Blessed Thessaly

Thessaly was a region of great importance in the ancient Greek world, possessing both agricultural abundance and a strategic position between north and south. It presents historians with the challenge of seeing beyond traditional stereotypes (wealth and witches, horses and hospitality) that have coloured perceptions of its people from antiquity to the present day. It also presents a complex and illuminating interaction between polis and ethnos identity. In daily life, most Thessalians primarily operated within, and identified with, their specific polis; at the same time, the regional dimension – being Thessalian – was rarely out of sight for long. It manifested itself in stories told, in deities worshipped, in modes of political co-operation, in language, rituals, sites and objects. Chapter by chapter, this book follows the emergence, development and adaptation of Thessalian regional identity from the Archaic period to the early second century BC. In so doing, rather than rejecting ancient stereotypes as a mere inconvenience for the historian, it considers the constant dialogue between Thessalian self-presentation and depictions of the Thessalian character by other Greeks. It also confronts some of the prejudices and assumptions still influencing modern approaches to studying the region. All in all, the reader is invited to see Thessaly not as a region of marginal significance in Greek history, but as occupying a central role in many aspects of ancient cultural and political discourse.

Successfully integrating elegance and a close fidelity to the Greek, these new translations aim to provide Greekless students with as close a sense as possible of how the Greeks themselves thought and wrote about the world. Miller's skillful introduction places the works in historical context and briefly describes the different metrical forms represented in the selections. Headnotes to each section highlight the background of the poet whose works follows. Complete with a glossary of names and a select bibliography.

One of the most celebrated poets of the classical world, Pindar wrote odes for athletes that provide a unique perspective on the social and political life of ancient Greece. Commissioned in honor of successful contestants at the Olympic games and other Panhellenic contests, these odes were performed in the victors’ hometowns and conferred enduring recognition on their achievements. Andrew M. Miller’s superb new translation captures the beauty of Pindar’s forty-five surviving victory odes, preserving the rhythm, elegance, and imagery for which they have been admired since antiquity while adhering closely to the meaning of the original Greek. This edition provides a comprehensive introduction and interpretive notes to guide readers through the intricacies of the poems and the worldview that they embody.

Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the influence of archaic lyric poetry on Hellenistic poets. However, no study has yet examined the reception of Pindar, the most prominent of the lyric poets, in the poetry of this period. This monograph is the first book to offer a systematic examination of the evidence for the reception of Pindar in the works of Callimachus of Cyrene, Theocritus of Syracuse, Apollonius of Rhodes and Posidippus of Pella. Through a series of case studies, it argues that Pindaric poetry exercised a considerable influence on a variety of Hellenistic genres: epinician elegies and epigrams, hymns, encomia, and epic poetry. For the poets active at the courts of the first three Ptolemies, Pindar's poetry represented praise discourse in its most successful configuration. Imitating aspects of it, they lent their support to the ideological apparatus of Greco-Egyptian kingship, shaped the literary profile of Pindar for future generations of readers, and defined their own role and place in Greek literary history. The discussion offered in this book suggests new insights into aspects of literary tradition, Ptolemaic patronage, and Hellenistic poetics, placing Pindar's work at the very heart of an intricate nexus of political and poetic correspondences.

This will be a 3 volume commentary on Thucydides. Appendices will appear in v.3 to be published some years hence.

Round Trip to Hades in the Eastern Mediterranean Tradition explores the theme of visits to the underworld in the ancient Greek and Byzantine traditions from a broad perspective including written sources, iconography and archaeology.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Pindar-the 'Theban eagle', as Thomas Gray famously called him-has often been taken as the archetype of the sublime poet: soaring into the heavens on wings of language and inspired by visions of eternity. In this much-anticipated new study, Robert Fowler asks in what ways the concept of the sublime can still guide a reading of the greatest of the Greek lyric poets. Working with ancient and modern treatments of the topic, especially the poetry and writings of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), arguably Pindar's greatest modern reader, he develops the case for an aesthetic appreciation of Pindar's odes as literature. Building on recent trends in criticism, he shifts the focus away from the first performance and the orality of Greek culture to reception and the experience of Pindar's odes as text. This change of emphasis yields a fresh discussion of many facets of Pindar's astonishing art, including the relation of the poems to their occasions, performativity, the poet's persona, his imagery, and his myths. Consideration of Pindar's views on divinity, transcendence, time, and the limits of language reveals him to be not only a great writer but a great thinker.