DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS migrated to Rome in 300 B.C., where he lived until his death some time after 8 B.C., writing his Roman Antiquities in twenty books and teaching the art of rhetoric and literary composition to a small group of upper-class Romans. His purpose, both in his own work and in his teaching, was to re-establish the classical Attic standards of purity, invention and taste in order to reassert the primacy of Greek as the literary language of the Mediterranean world. The essays in the present volume display the full range of Dionysius' critical expertise. In the treatise On Literary Composition, his finest and most original work, discussion of the effects produced by the arrangement of words involves minute analysis of phonetics and metre in addition to more general aspects of literary aesthetics such as the difference between poetry and prose, and the tripartite classification of the types of arrangement. The other four essays are on a less ambitious scale. The Dinarchus is primarily a study of authenticity in which Dionysius attempts to identify the genuine speeches of the latest Attic orator from the list of those ascribed to him by the librarians. The three literary letters are all concerned with possible models. In the Letter to Pompeius, Dionysius gives his reasons for criticizing Plato on stylistic and also moral grounds, and appends critiques of Herodotus, whom he greatly admired, and three other historians -- Xenophon, Philistus and Theopompus. Of the two Letters to Ammaeus, the second may be read as an appendix to the Thucydides, but the first concerns literary history, and investigates the question of whether Demosthenes could have learnt his oratorical skills from Aristotle's Rhetoric. Volume I contains the essays On the Ancient Orators, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, Demosthenes, and Thucydides.

Originally published in 1879, this book offers a comprehensive look at the Roman antiquities as described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. With an English translation by Edward Spelman and Ernest Cary, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of ancient Rome. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Interprets the works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, an important critic and historian in Rome, in a range of contexts.

Reconstructs the origins of the idea that social conflict, and not concord, makes political communities powerful.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, born ca. 60 BC, aimed in his critical essays to reassert the primacy of Greek as the literary language of the Mediterranean world. They constitute an important development from the somewhat mechanical techniques of rhetorical handbooks to more sensitive criticism of individual authors.