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Classical Studies
Archimedes and the Roman Imagination
Mary Jaeger
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
As is typical of many classical personalities, we have of Archimedes some treatises and some ancient anecdotes about his life, but we have no complete and reliable ancient biography. Archimedes is a particularly interesting figure because, even though he was a Syracusan who wrote in Greek, we see his life through the eyes of writers who are Romans, or who are strongly influenced by Roman culture, and write for Roman audiences. Moreover, for later Romans imagining their past, the capture of Syracuse (during which Archimedes was killed) was one of the most significant milestones in Rome's appropriation of Greek culture and in its subsequent moral decay. Archimedes' story, Jaeger argues, thus becomes a locus where writers explore the intersection of Greek and Roman culture, and as such it plays an important role in Roman self-definition.
In addition to being a specific study of Archimedes, this book is also a case-study in using the biography of one figure as a hermeneutic tool—exploring the ways in which an assembled history can provide insight into the individuals and contexts that assembled it. By breaking down the narrative of Archimedes' life and examining how the various anecdotes that comprise it are embedded in various contexts, the book offers fresh readings of passages from both well-known and less-studied authors, including Polybius, Cicero, Livy, Vitruvius, Plutarch, Silius Italicus, Valerius Maximus, Johannes Tzetzes, and Petrarch. The book will appeal to a wide audience: students of classical literature who are interested in issues of narratology, exemplarity, intertextuality and reception; historians studying Greco-Roman interaction in the third century BCE and the later, politically motivated, representation of that interaction; and readers of Petrarch and others interested in his reception of the classical tradition. The book should also find readers among historians of science, modern students of math and other fans of Archimedes.
Mary Jaeger is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Oregon and author of Livy's Written Rome (UMP 1998), a book that first piqued her interest in the genesis of Roman historical legends.
April 2008
280 pages
Clemency and Cruelty in the Roman World
Melissa Barden Dowling
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
In Clemency and Cruelty in the Roman World, Dowling argues that the concept of clemency originated in Rome, developing in significance until, to quote the reader, "by the third century of this era, clementia becomes a guiding principle of society, an embodiment of a peaceful universe and the compact between humankind and the gods." This work links with the burgeoning study of Roman social history while opening up a topic that has been curiously neglected given its obvious importance to Roman society and the workings of the penal system.
Melissa Barden Dowling is Associate Professor of Classics and History at Southern Methodist University.
Fall 2005
440 pages
The Illiad
Homer
Translated by Rodney Merrill
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
In 2002, the University of Michigan Press published Rodney Merrill's translation of Homer's Odyssey, a version of the classic that was unique in employing dactylic hexameter meter, thereby attempting to represent the oral-formulaic nature of the Homeric epic. In a market crowded with translations of Homer's work, Merrill's was a modest success, appealing to a niche of readers looking to capture the sound and feel of the original Greek.
Merrill has now produced an edition of Homer's Iliad, following the same approach. This particular form of rendering is particularly relevant to the Iliad, producing as it does a strong musical setting which many elements of the narrative require to truly come to life—most notable are the many scenes of battle, to which the strong meter gives an impetus embodying and making credible the "war-lust" in the deeds of the combatants.
For many years, until his retirement, Rodney Merrill taught English composition and comparative literature at Stanford and Berkley. In addition to his translation of Homer's Odyssey, he is the author of Chaucer's Broche of Thebes (U. Wisconsin 1973).
November 2007
464 pages
The Laws of the Roman People: Public Law in the Expansion and Decline of the Roman Republic
Callie Williamson
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
How did the Roman people maintain their society and adapt their values to new conditions as they expanded across most of the known world?
For hundreds of years, the Roman people produced laws in popular assemblies attended by tens of thousands of voters to publicly forge resolutions to issues that might otherwise have been unmanageable. Caroline Williamson's comprehensive new study finds that the key to Rome's survival and growth during the most formative period of empire, roughly 350 to 44 B.C.E., lies in its hitherto enigmatic public lawmaking assemblies which helped extend Roman influence and control. The author bases her rigorous and innovative work on the entire body of surviving laws preserved in ancient reports of proposed and enacted legislation from these public assemblies.
The Laws of the Roman People was the winner of the 2005 James Henry Breasted Prize given by the American Historical Association.
Caroline Williamson holds a PhD in Roman history from the University of London and is presently concluding her studies for a Juris Doctor degree in law.
Fall 2004
534 pages
Life and Thought in the Ancient Near East
Louis Orlin
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
Since retiring from the University of Michigan in 1989, Lou Orlin has continued to pursue his love of teaching through the University's "Learning in Retirement" project, presenting a series of informal lectures on various topics in Near-Eastern Studies. It is from the success of this experience that he hit upon the idea of putting together a book that explored, for a general-interest reader, the day-to-day life of people in the ancient Near East. Accordingly, Life and Thought in the Ancient Near East contains brief treatments of such topics as agriculture, architecture, crafts and industries, and literature. In addition to general readers, the book will be useful as a text supplementing a more conventional introduction to the study of the ancient Near East.
Now Professor Emeritus, Lou Orlin taught in the department of Ancient Near Eastern History and Literature at the University of Michigan for more than thirty years. He is the author and editor of several monographs, including Assyrian Colonies in Cappadocia and Ancient Near Eastern Literature: A Bibliography of One Thousand Items on the Cuneiform Literatures of the Ancient World.
November 2007
328 pages
The Marble and the Scroll: Studies in Reading and Reception in Hellenistic Poetry
Peter Bing
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
While people of previous ages relied on public performance as their chief means of experiencing poetry, the Hellenistic age developed what one may term a culture of reading. This was the first era in which poets consciously shaped their works with an eye toward publication and reception not just on the civic stage, but in several media—in performance, on inscribed monuments, in scrolls—each of which involved a different kind of readerly experience. The essays in Bing's collection explore how poetry accommodated various audiences, and how these in turn experienced the text in diverse ways according to changing readerly circumstances. Over the years, Bing's essays have focused on certain Hellenistic authors and genres—particularly on Callimachus, Posidippus, and on Epigram. His themes, too, have been broadly consistent. Thus, although the essays in The Marble and the Scroll span some twenty years, they offer a coherent vision of Hellenistic poetics, and form a satisfying whole.
Peter Bing is one of the most prominent figures in the study of Hellenistic poetry. He is Associate Professor of Classics at Emory University, and author, editor, and translator of numerous books, including Companion to Hellenistic Epigram down to Philip; Wilder Ursprung, Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece; and Games of Venus: An Anthology of Greek and Roman Erotic Verse from Sappho to Ovid.
October 2007
304 pages
Present Shock: An Episode in Ancient Greek Culture
Francis M. Dunn
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
Written in 1970, Alvin Toffler's book, Future Shock, depicted the state of disorientation brought about by the sudden cultural upheavals of 1960's America, a time when traditional forms of authority were broadly challenged and frequently rejected. Toffler argued that the rate of cultural change left people unable to confront the future.
Francis Dunn's Present Shock examines a similar phenomenon from late fifth-century Athens. With the revolution of 411 and military misadventures in 413 and 404, it was a time of vast cultural and intellectual change, which ultimately led to a shift away from Athenians' traditional tendency to seek authority in the past, toward a sense of greater value in the authority of the present. Using literary case studies from this period, Dunn shows how narrative techniques changed to focus on depicting a world in which events were no longer wholly predetermined by the past. Instead, readers were confronted with a sense of indeterminacy of human experience, in which individuals must find their own way.
Francis Dunn is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is author of Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama, and co-editor of Beginnings in Classical Literature and Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature.
December 2007
256 pages
The Serpent and the Stylus:
Essays on G.B. Piranesi edited by Mario Bevilacqua, Heather Hyde Minor, and Fabio Barry
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
New essays that shed light on the shadowy figure of Piranesi
This series of essays emerges from a conference sponsored by the American Academy of Rome in April 2001. Since Henri Focillon published his monograph on Piranesi in 1918, scholars have sought to expand his interpretive strategies used to examine Piranesi and his work. It has been more than twenty-five years since the great exhibitions were mounted and the conferences convened to commemorate the bicentary of Piranesi's death. Much new work has been done over this quarter century in European and American archives and libraries, as well as in print and drawing collections, that sheds light on Piranesi and his art. This volume is intended to be a representative sampling of this contemporary scholarship on Piranesi.
As perhaps the most crucial intermediary between Rome and the modern era, Piranesi appeals to many audiences, including archaeologists, architects, art & architectural historians, classicists, historians of the graphic arts and book design, as well as scholars interested in the legacy and reception of the ancient world.
Mario Bevilacqua is Associate Professor at the University of Florence, Italy.
Heather Hyde Minor is Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
Fabio Barry is Assistant Professor at the American University of Rome, Italy.
Spring 2007
280 pages
Taking Her Seriously: Penelope and the Plot of Homer's Odyssey
Richard Heitman
Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu
Taking Her Seriously: Penelope and the Plot of Homer's Odyssey offers an original reinterpretation of Penelope's centrality to the meaning of the Odyssey. In an introductory survey, the author lays down the assumptions that have historically led to the obfuscation of Homer's plot and Penelope's agency. Behind the interpretations of Aristotle, Longinus, Butler, Dacier, Wilamowitz, and others, Heitmann identifies two basic assumptions: first, that the structure of the epic is based on Odysseus's homecoming, and second, that Homer's interest in Penelope is mainly as the object of Odysseus's desire. The contemporary reevaluation of cunning deception (metis) in the Odyssey, inaugurated by Detienne and Vernant, has led to some progress by feminists in establishing Penelope's independent agency. The wife can be as deceptive as her husband and valued as highly for it. Unfortunately, this approach has a built-in contradiction in that it applies unequal evidentiary standards to husband and wife.
Hietman proposes an alternative analysis of the plot of the Odyssey in which none of these statements are false and concludes that only through Penelope's steadfast resistance to deception can Odysseus escape from his multiple impersonations into his true character. In this sense, Odysseus is not tricked by Penelope so much as he is redeemed by her, and it is Penelope, in the end, who completes and defines the Homeric meditation on metis.
Richard Heitman is Assistant Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Carthage College.
Spring 2005
144 pages
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