,
and that of Rome’s fourth and fi Ā h emperors,
Claudius and his stepson Nero, is fraught with
melodramatic material. Claudius reluctantly had
his third wife, Messalina, put to death for treason
when she took another husband during Claudius’s
absence from Rome. Th e following year,
Claudius married the widow of Cneius Domitius
Ahenobarbus. Her name was Agrippina, and as
empress, she at once undertook a campaign to
have her son by her fi rst marriage succeed Claudius
as emperor. Her eff orts succeeded, and Claudius
adopted Lucius Domitius, renaming him Nero.
Agrippina bound Nero more tightly to the imperial
family by arranging a marriage between him
and Claudius’s daughter, Octavia.
With the stage of history thus carefully set,
Agrippina poisoned her husband on October 12,
54 c.e. On October 13, the 17- year- old Nero succeeded
to the world’s most powerful throne, and
Agrippina, with the help of Nero’s tutor, Seneca,
and that of the captain of the Praetorian Guard,
Sextus Afranius Burrus, became for a time the de
facto regent of the Roman Empire. When Nero
fell in love with Poppaea—a lovely woman of bad
reputation—and wished to divorce Octavia, the
imperious Agrippina objected. Annoyed with his
mother’s domineering ways, Nero arranged her
murder. Th en Octavia was falsely accused and
convicted of adultery. Nero divorced and banished
her and subsequently arranged for her murder
as well.
976
the world.
Ode 1.13 concerns jealousy, and 1.14 addresses
a ship. Scholars and readers have variously interpreted
what Horace meant by the ship. Th ough
that issue remains unresolved, the poem is clearly
based on one by Alcaeus. Th e 15th ode glances
back at the Trojan War and at the sea god Nereus’s
prophecy concerning Troy’s fall.
Ode 1.16 addresses a goddess lovelier than her
lovely mother—perhaps one of the Muse s. He asks
that she condemn his angry satires and help him
achieve a sweeter poetic voice as he forswears his
earlier invectives. Th e following poem—which is
among Horace’s most beautiful—is an invitation
to join the poet at his country estate and enjoy its
pleasures. By seeming association, the next poem
initially celebrates the pleasures of wine, but it
ends by warning against wine’s dangers. Th e 19th
ode rec ords the poet’s infatuation with a girl
named Glycera. Th e 20th invites Maecenas to join
Horace at the Sabine farm, and the 21st encourages
young people to sing the praises of the deities
Diana, Cynthius (Apollo), and Latona, and to pray
to Apollo that he will protect Augustus and the
Roman people from famine, warfare, and plague.
In the 22nd ode, Horace celebrates the salutary
eff ect of his love for a woman named Lalage in
helping him lead a pure life and in protecting him
from many dangers. In the 23rd, however, his
amorous attention has shiĀ ed to Chloe.
Th e mood of Ode 1.24 darkens radically as
Horace mourns the death of his good friend and
Virgil’s, the critic Quintilius Varus. Th e poet
advises that patience will alleviate the loss that no
one can restore. Grief is replaced in the next ode
by wistful melancholy as the poet refl ects on the
circumstances of an aging courtesan, Lydia. Less
and less oĀ en do impatient lovers accost her, and
the day is not far off when her own lust will rage
unsatisfi ed.
In 1.26, the speaker of the poem impatiently
awaits the preparation of a garland for his beloved
Lamia. Ode 1.27 recounts a drinking party at
984
Odes 475
Horace through the enemy ranks and out of the
battle. Th e god concealed the poet in a dense
cloud, and Pompeius remained in the battle.
Horace is jubilant at the prospect of a reunion
with his friend.
A heartbreaker, Barine, is the addressee of Ode
2.8. All the oaths that she makes to her admirers,
she breaks. But the gods do not punish her. Rather,
she grows more attractive and prospers. Generations
of young men worship at Barine’s feet. Mothers,
young brides, and the old men worried about
what their sons are doing with their money—all
have reason to fear Barine’s appeal.
Th e ninth ode of the second collection reproves
a fellow poet, Valgius, for too long lamenting his
lost love, Mystes. Nothing else in nature mourns
forever. Horace advises him to drop his sorrow
and sing of the victories of Roman arms.
Ode 2.10 advises Horace’s friend Licinius to
steer a middle course and make his life an example
of the golden mean. Ill fortune does not last
forever; neither does the good. Apollo sometimes
grants his inspiration, sometimes withholds. Wisdom
dictates that canny seamen shorten sail
before too favorable a breeze.
“Seize the day” is once again the subject of
Ode 2.11, one that Horace addresses to “Hirpinian
Quinctus.” Th ere is no point in making plans
for infi nity. Join me, Horace invites, in performing
the rites of Bacchus, drinking a little wine
mixed with water, and enjoying music played by
Lyde, a local prostitute.
“Make love, not war” is the advice Horace
off ers in the 12th ode of his second collection.
Th e poem is addressed to Horace’s patron, Maecenas.
It begins by suggesting that par tic u lar
poetic forms best treat diff erent subjects. One
does not choose lyrics to describe battles. Th erefore,
if Maecenas wants to write about Rome’s
civil wars, Horace suggests that he do so in prose.
Horace’s own muse calls him to celebrate the
“fl ashing eyes” and the singing of his sweet mistress,
988
“trivial ditties.”
Th e time for that return has not yet come. Ode
3.4, invokes the Muse of epic poetry, Calliope.
She comes, and the poet recalls how as a child he
could wander and sleep in the woodlands untroubled
by snakes and bears. Th e poet rededicates
himself to the Muses, crediting his love for them
with his preservation at the battle of Philippi and
with his escape from drowning at Palinurus—
likely, as Niall Rudd tells us, in a battle against
Pompey’s son Sextus in 36 b.c.e. Horace also
salutes the Muses as his protectresses against the
Odes 477
falling tree. Given his history, he considers himself
immune to violence and is willing to face any
danger.
Th e poet credits the Muses with refreshing
Augustus in the midst of his military exploits. In a
lengthy epic simile, Horace compares Augustus’s
victories to that of the gods over the rebellious
Tit a ns. With that simile, the ode concludes.
“Momentous matters” continue to occupy the
poet through the next two odes. Ode 3.5, Horace
disparages Crassus’s captured Roman soldiers for
marrying Barbarian wives and remaining in Parthia
while serving in the army there. He contrasts
that recent Roman behavior with the former fortitude
of Marcus Attilius Regulus, a soldier in the
fi rst Punic War. Captured in Carthage in 255 b.
c.e., Regulus was released to return to Italy and
arrange an exchange of prisoners. Regulus appeared
before the senate and advised them against bringing
the army home. Having put the senatorial
speech in Regulus’s mouth, Horace then reports
how Regulus, feeling unworthy in defeat, had
refused to greet his wife and children. He concludes
by reporting how Regulus unhesitatingly
followed through on his determination to share
his comrades’ fates. Th e senate took his advice.
Regulus returned to Carthage, where he was executed
along with his fellows.
In Ode 3.6, Horace continues in the role of
social critic. Until the profaned temples of the
992
on her behavior.
Helen recounts an occasion on which Odysseus
had entered the citadel of Troy disguised as
a beggar. She nonetheless recognized him and
confronted him. Eventually, she said, she convinced
him to be her guest, bathed and anointed
him, gave him fresh clothes, and swore an oath
484 Odyssey, The
not to reveal him as Odysseus to the Trojans until
he was safely back in the Greek camp. AĀ er that,
she says, Odysseus told her the Greek plans and
killed many Trojans as he fought his way out of
the city. Helen says she repented “the mad day”
that Aphrodite had made her forsake all she held
dear, including a husband without physical or
mental defect.
Menelaus compliments Helen on her tale and
tells another. He recalls the way that, as the Greek
detachment sat waiting in the Trojan horse for an
opportunity to leap out and open the gates of the
city to the attacking host, Helen walked around the
horse three times, patting it and calling out the
names of the best Greek fi ghters while imitating the
voices of their wives. He remembers how Odysseus
had clamped his hands over the mouth of Diomedes
to keep him from calling out in answer and how
Odysseus saved the Greek cause by keeping everyone
quiet until Athena fi nally led Helen away.
In view of the subtext regarding Helen’s true
wishes that these stories imply, a reader can surmise
that a considerable degree of tension had
arisen between the spouses. Telemachus gives evidence
of his mature tact by suggesting that everyone
retire, thereby diff using a brewing argument.
Book 4
Th e next day, Telemachus asks Menelaus for news
of Odysseus. Menelaus recounts the details of his
passage home via Egypt. He reports an encounter
with the shape- shiĀ ing sea god Proteus, whom
Menelaus held down until the deity had exhausted
his repertoire of shapes: seal, other beasts, water,
and fi re. Th en Menelaus could question Proteus,
and the god had to answer truthfully. Menelaus
1007
and Menelaus.
Disguised as a beggar, Odysseus shows up at
his own palace gates in Book 18. Th ere, in a scene
fi lled with pathos, Odysseus encounters his old
dog, Argos, which had been leĀ on the trash heap
to die. Th ough the dog had only been a pup when
Odysseus leĀ , Argos recognizes his master and
expires in a paroxysm of canine ecstasy. Book 18
also recounts Odysseus’s powerful muscles as he
strips for a fi stfi ght with the formerly boastful but
increasingly frightened Irus—a hanger- on of the
suitors. One mighty punch leaves the braggart
stunned, broken, and bleeding.
Books 19–20
Book 19 focuses on a scar that Odysseus carries
from a childhood hunting accident when he had
been almost fatally wounded by a boar’s tusk. In
Odyssey, The 489
addition to being an emblem of Odysseus’s mortality,
the scar becomes the token by which both
his old nurse, Eurykleia, and his wife, Penelope,
recognize him.
Storm clouds gather over the suitors’ cause in
Book 20. Odysseus recruits as allies his swineherd,
his son, his father, and his nurse Euykleia.
Th e Ithacan seer Th eoclymenus predicts the suitors’
destruction.
Books 21–22
In Book 21, Odysseus strings a bow that he alone
can both string and draw and reveals his identity
to all by making a trick shot that is his trademark.
His arrow passes through the holes in 12 axe
handles without touching any. Th is is the signal
for general carnage to begin. Eurykleia locks the
women of the house hold in their quarters; Odysseus’s
confederates seize weapons from the
armory; the goddess Athena joins the fray in support
of her favorite Odysseus; and the suitors are
wiped out in Book 22.
Books 23–24
Vengeance is complete in Book 23 as Odysseus
hangs the maids who had been the suitors’ mistresses.
In that book, too, Penelope has one further
1017
Bibliography
Cato, Marcus Porcius, the Elder. Opere [Works].
Edited by Paolo Cugusi and Maria Teresa
Sblendorio Cugusi. Turin, Italy: UTET, 2001.
Orpheus (fl. ca. 1250 BC) Greek poet
Although so many mythical elements have
attached themselves to the story of Orpheus that
siĀ ing the facts, if any, from the fi ction is virtually
impossible, the ancient Greeks remembered
Orpheus as a pre- Homeric poet and musician. He
is thought to have been a native of the region of
Th race in the Eastern Balkan Peninsula and a
devotee of the god Dionysus.
If Orpheus did compose poems and songs,
nothing attributable to him survives. His legend,
however, has inspired later poets and musicians
down through the ages. So sweetly did he sing that
animals were enamored of his song, and the very
plants fanned their leaves in time with his music.
Orpheus is also remembered for his passion
for his wife, the dryad or tree nymph Eurydice,
and their story has inspired not only literary
retellings but also ballets and operas. Fleeing
Aristaeus, a potential ravisher, Eurydice stepped
on a venomous serpent and died of its bite. Inconsolable
at the loss of his wife, Orpheus descended
into the underworld. Th ere his music so charmed
the king of the underworld, Hades, that the god
shed an iron tear and released Eurydice from
death—with one proviso. Eurydice would follow
Orpheus back up from the underworld, but
Orpheus must not look back at her. Nearing the
world of the living, however, Orpheus could not
resist glancing back at his wife, and she slid back
into the land of the dead.
Orpheus is said to have met his own death as a
result of observing the secret, frenzied rituals
that the god’s Th racian female devotees—the
Maenads—employed in their worship of Dionysus.
When the worshippers caught Orpheus, they
tore him to pieces and decapitated him, throwing
his head into the river Hebrus, where, according
to some versions, it continued singing.
1053
512 palimpsest
earth is ridiculous.” He quotes the poet Pindar
on the subject: “All human bodies yield to Death’s
decree, / the soul survives to all eternity”—a view
that Plutarch endorses.
Th e other extant parallel lives that Plutarch
treats include those of the Athenian general and
politician Alcibiades (450–404 b.c.e.) paired with
the legendary Roman hero Coriolanus whom
Shakespeare treats in his tragedy of the same
name. We also fi nd the fi ft h century b.c. e. Greek
statesman Aristides paired with the Roman patriot
Cato the Elder (234–149 b.c. e.), the Athenian
general Nicias (d. 423 b.c. e.) and the Roman triumvir
and general Crassus (115–53 b.c. e.). Paired
as well are the Greek statesman Demetrius and
the Roman general and triumvir Marcus Antonius
(83–30 b.c.e.); the Greek orator and statesman
Demosthenes (384–322 b.c. e.) and his Roman
counterpart Cicer o (106–43 b.c.e.); the Greek
patriot Dion and the Roman republican Marcus
Junius Brutus (85–42 b.c.e.). Beyond these, other
extant paired biographies include those of the
wealthy Roman consul Lucullus (ca. 110–ca. 57
b.c. e.) with a Greek counterpart, the Athenian
general and statesman Cimon (502–449 b.c. e.);
the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius (715–
872 b.c.e.), with the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus
(ca. 820 b.c. e.).
Plutarch compares the Spartan conqueror of
Athens in 404 b.c. e., Lysander, with the Roman
general and dictator Sulla (138–78 b.c. e.). Th e
author considers together the careers of the Th eban
general Pelopidas (d. 364 b.c. e.), who defeated
the Spartans, together with that of the Roman
hero Marcellus (266–208 b.c. e.) who was fi ve
times consul and the conqueror of Syracuse. Plutarch
continues with a comparison of the Greek
patriot and chief of the Achaean League, Philopoeman
(ca. 252–183 b.c. e.), comparing him with
the Roman general and censor Caius Flamininus
(d. 217 b.c. e.). Also extant we fi nd Plutarch’s treatments
of the Roman general and statesman Cneius
1064
Publishers, 1970.
Heseltine, Michael, trans. Petronius. New York:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925.
Petronius. Ā e Poems of Petronius. [Selections.]
Translated by Edward Courtney. Atlanta, Ga.:
Scholars Press, 1991.
———. Satyrica: Petronius. Translated and edited by
R. Bracht Branham and Daniel Kenney. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996.
———. Ā e Satyricon. Translated by P. G. Walsh.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Phaedrus the fabulist (Gaius Iulius
Phaeder) (ca. 15 BC–ca. 50 . .)
Roman poet
Brought from his native Th race as a slave to Rome,
Phaedrus fortunately became the servant of the
emperor August us Ca esa r , who set him free.
He authored at least fi ve books of f a bl es that
survive under his name; an additional 32 fables
survive that are also likely attributable to him.
Phaedrus relied for his stories principally upon
the fables told by his pre de ces sor, Aesop, and on
stories from other sources that people attributed
to Aesop. To both sorts of fables, however, he
added brief tales about such fi gures as Mena nder ,
Soc r at es, or Aesop himself.
Phaedrus also made none- too- veiled references
to current Roman politics. Th is practice brought
Phaedrus to the unfavorable attention of the emperor
Tiberius’s prefect of the Praetorian Guard,
Lucius Aelius Sejanus—a man not to be trifl ed
with. Phaedrus may well have been imprisoned
for a time over his real or fancied criticisms of
imperial policy. It is likely they were real; though
many of the fables are merely jocular, others seem
to be straightforward social and po liti cal criticism.
A principal Phaedrus lesson was this: When
the immoral or the ignorant are in power, ordinary
persons need to learn the virtue of resignation
and wait out the storm. Re sis tance is futile.
If Phaedrus’s versions of such stories as “Th e
Fox and the Sour Grapes” or “Th e Wolf and the
Lamb” do not reach the level of the Re nais sance
1103
that the gods take the good men and let the
evil fl ourish. Odysseus is Philoctetes’ principal
example of the latter.
Neoptolemus says he must be going, and
Philoctetes begs him to take him along. He knows
that the stench of his wound is a problem, but he
is willing to ride anywhere, including in the bilge,
and he is only a day’s sail from home. Neoptolemus
agrees to take him. Th e two are about to enter
Philoctetes’ dwelling to collect his belongings
when they are interrupted by the arrival of a sailor
and a merchant who supplies the Greek troops
at Troy. Th e merchant has heard the prophecy
concerning Philoctetes, and he further reports
that Odysseus means to bring him to Troy.
Philoctetes says he would rather go to Hell.
As Philoctetes gathers his belongings and some
medicine that eases his foot, the chorus sings
sympathetically of his plight. He allows Neoptolemus
to examine his bow and arrows. Th en
Philoctetes suddenly suff ers unbearable pain
from his aἀ icted foot and begs Neoptolemus to
cut off the off ending heel. Aft er describing his
suff ering, Philoctetes falls into a deep sleep.
When Philoctetes wakens, Neoptolemus is
conscience- stricken about his role in deceiving
his newfound friend. Th e youth confesses that
Philoctetes must sail with him to Troy. Philoctetes
begs the youth to give him back his weapons and
leave him aft er all. Odysseus, however, enters, and
reveals himself to be the master plotter, but he
defends himself by saying that he is merely the
instrument of the will of Zeus.
Philoctetes threatens suicide and moves toward
the edge of a precipice. Odysseus orders two sailors
to restrain the man. Philoctetes calls Odysseus
evil and curses him. Odysseus threatens to
take the weapons and leave Philoctetes on Lemnos
aft er all. Neoptolemus sets about preparing
his ship for the journey and encourages Philoctetes
to change his mind and come willingly. Th e
archer, however, has become totally distracted by
fi nding himself in an impossible situation, and he
1109
girl, all ends very well for the two central young
couples.
Heightened interest in Bacchides has, as the
play’s recent translator James Tatum tells us,
resulted from the 1968 discovery of a substantial
fragment of the play’s lost Greek source,
Mena nder ’s Dis exapaton (Ā e Double Deceiver).
Having a 70- line sample of this play has
made possible the sustained study of the way
Plautus used his sources. Not altogether surprisingly,
Plautus translated closely or freely as it
suited his dramatic purposes. Th e comparison
confi rms that achieving eff ective theater, not
slavish imitation of his sources, was Plautus’s
goal. Bacchides is also of interest as the ultimate
source of the inscription over Hell’s gate in
Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon every hope, all you
who enter here.” In Plautus, however, the source
reference to hope abandoned appears on the
door of a brothel—a door characterized as a portal
to Hades.
Sometimes also classed among the less important
of Plautus’s extant plays, we fi nd Asinaria
(Asses Galore) and Casina (the name of a slave
girl who never appears on stage but who is loved
by both an el der ly man and his son—recently
translated as “A Funny Th ing Happened on the
Way to the Wedding”). In a similar category, we
fi nd Cistellaria (Ā e Little Box), another recognition
play in which the contents of the box are crucial
in the identifi cation of a foundling as the
daughter of a worthy citizen. Her improved status
means she can marry her beloved. Curculio (Ā e
Weevil)—named for the central character, a stock
parasite who is the literary ancestor of the British
playwright Ben Jonson’s smarmy Mosca in Volpone—
tells another story of the triumph of true
love over adversity and also revolves around hidden
identities.
Also named for a major character, a slave, Epidicus
once again exploits the stock situations of
tricking an old man out of money to buy a young
man’s beloved—or in this case, two beloveds—out
1126
Porphyry 551
Princess Nukata See female p oet s of
ancient J apan.
printing, Chinese invention of
Primitive forms of block printing had likely been
known as early as the seventh century c.e. and
were probably fi rst used to make available multiple
copies of Buddhist devotional literature (see Buddh
ist t ext s). By late in the T’ang dynasty, the
technology had been employed in such applications
as the production of almanacs, calendars,
and dictionaries. Th e invention of the application
of that technology to the production of a wide
assortment of books, however, is attributable to
Feng Dao (881–954 c.e.), a tutor in the imperial
house hold. Th us, the Chinese achieved the capacity
to mass-produce books about half a millennium
before a comparable technology became available
in Eu rope.
Bibliography
Giles, Herbert A. A History of Chinese Literature.
New York: Grove Press, 1958.
Proba, Faltonia Betitia (fl. ca. 350 . .)
Roman poet
One of only two female Roman poets with substantial
literary remains, Proba was an aristocrat and a
Christian. She established an enviable literary reputation
as a composer of ce nt os. Th e En glish word
cento, in Proba’s context, alludes to poems that she
constructed on subjects taken from the Hebr ew
Bibl e and the New Test a ment b y taking lines that
Vir gil originally wrote and cleverly rearranging
them so that they addressed her subject.
Th e success among Christian readers of Proba’s
Virgilian centos was so great that Pope Gelasius
named it on a list of works without authority
as Christian text. For devout Christian Romans,
however, the twin appeal of the authoritative poet
of Rome’s literary golden age and stories from
Scripture seems to have been overwhelming.
See also Sul picia .
Bibliography
Conte, Gian Biaggio. Latin Literature: A History.
1146
anger.
Aesclepius learned to treat the illnesses of all
who sought his help, but he had also inherited his
mother’s folly. He overstepped his human limitations
by yielding to the importunities of the goddess
Artemis, who begged Aesclepius to bring
back to life her human favorite, Hippolytus (see
Hippol ytu s). Infuriated at this breech of human
limitation, Zeus destroyed Aesclepius with a
thunderbolt. From this tale, Pindar draws a
moral. Human beings must “seek what is proper
from the gods.” Th en, tactfully addressing himself
instead of his royal patron, Pindar continues:
“Do not, my soul, strive for the life of the immortals,
/ but exhaust the practical means at your
disposal.”
Returning to his original wish that Chiron
were still living, the poet says he would use his
song to persuade the centaur to “provide a healer”
for the maladies of “good men”—presumably like
Hieron. Were that the case, the poet would bring
his patron two prizes for his horse’s fi rst- place
fi nish, a “victory revel” and golden health.
Having proceeded until this point by indirection,
Pindar now directly addresses his patron.
Th e poet reminds the king that the gods apportion
to human beings a pair of evils for every good.
Fools, he continues, cannot handle this truth, but
good men—as Hieron has implicitly done—take
the gods’ gift s and share them with others.
Pindar draws from mythology further examples
of the intermixture of good fortune and misfortune
that the gods dispense. He concludes the
poem’s fi ft h antistrophe with the observation that
people’s happiness, like “gusts of high- fl ying
winds,” does not last long.
With great tact, Pindar off ers Hieron disguised
advice in the concluding stanza of the poem. Th e
disguise amounts to a statement of Pindar’s personal
intention to “be small in small times” and
“great in great ones” and to “honor with [his]
mind” the fortune that is allotted to him. Pindar
concludes by hoping for fame that “endures in
1167
peoples.
Bibliography
Gibson, J. C. L., trans. Ras Shamra: Canaanite Myths
and Legends. New York, T. & T. Clark International,
2004.
Habel, Norman C. Yahweh vs. Baal: A Confl ict of
Religious Cultures. New York: Bookman Associates,
1964.
Kapelrud, Arvid S. Ā e Ras Shamra Discoveries and
the Old Testament. Semitic texts translated by
G. W. Anderson. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1963.
Record of Ancient Matters See Kojiki .
“Record of the Peach Blossom
Spring” (Taohuayuan, T’ao- hua
yüan) Tao Qian (ca. 400 . .)
Contained in Tao Qia n’s (T’ao Ch’ien’s) 10-
volume collection of 116 fairy tales and legends
entitled Sequel to “Search for the Supernatural,”
“Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” is a utopian
tale. It tells of an isolated people dwelling in
peace in a location that, though a traveler has
once discovered it, can never again be found. It
fi nds its analogues in stories about the magical
kingdom of Shangri- la in the Himalayan Mountains,
or about the village of Brigadoon that only
appears once each century in Scotland.
In “Record of the Peach Blossom Spring,” a
fi sherman follows a narrow channel in his boat.
Th e channel leads through a maze of high rocks
to a pleasant land where people enjoy peace and
plenty without the supervision of overlords or the
expectation of military ser vice. Th e people are
happy to explain their circumstances to the visiting
fi sherman, asking only that he not reveal their
existence to anyone in the outside world. He
promises not to speak about them, but when he
leaves, he carefully marks his route and immediately
reports his experience to the authorities.
When he tries to lead them to the happy land of
the peach blossom spring, however, he can fi nd
no evidence of his markers, and he never succeeds
in retracing his journey.
1182
Bibliography
Tao Qian. Ā e Complete Poetical Works of Tao Yuanming
[Tao Quian]. Translated by Wang Rongpei.
Beijing: Wai yu jiao xue yu yan jiu chu ban she,
2000.
Davis, A. R. Tao Yüan Ming: His Works and Ā eir
Meaning. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1983.
Rec ords of the Grand Historian See
Shihji .
Republic, The Plato (ca. 411 or 410 BC)
Described by the 20th- century British writer
Aldous Huxley as “a noble philosophical romance,”
the 10 books of Pl at o’s Ā e Republic cover education,
ethics, politics, religion, and sociology,
among other subjects. Plato himself thought of
his book as a serious but nonetheless playful fable
Republic, The 571
about justice. In that context, the work provides
a model for thinking about po liti cal systems
rather than, as has sometimes been proposed, a
blueprint for an ideal state. While Plato seriously
examines the subjects that Ā e Republic covers,
and while careful readers can derive much
intellectual profi t as well as plea sure from its
pages, those readers must always bear in mind
that they have before them a work of sometimes
playful and satirical fi ction. Th e date ascribed
above gives that which is sometimes proposed
for the fi ctive conversations that occur in Ā e
Republic. Th e actual date of composition is
uncertain.
Book 1
Th e story opens as Socr at es and his companion,
Glaucon, are about to leave a religious festival in
the port city of Piraeus and return home to Athens.
Th e servant of their friend Polemarchus asks
them to wait for his master, who is coming along
behind them. Catching up, Polemarchus persuades
his friends to join him for dinner and to
see the eve ning festivities. Th ey accept, and at
Polemarchus’s home they encounter the virtuous,
aged, and wise Cephalus, with whom Socrates
1183
Book 1
As the fi rst of the satires opens, a reader encounters
the voice of the satirist, who seems to be an
audience member at a poetry reading. Th e satirist
rhetorically asks himself why he must always be
in the audience instead of being the poet. He certainly
has the education to be a poet, for he has
studied the classics of 2008 and Rome. Th ere
are, however, so many poets that he is reluctant to
add yet another voice to the yammer of versifi ers—
but he must. He is thoroughly enraged by the
sorry state of an enfeebled and eff eminate Rome.
Eunuchs take wives, barbers make fortunes,
wealthy old women hire lovers, conspicuous consumption
thrives, and crooked politicians and
civil servants on the take proliferate. Th e Roman
world, in brief, is turned upside down, and the
poet’s persona, who is a conventional moralist if
also a bit of a prig, quivers with rage at the state of
Roman morality. His satiric voice must be heard.
Yet he must be careful. Attacking powerful fi gures
by name can be fatal to the attacker. He will
be most secure if he vents his fury on famous (or
infamous) fi gures already dead. If readers see
parallels between them and the living, that is not
the poet’s fault.
As Satire 2 opens, the poet takes aim at those
men who play the female role in homosexual relationships
and who denounce others for doing the
same thing. He waxes especially vehement when
he reports that a male member of the famous
Roman po liti cal family, the Gracchi, had been
given in marriage as the bride. Cowardice and
sexual bondage are rife. Religion is dead, and
Rome exports its contemporary vices to the ends
of the earth—at least as far as Armenia.
In the third satire, Juvenal turns his invective
against the city of Rome itself. Her holy places
have been let as tenements and her greensward
paved over. Th e authorial voice of Juvenal in the
person of one Umbricius asserts that Rome has
become an uncongenial place for honest men.
One can fi nd a job as a hired assassin or a lookout
1222
598 Satyricon
Th e cook is stripped, preparatory to being punished.
Th e guests intercede, and the cook is
ordered to gut the pig in everyone’s presence. He
hacks away at the carcass, and instead of intestines,
fi ne sausages and blood puddings tumble
forth.
A game follows in which guests receive
humorous presents depending on what message
appears on papers they draw from a jar. When
Encolpius and his friends become amused by
something and break into laughter, a former slave
takes drunken off ense and begins to threaten
them. He perversely illustrates a kind of reverse
snobbism as he takes pride in his former condition
of servitude and imagines slights where none
are intended.
Aft er professional entertainment and gift giving,
Trimalchio introduces his household gods:
Fat Profi t, Good Luck, and Large Income. Th en
the host invites a guest to tell a story. Th e guest
obliges with the tale of a werewolf. Trimalchio
himself responds with a story about witchcraft
and a strong man killed by it.
Various displays of bad taste ensue. Among
them, Trimalchio invites some of his slaves to join
the guests at the table, where he announces to the
assembled company his intention to free them all
when he dies and to leave his money to Fortunata.
He wants all his house hold to know his plans so
that they will love him as much while he lives as
they will aft er his death. He then describes in
detail the sumptuous tomb that he plans for himself.
Among other things, he specifi es a statue of
himself, another of his dog, a third of Fortunata,
garlands of fl owers, jars of perfume, and depictions
of every fi ght that his favorite boxer has ever
won. He also specifi es his epitaph, shaped like a
funeral urn and listing as chief among his accomplishments
the fact that he never listened to philos
o phers. He then bursts into tears and mourns
his own inevitable passing.
Recovering from his paroxysm of grief, Trimalchio
1238
adultery forgivable.
Hermas wants to know, aft er one has been
baptized and redeemed from one’s former sins,
whether or not other opportunities for forgiveness
are possible should someone backslide. Th e
shepherd replies that one can be forgiven one
more time. If, however, one sins and repents
repeatedly, one has exhausted one’s reservoir of
grace.
Hermas then asks if remarriage aft er the death
of a spouse is a sin. Th e shepherd replies that it is
not, but that “superior honor” attaches to life as a
widow or widower. Th is, of course, is the Catholic
Church’s historically orthodox view of that
matter.
612 Shepherd, The
Th e shepherd’s fi ft h commandment requires
patience and prohibits irascibility, whose ill
eff ects he describes at length. In the sixth, the
shepherd recurs to the fi rst. He wants to discuss
in more detail the benefi ts of faith, fear, and selfrestraint.
Staying on the right path will avoid
temptation. Each person, the shepherd avers, has
two angels: one righ teous and one wicked. Th e
wicked one can be recognized if a person feels
angry or bitter, or feels extravagantly desirous of
too much food or drink, lusts aft er sex, or easily
grows haughty, proud, or angry.
Th e seventh commandment requires that a
person “fear the Lord . . . and guard his commandments.”
It also suggests fearing the works of
the dev il.
Th e eighth commandment requires refraining
from evil, but not from good. If Hermas had
been in any doubt about what was evil, the
Shepherd gives him a list of prohibitions. He
must avoid: “adultery and sexual immorality . . .
l awless drunkenness . . . evil luxury . . .
over abundant food . . . extravagant wealth . . .
boasting . . . pride . . . haughtiness . . . lying,
slander . . . hypocrisy . . . bearing grudges, and
speaking . . . blasphemy.” Other lesser wickedness
is also to be avoided: “robbery, fraud, false
1267
skepticism.
Like the Eu ro pe an historians of antiquity,
Sima is not above supplying his characters with
the speeches they might have given if the ones
they did give are absent from the record. In fact,
his historical approach oft en tries to re create the
past in dramatic fashion rather than to give merely
a running retrospective account. Th e result is a
highly readable, oft en novelistic account of Chinese
antiquity.
Bibliography
Giles, Herbert A. A History of Chinese Literature.
New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958.
Mair, Victor H., ed. Ā e Columbia History of Chinese
Literature. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2001.
Sima Qian. Rec ords of the Grand Historian: Han
Dynasty. 2 vols. Translated by Burton Watson.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
———. Ā e Grand Scribe’s Rec ords. 7 vols. Edited by
William Nienhauser, Jr. Translated by Tsai- fa
Cheng et al. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1994–2006.
shi poems
Written Chinese is a monosyllabic language. Th is
does not mean that all words in Chinese have one
syllable and one only. Indeed, in the spoken language,
words may very well be polysyllabic. Th e
monosyllabic classifi cation does mean, however,
that the great preponderance of Chinese written
words have just one syllable. Chinese, however, is
also a tonal language, so that the same syllable—
wu, for example—might mean one thing when
spoken with a level pitch, another when spoken
with a rising pitch, and yet another when spoken
with a falling pitch. Th us, three separate
characters, or sinographs, would be required to
render the three possible combinations in this
hypothetical example.
Sinographs in ancient times were scratched or
painted onto surfaces such as bamboo or silk
before the invention of paper in about 100 c. e.
made brush and ink the preferred mode for rendering
1274
Bibliography
Collins, John J. Seers, Sibyls, and Sages in Hellenistic-
Roman Judaism. Boston: Brill Academic, 2001.
Potter, David S. Prophets and Emperors: Human and
Divine Authority from Augustus to Ā eodosius.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1994.
Terry, Milton S. trans. Sibylline Oracles: Translated
from the Greek into En glish Blank Verse. El Paso,
Tex.: Selene Books, 1991.
Silius Italicus (Tiberius Catius Silius
Asconius) (26–102 . .) Roman poet
Th e author of the longest (12,000- line) epic poem
in Latin, Punica, Silius Italicus does not command
much literary attention among modern readers.
Silius Italicus 617
He is nonetheless of considerable interest to
Roman history quite apart from his literary work.
Before he retired to the poetic life, Silius enjoyed
a distinguished career as a public offi cial and a
jurist. He served as a consul of the Roman state
under the emperor Nero. On Nero’s death, Silius
tried to negotiate between confl icting claims to
the imperial throne made by Nero’s general in
northern Eu rope, Vitellius, and by Nero’s commander
in Asia, Vespasian. Th ough the negotiations
succeeded and Vitellius agreed to abdicate in
favor of Vespasian, the mass desertion of Vitellius
by his troops left him at the mercy of a hostile
crowd of Romans who demeaned, mutilated, and
murdered him.
Th e victorious Vespasian advanced Silius’s
career. Already a member of the Roman senate,
Silius rose to become the proconsul of Asia. Th ereaft
er, he retired to his extensive estates and began
his massive literary undertaking. For his poetic
model, he chose Vir gi l ’s Aeneid, although his
debts to Luca n also abound. For historical detail,
he consulted Liv y.
Silius begins Punica from the premise that
Dido’s dying curse against a faithless Aeneas in
the Aeneid was fulfi lled by the second Punic War
fought between Rome and Carthage. He restores
1277
2005.
Plato. Plato Unmasked: Plato’s Dialogues Made New.
Translated by Keith Quincy. Spokane: Eastern
Washington University Press, 2003.
———. Ā e Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues.
Translated by Benjamin Jowett. New
York: Barnes and Noble, 2004.
Xenophon. Ā e Shorter Socratic Writings. Translated
and edited by Robert C. Bartlett. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1996.
Solon (fl. ca. 594 BC) Greek statesman, poet
Said to be descended from Codrus, the last of
Athens’s legendary kings, Solon was born at Salamis
on the island of Cyprus. Tradition has it that
he spent time in his youth traveling to Egypt and
other Mediterranean countries while engaging in
trade. Perhaps his ventures succeeded, for he was
able to retire to Athens while still relatively young
and to spend his time there in literary and philosophical
pursuits.
Th e state of Athenian politics, however, compelled
Solon’s attention. By means of a martial
poem, he encouraged the Athenians to make
war against the neighboring city- state of Megara.
Taking a command himself, he overcame his
native city of Salamis. His success as a general
led to his appointment as archon of the city—
that is, as head of the Athenian state. In that
capacity, Solon promulgated laws whose eff ectiveness
has made his name a byword for
wisdom. He cancelled all debts, including the
traditional responsibility of tenant farmers to
give a sixth of their produce to landlords. He
broke the power of the hereditary nobility by
or ga niz ing the rest of the citizenry into property
classes, each of which could elect members to
certain civic offi ces. He gave all citizens the right
to sue and initiated an appeals pro cess against
the arbitrary decisions of magistrates. Naturally,
as with any po liti cal reform, some were satisfi ed,
but most were not. Nonetheless, Solon’s reformation
of the Athenian legal code laid the foundation
for Athens’ subsequent ascendancy as a
1290
successful democracy.
When he had done what he could to remedy
Athens’s po liti cal and diplomatic diffi culties, Solon
retired once more to his literary and philosophical
occupations. Th e remains of these are slender. A
collection of moral proverbs in elegiac verse (see
el eg y a nd el ega ic poet r y) bears his name. A
few letters and a fragment concerning a well- spent
life are also ascribed to him.
Bibliography
Blok, Josine H., and André P. M. H. Lardinois.
Solon of Athens: New Historical and Philological
Approaches. Boston: Brill, 2006.
Irwin, Elizabeth. Solon and Early Greek Poetry: Ā e
Politics of Exhortation. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Solon. Frammenti dell’ opera poetica: Solone. Edited
by Herwing Maehler. Translated by Marco Fantuzzi.
Milan, Italy: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli,
2007.
Wallace, Robert W. “Revolutions and a New Order
in Solonian Athens and Archaic 2008 .” In Origins
of Democracy in Ancient 2008 . Edited by
Kurt A. Raafl aub et al. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007.
Song Yu (Sung Yü) (fl. ca. 290–223 BC)
Chinese offi cial, poet
Th e nephew of the poet Qu Yua n, Song Yu was an
offi cial at the Zhou (Chou) dynasty’s court and an
infl uential poet. Little else is known concerning
his life. Song Yu is historically credited with a
number of compositions. Some of those credits,
however, are certainly mistaken, others are in
doubt, and still others are presumed to be
accurate.
A major work in the second category is a work
in several sections that runs to almost 300 lines—
Ā e Nine Changes (Jiu Bian, Chiu Pien). Th is work
is in an elegiac mood that seems to characterize
Song’s composition and looks to China’s most
famous poem, Li Sao (Enc ounter ing Sor r ow),
as its model. According to Sima Q ia n, who
624 Solon
1291
Christianity.
For a time, Stoicism had a powerful spokesman
in the person of the Roman emperor Ma r -
cu s Aur eli us Anto ninus, whose Medit at ions,
written in Greek, reveal the character of a man
who resisted the tendency for absolute power to
corrupt absolutely and who believed in the power
of reason over credulity.
Bibliography
Inwood, Brad, ed. Ā e Cambridge Companion to the
Stoics. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2003.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1997.
Strabo See Geo g r aphy; geo grap hy and
geo grap hers, G r eek and Roman.
Suetonius Tranquillus, Caius (ca. 70– ca.
160 . .) Roman historian
A member of the equestrian (knightly) class of
Roman citizens, Suetonius was the son of a a tribune,
a se nior offi cer of the 13th Roman Legion.
As a young man in Rome, Suetonius practiced
law. He was a friend of Pl iny t he Younge r, a nd
Pliny formally requested that the emperor Trajan
grant Suetonius exemption from the payment of
certain taxes.
Roman emperors continued to look upon Suetonius
with favor, and he occupied a series of
responsible offi ces within the imperial house hold.
Under Trajan and his successor Hadrian, Suetonius
performed the offi ces of research secretary,
chief librarian, and private or corresponding secretary.
In the latter post, he well may have been a
member of Hadrian’s retinue when the emperor
visited Gaul, Germany, and Britain in 121–22 c.e.
For reasons unknown, Suetonius was summarily
dismissed from the imperial ser vice
around the time of the emperor’s return. By that
time, though, he had already acquired a reputation
as a writer on a wide range of topics from
bio gr a phy to clothing to meteorology. Many of
his works have been lost, but we know some of the
matters they concerned. Composing in both Latin
1301
636 Symposium
Socrates is absent, Alcibiades is overcome again
by his love of popularity.
Alcibiades goes on to praise Socrates’ selfcontrol
and his fi rm and nonjudgmental re sistance
to the homoerotic advances of Alcibiades.
He recalls Socrates’ self- mastery in other situations,
such as in the battle of Potidea during the
Peloponnesian Wars. Th ere, Socrates seemed
indiff erent to such hardships as hunger, fatigue,
and cold. He could, for instance, march barefoot
on ice without seeming to experience discomfort.
His powers of concentration made it possible
for him to stand lost in thought throughout
the night. Alcibiades recalls an occasion when
he himself lay wounded on the fi eld and Socrates
saved his life, rescuing both Alcibiades and his
weapons.
Alcibiades concludes his oration in praise of
Socrates by repeating his comparison between
Socrates and the busts that conceal images of the
gods. In reply, Socrates accuses Alcibiades of only
feigning drunkenness to have the opportunity to
try a new tactic in his ongoing attempt to seduce
Socrates. He also thinks Alcibiades is attempting
to stir up a quarrel between Socrates and his
friend Agathon.
Just at that moment, a new band of revelers
bursts in at the door, and the orderly speechifying
at the banquet is irretrievably interrupted.
Everyone falls asleep except Socrates, Aristophanes,
and Agathon. When a cock’s crowing
awakens Aristodemus, he discovers Socrates
discoursing to the other two about the essential
identity of the geniuses of c omedy and t r agedy.
When his last two listeners also fall asleep
toward daybreak, Socrates rises, goes to the public
baths to bathe, passes the day as he usually
does, and goes home to rest at the day’s end.
In Symposium, Plato provides us with a dramatic
per for mance that contains a philosophical
clarifi cation of his thinking about the subject of
love in the dialogue reported between Socrates
1317
1980.
Theognis (ca. mid- sixth century BC)
Greek poet
Probably born in the mainland city of Megara,
Th eognis composed elegiac verses that took among
their principal subjects the benefi ts of hereditary
oligarchy as opposed to the evils of demo cratic
politics and majority rule. Th e works of Th eognis
survive in a unique manuscript of almost 1,400
lines, but it appears that the work of other poets
also comprise a part of the collection. Some poems
on the subject of love are attributed to Th eognis,
but that attribution is highly suspect.
In the po liti cal poems, Th eognis chooses the
elegiac form that alternates lines of dactylic
hexameter—the meter of Homer —with lines of
dactylic pentameter (see quant it at ive ve r se).
An aristocrat by birth, Th eognis believed that
humankind was sharply divided into two sorts:
those who were born of noble parentage and
were therefore good, and those who were not so
born and were therefore bad. Education brought
no benefi t in the reformation of the moral predispositions
of the bad ones, so that when the
rule of cities fell into their hands, po liti cal corruption
and the ruin of aristocrats inevitably
followed.
Th e virtues of the aristocratic class included
judgment, moderation, justice, restraint, and reverence.
Th e lower classes were distinguished by a
total absence of those virtues. Th eognis thought it
642 Theocritus
easier to “beget and rear a man” than it was “to
put good sense in him.” Fools did not become
wise; neither did bad people suddenly turn good.
Teaching did not lead to improvement of virtue.
Th eognis complains of the role that the wicked,
risen to important positions, were playing in
debasing the citizenry of Megara, in replacing
noble motives with the quest for power and profi t,
in approving injustice to achieve those goals, and
in turning “gentlemen into nobodies.” Apparently
this was the fate that the poet himself had suffered,
1327
Trinummus 655
A much- chastened Megaronides leaves, blaming
himself for having believed idle gossip against
his friend.
Act 2 begins with the soliloquy of the young
Athenian, Lysiteles. He is pondering the question
of whether to concentrate on love aff airs or on
business and wonders which option would bring
the greater happiness. Business with integrity
wins his internal confl ict. His father, Philto, now
enters spouting a fountain of moral advice. Aft er
assuring his father that he always observes his
counsel punctiliously, Lysiteles tries to borrow
money to help a young friend out of fi nancial diffi
culty. Philto’s high principles, however, do not
usually extend to rescuing the fi nancially foolish,
but as Lysiteles keeps insisting, Philto begins to
weaken until he hears that the friend is Charmides’
son, Lesbonicus. Th en he once more grows
reluctant to help a wastrel.
Lysiteles suggests that he be allowed to wed
Lesbonicus’s sister and to take her without a
dowry. Shocked at such an unpre ce dented idea,
the doting father nonetheless yields and agrees to
arrange the marriage on terms he regards as unfavorable.
As he does, he sees Lesbonicus coming
with his slave Stasimus, and Philto hides to eavesdrop
on their conversation. Th e two are trying to
sort out where 100,000 dollars has disappeared to
in the past two weeks. Philto interrupts them and
tries to arrange the marriage, but Lesbonicus
refuses the contract on the grounds that, because
he has wasted his father’s substance, the families
are no longer social equals. He is also unwilling
to put his sister into a situation in which she does
not have the protection that a dowry aff ords. Aft er
some persuasion, Lesbonicus agrees to the match
provided that Philto will accept a remaining family
farm as his sister’s dowry.
Th e slave Stasimus, trying to keep the farm in
his master’s family, interrupts and tells Philto
awful stories about the farm’s imperfections. In
the end, Philto refuses the farm but still insists on
1355
of Tomis.
Despite the poet’s depression at this unlookedfor
turn of events, he discovered that his capacity
for writing fi rst- rate poetry had not diminished.
While Ovid was still aboard ship on the outbound
journey, he turned his attention to composing
the fi rst of many collections of elegies
that would fl ow from his pen during the last nine
years of his life. He titled this fi rst collection of 5
books of elegies Tristia (Sadness, or Elegies of
Gloom).
Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto 657
Tristia, Book 1
Th e fi rst of Ovid’s elegies is an extended address
to the book he is writing. He imagines that it will
visit the beloved places in Rome where he cannot
go, and he charges the book to greet those places
for him. He also warns the book that readers may
take no plea sure from it. He begs the book to try
to intercede with Augustus on the poet’s behalf
and to withdraw the edict that has left him isolated
from his friends and his family. He imagines
that his book at last comes to rest in the “round
book- cases” of Ovid’s home, where Tristia will
fi nd itself lodged among its brothers. Ovid warns
Tristia to avoid those of his books that “teach how
to love”—his Ar t of Lov e. He tells his book to
make haste while he himself continues “to dwell
at the edge of the world.”
In the second elegy, Ovid describes a storm at
sea and his responses to the storm’s fury. Among
those responses is his vain prayer that he will be
drowned. His thoughts turn to the wife he left in
Rome and her grief for him. But the violence of
the storm does not long allow him to think about
her, and his thoughts turn again to dying. He
decides that he prefers to bear “Caesar’s wrath”
with him to the appointed place of his banishment.
He makes explicit his continued and former
loyalty to Augustus and insists that no guilty
deed incurred his punishment.
In the third elegy, Ovid revisits in his imagination
his fi nal night at home before his exile and
1359
666
U
Upanishads
A collection of Hindu wisdom literature, the
Upanishads are thought by the devout to contain
(in the words of their translator, S. Radhakrishnan)
“a complete chart of the unseen Reality
. . . [an] immediate, intimate . . . convincing
light on the secret of human existence.”
A composite word that literally means “to sit
down near,” the term Upanishad suggests a long,
oral history in which the works’ inherent wisdom
was passed from teacher to student over the generations.
A more meta phorical interpretation of
the word suggests that Upanishad conveys “bhrama-
knowledge by which ignorance is loosened or
destroyed.” Both philosophy and spiritual enlightenment
are implicit in the term.
While the numbers of texts that have come to
be included under the Upanishads umbrella have
grown over the centuries to more than 200, the
ancient list of texts connected with the earliest
Vedic schools seems to number between 10 and
14. Eight of these texts are in prose and are held to
be the earliest extant philosophical documents.
Dating from the eighth and seventh centuries b.
c. e., they are considered to be “revealed literature,”
and they enjoy the same status among
devout Hindus that the Bible does among Christians
and that the Koran does among Muslims.
Th e Upanishads contain the central doctrines as
well as the goal of enlightenment that Hindus
revere according to their individual and collective
capacities.
Among the concerns that the Upanishads
address are the origins, pro cesses, and ends of the
universe, the diff erences between the gods and
goddesses that people create—deities that are
genuine despite their origins and that populate
polytheistic pantheons—and the “one light of
universal creation.” Th e Upanishads focus principally
on subjective as opposed to objective reality.
Th ey are critical of ritualistic religion and eschew
1375
to China’s side.
Th e Legalists favor stern laws and harsh punishments
as the proper means for keeping the
common people in line. Th e Confucians describe
the wretchedness and want of the common people
and call for social programs to relieve their
misery. Th e Legalists feel sure that such programs
only encourage slothfulness. Th e Confucians
insist that proper educational programming
can lead the untutored commoners to virtue.
Besides, the Confucians argue, the idle rich have
no concept of the misery and drudgery that
make up the ordinary lot of common folks.
Huan Kuan manages to catch the fl avor of the
debates. While the rhetoric is high- fl own and the
speeches are oft en set pieces, insults are sometimes
exchanged, tempers fl are, and they occasionally
become so bitter that personal quarreling
and name- calling ensue.
Bibliography
Huan Kuan. Discourses on Salt and Iron: a debate.
Trans. by Esson M. Gale. Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1931.
Idema, Wilt, and Lloyd Haft . A Guide to Chinese Literature.
Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies,
Th e University of Michigan, 1997.
Watson, Burton. Early Chinese Literature. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1962.
Yanzi chunqiu (Yen Tzu Ch’un- ch’iu,
Spring and Autumn of Master Yen)
(ca. 500 BC)
Th e hero of this eight- chapter series of rigidly
moralistic anecdotes, Yen Ying, was a younger
contemporary of Confucius who shared some of
Confucius’s views but was not always the great
sage’s admirer. Specifi cally, Yen took issue with
the Confucian penchant for long periods of
mourning and elaborate funeral rituals. He also
disapproved of the Confucian fondness for
music. Instead, he seemed to favor the view of
Moz i, who considered music to be tainted with
lascivious overtones.
Th e literary historian Burton Watson suggests
1410
path.
Many of the stories Zhuangzi tells both teach
and amuse. Th is one concerns himself. Two high
offi cials of the Prince of Chu came from the ruler
as emissaries. Th eir mission was to invite Zhuangzi
to become Chu’s chief minister. Zhuangzi
replied that he had heard of a sacred tortoise that
had died at the age of 3,000 years and that the
prince kept its remains in his ancestral temple.
Would the tortoise rather, Zhuangzi asked the
messengers, have its remains venerated there or
wag its tail in the mud? Th e messengers agreed
that the tortoise would have preferred the latter.
Zhuangzi sent them away with the message that
he too preferred to wag his tail in the mud.
Bibliography
Roth, Harold D. A Companion to Angus C. Graham’s
Chuang- tzu: Ā e Inner Chapters. Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 2003.
Zhuangzi. Basic Writings. Translated by Burton
Watson. New York: Columbia University Press,
2003.
———. Chuang- tzu: Ā e Inner Chapters. Translated
by A. C. Graham. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett
Publishing Company, 2001.
———. Chuang- Tzu: A New Selected Translation with
an Exposition of the Philosophy of Kuo Hsiang.
Translated by Yu- Lan Fung. New York: Paragon
Book Reprint Corporation, 1964.
Zoroaster (Zarathustra Spitama)
(ca. 630–ca. 553 BC) Persian poet
An ancient Persian poet, prophet, and religious
leader, Zoroaster may have been the found er or
the head of a reform movement within the religion
of ancient Persia. Reference to him as a
historical fi gure appears at the beginning of
Zoroastrianism’s holy book, the Avesta.
Th e historian W. B. Henning fi nds Zoroastrianism
to be an essentially dualistic kind of mixed
religion whose beliefs varied with time. Whether
Zororaster initiated or inherited the religious
beliefs that came to be associated with his name,
Henning enumerates the following central points.
1415
691
__
SELECTED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armstrong, Rebecca. Cretan Women: Pasiphae, Ariadne,
and Phaedra in Latin Poetry. Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Barnstone, Willis, trans. Sweetbitter Love: Poems of
Sappho. Boston: Shambala, 2006.
Barrett, W. S. Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual
Criticism: Collected Papers. Edited by M. L. West.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2007.
Beyes, Charles Rowan. Ancient Epic Poetry: Homer,
Apollonius, Virgil with a Chapter on the Gilgamish
Poems. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy- Carducci, 2006.
Bingham, Jane. Classical Myth: A Trea sury of Greek
and Roman Legends, Art, and History. Armonk,
N.Y.: M. E. Sharp, 2008.
Black, Brian. Ā e Character of the Self in Ancient
India: Priests, Kings, and Women in the early
Upanishads. Albany, N.Y.: State University of
New York Press, 2007.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Homer. New York: Chelsea
House, 2007.
———. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. New York: Chelsea
House, 2007.
Briggs, Ward W. ed. Ancient Roman Writers. Detroit,
Mich.: Gale Group, 1999.
Carawan, Edwin. Oxford Readings in the Attic Orators.
Oxford and New York: Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Casiday, Augustine, and Frederick W. Norris. Constantine
to c. 600. [Essays on the development of
ancient versions of Christianity.] Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Claren, James L., ed. Chinese Literature: Overview
and Bibliography. Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science
Publishers, 2002.
Conte, Gian Biagio. Latin Literature: A History.
Translated by Joseph B. Solodow. Revised by Don
Fowler and Glenn W. Most. Baltimore, Md.:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
1419
Societies, 1957.
De Bary, William Th eodore, et al. A Guide to Oriental
Classics. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1989.
Emeneau, Murray Barnson. A Union List of Printed
Indic Texts and Translations in American Libraries.
New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society,
1935.
Fung, Sydney S. K., and S. T. Lai. 25 Tang Poets:
Index to En glish Translations. Hong Kong: Chinese
University Press, 1984.
Gonda, Jan, ed. A History of Indian Literature. 10
vols. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1973– [work
ongoing]. [Vols. 1–3 deal with the literature of
ancient India.]
Hospers, J. H., ed. A Basic Bibliography for the Study
of Semitic Languages. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1973–
74. [Contains sections of interest to literary
scholars about such languages as Akkadian,
Sumerian, Anatolian, Ancient Persian, dialects
of Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic, among others,
together with bibliographies of studies of literary
works in the Semitic languages. Th e second volume
focuses on Arabic in all its varieties in all
times and places.]
Kai- chee Wong, Pung Ho, and Shu- leung Dang. A
Research Guide to En glish Translation of Chinese
Verse (Han Dynasty to T’ang Dynasty). Hong
Kong: Chinese University Press, 1977.
L’Année philologique: Bibliographie critique et analytique
de l’antiquité gréco- latine. Edited by J.
Marouzeau et al. Paris: Societe d’Éditions Les
Belles Lettres, 1928–. [Th e most complete source
for scholarly literature concerning the Greek and
Latin classical world, this bibliography has been
published annually since 1928. Starting with volume
36, an American branch commenced publication
at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Notes to
the entries in the American version appear in
En glish.]
Lynn, Richard John. Guide to Chinese Poetry and
Drama. 2nd ed. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984.
Mamola, Claire Zebroski. Japa nese Women Writers
1425
Alexandria
Alfred the Great (king of En gland) 96
Ælius Aristides 6
Alkman (Alcman) 30–31
allegory of the cave 575–576
Almagest. See System of Mathematics
(Ptolemy)
alphabet 31–32
Civil War 130
hieroglyphs 308
Ā e Histories 318
Japa nese literature, ancient 359
Linear B 392
Ambiorix 155, 157
Ambrose, St. 32
St. Augustine 77
Confessions 163, 164
Macrobius 409
Mani 415
patristic exegesis 517
Aurelius Prudentius 558
Ammianus Marcellinus 32–33, 44
Amphitryon (Titus Maccius Plautus)
33–35, 541
Anabasis (Xenophon of Athens) 680–681
Anacharsis the Scythian 393
Anacreon 35–36, 246
Anacreonic verse 35
Analects (Confucius) 36–38
Confucius 167
Fayan 245
Kojiki 372
Nihon Shoki 469
anapestic tetrameter 563
ancient (technical defi nition) ix
ancient Chinese dynasties and periods
38–39t, 38–40
Intrigues of the Warring States
351–352
Ji Kang 362
Shihji 615–616
shi poems 616–617
Sima Qian 618–619
1429
Eratosthenes 235
Hellenistic Age 300, 301
Apollonius of Tyana 241
Apology of Socrates (Plato) 51–53, 538
Apostles, Acts of the 465–466
Apostolic Fathers of the Christian Church,
Ā e 53–54
Didache: Ā e Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles 206
“Th e Epistle to Diognetus”
234–235
First Letter of Clement to the
Corinthians 249
Fragments of Papias and Quadratus
250
Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians
376
Th e Letters of Ignatius 379
Th e Martyrdom of Polycarp 421
Second Letter of Clement to the
Corinthians 602
Ā e Shepherd 611
Appendices to Book of Changes 54
Apuleius 54–55
Quintus Ennius 226
Ā e Golden Ass 269–280
Milesian Tales 453
Albius Tibullus 649
Aramaic language
Th e Dead Sea Scrolls 188–189
New Testament 462
Aratus of Soli 55–56
Postumius Rufus Fes Avianus 81
Ovid 509
Arbitration, Ā e (Menander) 56–58,
428
Arcadia (Sidney) 682
Archestratus of Gela
Quintus Ennius 226
Hedupatheia 296–297
Archilochus 58–59
Apollonius of Rhodes 51
Diphilus 212
1431
epode 235
fables of 2008 and Rome 243
quantitative verse 563
Archimedes 59–60, 235
Areopagus 239
Arginusae, Battle of
Ā e Peloponnesian War 524
Socrates 53
Argonautika, Ā e (Apollonius of Rhodes)
60–65
epic 226
Hellenistic Age 301
Gaius Valerius Flaccus 667
Ariadne’s Crown (constellation) 442
Arian heresy
Ambrose, St. 31
Athanasius, St. 73–74
St. Basil 87
Boethius 95
Eusebius of Caesarea 240
Ariovistus 152
Aristagoras of Miletus 317–318
Aristarchus of Samothrace 283
Aristides of Miletus 453
Aristophanes (dramatist) 65–67
Ā e Acharnians 1–3
Andocides 40
Apology of Socrates 52
Ā e Birds 93–95
Ā e Clouds 145–147
comedy in 2008 and Rome 148,
149
conventions of Greek drama 172
Euripides 240
Ā e Frogs 251–253
gnomic poetry and prose 269
Ā e Knights 368–370
Lenaea, Athenian festival of 375
Lysistrata 406–408
Ā e Peloponnesian War 520
satire in 2008 and Rome 587
Socrates 623
Symposium 635
1432
Ā e Wasps 672–674
Women at the Ā esmophoria
676–677
Aristophanes of Byzantium (scholar)
537
Aristotelian philosophy. See Peripatetic
school of philosophy
Index 697
Aristotle 67–69
Aeschylus 22
Antigone 48
biography, Greek and Roman 90
Boethius, Anicius Manlius
Severinus 96
conventions of Greek drama 171,
172
Dialogues of the Dead 202–203
Empedocles 223
Epicurus 228
Herodotus 304
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 394
Medea 423
Ā e Nicomachean Ethics 467–468
Peripatetic school of philosophy
528
Poetics 548–549
Porphyry 551
Ā e Seven against Ā ebes 609
Sophocles 626
Ā e Suppliants 633
Th emistius Euphrades 641
Th eophrastus of Eresus 645
tragedy in 2008 and Rome 653
“Armory, Th e” (Alcaeus) 29
Arnott, W. Geoff rey
Dyskolos 214
Menander 428
Philemon 532
Ā e Woman from Samos 675
Arrian 69
Arrowsmith, William 602
Ars Donati (Th e art of Donatus) (Aelius
Donatus) 284
1433
Atreus, curse of
Agamemnon 24–26
Ā e Choephori 122
Electra 221–222
Ā e Eumenides 238–239
Orestes 503
Ā yestes 648
Attalid dynasty 300
“Attis” (Poem 63) (Catullus) 75–76
augury 112
Augustine of Hippo, St. 76–79
St. Ambrose 32
Claudian 144
Concerning the City of God against
the Pagans 159–160
Confessions 160–166
Mani 415
Manichaean writings 416
patristic exegesis 517
Plato 539
Th emistius Euphrades 641
Marcus Terentius Varro 669
Augustus Caesar 79–80
Aeneid 6
annalists and annals of Rome 44
Ā e Art of Love 69–70
biography, Greek and Roman 91
Books from the Foundation of the
City 105
Julius Caesar 112
Marcus Tullius Cicero 125–126
Civil War 127
Quintus Rufus Curtius 175
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 211–212
Eclogues 218
Epistles 234
epode 235
Fasti 244
Gaius Cornelius Gallus 256
Geography 258
geography and geographers, Greek
and Roman 261
Georgics 261–262
1435
Banquet)
Bapat, P. V. 111
Bar Kokhba 188, 189
Barnard, Mary 333
Barnstone, Tony 566
Barnstone, Willis 584
Basil, St. 87–88
St. Ambrose 32
Libanius of Antioch 380
Beacham, Richard 559
Bellum Catilinae (Sallust) 583
Bhagavad Gita 412, 413
Bhagavad Gita (Vya¯sa) 88–90
Bhrama- veda. See Atharva- Veda
biblical interpretation. See patristic
exegesis
biography, Greek and Roman 90–92, 629
Bion of Smyrna 92–93, 514
Birds, Ā e (Aristophanes) 66, 93–95
Birrell, Anne 625
698 Index
bisexuality
“Attis” 75–76
Sappho 584, 585
Bloom, Harold 675
Boccaccio, Giovanni 202
Bodner, Martin 214
Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (St.
Severinus) 95–96
Claudian 143
Ā e Consolation of Philosophy
167–171
Porphyry 551
Book of Changes (Yijing) 96–97
Chinese classical literary
commentary 120
Chinese ethical and historical
literature 120–121
Sima Xiangru’s fu poems 621
Yang Xiong 685
yuefu 687
Book of History (Shiji) 121
Book of Lord Shang (Shangjun shu) 97
1437
(Horace) 328
carpe diem
Ā e Art of Love 70
Odes 473, 476
Carrier, Constance 33–35
Carthage 11–12
Carvaka. See Loka¯yata
Cassivellaunus 155
Castelvetro, Ludovico
Poetics 549
tragedy in 2008 and Rome 653
Cata logue of Women (Eoeae)
Hesiod 307–308
Ā eogony 645
catharsis
Antigone 48
Medea 423
Cathemerinon liber (Ā e Daily Round)
558
Cato the Elder
annalists and annals of Rome 44
Quintus Ennius 225, 226
Origines 505–506
Catullus, Caius Valerius 118–119
“Attis” 75–76
Callimachus 116
epigram, Greek and Latin 230
Epigrams 231–232
“I more than envy him . . .” 351
Ā e Lock of Bereníkê 398
quantitative verse 563
Satires 594
Caucasus region 460
Index 699
cave allegory 575–576
Cawkwell, George Law 208
Caxton, William 23
cento 119, 552
Chadwick, John 392
Chalideus, Treaty of 522
Champollion, Jean François 580
Chang Meng Fu (Chang Meng palace
poem) 620
1441
Dewing, H. B. 554
Dhammapada 110–111
Diakonoff , I. M. 174
Dialoghi di amore (Abravanel) 540
“Dialogue on Poverty”
Man’yo¯shu¯ 418
Yamanoue no Okura 684
Dialogues of the Dead (Lucian of
Samosata) 202–203
Dialogues of the Gods (Lucian of
Samosata) 203–205
Dialogues of the Sea Gods (Lucian of
Samosata) 205–206
Didache: Ā e Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles (Anonymous) 206–207
Ā e Apostolic Fathers of the
Christian Church 54
Th e Epistle of Barnabas 233
didactic poetry 207–208
Hebrew Bible 290, 291
Ovid 509
didactic satire 208
Didymos Judas Th omas 282
Dinarchus 208
Dio Cocceianus Chrysostom
208–210
Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Agyrium)
210–211, 237
Diogenes Laertius 211
anthologies of Greek verse 46
biography, Greek and Roman 91
Cynicism 177
Empedocles 223
Epicurus 228
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers
392–396
Diogenes of Sinope
Cynicism 176–177
Leonidas of Tarentum 376
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 395
Diogenes the Cynic 202–203
Dionysian cult/rites
Aeschylus 22
1452
Ā e Bacchae 82–84
conventions of Greek drama 171
Ā e Life of Apollonius of Tyana 385
tragedy in 2008 and Rome 652
Dionysius of Charax 261
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 211–212
Herodotus 305
Hymn to Aphrodite 333
Flavius Josephus 363
On Literary Composition 496–497
Longinus, On the Sublime 399
Sappho 584
Dionysus 375
Diphilus 4, 212–213
Discourses against the Arians
(St. Athanasius) 73–74
Discourses of the States (Guo yu) 213
Divjak, Johannes 79
Dodge, Th eodore F. 681
Dolbeau, François 79
Domitian (Roman emperor)
Statius 628
Tacitus 638
Donatist heresy 78
Donatus, Ælius 213–214, 360
Don Quixote of La Mancha (Cervantes)
280
Dover, Kenneth James 227
Dragon Boat Festival, Chinese 567
Dryden, John 530
dualism 689
Duckworth, George E. 657
Duff , J. D. 401
Dumnorix 155
Dundas, Paul 358
Dyskolos (Th e Bad Tempered Man)
(Menander) 214–217
comedy in 2008 and Rome
149
Menander 428
Ā e Woman from Samos 675
E
Eclogues (Calpurnius Siculus) 118
1453
Homer 325–327
On Literary Composition 497
Mahabharata 411–414
Metamorphoses 431
Muses 457
mythography in the ancient world 459
Nicander of Colophon 467
Ā e Odyssey 482–490
oral formulaic tradition 501
Ā e Peloponnesian War 518
Poetics 548
quantitative verse 563
Ramayana 568
rhapsodes 578
Rig- Veda 579
Silius Italicus 617–618
Sumerian literature 631
Gaius Valerius Flaccus 667
Virgil 671
Epicharmus (Ennius) 226
Epicharmus of Cos (Epicharmus of Sicily)
227
Epictetus 69
Epicurus 227–229
biography, Greek and Roman 91
Th e Dead Sea Scrolls 190
De Rerum Natura 195, 196, 199
didactic poetry 208
Diogenes Laertius 211
Quintus Ennius 226
Hellenistic Age 301
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 392,
396
Menander 428
Moralia 454
On the Nature of the Gods 498–499
Odes 473
Satires 594
Tusculan Disputations 664
Epigenes the Sicyonian 229–230
epigram, Greek and Latin 230–231
Agathias of Myrina 26
Damasus 187
1456
Erinna 246
erotic songs
Alkman 31
Anacreon 35
eschatology 190
Eschenburg, J. J.
Atellane fables or farces 72
Diogenes Laertius 211
Epicharmus of Cos 227
Julianus 366
Esdras, Th e First and Second Books of (in
the Apocrypha) 49, 236
Essenes 192
ethics 467–468
Ethiopia 314
Ethiopian Romance, An (Heliodorus) 286
Etymologicum Magnum (Great
Etymology) 283
Etymologies 356
Eucharist 206
Euclid 237, 552
Eudemian Ethics, Ā e (Aristotle)
Aristotle 68–69
Ā e Nicomachean Ethics 467, 468
Euhemerus 210, 237–238
Euhemerus (Holy History) (Ennius) 226
Eumenides, Ā e (Aeschylus) 238–239
Agamemnon 24
Oedipus at Colonus 491
Oresteia 503
Euripides 239–240
Aeschylus 22
Alcestis 29–30
Andocides 40
Andromache 42–43
Aristophanes 66
Ā e Bacchae 82–84
Cyclops 175–176
Dialogues of the Gods 205
Electra 221
Quintus Ennius 225
Ā e Frogs 251–253
Hebrew Bible 290
1458
Hecuba 294–296
Helen 297–299
Heracles 302–303
Index 703
Hippolytus 309–310
Ā e Histories 313
Idylls 340
Ion 352–354
Iphigenia in Aulis 354–355
Ā e Life of Apollonius of Tyana 383,
384
On Literary Composition 497
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 393
Mad Hercules 410
Medea 422–423
Metamorphoses 436–437
Orestes 503–505
satyr plays 597
Lucius Annaeus Seneca 607
Sophocles 626
Ā yestes 648
Ā e Trachiniae 651
tragedy in 2008 and Rome 653,
654
Ā e Trojan Women 662–663
Ā e Wasps 674
Women at the Ā esmophoria
676–677
Eusebius of Caesarea 240–242
annalists and annals of Rome 44
Th e Epistle of Barnabas 233
Fragments of Papias and Quadratus
250–251
St. Jerome 360
Th e Letters of Ignatius 379
Ā e Life of Apollonius of Tyana 382
New Testament 462
L. Flavius Philostratus 535
Eutropius, Flavius 242
exegetical literature 190–191
Exordia (Demosthenes) 195
F
Fabius Maximus (“Cunctator”)
1459
525–528
fables of 2008 and Rome 243–244
Postumius Rufus Fes Avianus 81
Hebrew Bible 290
Phaedrus the fabulist 531
Symposium 635
Fairclough, H. Rushton 264
faith, affi rmation of 426
Falconer, W. 258
Fantasticks, Ā e 286
farming
Georgics 261–265
Works and Days 678
Fasti (Ovid) 244–245, 509
Fayan (Yang Xiong) 245, 685
female Greek lyricists 245–247. See also
specifi c poets, e.g.: Sappho
female poets of ancient Japan 247
Feng Dao 552
Ferryboat, Ā e (Ā e Tyrant) (Lucian) 193,
247–248
fi ction as epistle, romance, and erotic
prose 248–249
First Letter of Clement to the Corinthians,
Th e 249–250
Ā e Apostolic Fathers of the
Christian Church 54
Didache: Ā e Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles 206
First Triumvirate
Civil War 128
Ā e Civil Wars 138
Flat Earth Society 173
Flavius Arianus. See Arrian
fl ood myth
Discourses of the States 213
Ā e Gilgamesh Epic 267–268
Forehand, Walter E. 640
40 Principal Doctrines (Epicurus) 228
Fowler, Howard North 52
Fragments of Papias and Quadratus 54,
250–251
Frankel, Hermann 657
1460
free will
Augustine, St. 77
Ā e Consolation of Philosophy
170
Ā e Nicomachean Ethics 467
Frogs, Ā e (Aristophanes) 66, 251–253
Frontinus, Sextus Julius 253
fu poems 253–254
Chinese ethical and historical
literature 121–122
Fayan 245
Jia Yi 364
Seven Incitements 609
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove
610
Sima Xiangru 619
Sima Xiangru’s fu poems
620–621
Song Yu 625
Yang Xiong 685
Fusek, Lois 617
G
Gaius, Iulius Caesar. See Caesar, Julius
Gaius Iulius Phaeder. See Phaedrus the
fabulist
Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. See
Augustus Caesar
Galen (Claudius Galenus) 193, 255–256
Gallic Wars 151–158
Gallus, Gaius Cornelius 256
Eclogues 221
Parthenius of Nicaea 514
Sextus Aurelius Propertius 556
Gantz, Timothy 507
Garland (Anthologia) (Anthology) 427
Ga¯tha¯s (Zoroaster) 256–257
Old Persian 495
Zoroaster 689
Gellius, Aulus
grammarians of Rome 284
Philemon 532
Genealogy of the Gods (Boccaccio) 645
Geography (Geographika) (Strabo)
1461
257–259, 261
geography and geographers, Greek and
Roman 259–261
Arrian 69
Ptolemy 560–561
Tacitus 638
geometry 237
Georgics (Virgil) 261–265
didactic poetry 208
geography and geographers 259
Nicander of Colophon 467
Ovid 509
pastoral poetry 514
Virgil 671
Germania (Tacitus) 638
ghosts 377–378
Gibbon, Edward
Ammianus Marcellinus 33
geography and geographers, Greek
and Roman 261
Claudius Numantianus Rutilius 581
Tacitus 638
Giles, Herbert A.
Book of Odes 97
Mencius 429
Sima Qian 619
Zuozhuan 690
Gilgamesh Epic, Ā e 265–268
Akkadian 28
Bacchides 87
“Th e Ballad of Sawseruquo” 87
cuneiform 174–175
epic 227
Hebrew Bible 290
Homer 326
mythography in the ancient world
459
Nart Sagas 461
oral formulaic tradition 501
Sumerian literature 632
Girl from Andros, Ā e. See Andria
Gluck, Christof Willibald 507
gnomic poetry and prose 268–269, 291
1462
Hedupatheia 296
Flavius Josephus 363
Lycophron 405
Metamorphoses 431
mythography in the ancient world
459
Nicander of Colophon 467
Ovid 509
Parthenius of Nicaea 514
Pleiad of Alexandria 543
Ptolemy 560
tragedy in 2008 and Rome 653
Henderson, Jeff rey 66
Henning, W. B. 689
Hephæstion of Alexandria 301–302
Heptameron (Marguerite of Navarre)
286
Heracles
Amphitryon 35
Idylls 337, 339
Ā e Life of Apollonius of Tyana 388
Mad Hercules 410
“Tlepsh and Lady Tree” 651–652
Heracles (Euripides) 302–303
Geography 258
Ā e Gilgamesh Epic 267
Heraclitus of Ephesus 303–304, 396
Index 705
Hermas
Ā e Shepherd 610–615
Hero and Leander (Musæus) 457
Herodotus (Herodotos) 304–305
Ctesias of Cnidos 173
Epigenes the Sicyonian 230
Helen 297
Ā e Histories 310–324
On Literary Composition 496
Procopius 553
Heroides (Ovid) 305–307, 508–509
Herophilus 301
Hesiod 307–308
Apollonius of Rhodes 51
Dialogues of the Gods 203
1467
Zhao) 324–325
History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi
356
History of the Wars (Procopius) 553
Homer 325–327
Aeneid 6
Ajax 26
Apollonius of Rhodes 51
Archimedes 60
Ā e Argonautika 60
biography, Greek and Roman 90
Ā e Consolation of Philosophy 170
Crito 173
Cyclops 175
Dialogues of the Gods 203, 205
didactic poetry 207
epic 226
female Greek lyricists 246
Geography 257, 258
Ā e Gilgamesh Epic 268
grammar and grammarians in
2008 283
Heroides 305
Hesiod 307
Ā e Histories 313
Homeridae 327
hubris 331
Ā e Iliad 340–351
Livius Andronicus 397
Longinus, On the Sublime 399
Metamorphoses 437
Muses 457
mythography in the ancient world
459
Ā e Odyssey 482–490
Philetas of Cos 533
Quintus Smyrnaeus 565
Ā e Republic 577
Ā e Seven against Ā ebes 609
Sumerian literature 632
Titans 650
Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto 658
Gaius Valerius Flaccus 667
1469
Virgil 671
Homeridae (Sons of Homer) 327
homoeoteleuton 281
homosexuality
Idylls 335–337
Satyricon 599–601
Symposium 634, 635
Ā e Woman from Samos 675
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
327–329
Ā e Art of Poetry 71–72
Epistles 233–234
epode 235
ode 472
Odes 473–482
Persius 530
Pindar 538
satire in 2008 and Rome 586
Satires 588–595
Simonides of Ceos 622
Hornblower, Simon 543
“How a Man May Become Aware of His
Progress in Virtue” (Plutarch) 329
Howard, Th omas 647
Howe, Quincy, Jr.
“Attis” 75–76
Caius Valerius Catullus 118
“How to Profi t by One’s Enemies”
(Plutarch) 329–330
Hsiao Ching. See Classic of Filial Piety
Hsi K’ang. See Ji Kang
Huainanzi (Liu An) 330–331
Huan Kuan
Yantielun 685–686
hubris 331
Odes 473
Ā e Odyssey 489
Ā e Persians 529
Hun Kuan 685–686
hunting
Nemesianus 461
Oppian of Corycus 500–501
Sima Xiangru 619
1470
150
tragedy in 2008 and Rome 653
Livy (Titus Livius) 397–398
annalists and annals of Rome 44
Books from the Foundation of the
City 101–105
Civil War 127
gnomic poetry and prose 269
Livius Andronicus 397
Quintus Fabius Pictor 536–537
Silius Italicus 618
Lloyd- Jones, Hugh 626
Lock of Bereníkê, Ā e (Callimachus) 116,
398–399
logogram
hieroglyphs 308
Linear B 392
logograph 431
Loka¯yata (Carvaka) 399, 629
Lombardo, Stanley 332
Longinus, On the Sublime (Anonymous)
399–400
“I more than envy him . . .” 351
Sappho 584
Longus
Greek prose romance 285
Pastorals of Daphnis and Chloe
515–516
Lord’s Prayer 206
Lü Buwei
Ā e Spring and Autumn of Mr. Lü
627–628
Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus)
400–401
Books from the Foundation of the
City 105
Civil War 127–138
Martial 420
Persius 530
Silius Italicus 618
Lucian of Samosata 401–403
Archimedes 60
Ā e Deipnosophists 193
1477
Stoicism 629
Marcus Aurelius Olympius Nemesianus.
See Nemesianus
Marguerite of Navarre 286
Mariotti, Scevola 397
Marlowe, Christopher 457
Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis)
420–421
epigram, Greek and Latin 230
Epigrams 231–232
Juvenal 366
quantitative verse 564
satire in 2008 and Rome 587
Martínez, Florentino García 188–191
Martyrdom of Polycarp, Th e (Marcion of
Smyrna) 54, 421
Masada manuscripts 188
Master Kong. See Confucius
mathematics 59
708 Index
McHardy, W. D. 48, 49
Medea (Euripides) 422–423
Metamorphoses 440–441
Gaius Valerius Flaccus 667
Medea (Seneca) 423–424
Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
424–427
biography, Greek and Roman 91
Marcus Aurelius 419
Stoicism 629
Megalensian Games 40
Mei Sheng
Seven Incitements 609–610
Meleager of Gadara (Meleagros)
427–428
anthologies of Greek verse 46
epigram, Greek and Latin 230
Mellino 246
Memorials of Socrates (Memorabilia)
(Xenophon of Athens) 681
Menaechmi (Ā e Twin Brothers) (Plautus)
541
Menander 428–429
1480
Andria 40
Ā e Arbitration 56–58
chorus in Greek theater 124
comedy in 2008 and Rome 149
Diphilus 212
Dyskolos 214–217
Hellenistic Age 301
Phaedrus the fabulist 531
Philemon 532
Titus Maccius Plautus 541, 542
Ā e S elf- Tormentor 603–604
Ā e Woman from Samos 675–676
Mencius (Meng K’o) 429
Annals of Spring and Autumn 45
Chinese ethical and historical
literature in verse and prose 121
Xunzi 683
Menippean Satires (Varro) 669
Menippus of Gadara
Cynicism 177
Dialogues of the Dead 203
Lucan 402–403
Meleager of Gadara 428
satire in 2008 and Rome 587
Marcus Terentius Varro 669
Merchant, Ā e (Ā e Entrepreneur)
(Plautus) 429–431
Philemon 532
Titus Maccius Plautus 542
Mesoamerican writing, ancient 431
Metamorphoses (Ovid) 431–452
Augustus Caesar 80
Callimachus 116
De Rerum Natura 196
Nicander of Colophon 467
Ovid 509
Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto 658
Metaphysics (Aristotle) 68
Meteorologica (Aristotle) 68
meteorology
Aratus of Soli 56
Aristotle 68
meter, poetic. See quantitative verse
1481
Metonic cycle 56
Miles gloriosus. See Braggart Soldier, Ā e
Milesian Tales (Aristides of Miletus) 453
millenarianism 250
Miller, Frank Justus 654
Miller, Walter 681
Milton, John
Bion of Smyrna 93
Civil War 128
Orpheus 507
Mimnermus of Colophon 453
Miracle and Magic (Reimer) 389
Modi. See Mozi
Moiro of Byzantium 246
Moles, John L. 177
Montaigne, Michel Equem de
Moralia 453
Plutarch 547
Moore, Richard 542
Moralia (Ethical Essays) (Plutarch)
453–454
“How a Man May Become Aware of
His Progress in Virtue” 329
“How to Profi t by One’s Enemies”
329–330
Plutarch 547
Morgan, Llewelyn 556
Moschus of Syracuse 454
Bion of Smyrna 92
pastoral poetry 514
Mosella (Ausonius) 81
Mostellaria (Ā e Haunted House)
(Plautus) 541
Mount Vesuvius eruption 377
Mozi (Modi) 454–455
Han Feizi 288
Ā e Mozi 455–457
Xunzi 682
Zhuangzi 688
Mozi, Ā e (Ā e Mo Tzu) (Mozi)
455–457
Munda, Battle of 115
Murabba’at manuscripts 188–189
1482
Ajax 26
Archimedes 60
biography, Greek and Roman 90
Ā e Consolation of Philosophy 170
Cyclops 175
Dialogues of the Sea Gods 205
epic 226
Geography 257
Ā e Gilgamesh Epic 268
Ā e Histories 313
Homer 326
Homeridae 327
hubris 331
Ā e Iliad 340
On Literary Composition 496
Livius Andronicus 397
Metamorphoses 437, 450
Muses 457
Philetas of Cos 533
Porphyry 551
Quintus Smyrnaeus 565
Ā eogony 644
“Tlepsh and Lady Tree” 651
Oedipus (Seneca) 490–491
Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles)
491–493
Oedipus Tyrannus (Oedipus Rex)
(Sophocles) 493–495
Antigone 47
hubris 331
Oedipus 490
Oedipus at Colonus 491
Poetics 549
O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger 579–580
Oldfather, C. H. 211
Old Persian (Avestan) 460, 495
“Olympian 1” (Pindar) 472, 495–496
Olympic games 670
On Christian Doctrine (St. Augustine) 77
O’Neill, Eugene, Jr.
Aeschylus 22
Ā e Suppliants 634
On Literary Composition (Dionysius of
1486
Pindar 537
Sappho 584
710 Index
Oxyrhynchus (continued)
Simonides of Ceos 622
Sophocles 626
P
Pacuvius, Marcus 511, 653–654
paganism 390
paians 31
Pali language 109
palimpsest 189, 512
Panegyricus (Pliny the Younger) 545
Panichas, George A. 228
Pan Ku. See Ban Gu
Papias, bishop of Hieropolis 250
para- biblical literature 191
parables 613–615
Paradise Lost (Milton) 131
Paraleipomena Homero. See Posthomerica
(Matters omitted by Homer)
Parallel Lives (Plutarch) 512–513
biography, Greek and Roman 90
Ā e Peloponnesian War 524
Plutarch 547
“Th eseus” and “Romulus” 646–647
partheneia
Alkman 30–31
Anacreon 35
Pindar 537
Parthenius of Nicaea 249, 513–514
pastoral poetry 514–515
Titus Siculus Calpurnius 117–118
Greek prose romance 285
Idylls 334
Man’yo¯shu¯ 419
Th eocritus 642
Turnus 664
Pastorals of Daphnis and Chloe (Longus)
515–516
fi ction as epistle, romance, and
erotic prose 249
Greek prose romance 285
1489
periplus 260
Persians, Ā e (Aeschylus) 529–530
Persius (Aulus Persius Flaccus) 530
Juvenal 366
satire in 2008 and Rome 586
Satires 595–596
Petrarch
cento 119
Marcus Tullius Cicero 126
Ælius Donatus 213
Quintilian 565
sibyls and sacred verse 617
Petronius Arbiter 530–531
Greek prose romance 286
Milesian Tales 453
satire in 2008 and Rome 587
Satyricon 597–602
Phaedrus the fabulist (Gaius Iulius
Phaeder) 243, 531–532
Phaenomena (Euclid) 237
Phaenomena kai Diosemaiai (Th e Starry
Sphere and the Signs of the Weather)
(Aratus of Soli)
Aratus of Soli 56
Postumius Rufus Fes Avianus 81
Pharsalia, Battle of
Civil War 133–134
Ā e Civil Wars 142
Philemon 532
grammar and grammarians in
2008 283
Ā e Merchant 429
Trinummus 655
Philetas of Cos 532–533, 556
Philip of Macedon
Aristotle 67
Aeschines 21
Demosthenes 194–195
Philippics (Cicero) 126
Philoctetes (Sophocles) 533–535
Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus 210
tragedy in 2008 and Rome 653
phi los o pher- king
1491
Ā e Mozi 456
Ā e Republic 576
Philostratus, L. Flavius 535
biography, Greek and Roman 91
Ā e Life of Apollonius of Tyana
381–389
Sophist 625
Phoenicia 31
Phoenissae (Phrynicos of Athens) 536
phonogram 308
Photius, St. 249, 535–536
Phrynicos of Athens 536, 653
Physics (Aristotle) 67
Pictor, Quintus Fabius 44, 536–537
Pindar 537–538
Aeneid 15
Anacreon 35
female Greek lyricists 246
ode 472
Odes 473, 481
“Olympian 1” 495–496
Oxyrhynchus 510
Parallel Lives 513
“Pythian 3” 561–562
victory odes 669, 670
Plataea, battle of
elegy and elegiac poetry 223
Ā e Histories 323
Ā e Persians 529
Platnauer, Maurice 144, 145
Plato
Apology of Socrates 51–53
Apuleius 55
Aratus of Soli 56
Aristophanes 66
Aristotle 67
biography, Greek and Roman 90, 91
Boethius, Anicius Manlius
Severinus 96
Confessions 163
Ā e Consolation of Philosophy 168,
169
Crito 173
1492
Cyclops 175
Cynicism 177
Ā e Deipnosophists 193
Eratosthenes 235
fables of 2008 and Rome 243
Gorgias 281–282
Gorgias of Leontium 281
ISocrates 356
Ā e Life of Apollonius of Tyana 387
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 392,
394
Longinus, On the Sublime 400
Macrobius 409
Moralia 454
Ā e Mozi 456
Index 711
Musæus 457
Peripatetic school of philosophy 528
Poetics 548
Porphyry 551
Proclus of Byzantium 552
Protagoras 556–558
Ā e Republic 571–578
rhetoric 578
Sappho 585
Socrates 623
Sophist 625
Stoicism 628
Symposium 634–637
Xenophon of Athens 681
Platonic Academy 394
Platonic Philosophy. See Academic sect of
philosophy
Platonism
New Testament 466
Plutarch 547
Plautus, Titus Maccius 540–543
Amphitryon 33–35
Ā e Arbitration 56–57
Ā e Art of Poetry 72
Bacchides 84–86
Ā e Braggart Soldier 105–108
comedy in 2008 and Rome 149, 150
1493
Diphilus 212
Dyskolos 217
Livius Andronicus 397
Menander 428
Ā e Merchant 429–431
Philemon 532
Pseudolus 559–560
Saturnian verse 597
Trinummus 655–657
Pleiad of Alexandria 543–544
Lycophron 405
tragedy in 2008 and Rome 653
Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus)
544–545
annalists and annals of Rome 44
Letters 377
Pliny the Younger 545, 546
Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius
Caecilius Secundus) 545–546
annalists and annals of Rome 44
Quintus Rufus Curtius 175
Letters 376–379
Martial 420
Pliny the Elder 544, 545
Caius Suetonius Tranquillus 629
Plotinus 546–547
Ā e Consolation of Philosophy 169
Plato 539
Porphyry 551
Plutarch 547–548
biography, Greek and Roman 90
Demosthenes 195
Hecale 294
“How a Man May Become Aware of
His Progress in Virtue” 329
“How to Profi t by One’s Enemies”
329–330
Macrobius 409
Moralia 453–454
Parallel Lives 512–513
“Pericles” and “Fabius” (from
Parallel Lives) 525–528
“Th eseus” and “Romulus” (from
1494
Plato 539
Posthomerica (Matters omitted by
Homer) 565
Praise of Folly, Ā e (Erasmus) 49
Praxilla 246
Praxiphanes 228
Price, Derek De Solla 59
prime mover
Aristotle 68
Ptolemy 560
printing, Chinese invention of 552
Priscian 284
Proba, Faltonia Betitia 119, 552
Proclus of Byzantium 552–553
Ā e Consolation of Philosophy 169
Plato 539
Procopius 26, 553–554
Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus) 554–556
Bacchides 87
“Th e Ballad of Sawseruquo” 87
De Rerum Natura 200
Oedipus at Colonus 491
Titans 650
Propertius, Sextus Aurelius 556
prophecy
Aeneid 15–16
Antigone 47
Civil War 131
Hebrew Bible 292–294
sibyls and sacred verse 617
Prosper Aquitanus 44–45
Protagoras (Plato) 556–558
Providence 426
Prudentius, Aurelius (Clemens) 558
Pruett, Michael 330
Psappho. See Sappho
Pseudolus (Plautus) 541, 559–560
psychomachia 290
Ptolemaic dynasty 300
Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus) 259,
560–561
Ptolemy II (Ptolemy Philadelphos)
Callimachus 116
1496
Menander 428
Oratorical Institute 502
Pindar 538
Pliny the Younger 545
rhetoric 578
satire in 2008 and Rome 586
Albius Tibullus 649
Gaius Valerius Flaccus 667
Quintus Horatius Flaccus. See Horace
Quintus Smyrnaeus (Quintus Calaber)
565–566
quipu (khipu) 566
Qumran papyri 188
Qu Yuan (Ch’ü Yüan) 566–567
Encountering Sorrow 223–224
fu poems 254
Jia Yi 364
Song Yu 624, 625
R
Race, William H.
Pindar 538
“Pythian 3” 561
victory odes 670
Rackham, Horace 468
Radhakrishnan, S. 666
Radice, Betty 545
Ramayana (Va¯lmīki) 568–570
epic 227
mythography in the ancient world
459
oral formulaic tradition 501
Vya¯sa 671
Rape of Proserpine, Ā e (Claudian) 144
Rape of the Lock, Ā e (Pope) 398
Ras Shamra texts 459, 570–571
rationalist criticism 404–405
reality, nature of 576
reasoning, science of 67
rebirth 486
“Record of the Peach Blossom Spring”
(Taohuayuan) 571, 639
Regulus, Marcus Attilius 478
Reimer, Andy M. 389
1498
reincarnation
Aeneid 16
Ā e Life of Apollonius of Tyana 384
Loka¯yata 399
Rig- Veda 580
religious freedom 409
Republic, Ā e (Plato) 571–578
Ā e Consolation of Philosophy 168,
169
Macrobius 410
Plato 538
Plotinus 546
Poetics 548
Proclus of Byzantium 552
Res gestae divi Augusti (Deeds
accomplished by the divine Augustus)
80
Revelation, book of 466
Reynolds, Margaret
“Hymn to Aphrodite” 333
Sappho 583
rhapsodes 578
rhapsodists. See Homeridae
rhetoric 564–565, 578–579
riddle poems 224
Rig- Veda 579–580
Nart Sagas 461
Pa¯niņi 512
Rinuccini, Ottavio 507
ritual dance songs 31
Roche, Paul 585
Rolfe, J. C. 583
Rome
annalists and annals of Rome 45
Sextus Julius Frontinus 253
“Th eseus” and “Romulus” 646
Rose, Herbert Jennings 647
Rosetta Stone 580
Rudd, Niall 473, 477
Russell, Donald A. F. M. 281
Rutilius, Claudius Numantianus 581
S
Sacred Scriptures (Euhemerus)
1499
Origen 505
Seven against Ā ebes, Ā e (Aeschylus)
608–609
Antigone 46
Diodorus Siculus 210
Oedipus at Colonus 492
Statius 628
Seven Incitements (Wenzhuan) (Mei
Sheng) 609–610
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove 362,
610
Severinus, St. See Boethius, Anicius
Manlius Severinus
Sextus Iulius Frontinus. See Frontinus,
Sextus Julius
sexuality 408
Shakespeare, William
Ā e Braggart Soldier 108
Titus Maccius Plautus 541
Shangjun shu. See Book of Lord Shang
Shang Lin Fu (Th e Imperial Hunting
Preserve) 619
Shapur I (emperor of Persia) 415, 416
Shepherd, Ā e (Hermas) 54, 610–615
Shepherd’s Calendar, Ā e (Spenser) 245
Shihji (Historical Record) (Sima Qian)
615–616
Critical Essays, Balanced
Discussions 405
Hanji 288–289
History of the Former Han Dynasty 324
Sima Qian 618–619
Song Yu 625
Shi jing. See Book of Odes
shi poems 616–617
sibyls and sacred verse 617
Siddhartha Gautama 108
Sidney, Philip 682
Silius Italicus (Tiberius Catius Silius
Asconius) 617–618
Sima Qian 618–619
Chinese ethical and historical
literature in verse and prose 121
1503
Hanji 288–289
History of the Former Han Dynasty
324
Shihji 615–616
Song Yu 624–625
Xunzi 682
Sima Xiangru (Ssŭ- ma Hsiang- ju) 254,
619–620
Sima Xiangru’s fu poems 254, 620–621
Simonides of Ceos 621–622
elegy and elegiac poetry 223
Odes 475
Protagoras 557
victory odes 669
Xenophon of Athens 681
sinographs 616
slavery Th e Code of Hammurabi 147–148
Dio Cocceianus Chrysostomus 209
Slavic languages 31
Smyth, Herbert Weir 30, 31
Socrates 622–624
Apology of Socrates 51–53
Apuleius 55
biography, Greek and Roman 90
Ā e Clouds 145–146
Crito 173
Dialogues of the Dead 203
fables of 2008 and Rome 243
Ā e Frogs 251
ISocrates 356
Ā e Life of Apollonius of Tyana 383
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers
393–394
Meditations 425
Phaedrus the fabulist 531
Plato 538–539
Protagoras 556–558
Ā e Republic 572–578
rhetoric 578
satire in 2008 and Rome 587
Satires 594, 596
Lucius Annaeus Seneca 607
Sophist 625
1504
Symposium 634–637
Xenophon of Athens 680
Socratic Apology (Xenophon of Athens)
681
soldurii 153
Solon 624
Ā e Histories 311
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 393
Song of God, Th e. See Bhagavad Gita
Song Yu (Sung Yü) 253–254, 624–625
Sophist 625–626
Ælius Aristides 6
St. John Chrysostom 124
Ā e Clouds 145–146
Cyclops 175
Gorgias 281–282
Gorgias of Leontium 281
Greek prose romance 285
ISocrates 356, 357
Libanius of Antioch 380
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 394
Plato 539
Plotinus 546
Procopius 553
Protagoras 556
Socrates 623
Th emistius Euphrades 641
Tyrtaeus 665
Sophistic period, Second
rhetoric 578–579
Sophist 625
Sophocles 626–627
Aeschylus 22
Ajax 26–28
Antigone 46–48
biography, Greek and Roman 90
Cyropædia 178
Electra 221–222
Euripides 240
Ā e Frogs 252
hubris 331
Oedipus at Colonus 491–493
Oedipus Tyrannus 493–495
1505
alphabet 31
Linear B 392
syllabic script 431
Syme, Ronald 175
Symmachus, Quintus Aurelius
Memmius
Augustine, St. 77
Boethius 95
Aurelius Prudentius 558
Symposium (Ā e Banquet) (Plato)
634–637
Aristophanes 66
Ā e Deipnosophists 193
Gorgias of Leontium 281
Macrobius 409
Plato 538, 540
Satyricon 598
Symposium (Ā e Banquet) (Xenophon of
Athens) 682
Synapothnescontes (Diphilus) 4
synoptic Gospels 464
Sypherd, William Owen 289
Syriac language 415
System of Mathematics (Ptolemy) 560
T
Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus)
638–639
Ammianus Marcellinus 33
annalists and annals of Rome 44
Quintus Rufus Curtius 175
geography and geographers, Greek
and Roman 261
Letters 377
Petronius Arbiter 530
Pliny the Elder 545
Lucius Annaeus Seneca 607
Taoism. See Daoism
Tao Qian (T’ao Ch’ien) 639–640
“Record of the Peach Blossom
Spring” 571
Tao Te Ching. See Laozi (Daode jing)
(Laozi)
Taplin, Oliver 304
1508
Georgics 262
Hesiod 307
X
Xenophanes of Colophon 208
Xenophon of Athens 680–682
biography, Greek and Roman 90
Ctesias of Cnidos 173
Cynicism 177
Cyropædia 177–186
Ā e Deipnosophists 193
geography and geographers, Greek and Roman 260
Greek prose romance 286
Hellenika 299–300
“How to Profi t by One’s Enemies”330
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 393
Nart Sagas 460
Socrates 622–623
Xenophon of Ephesus 682
Greek prose romance 285, 286
Xerxes (king of Persia) 320–324
Zeno of Citium
Lives of Eminent Phi los o phers 395
Stoicism 628