This book offers a new interpretation of Aeschylus’ tragic tetralogy Lycurgeia and Naevius’ tragedy Lycurgus, the two most important texts that shaped the tradition of the myth about Lycurgus’ resistance against the god Dionysus.

A recently-published second-century papyrus, P.Oxy. 5283, contains prose summaries (hypotheses) of six plays by the Greek dramatist Euripides, including two lost plays depicting the hero Perseus, Dictys and Danaë. This book demonstrates the significance of this discovery for our understanding of Greek tragedy. After setting out the mythological and dramatic context, and offering a new text and translation based on autopsy, the book analyses the light which the papyrus sheds on these plays, whose narratives, centred on female resistance to abusive male tyrants, speak as powerfully to us today as they did to their original audiences. It then investigates Euripides’ tragic trilogy of 431 BC, which ended with Dictys and began with Medea, whose dramatic power now stands in sharper focus given our improved understanding of the production in which it originally appeared. Finally, it ponders the purpose which these hypotheses served, and why readers in the second century AD should have wanted a summary of plays written more than half a millennium before. All Greek (and Latin) is translated, making the book accessible not just to classicists, but to theatre historians and to anyone interested in Greek literature, drama, and mythology.

The mythological hero Orpheus occupied a central role in ancient Greek culture, but 'the son of Oeagrus' and 'Thracian musician' venerated by the Greeks has also become a prominent figure in a long tradition of classical reception of Greek myth. This book challenges our entrenched idea of Orpheus and demonstrates that in the Classical and Hellenistic periods depictions of his identity and image were not as unequivocal as we tend to believe today. Concentrating on Orpheus' ethnicity and geographical references in ancient sources, Tomasz Mojsik traces the development of, and changes in, the mythological image of the hero in antiquity and sheds new light on contemporary constructions of cultural identity by locating the various versions of the mythical story within their socio-political contexts. Examination of the early literary sources prompts a reconsideration of the tradition which locates the tomb of the hero in Macedonian Pieria, and the volume argues for the emergence of this tradition as a reaction to the allegation of the barbarity and civilizational backwardness of the Macedonians throughout the wider Greek world. These assertions have important implications for Archelaus' Hellenizing policy and his commonly acknowledged sponsorship of the arts, which included his incorporating of the Muses into the cult of Zeus at the Olympia in Dium.

The Dirae is a curse uttered, in bucolic hexameters, by an Italian farmer against his former estate confiscated to enable the settlement of Caesarian veterans in the aftermath of the battle of Philippi: this commentary is the first work, in eighty years, to offer a systematic exploration of the poem within the literary and historical context of the Late Republic. At the heart of the volume is a freshly edited Latin text, based on a thorough reappraisal of manuscript evidence and earlier textual scholarship, which in particular aims to restore the poems stanzaic organisation, gravely distorted in the course of transmission. Besides providing an account of the manuscripts and an overview of the poems structure and contents, the introduction discusses at length the Diraes engagement with other poetic texts and traditions, first of all with its sibling the Lydia, but also, crucially, with Greek bucolic, before considering its reception in Virgils Eclogues and later Augustan poetry; it sheds new light too on the Diraes links with Hellenistic curse poetry and with the ritual tradition of inscribed curses. Endorsing a composition period shortly after the poems dramatic date (springsummer of 41 BC) and tentatively reviving the old attribution to Valerius Cato, the introduction also explores the Diraes engagement with the political events and narratives of one of the most dramatic moments of Roman history. The line-by-line commentary provides exegesis of the poems textual, linguistic, literary and historical aspects, with the English translation offering a further point of orientation.

Euripides' Bacchae is one of the most widely read and performed Greek tragedies. A story of implacable divine vengeance, it skilfully transforms earlier currents of literature and myth, and its formative influence on modern ideas of Greek tragedy and religion is unparalleled. This up-to-date edition offers a detailed literary and cultural analysis. The wide-ranging Introduction discusses such issues as the psychological and anthropological aspects of Dionysiac ritual, the god's ability to blur gender boundaries, his particular connection to dramatic role-playing, and the interaction of belief and practice in Greek religion. The Commentary's notes on language and style are intended to make the play fully accessible to students of Greek at all levels, while the edition as a whole is designed for anyone with an interest in Greek tragedy or cultural history.

Preliminary material -- THE MAIN PROBLEMS -- THE GREEK TEXT -- BIOGRAPHICAL DATA -- PORPHYRY'S ACCOUNT OF SANCHUNIATHON -- PHILO'S ACCOUNT OF SANCHUNIATHON -- THE COSMOGONY -- THE DISCOVERERS -- THE LIFE OF KRONOS -- KRONOS' VICTORY and PHILO'S CONCLUSION -- CHILD SACRIFICE and SNAKES -- CONCLUSIONS -- INDEX OF NAMES -- INDEX OF PASSAGES -- ÉTUDES PRÉLIMINAIRES AUX RELIGIONS ORIENTALES DANS L'EMPIRE ROMAIN.