‘Wonderful and timely … Hugely recommended’ STEPHEN FRYWhat do you and an ancient philosopher have in common? It turns out much more than you might think…Aristotle was an extraordinary thinker yet he was preoccupied by an ordinary question: how to be happy. In this handbook to his timeless teachings, Professor Edith Hall shows how ancient thinking is precisely what we need today, even if you don’t know your Odyssey from your Il...

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring This Very Short Introduction introduces the life, work, and influence of one of the greatest dramatists of all time, Sophocles the Athenian. Placing his plays within their historical context, and explaining the conventions of ancient Greek tragic theatre, Edith Hall spotlights their distinctive features-tight plots, titanic personalities, lucid style, sympathetic women, exquisite poetry, and stagecraft. This analysis i...

They gave us democracy, philosophy, poetry, rational science, the joke. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. They wrote the timeless myths of Odysseus and Oedipus, and the histories of Leonidas’s three hundred Spartans and Alexander the Great.But who were the ancient Greeks? And what was it that enabled them to achieve so much?Here, Edith Hall gives us a revelatory way of viewing this geographically scattered people, visiting different communitie...

An urgent study of Homer’s Iliad, exposing the beginnings of the ecological disaster we now face and facilitating our understanding of its historyThe roots of today’s environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity’s past. Through this unprecedented reading of Homer’s Iliad, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall examines how this foundational text both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the d...

An award-winning classicist turns to Greek tragedies for the wisdom to understand the damage caused by suicide and help those who are contemplating suicide themselvesIn Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the Tyrant, a messenger arrives to report that Jocasta, queen of Thebes, has killed herself. To prepare listeners for this terrible news, he announces, “The tragedies that hurt the most are those that sufferers have chosen for themselves.” Edith Hall, whose own li...

Longlisted for the 2022 Runciman AwardThis is the first book-length study of the classicism of Tony Harrison, one of the most important contemporary poets in England and the world. It argues that his unique and politically radical classicism is inextricable from his core notion that poetry should be a public property in which communal problems are shared and crystallised, and that the poet has a responsibility to speak in a public voice about collective and politic...

Brought to you by Penguin.‘Wonderful and timely … Hugely recommended’ STEPHEN FRYWhat do you and an ancient philosopher have in common? It turns out much more than you might think…Aristotle was an extraordinary thinker, perhaps the greatest in history. Yet he was preoccupied by an ordinary question: how to be happy. His deepest belief was that we can all be happy in a meaningful, sustained way – and he led by exampl...

The roots of today's environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity's past. Through this unprecedented reading of Homer's Iliad, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall examines how this foundational text both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of the natural landscape. Underlying Homer's account of brutal military operations, alliances, and cataclysmic struggle is a palpable understanding ...

This Very Short Introduction introduces the life, work, and influence of one of the greatest dramatists of all time, Sophocles the Athenian.Placing his plays within their historical context, and explaining the conventions of ancient Greek tragic theatre, Edith Hall spotlights their distinctive features—tight plots, titanic personalities, lucid style, sympathetic women, exquisite poetry, and stagecraft. This analysis is followed by an account of how and why Sophoclean drama...

Hecuba The Trojan Women Andromache In the three great war plays contained in this volume Euripides subjects the sufferings of Troy's survivors to a harrowing examination. The horrific brutality which both women and children undergo evokes a response of unparalleled intensity in the playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the poets. Yet the new battleground of the aftermath of war is one in which the women of Troy evince an overwhelming greatness of spirit. We weep for the aged ...

A deeply insightful approach to cultivating leaders of character centered on the arts and humanitiesWhat does it mean to lead? Whom do we consider to be leaders? And how might viewing leadership through the many lenses of the humanities expand our understanding of how it is imagined, represented, and enacted?Drawing on insights from eminent scholars in the classics, philosophy, religion, literature, history, art, music, and theater, The Arts of Leading

The 24 essays collected in this book address the complex interactions between concepts of time, grammatical tense, and type of genre of prose or poetry in ancient Greek literature. The chronological scope stretches across nearly a millennium from archaic epic to the Second Sophistic, from the emotional intensity of Homer to Plutarch and the playfulness of Lucian, tracing patterns, developments, contrasts, and intertextual allusiveness across diverse texts and authors. These include dramati...