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Presenting new archaeological studies from recent fieldwork, this volume throws new light on the archaeology and history of the Pavllas River Valley, the Mediterranean alluvial plain in the territory of Butrint, ancient Buthrotum, in southwestern Albania. It gives prominence for the first time to two important sites, Kalivo and Çuka e Aitoit, which are here reinterpreted and shown to have played major roles in the early history of Butrint as it evolved in the later first millennium BC to emerge as the key city of Chaonia in Epirus. Butrint 7 also presents the full excavation report of the Late Bronze Age and Hellenistic fortified site of Mursi, in addition to other archaeological surveys and excavations in the hinterland of Butrint, including the Roman villa maritima at Diaporit, the villa suburbana on the Vrina Plain, and Roman sites on Alinura Bay and at the Customs House, as well as new surveys of the early modern Triangular Fortress and a survey to locate the lost Venetian village of Zarópulo. It also includes a new study of the Hellenistic bronze statuette of Pan found on Mount Mile and of his sanctuary at Butrint. The volume concludes with a comprehensive reassessment of the Pavllas River Valley in relation to Butrint, from the Palaeolithic to the modern eras, examining how dominion, territory, environment and the ‘corrupting sea’ reshaped Butrint and its fluvial corridor diachronically and particularly brought profound territorial, economic and social alterations under the Roman Empire.

Augustine’s commentaries on Psalm 61-70 are mostly based on sermons. In this edition, a special emphasis was laid on the adequate presentation of Augustine’s expressive and nuanced oral style. Each commentary is accompanied by an introduction, in which the known facts on time, date and liturgical circumstances are presented, as well as a precisely reconstructed version of the text of Augustine’s Psalter(s).…

Christopher Baron

Cassius Dio’s Roman History is an essential, yet still undervalued, source for modern historians of the late Roman Republic. The papers in this volume show how his account can be used to gain new perspectives on such topics as the memory of the conspirator Catiline, debates over leadership in Rome, and the nature of alliance formation in civil war.
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Aldo Tagliabue

Among the five fully extant Greek novels, the Ephesiaca occupies the position of being an anomaly, since scholars have conventionally considered it to be either a poorly written text or an epitome of a more sophisticated lost original. This monograph challenges this view by arguing that the author of the Ephesiaca is a competent writer in artistic control of his text, insofar as his work has a coherent and emplotted focus on the protagonists’ progression in love and also includes references to earlier texts of the classical canon, not least Homer’s Odyssey and the Platonic dialogues on Love. At the same time, the Ephesiaca exhibits stylistically an overall simplicity and contains many repetitions; these and other features make this text different from the other extant Greek novels. This book explains this difference with the help of Couégnas’ view of ‘paraliterature’, a term that refers not to its status as ‘non-literature’ but rather to literature of a different kind, that is simple, action-oriented and entertaining.


Martin Bloomer

A Companion to Ancient Education presents a series of essays from leading specialists in the field that represent the most up-to-date scholarship relating to the rise and spread of educational practices and theories in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.…

Christopher A. Baron

Timaeus of Tauromenium (350–260 BC) wrote the authoritative work on the Greeks in the Western Mediterranean and was important through his research into chronology and his influence on Roman historiography. Like almost all the Hellenistic historians, however, his work survives only in fragments. This book provides an up-to-date study of his work and shows that both the nature of the evidence and modern assumptions about historical writing in the Hellenistic period have skewed our treatment and judgment of lost historians. For Timaeus, much of our evidence is preserved in the polemical context of Polybius' Book 12. When we move outside that framework and examine the fragments of Timaeus in their proper context, we gain a greater appreciation for his method and his achievement, including his use of polemical invective and his composition of speeches. This has important implications for our broader understanding of the major lines of Hellenistic historiography.…

Luca Grillo

Traditional approaches have reduced Caesar's Bellum Civile to a tool for teaching Latin or to one-dimensional propaganda, thereby underestimating its artistic properties and ideological complexity. Reading strategies typical of scholarship on Latin poetry, like intertextuality, narratology, semantic, rhetorical and structural analysis, cast a new light on the Bellum Civile: Ciceronian language advances Caesar's claim to represent Rome; technical vocabulary reinforces the ethical division between 'us' and the 'barbarian' enemy; switches of focalization guide our perception of the narrative; invective and characterization exclude the Pompeians from the Roman community, according to the mechanisms of rhetoric; and the very structure of the work promotes Caesar's cause. As a piece of literature interacting with its cultural and socio-political world, the Bellum Civile participates in Caesar's multimedia campaign of self-fashioning. A comprehensive approach, such as has been productively applied to Augustus' program, locates the Bellum Civile at the interplay between literature, images and politics.…

W. Martin Bloomer

This fascinating cultural and intellectual history focuses on education as practiced by the imperial age Romans, looking at what they considered the value of education and its effect on children. W. Martin Bloomer details the processes, exercises, claims, and contexts of liberal education from the late first century b.c.e. to the third century c.e., the epoch of rhetorical education. He examines the adaptation of Greek institutions, methods, and texts by the Romans and traces the Romans’ own history of education. Bloomer argues that whereas Rome’s enduring educational legacy includes the seven liberal arts and a canon of school texts, its practice of competitive displays of reading, writing, and reciting were intended to instill in the young social as well as intellectual ideas. University of California Press, 2011 …

Catherine Schlegel

In his first book of Satires, written in the late, violent days of the Roman republic, Horace exposed satiric speech as a tool of power and domination. Using critical theories from classics, speech act analysis, and other fields, Catherine Schlegel argues that Horace’s acute poetic observation of hostile speech provides insights into the operations of verbal control that are relevant to his time and to ours.…

Brian Krostenko

Charm, wit, and style were critical, but dangerous, ingredients in the social repertoire of the Roman elite. Their use drew special attention, but also exposed one to potential ridicule or rejection for valuing style over substance. Brian A. Krostenko explores the complexities and ambiguities of charm, wit, and style in Roman literature of the late Republic by tracking the origins, development, and use of the terms that described them, which he calls "the language of social performance."
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Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek

The volumes published in the series "Beiträge zur Altertumskunde" comprise monographs, collective volumes, editions, translations and commentaries on various topics from the fields of Greek and Latin Philology, Ancient History, Archeology, Ancient Philosophy as well as Classical Reception Studies. The series thus offers indispensable research tools for a wide range of disciplines related to Ancient Studies.…