A bold reconception of ancient Greek drama by one of the most brilliant and original classical scholars of his generationWhen John Winkler died in 1990, he left an unpublished manuscript containing a highly original interpretation of the development and meaning of ancient Greek drama. Rehearsals of Manhood makes this groundbreaking work available for the first time, presenting an entirely novel picture of Greek tragedy and a vivid portrait of the cultural ...

New directions in queer theory continue to trouble the boundaries of both queerness and the classical, leading to an explosion of new work in the vast—and increasingly uncharted—intersection between these disciplines, which this interdisciplinary volume seeks to explore.This handbook convenes an international group of experts who work on the classical world and queer theory. The discipline of Classics has been involved with, and implicated in, queer theory from the start. By placin...

Marriage is a central concern in five of the seven extant plays of the Greek tragedian Sophocles. In this pathfinding study, Kirk Ormand delves into the ways in which these plays represent and problematize marriage, thus offering insights into how Athenians thought about the institution of marriage.Ormand takes a two-fold approach. He first explores the legal and economic underpinnings of Athenian marriage, an institution designed to guarantee the legitimate continuation of patrili...

This book examines the extant fragments of the archaic Greek poem known in antiquity as Hesiod's Catalogue of Women. Kirk Ormand shows that the poem should be read intertextually with other hexameter poetry from the eighth to sixth century BCE, especially Homer, Hesiod, and the Cyclic epics. Through literary interaction with these poems, the Catalogue reflects political and social tensions in the archaic period regarding the production of elite status. In particular, Ormand argues that the...

Ancient Sex: New Essays presents groundbreaking work in a post-Foucauldian mode on sexuality, sexual identities, and gender identities in ancient Greece and Rome. Since the production of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, the field of classics has been caught in a recursive loop of argument regarding the existence—or lack thereof—of "sexuality" (particularly "homosexuality") as a meaningful cultural concept for ancient Greece and Rome. Much of the argument concerning these issues, however, h...

Deianeira sends her husband Herakles a poisoned robe. Eriphyle trades the life of her husband Amphiaraos for a golden necklace. Atreus’s wife Aerope gives away the token of his sovereignty, a lamb with a golden fleece, to his brother Thyestes, who has seduced her. Gifts and exchanges always involve a certain risk in any culture, but in the ancient Greek imagination, women and gifts appear to be a particularly deadly combination.This book explores the role of gender in exchange as r...

This book is about love in the classical world - not erotic passion but the kind of love that binds together intimate members of a family and very close friends, but which may also be extended to include a wider range of individuals for whom we care deeply. The book begins with a discussion of friendship, focusing particularly on the Greek notion that in friendship the identities of two friends all but merge into one. The book then turns to the question of loyalty, and why loyalty seems no...

This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of the ancient world find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consu...

New and surprising insights into homoeroticism of times pastIn ancient times, the Greek god Eros personified both heterosexual and homosexual attractions. Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in Classical Tradition of the West explores the homosexual side of the vanished civilizations of Greece and Rome, and the resulting influence on the Classical tradition of the West. Respected scholars clearly present evidence that shows the extensive nature of homoeroticism an...

Women's and men's worlds were largely separate in ancient Mediterranean societies, and, in consequence, many women's deepest personal relationships were with other women. Yet relatively little scholarly or popular attention has focused on women's relationships in antiquity, in contrast to recent interest in the relationships between men in ancient Greece and Rome. The essays in this book seek to close this gap by exploring a wide variety of textual and archaeological evidence for women's h...

From Zeus and Europa, to Diana, Pan, and Prometheus, the myths of ancient Greece and Rome seem to exert a timeless power over us. But what do those myths represent, and why are they so enduringly fascinating? Why do they seem to be such a potent way of talking about our selves, our origins, and our desires? This imaginative and stimulating Very Short Introduction goes beyond a simple retelling of the stories to explore the rich history and diverse interpretations of classical myth...

This book provides an original and challenging answer to the question: 'Who were the Classical Greeks?' Paul Cartledge - 'one of the most theoretically alert, widely read and prolific of contemporary ancient historians' (TLS) - here examines the Greeks and their achievements in terms of their own self-image, mainly as it was presented by the supposedly objective historians: Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. Many of our modern concepts as we understand them were invented by the ...