In Literature and Its Writers, Ann and Samuel Charters complement a rich and varied selection of stories, poems, and plays with an unparalleled array of commentaries about that literature by the writers themselves. Such "writer talk" inspires students to respond as it models ways for them to enter the conversation. In the sixth edition, the Charters continue to entice students to join the conversation, with adventurous and intriguing new literary works, more detailed coverage of literary elements, and more help with reading and writing.This anthology is now available with video! Learn more about VideoCentral for Literature.

    Never has there been such a multiplication of talents and genius within so limited a period. An astonishing period caught at the height of its powers by an eminent historian. "Michael Grant never fails to be lively and well informed and he has done more, single-handedly, to blow the dust of the classical world than any comparable populariser."--Sunday Times. "Grant is a unique figure among the classical scholars of our time."--Spectator.

    It contains: -Introduction -Latin text with same/facing page -Vocabulary notes -Grammatical commentary -Full vocabulary -Historical commentary -Index of place names and persons The Res Gestae reveals as much about Augustus and his accomplishments through what it omits as what it contains. This edition allows students rare access to non-literary historical Latin, to the "queen" of Latin inscriptions: the accomplishments of the emperor Augustus, as he sought to have them presented.

    It has often been treated merely as a key to the Greek philosophical works that Cicero used, but this volume aims to render De Officiis, which had a profound impact upon subsequent political thinkers, more intelligible by explaining its relation to its own time and place. All the standard series features are present, including a wholly new translation, a concise introduction by a leading scholar, select bibliography, chronology, notes on vocabulary and brief biographies of the most prominent individuals mentioned in the text.

    Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory—rapid, spectacular victory—had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. In the space of a single generation, they had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. As a result of those conquests, Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet. Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks of the mainland managed to hold out. The Persians were turned back. Greece remained free. Had the Greeks been defeated in the epochal naval battle at Salamis, not only would the West have lost its first struggle for independence and survival, but it is unlikely that there would ever have been such an entity as the West at all.Tom Holland’s brilliant new book describes the very first “clash of Empires” between East and West. As he did in the critically praised Rubicon, he has found extraordinary parallels between the ancient world and our own. There is no other popular history that takes in the entire sweep of the Persian Wars, and no other classical historian, academic or popular, who combines scholarly rigor with novelistic depth with a worldly irony in quite the fashion that Tom Holland does.

    B. Parkinson's new translations bring to life for the modern reader the golden age of Egyptian fictional literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1940-1640 BC). The book features The Tale of Sinuhe, acclaimed as the masterpiece of Egyptian poetry, which tells of a courtier's adventures after he flees Egypt. Other works include stories of fantastic wonders from the court of the builder of the Great Pyramid, a lyrical dialogue between a man and his soul on the nature of death and the problem of suffering, and teachings about the nature of virtue and wisdom, one of which is bitterly spoken from the grave by the assassinated king Amenemhat I, founder of the Twelfth Dynasty. A general introduction discusses the historical context of the poetry, the nature of poetry, and the role of literature in ancient Egyptian culture., while a full set of notes explicates allusions, details of mythology, place-names, and the like. Parkinson's book provides, for the first time, a literary reading to enable these poems to entertain and instruct the modern reader, as they did their original audiences three-and-a-half thousand years ago.Content:TALES1 The Tale of Sinuhe2 The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant3 The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor4. The Tale of King Cheops’ CourtDISCOURSES5. The Words of Neferti6. The Words of Khakheprreseneb7. The Dialogue of a Man and his Soul8. The Dialogue of Ipuur and the Lord of AllTEACHINGS9. The teaching of King Amenenmhat10. The Teaching of King Merikare11. The ‘Loyalist’ Teaching12. The teaching of the Vizier Ptahhotep13. The Teaching of KhetiPHRASES AND FRAGMENTS14. Phrases and Fragments

    In English translations that achieve a lively readability without sacrificing the dramatic and comic impact of the original Latin, this volume presents all six comedies: The Girl from Andros (Andria), The Self-Tormentor (Heautontimorumenos), The Eunuch (Eunouchus), Phormios, The Brothers (Adelphoe), and Her Husband's Mother (Hecyra).

    The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of “things aid” and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault’s own methodological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now. Challenging, at times infuriating, it is an absolutely indispensable guide to one of the most innovative thinkers of our time.

    Renowned archaeologist Barry Cunliffe here re-creates Pytheas's unprecedented journey, which occurred almost 300 years before Julius Caesar landed in Britain. Beginning with an invaluable pocket history of early Mediterranean civilization, Cunliffe illuminates what Pytheas would have seen and experienced—the route he likely took to reach Brittany, then Britain, Iceland, and Denmark; and evidence of the ancient cultures he would have encountered on shore. The discoveries Pytheas made would reverberate throughout the civilized world for years to come, and in recounting his extraordinary voyage, Cunliffe chronicles an essential chapter in the history of civilization.

    J. Ayer in a fabled debate about the existence of God and the possibility of metaphysics, knew that seminary students were fed a woefully inadequate diet of theses and proofs, and that their familiarity with most of history's great thinkers was reduced to simplistic caricatures. Copleston set out to redress the wrong by writing a complete history of Western philosophy, one crackling with incident and intellectual excitement -- and one that gives full place to each thinker, presenting his thought in a beautifully rounded manner and showing his links to those who went before and to those who came after him. The result of Copleston's prodigious labors is a history of philosophy that is unlikely ever to be surpassed. Thought magazine summed up the general agreement among scholars and students alike when it reviewed Copleston's A History of Philosophy as "broad-minded and objective, comprehensive and scholarly, unified and well proportioned... We cannot recommend [it] too highly."

    This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Betty Radice.A prominent lawyer and administrator, Pliny was also a prolific letter-writer, who numbered among his correspondents such eminent figures as Tacitus, Suetonius and the Emperor Trajan, as well as a wide circle of friends and family. His lively and very personal letters address an astonishing range of topics, from a deeply moving account of his uncle's death in the eruption that engulfed Pompeii, to observations on the early Christians - 'a desperate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths' - from descriptions of everyday life in Rome, with its scandals and court cases, to Pliny's life in the country.Betty Radice's definitive edition was the forst complete modern translation of Pliny's letters. In her introduction she examines the shrewd, tolerant and occasionally pompous man who emerges from these letters.Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (c. 61-113), better known as Pliny the Younger, and nephew of Pliny the Elder, was born in Como, Italy. Beginning his career at the bar when he was eighteen, Pliny managed to emerge unscathed from Domitian's 'reign of terror', even being appointed an official at the treasury. In 103 he was awarded a priesthood in recognition of his distinguished public service, and was prominent in several major prosecutions. His nine books of personal letters were selected by Pliny himself and published during his lifetime, while his official correspondence with Trajan was published as a tenth book after his death and contains a celebrated exchange of letters on the early Christians.If you enjoyed The Letters of the Younger Pliny, you might like Tacitus' The Annals of Imperial Rome, also available in Penguin Classics.

    Michael Kulikowski s history begins with the reign of Hadrian, who visited the farthest reaches of his domain and created stable frontiers, to the decades after Constantine the Great, who overhauled the government, introduced a new state religion, and founded a second Rome.Factionalism and intrigue sapped the empire from within, even at its apex. Roman politics could resemble a blood sport: rivals resorted to assassination; emperors rose and fell with bewildering speed, their reigns measured in weeks, not years; and imperial succession was never entirely assured. Canny emperors including Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, and Diocletian constantly cultivated the aristocracy s favor to maintain a grip on power. Despite such volatility, the Roman Empire protected its borders, defeating successive attacks from Goths and Germans, Persians and Parthians. Yet external threats persisted and the imperial government sagged under its own administrative weight. Religion, too, was in flux with the rise of Christianity and other forms of monotheism. In the fourth century CE, Constantine and his heirs reformed imperial institutions by separating civilian and military hierarchies, restructuring the government of both provinces and cities, and ensuring the prominence of Christianity.The Triumph of Empire is a fresh, authoritative narrative of Rome at its height and of its evolution from being the central power of the Mediterranean world to becoming one of several great Eurasian civilizations."

    In Thucydides, Donald Kagan, one of our foremost classics scholars, illuminates the great historian and his work both by examining him in the context of his time and by considering him as a revisionist historian. Thucydides took a spectacular leap into modernity by refusing to seek explanations for human behavior in the will of the gods, or even in the will of individuals, looking instead at the behavior of men in society. In this context, Kagan explains how The Peloponnesian War differs significantly from other accounts offered by Thucydides' contemporaries and stands as the first modern work of political history, dramatically influencing the manner in which history has been conceptualized ever since.

    Stone ranges far and wide over Roman as well as Greek history to present an engaging and rewarding introduction to classical antiquity and its relevance to society today. The New York Times called this national best-seller an "intellectual thriller."

    In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex the king sets out to uncover the cause of the plague that has struck his city, only to disover the devastating truth about his relationship with his mother and his father.Medea is the terrible story of a woman's bloody revenge on her adulterous husband through the murder of her own children.