A handful of fragments is all that remains of the writings of Menippus, the third-century BCE provocateur of the Greek Cynic movement. The Western literary tradition knows him through Lucian, the Greek satirist who lived and worked four hundred years later. Included in this book are Joel Relihan’s lively English translations of Lucian’s three reanimations of Menippus—fantastic narratives and comic dialogues set in heaven and hell: Menippus; or, The Consultation of the CorpsesIcaromenippus; or, A Man above the CloudsThe Colloquies of the Corpses (Dialogues of the Dead) For the first time in over fifty years, these works are assembled in a unified format to tell a particular story: Lucian’s evolving understanding of the philosophical and literary potential of the person, productions, and purposes of Menippus. Not only is it time to give Lucian’s Menippus a fresh look and a thorough reevaluation, but also to consider how Lucian’s imitations and innovations adumbrate, illuminate, and complicate the history of that enigmatic genre, Menippean satire.

The first English-language monograph about religion and Lucian of Samosata

An anonymous Greek reworking (doubtfully attributed to Lucian) of the lost, anonymous Greek Metamorphoseis (falsely attributed to Lucius of Patras). An American translation by Joel C. Relihan (Professor of Classics, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts), available as a free eBook from Hackett Publishing Company.

This collection of essays—the first of its kind in English—brings together the work of an international group of scholars examining the entire tradition associated with the ancient Cynics. The essays give a history of the movement as well as a state-of-the-art account of the literary, philosophical and cultural significance of Cynicism from antiquity to the present. Arguably the most original and influential branch of the Socratic tradition, Cynicism has become the focus of renewed scholarly interest in recent years, thanks to the work of Sloterdijk, Foucault, and Bakhtin, among others. The contributors to this volume—classicists, comparatists, and philosophers—draw on a variety of methodologies to explore the ethical, social and cultural practices inspired by the Cynics. The volume also includes an introduction, appendices, and an annotated bibliography, making it a valuable resource for a broad audience.

Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature offers an overview of Greek and Roman excursions into fantasy, including imaginary voyages, dream-worlds, talking animals and similar impossibilities. This is a territory seldom explored and extends to rarely read texts such as the Aesop Romance, The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice, and The Pumpkinification of the Emperor Claudius. Bringing this diverse material together for the first time, Anderson widens readers’ perspectives on the realm of fantasy in ancient literature, including topics such as dialogues with the dead, Utopian communities and fantastic feasts. Going beyond the more familiar world of myth, his examples range from The Golden Ass to the Late Antique Testament of a Pig. The volume also explores ancient resistance to the world of make-believe. Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature is an invaluable resource not only for students of classical and comparative literature, but also for modern writers on fantasy who want to explore the genre’s origins in antiquity, both in the more obvious and in lesser-known texts.

The volume focuses on the various representations of the Beyond in later Antiquity, a period of intense interaction and competition between various religious traditions and ideals of education. The concepts and images clustering around the Beyond form a crucial focal point for understanding the dynamics of religion and education in later Antiquity. Although Christianity gradually supersedes the pagan traditions, the literary representations of the Beyond derived from classical literature and transmitted through the texts read at school show a remarkable persistence: they influence Christian late antique writers and are still alive in medieval literature of the East and West. A specifically Christian Beyond develops only gradually, and coexists subsequently with pagan ideas, which in turn vary according to the respective literary and philosophical contexts. Thus, the various conceptualisations of the great existential unknown, serves here as a point of reference for mirroring the changes and continuities in Imperial and Late Antique religion, education, and culture, and opening up further perspectives into the Medieval world.

Satire as a distinct genre of writing was first developed by the Romans in the second century BCE. Regarded by them as uniquely 'their own', satire held a special place in the Roman imagination as the one genre that could address the problems of city life from the perspective of a 'real Roman'. In this Cambridge Companion an international team of scholars provides a stimulating introduction to Roman satire's core practitioners and practices, placing them within the contexts of Greco-Roman literary and political history. Besides addressing basic questions of authors, content, and form, the volume looks to the question of what satire 'does' within the world of Greco-Roman social exchanges, and goes on to treat the genre's further development, reception, and translation in Elizabethan England and beyond. Included are studies of the prosimetric, 'Menippean' satires that would become the models of Rabelais, Erasmus, More, and (narrative satire's crowning jewel) Swift.

In Ancient Menippean Satire, Joel C. Relihan charts the history and development of this ancient genre. He demonstrates its unity as a Greco-Roman phenomenon, describes its different branches, and shows the continuity of the genre into late classical and early Christian times. He also discusses the theories of the genre set forth by Northrop Frye and Mikhail Bakhtin and presents a new and detailed definition that respects the particularities of classical texts. In chapters on the fragments and testimonia relevant to Menippus and Varro, Relihan shows the specific Greek origins of the genre and its transformation in Roman hands.

In this book Professor Kronenberg shows that Xenophon's Oeconomicus, Varro's De Re Rustica and Virgil's Georgics are not simply works on farming but belong to a tradition of philosophical satire which uses allegory and irony to question the meaning of morality. These works metaphorically connect farming and its related arts to political life; but instead of presenting farming in its traditional guise as a positive symbol, they use it to model the deficiencies of the active life, which in turn is juxtaposed to a preferred contemplative way of life. Although these three texts are not usually treated together, this book convincingly connects them with an original and provocative interpretation of their allegorical use of farming. It also fills an important gap in our understanding of the literary influences on the Georgics by showing that it is shaped not just by its poetic predecessors but by philosophical dialogue.