Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds.

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. XV,596p. ills.(B&W photographs). Original dark blue hard cover. Spine gilt titled. Spine slightly bumped. Signature on free endpaper. 'The project is aimed at at wide audience, and I have rarely seen an introduction to the whole field of Classical literature at this level of clarity and intensity. (...) Almost every part of the collection offers a number of formulations which are not simply bien trouvé or epigrammatic but also inspiring and inviting to further reflection. (...) In sum, the success of the book is based both on the quality of the individual contributors and on the intelligent planning of the whole. Some of the authors should be congratulated for writing with originality and independence about gigantic figures (e.g. A. Wilson Nightingale, who introduces Greek wisdom traditions from the origins to the beginnings of Hellenistic philosophy), others have been nothing short of heroic in covering a huge and unforgiving landscape of texts (J. Lightfoot, less than 70 pages on everything written in Greek from Menander to Nonnos; M. Dewar, from the age of Apuleius to the fall of the Empire). Other chapters, based on a coherent genre and situation (Kurke on lyric, Peter Wilson on Attic drama, Carey on the Athenian orators), represent the closest equivalent to the audience-oriented program sketched by Taplin. All have been in full control not only of the issues, but of the brief to write about the horizon of the intended public, and of the importance of not writing just another handbook of literary history.' (ALESSANDRO BARCHIESI in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2001.12.01).