Latin

Who were Roman authors writing for? Only a minority of the population was fully literate and books were very expensive, individually hand-written on imported papyrus. So does it follow that great poets and prose authors like Virgil and Livy, Ovid and Petronius, were writing only for the cultured and the privileged? It is this modern consensus that is challenged in this volume. In an ambitious overview of a thousand years of history, from the formation of the city-state of Rome to the establishment of a fully Christian culture, T. P. Wiseman examines the evidence for the oral delivery of 'literature' to mass public audiences. The treatment is chronological, utilizing wherever possible contemporary sources and the close reading of texts. Wiseman sees the history of Roman literature as an integral part of the social and political history of the Roman people, and draws some very unexpected inferences from the evidence that survives. In particular, he emphasizes the significance of the annual series of 'stage games' (ludi scaenici), and reveals the hitherto unexplored common ground of literature, drama, and dance. Direct, accessible, and clearly written, The Roman Audience provides a fundamental reinterpretation of Roman literature as part of the historical experience of the Roman people, making it essential reading for all Latinists and Roman historians.

Looting, despoiling temples, attempted rape and judicial murder: these are just some of the themes of this classic piece of writing by one of the world's greatest orators. This particular passage is from the second book of Cicero's Speeches against Verres, who was a former Roman magistrate on trial for serious misconduct. Cicero presents the lurid details of Verres' alleged crimes in exquisite and sophisticated prose. This volume provides a portion of the original text of Cicero's speech in Latin, a detailed commentary, study aids, and a translation. As a literary artefact, the speech gives us insight into how the supreme master of Latin eloquence developed what we would now call rhetorical "spin." As an historical document, it provides a window into the dark underbelly of Rome's imperial expansion and exploitation of the Near East. Ingo Gildenhard's illuminating commentary will be of particular interest to students of Latin at both high school and undergraduate level. It will also be a valuable resource to Latin teachers and to anyone interested in Cicero, language and rhetoric, and the legal culture of Ancient Rome.

Considered the earliest courtly romance in Germany, Ruodlieb is an invaluable document of eleventh century European society and a fascinating link in the development of the novel of chivalry. This edition by Edwin H. Zeydel (first published in 1959) with Latin text and the first English translation on facing pages is based upon painstaking study of the manuscripts, with many fragmentary lines completed and 450 corrections of Langosch's text. Zeydel's introduction to the history of the text and appendices with literary commentary and textual notes make this the first critical edition of Ruodlieb utilizing the manuscript to appear since Seiler's work in 1882.

For a host of reasons, traditionalist scholarship has failed to give a full and positive account of the formal, aesthetic and religious transformations of ancient poetics in late antiquity. This collection of new essays attempts to capture the vibrancy of the living ancient tradition reinventing itself in a new context in the hands of a series of great Latin writers of the fourth and fifth centuries AD.