New Distributed Titles Fall 2009 - Oxbow Books

Reconstructing the Epic
Cross-Readings of the Trojan Myth in Hellenistic Poetry
by Evina Sistakou
The Trojan War inspired a multifaceted mythological tradition which evolved through a variety of artistic devices – oral and written
poetry, prose, and iconography. In the open system of Trojan War narratives, Homer represents the dominant line, while the cyclic, lyric
and tragic poets offer a host of alternative versions. Reconstructing the Epic builds on the premise that the reception of the Trojan myth
by the Hellenistic avant-garde reflects their aesthetic and ideological distancing from the elevated genres of the past, particularly the
epic, and monitors the various stages of this modernistic reaction to the literary tradition.
210p, paperback, 9789042921177, $79.00, Peeters Publishers, December 2008, Hellenistica Groningiana 14.
Roman Perspectives
Studies on Political and Cultural History, from the First to the Fifth Century
by John Matthews
The fifteen papers in this volume discuss issues of Roman social, cultural and political history from the foundation
of the Principate to the age of barbarian settlements of the west. Working imaginatively from within
the diverse evidence, they show the institutional continuity of the Roman empire between its early and later
periods, and reveal the roots of political behavior in social practice.
350p, b/w illus, hardback, 9781905125395, $100.00(s), Classical Press of Wales, December 2009.
Xenophon and Sparta
edited by Anton Powell and Nicolas Richer
This volume deals with Xenophon, to whom we owe a very large part of our image of the Lacedaemonians.
Uniquely among surviving writers, Xenophon campaigned with Spartan commanders in the field. His
Agesilaos is a eulogy of a Spartan king he knew personally, his Constitution of the Lacedaemonians an intimate
document of a different sort. Here, internationally-recognized authorities on Sparta examine Xenophon’s
close – arguably too close – relationship with the most powerful Greek state of his day.
350p, hardback, 9781905125371, $100.00(s), Classical Press of Wales, December 2009.
A Roman Miscellany
Essays in Honour of Anthony R Birley
on his Seventieth Birthday
edited by Hans Michael Schellenberg,
Vera Elisabeth Hirschmann and Andreas Krieckhaus
Contents: Kritische Passagen zu Konstantin; Soldiers and Leaders in
Plutarch’s Galba and Otho; Reflexions on Hadrian, Antiochus Epiphanes
and the Jews; Neue Diplome für die Hilfstruppen von Britannia; Footnotes
to The Fasti; Die phrygische Opposition; Paulinos Mystes; Urbanism,
epigraphy and identity in the towns of Britain; Sulpicii Alexandri;
Choosing a Cognomen in Rome; Anmerkungen zu Heron von Alexandria;
Vereinigungen in Tarsos; A Forgotten Masterpiece of Cartography; Sallust und das ‘Massaker von Cirta’;
Fragment einer Bauinschrift aus Sexaginta Prista; Pullarii, Marsi, Haruspices, and Sacerdotes in the Roman
Imperial Army; Apollodorus’ Poliorketika; Zur Münzemission in Anemurion unter Kaiser Maximinus Thrax.
236p, 51 b/w illus, 3 maps, 10 maps on CD-ROM, hardback, 9788375311464, $90.00, Akanthina, December 2008.
classical studies
Sparta
Comparative Approaches
edited by Stephen Hodkinson
Both in antiquity and in modern scholarship, classical
Sparta has typically been viewed as an exceptional society,
different in many respects from other Greek city-states.
This view has recently come under challenge from ‘revisionist’
historians. This is the first book devoted explicitly
to this lively historical controversy. Historians from Britain,
Europe and the USA present different sides of the argument,
using a variety of comparative approaches. The focus
includes kingship and hegemonic structures, education
and commensality, religious institutions and practice,
helotage and ethnography. The volume concludes with a
wide-ranging debate on the overall question of whether
Sparta was a normal or an exceptional polis.
380p, hardback, 9781905125388, $110.00(s),
Classical Press of Wales, December 2009.
Look Who’s Talking
Innovations in Voice and Identity
in Hellenistic Epigram
by Michael A Tueller
This volume examines the methods by which the ancient
reader identified the speaker and addressee of epigram, and
how these methods were manipulated by Hellenistic epigrammatists.
The book also traces the development of the
ancient habit of equating an artistic image with the thing
or being it represented; it thinks of Hellenistic epigram the
way its authors did – from the background of inscription
– and consequently discovers many of the places where
Hellenistic epigrammatists hoped to make their mark.
231p, paperback, 9789042920118, $79.00,
Peeters Publishers, December 2008, Hellenistica Groningiana 13.
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