The Greeks An Introduction to Their Culture, 3rd edition

seen to be prophetic of a decline in imaginative creativity to come in the fourth century. The current malaise and future declin ...

Philosophy took a part in the discovery and development of all these, and gave us education in the field of affairs and civilise ...

smoother in English than he does in Greek, but comparison of the account of stasis with passages from other prose writers cited ...

cites. However, the treatise On the Sublime, traditionally attributed to the rhetorician Longinus and perhaps written in the fir ...

Dionysius’ second exemplar of the middle or well-blended style is Isocrates. His diction is elegant and smooth; his clauses are ...

ness sometimes present in Isocrates. He juxtaposes with the passage from Isocrates an extract from Demosthenes on a similar them ...

are better now.’ What possible proof is there of this? The parapets we whitewash? The roads which we repair? The fountains and t ...

period of time, so the great artistic achievements in Greek oratory and prose in the late fifth and fourth centuries presuppose ...

textual order. Texts were standardized and methods of copying improved. Classical literature was now officially canonized. Two o ...

Though one cannot be seen, the other extends Over the north. (translated by Aaron Poochigian, ll.19–25) Aratus’s idea of the cos ...

The nightime effort refers not only to Aratus’s study of the sky but wittily expresses Callimachus’s appreciation for the poem’s ...

The malignant gnomes who write reviews in Rhodes are muttering about my poetry again – tone-deaf ignoramuses out of touch with t ...

Hymn 5, ‘The Bath of Pallas’ addresses the attendants of the stern warrior goddess Pallas Athena: Ladies of Akhaia, come! but no ...

Medea’s help Jason is able to overcome the test set by Medea’s father Aeetes who is the guardian of the Fleece. The whole plot, ...

hospitality on his way to Marathon, and dwelt upon picturesque descriptive detail. An early surviving example is Theocritus’ Idy ...

Chloris Kisses are empty joys and soon are o’er. Daphnis A kiss betwixt the lips is something more. Chloris I wipe my mouth and ...

The beautiful ‘Lament for Bion’, attributed to the later, second-century poet Moschus uses the pastoral convention to pay poetic ...

even later. They are invariably about wine and love and have inspired many translations and imitations. ‘The wounded Cupid’ is i ...

Why doest thou pour, O wretch profane, On senseless earth, the nectared wine? To me thy breathing odours bring, On me the mantli ...

5 PHILOSOPHY It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophise; wondering in the first place at obvio ...