An enriching collection of classical writings about how ancient Romans made—and thought about—moneyAncient Romans liked money. But how did they make a living and sometimes even become rich? The Roman economy was dominated by agriculture, but it was surprisingly modern in many ways: the Romans had companies with CEOs, shareholders, and detailed contracts regulated by meticulous laws; systems of banking and taxation; and a wide range of occupations, from merchant and...

Perhaps no other single Roman speech exemplifies the connection between oratory, politics and imperialism better than Cicero's De Provinciis Consularibus, pronounced to the senate in 56 BC. Cicero puts his talents at the service of the powerful "triumviri" (Caesar, Crassus and Pompey), whose aims he advances by appealing to the senators' imperialistic and chauvinistic ideology. This oration, then, yields precious insights into several areas of late republican life: international r...

Well-known as a brilliant general and politician, Julius Caesar also played a fundamental role in the formation of the Latin literary language and remains a central figure in the history of Latin literature. With twenty-three chapters written by renowned scholars, this Companion provides an accessible introduction to Caesar as an intellectual along with a scholarly assessment of his multiple literary accomplishments and new insights into their literary value. The Commentarii and Caesar's l...

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 b...

Ancient Romans liked money. But how did they make a living and sometimes even become rich? The Roman economy was dominated by agriculture, but it was surprisingly modern in many ways: the Romans had companies with CEOs, shareholders, and detailed contracts regulated by meticulous laws; systems of banking and taxation; and a wide range of occupations, from merchant and doctor to architect and teacher. The Romans also enjoyed a relatively open society, where some could start from the bottom,...

Starting out as a harrowing wartime sea adventure, Burroughs's story ultimately develops into a lost world story reminiscent of such novels as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912) and Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (1874) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864). Burroughs adds his own twist by postulating a unique biological system for his lost world, in which the slow progress of evolution in the world outside is recapitulated as a matter of individual metamorphosis.

Le Morte D'Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory's richly evocative and enthralling version of the Arthurian legend. Recounting Arthur's birth, his ascendancy to the throne after claiming Excalibur, his ill-fated marriage to Guenever, the treachery of Morgan le Fay and the exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, it magically weaves together adventure, battle, love and enchantment. Le Morte D'Arthur looks back to an idealized Medieval world and is full of wistful, elegiac regret for a vanished ag...

From Pulitzer Prize–winner Garry Wills, the story of Augustine’s ConfessionsIn this brief and incisive book, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills tells the story of the Confessions--what motivated Augustine to dictate it, how it asks to be read, and the many ways it has been misread in the one-and-a-half millennia since it was composed. Following Wills's biography of Augustine and his translation of the Confessions, this is an unp...

One of the most controversial of all works to survive from ancient Rome, the Augustan History is our main source of information about the Roman emperors from 117 to 284 AD. Written in the late fourth century by an anonymous author, it is an enigmatic combination of truth, invention and humour. This volume contains the first half of the History, and includes biographies of every emperor from Hadrian to Heliogabalus - among them the godlike Marcus Antonius and his grotesquely corrupt son Com...

Freida Sima (Bertha) Eisenberg Kraus was among the two million Jewish men, women and children who emigrated from Europe to the United States during the Great Wave of Immigration (1881–1914). This book tells her story and that of her family, from her birth in the Bukovina to her immigration to New York City alone at age fifteen in 1911, her immigrant work life, her marriage to a widower with four sons, and the birth of their only daughter right before the beginning of the Great Depression i...

Dionysus Resurrected analyzes the global resurgence since the late 1960s of Euripides’ The Bacchae. By analyzing and contextualizing these modern day performances, the author reveals striking parallels between transformational events taking place during the era of the play’s revival and events within the play itself.Puts forward a lively discussion of the parallels between transformational eventsduring the era of the play’s revival and events within the play...

Plato's Meno and Phaedo are two of the most important works of ancient western philosophy and continue to be studied around the world. The Meno is a seminal work of epistemology. The Phaedo is a key source for Platonic metaphysics and for Plato's conception of the human soul. Together they illustrate the birth of Platonic philosophy from Plato's reflections on Socrates' life and doctrines. This edition offers new and accessible translations of both works, together with a thorough introduct...