J. H. Hordern provides a text (based on Kassel and Austin's Poetae Comici Graeci text but with significant additions), translation, and detailed commentary on the surviving fragments of Sophron's mimes. The commentary deals with both literary and linguistic questions, but focuses particularly on Sophron's relationship with earlier traditions (for example, iambus) and his influence on later literature (for example, the work of Theocritus). A substantial introduction furnishes an overview of the biographical evidence, and discusses the vexed question of audience and performance, arguing that the mimes were essentially symposiac entertainment rather than stage performances. There is detailed discussion of Sophron's dialect and lexicon, the textual tradition, and his impact on post-classical literature.

Acknowledging the powerful impact that Plato's dialogues have had on readers, Jill Gordon shows how the literary techniques Plato used function philosophically to engage readers in doing philosophy and attracting them toward the philosophical life. The picture of philosophical activity emerging from the dialogues, as thus interpreted, is a complex process involving vision, insight, and emotion basic to the human condition rather than a resort to pure reason as an escape from it. Since the literary features of Plato's writing are what draw the reader into philosophy, the book becomes an argument for the union of philosophy and literature--and against their disciplinary bifurcation--in the dialogues. Gordon construes the relationship of Plato's text to its audience as an analogue of Socrates' relationship with his interlocutors in the dialogues, seeing both as fundamentally dialectic. On this insight she builds her detailed analysis of specific literary devices in chapters on dramatic form, character development, irony, and image-making (which includes myth, metaphor, and analogy). In this way Gordon views Plato as not at all the enemy of the poets and image-makers that previous interpreters have depicted. Rather, Gordon concludes that Plato understands the power of words and images quite well. Since they, and not logico-deductive argumentation, are the appropriate means for engaging human beings, he uses them to great effect and with a sensitive understanding of human psychology, wary of their possible corrupting influences but ultimately willing to harness their power for philosophical ends.

List of abbreviations Preface Introductory note 1. Problem and sources 2. Life and character 3. Philosophical significance Bibliography Index of passages quoted or referred to General index Index of selected Greek words.

14 essays which examine the efforts of Socrates' associates to preserve his speeches for posterity. The papers place particular emphasis on the non-Platonic tradition.

This volume collects the most recent essays of Richard Hunter, one of the world's leading experts in the field of Greek and Latin literature. The essays range across all periods of ancient literature from Homer to late antiquity, with a particular focus not just on the texts in their original contexts, but also on how they were interpreted and exploited for both literary and more broadly cultural purposes later in antiquity. Taken together, the essays sketch a picture of a continuous tradition of critical and historical engagement with the literature of the past from the period of Aristophanes and then Plato and Aristotle in classical Athens to the rich prose literature of the Second Sophistic. Richard Hunter's earlier essays are collected in On Coming After (Berlin 2008).