G. Williams, Change and decline: Roman literature in the early empire (Berkeley, 1978) surveys the
whole period. On individual poets see M. P. O. Morford, The Poet Lucan: Studies in Rhetorical Epic
(Oxford, 1967); F. M. Ahl, Lucan: An Introduction (Ithaca, 1976); J. C. Bramble, Persius and the
Programmatic Satire: A Study in Form and Imagery (Cambridge, 1974); D. Vessey, Statius and the
Thebaid (Cambridge, 1973); G. Highet, Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford, 1954); R. G. M. Nisbet, 'Persius'
and H. A. Mason, 'Is Juvenal a classic?', in Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Satire, ed. J. P. Sullivan
(London, 1963); R. Jenkyns, Three Classical Poets: Sappho, Catullus and Juvenal (London, 1982), part 3
'Juvenal the poet'; W. Anderson, Essays on Roman Satire (Princeton, 1982), which contains several
pieces on Juvenal. On satire generally see M. Coffey, Roman Satire (London, 1976).
On the Latin novel: B. E. Perry, The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of their Origins
(Berkeley, 1967); P. G. Walsh, The Roman Novel (Cambridge, 1970); J. P. Sullivan, The Satyncon of
Petronius: A Literary Study (London, 1968); J. Tatum, Apuleius and The Golden Ass (Ithaca, 1979). J-
Winkler, Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's Golden Ass (Berkeley, 1985).
- Later Philosophy (By Anthony Meredith)
One of the best introductions to the thought and atmosphere of the whole period is Conversion by A. D.
Nock (Oxford, 1933), a study in the Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to
Augustine of Hippo. To this should be added Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety by E. R. Dodds
(Cambridge, 1965), which offers an explanation of the success of Christianity in psychological
categories. The chapters on philosophy by Nock and F. H. Sandbach in Vols, x and xi of the Cambridge
Ancient History are also useful.
For more specifically philosophical treatment the last volume of Zeller's History of Philosophy, entitled
Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (London, 1892), is still probably the most thorough and helpful
treatment, though he does not deal with Plotinus. A good, though rather general, survey of the whole
classical period of philosophy is also to be found in Vol. i of A History of Philosophy, Greece and Rome
(London, 1946) by F. C. Copleston. The most easily accessible account of Plotinus and of his immediate
predecessors and followers, and also of Philo and of the main Christian philosophers of the first three
centuries A.D., is to be found in The Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy
(Cambridge, 1967) ed. A. H. Armstrong. More detailed accounts of imperial philosophy can be had in
Stoic Philosophy by R. M. Rist (Cambridge, 1969) and in The Middle Platonists, a Study in Platonism,
80 BC-AD 220 by J. Dillon (London, 1977), and Neoplatonism by R. T. Wallis (London, 1972).
Most of the authors of the period can be read in the Loeb Classical Library, which are often furnished
with useful introductions and, in the case of Plutarch and Plotinus, with helpful analyses of the contents
of the various treatises. The Stoics are represented by the Discourses of Epictetus (London, 1925) with
an introduction and translation by W. A. Oldfather, and by the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus (London, 1916), edited, translated, and introduced by C. R. Haines. The appendix contains