Aristophanes and Women, first published in 1993, investigates the workings of the great Athenian comedian’s ‘women plays’ in an attempt to discern why they were in fact probably quite funny to their original audiences. It is argued that modern students, scholars, and dramatists need to consider much more closely the conditions of the plays’ ancient productions when evaluating their ostensible themes. Three plays are focused upon: Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, and Ecclesiazusae. All seem to speak quite eloquently to contemporary concerns about women’s rights, the value of women’s work, and the relationships between women and war, literary representation and politics. On the one hand, Professor Taaffe tries to retrieve what an ancient Athenian audience may have l appreciated about these plays and what their central theses may have meant within that culture. On the other hand, Aristophanes is discussed from the perspective of a late twentieth-century, specifically female, reader.

Robert Browning, the great Victorian poet, is often claimed to be hard to understand, largely on account of the obscurity of his language, the complexity of his thought, and his poetic style. The Browning Cyclopaedia, first published in 1891, presents an exposition of the prominent ideas of each poem, as well as its tone, its sources – historical, legendary or fanciful – and a glossary of every difficult word or allusion which might obscure the poem’s meaning. This volume remains indispensable for students of Robert Browning, as well as those interested in the general aesthetic climate of Victorian poetry.

A sweeping new account of ancient Greek culture and its remarkable diversity Covering the whole of the ancient Greek experience from its beginnings late in the third millennium BCE to the Roman conquest in 30 BCE, Out of One, Many is an accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking. In this fresh and witty exploration of the thought, culture, society, and history of the Greeks, Jennifer Roberts traces not only the common values that united them across the seas and the centuries, but also the enormous diversity in their ideas and beliefs. Examining the huge importance to the Greeks of religion, mythology, the Homeric epics, tragic and comic drama, philosophy, and the city-state, the book offers shifting perspectives on an extraordinary and astonishingly creative people. Century after century, in one medium after another, the Greeks addressed big questions, many of which are still very much with us, from whether gods exist and what happens after we die to what political system is best and how we can know what is real. Yet for all their virtues, Greek men set themselves apart from women and foreigners and profited from the unpaid labor of enslaved workers, and the book also looks at the mixed legacy of the ancient Greeks today. The result is a rich, wide-ranging, and compelling history of a fascinating and profoundly influential culture in all its complexity—and the myriad ways, good and bad, it continues to shape us today.

Athens has, at different times and from different points of view, been cited as a model of moderate democracy and triumphant humanism, or, on the contrary, as an illustration of the disorders due to demagoguery and misguided imperialism. Professor Mossé looks beyond these judgments to discuss the exceptional destiny of Athens – a city which for two centuries dominated the Eastern Mediterranean world, but then faded from the political scene when Rome extended its control over the whole Mediterranean. The history of Athenian democracy does not end in 404 BC, as is sometimes thought, when the city capitulated to Sparta at the end of its Golden Age. Athens in Decline, first published in 1973, demonstrates how the city experienced another seventy-five years of greatness, and survived, more or less curtailed, under Macedonian domination. She examines the reasons for the final collapse and follows the stages of a decline which was not wholly without grandeur.

Interpretations of Greek Mythology, first published in1987, builds on the innovative work of Walter Burkert and the ‘Paris school’ of Jean-Pierre Vernant, and represents a renewal of interpretation of Greek mythology. The contributors to this volume present a variety of approaches to the Greek myths, all of which eschew a monolithic or exclusively structuralist hermeneutic method. Specifically, the notion that mythology can simply be read as a primitive mode of narrative history is rejected, with emphasis instead being placed on the relationships between mythology and history, ritual and political genealogy. The essays concentrate on some of the best known characters and themes – Oedipus, Orpheus, Narcissus – reflecting the complexity and fascination of the Greek imagination. The volume will long remain an indispensable tool for the study of Greek mythology, and it is of great interest to anyone interested in the development of Greek culture and civilisation and the nature of myth.

In the fifth century BC Thebes, faced with the challenges presented by defeat and disgrace in the Persian Wars – it had sided with the invaders – succeeded not only in regaining its former prominence, but also in laying the groundwork for its hegemony of Greece in the early part of the fourth century. In Thebes in the Fifth Century, first published in 1982, Nancy Demand examines the political and military history of this renowned city, as well as a number of other aspects of Theban culture and society: its physical layout, religious cults, poetry and music, arts, crafts and philosophy. Other topics of special interest include a chapter on Pythagoreanism in Thebes, an appendix on the evidence for the participation of women in Pythagoreanism, and an investigation, extending throughout the book, of the role of women in Theban society.

The history of sexuality has been the subject of increased interest in recent years and more widely acknowledged importance in the interpretation of past mentalités. Yet historians have only recently begun to study sexual practices in any depth, establishing that sexuality is not a biological constant but an ever-changing phenomenon, continuously shaped by people themselves. The contributors to this inter-disciplinary collection bring their expertise in ancient as well as medieval history, anthropology, modern history, and psychology to bear upon the history of sexuality. They explore various aspects of sexuality in successive periods: pederasty and lesbian love in antiquity, incest in the Middle Ages, sexual education during the Dutch Republic, voyeurism in the rococo, prostitution in Vienna around 1900, and the invention of sexology. From Sappho to De Sade, first published in 1989, offers an informative and entertaining collection of essays for students of cultural anthropology, social history and gender studies.

The Sophists, the Socratics and the Cynics had one important characteristic in common: they mainly used spoken natural language as their instrument of investigation, and they were more concerned to discover human nature in its various practical manifestations than the facts of the physical world. The Sophists are too often remembered merely as the opponents of Socrates and Plato. Rankin discusses what social needs prompted the development of their theories and provided a market for their teaching. Five prominent Sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias and Thrasymachus – are looked at individually. The author discusses their origins, aims and arguments, and relates the issues they focussed on to debates apparent in contemporary literature. Sophists, Socratics and Cynics, first published in 1983, also traces the sophistic strand in Greek thought beyond the great barrier of Plato, emphasising continuity with the Cynics, and concludes with a look forward to Epicureans and Stoics.

First published in 1934, this book covers a broad array of ancient Greek literature, taking into account the most acknowledged of the Greek authors as well as those less well known. H. J. Rose presents the latest findings of the time in terms of research into Greek literature and covers subjects from Homer, Comedy and Poetry, to Philosophy, Science, and the Empire.

First published in 1964, this is a short collection of both literary and philosophical essays. Whilst two essays consider Greek literature written at the point at which the Athenian empire was breaking apart, another group explore the background from which Christianity arose, considering Paganism and the religious philosophy at the time of Christ. These, in particular, display Gilbert Murray’s ‘profound belief in ethics and disbelief in all revelational religions’ as well as his conviction that the roots of our society lie within Greek civilization. Finally, there is an interesting discussion of Order and the motives of those who seek to overthrow it.