Although Greek society was largely male-dominated, it gave rise to a strong tradition of female authorship. Women poets of ancient Greece and Rome have long fascinated readers, even though much of their poetry survives only in fragmentary form. This pathbreaking volume is the first collection of essays to examine virtually all surviving poetry by Greek and Roman women. It elevates the status of the poems by demonstrating their depth and artistry. Edited and with an introduction by Ellen Greene, the volume covers a broad time span, beginning with Sappho (ca. 630 b.c.e.) in archaic Greece and extending to Sulpicia (first century B.C.E.) in Augustan Rome. In their analyses, the contributors situate the female poets in an established male tradition, but they also reveal their distinctly “feminine” perspectives. Despite relying on literary convention, the female poets often defy cultural norms, speaking in their own voices and transcending their positions as objects of derision in male-authored texts. In their innovative reworkings of established forms, women poets of ancient Greece and Rome are not mere imitators but creators of a distinct and original body of work.

In the perpetual running fight about the Homeric Homer, Mr. Andrew Lang has been for some years a most prominent champion. In his latest return to the fray, " The World of Homer " (Jazzybee Publishing), he lays about him in a very joyous and triumphant mood. His foemen are all those who hold, in some form or other, that " the Iliad is a mosaic produced by a long series of Ionian additions to an Achaean ' kernel.' " Against them he maintains that '' the Iliad is, in the main, the work of a single poet, as is shown by the unity of thought, temper, character and ethos " ; that it is " a work of one brief period, because it bears all the notes of one age, and is absolutely free from the most marked traits of religion, rites, society, and superstition that characterise the preceding Aegean, and the later ' Dipylon,' Ionian, Archaic, and historic periods in Greek life and art" Homer is an Achaean poet, composing for Achaean auditors at a time when "the glow of Aegean (late Minoan, Mycenean) culture still flushed the sky." In support of his contention he writes nearly three hundred pages under such captions as "The Homeric World in War," "Homer and Ionia" "Bronze and Iron," "Burial and the Future Life," and "The Great Discrepancies." It goes without saying that the argumentation is serious. Some historians have long been in accord with Mr. Lang's principal views, while differing from him about many details ; but from friend and foe alike the book deserves attention.

Shadow of the Third Century: A Revaluation of Christianity, first published in 1949, begins with the assertions that a true history of Christianity has never before been written and that the roots of the Christian religion lie in earlier religions and philosophies of the ancient world. The author, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, asserts that Christianity as we know it took the form it did due to a degeneration of knowledge rather than to an energization produced by a new release of light and truth into the world. In the ancient world, knowledge was commonly passed down by esoteric traditions, its inner meaning known only to the initiated. The Gospels, according to Kuhn, should therefore be understood as symbolic narratives rather than as history. Sacred scriptures are always written in a language of myth and symbol, and the Christian religion threw away and lost their true meaning when it mistranslated this language into alleged history instead of reading it as spiritual allegory. This literalism necessarily led to a religion antagonistic toward philosophy. Moreover, it produced a religion that failed to recognize its continuity with, and debt to, earlier esoteric schools. As evidence of this, Kuhn finds that many of the gospel stories and sayings have parallels in earlier works, in particular those of Egypt and Greece. The transformation of Jesus’ followers into Pauline Christians drew on these sources. Moreover, the misunderstanding of true Christianity led to the excesses of misguided asceticism. Overall, the book seeks to serve as a “clarion call to the modern world to return to the primitive Christianity which the founder of Christian theology, Augustine, proclaimed had been the true religion of all humanity.” With its many citations from earlier works, Shadow of the Third Century also serves as a bibliographic introduction to alternative histories of Christianity.

The volume assembles about 50 contributions presented at the Intenational Colloquium on Ancient Greek Linguistics, held in Rome, March 2015. This Colloquium opened a new series of international conferences that has replaced previous national meetings on this subject. They embrace essential topics of Ancient Greek Linguistics with different theoretical and methodological approaches: particles and their functional uses; phonology; tense, aspect, modality; syntax and thematic roles; lexicon and onomastics; Greek and other languages; speech acts and pragmatics.