The Greek epic account of the quest for the golden fleece.

Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, composed in the 3rd century BC, is the epic retelling of Jason’s quest for the golden fleece. Along with his contemporaries Callimachus and Theocritus, Apollonius refashioned Greek poetry to meet the interests and aesthetics of a Hellenistic audience, especially that of Alexandria in the Ptolemaic period following Alexander’s death. In this carefully crafted work of 5,835 hexameter verses in four books, the author draws on the preceding literary traditions of epic (Homer), lyric (Pindar), and tragedy (especially Euripides) but creates an innovative and complex narrative that includes geography, religion, ethnography, mythology, adventure, exploration, human psychology, and, most of all, the coming of age and love affair of Jason and Medea. It greatly influenced Roman authors such as Catullus, Virgil, and Ovid, and was imitated by Valerius Flaccus.

This new edition of the first volume in the Loeb Classical Library offers a fresh translation and improved text.

How to write a speech in ancient Greek.

This volume contains three rhetorical treatises dating probably from the reign of Diocletian (AD 285–312) that provide instruction on how to compose epideictic (display) speeches for a wide variety of occasions both public and private. Two are attributed to one Menander Rhetor of Laodicea (in southwestern Turkey); the third, known as the Ars Rhetorica, incorrectly to the earlier historian and literary critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus. These treatises derive from the schools of rhetoric that flourished in the Roman Empire from the second through fourth centuries AD in the Greek East. Although important examples of some genres of occasional prose were composed in the fifth and fourth centuries BC by Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and especially Isocrates, it was with the flowering of rhetorical prose during the so-called Second Sophistic in the second half of the second century AD that more forms were developed as standard repertoire and became exemplary.

Distinctly Hellenic and richly informed by the prose and poetry of a venerable past, these treatises are addressed to the budding orator contemplating a civic career, one who would speak for his city’s interests to the Roman authorities and be an eloquent defender of its Greek culture and heritage. They provide a window into the literary culture, educational values and practices, and social concerns of these Greeks under Roman rule, in both public and private life, and considerably influenced later literature both pagan and Christian.

This edition offers a fresh translation, ample annotation, and texts based on the best critical editions.

The preeminent lyric poet of ancient Greece.

Of the Greek lyric poets, Pindar (ca. 518–438 BC) was “by far the greatest for the magnificence of his inspiration” in Quintilian’s view; Horace judged him “sure to win Apollo’s laurels.” The esteem of the ancients may help explain why a good portion of his work was carefully preserved. Most of the Greek lyric poets come down to us only in bits and pieces, but nearly a quarter of Pindar’s poems survive complete. William H. Race now brings us, in two volumes, a new edition and translation of the four books of victory odes, along with surviving fragments of Pindar’s other poems.

Like Simonides and Bacchylides, Pindar wrote elaborate odes in honor of prize-winning athletes for public performance by singers, dancers, and musicians. His forty-five victory odes celebrate triumphs in athletic contests at the four great Panhellenic festivals: the Olympic, Pythian (at Delphi), Nemean, and Isthmian games. In these complex poems, Pindar commemorates the achievement of athletes and powerful rulers against the backdrop of divine favor, human failure, heroic legend, and the moral ideals of aristocratic Greek society. Readers have long savored them for their rich poetic language and imagery, moral maxims, and vivid portrayals of sacred myths.

Race provides brief introductions to each ode and full explanatory footnotes, offering the reader invaluable guidance to these often difficult poems. His Loeb Pindar also contains a helpfully annotated edition and translation of significant fragments, including hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, maiden songs, and dirges.

The preeminent lyric poet of ancient Greece.

Of the Greek lyric poets, Pindar (ca. 518–438 BC) was “by far the greatest for the magnificence of his inspiration” in Quintilian’s view; Horace judged him “sure to win Apollo’s laurels.” The esteem of the ancients may help explain why a good portion of his work was carefully preserved. Most of the Greek lyric poets come down to us only in bits and pieces, but nearly a quarter of Pindar’s poems survive complete. William H. Race now brings us, in two volumes, a new edition and translation of the four books of victory odes, along with surviving fragments of Pindar’s other poems.

Like Simonides and Bacchylides, Pindar wrote elaborate odes in honor of prize-winning athletes for public performance by singers, dancers, and musicians. His forty-five victory odes celebrate triumphs in athletic contests at the four great Panhellenic festivals: the Olympic, Pythian (at Delphi), Nemean, and Isthmian games. In these complex poems, Pindar commemorates the achievement of athletes and powerful rulers against the backdrop of divine favor, human failure, heroic legend, and the moral ideals of aristocratic Greek society. Readers have long savored them for their rich poetic language and imagery, moral maxims, and vivid portrayals of sacred myths.

Race provides brief introductions to each ode and full explanatory footnotes, offering the reader invaluable guidance to these often difficult poems. His Loeb Pindar also contains a helpfully annotated edition and translation of significant fragments, including hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, maiden songs, and dirges.

A Platonic evangelist’s lectures on the good life.

Maximus of Tyre, active probably in the latter half of the second century AD, was a devoted Platonist whose only surviving work consists of forty-one brief addresses on various topics of ethical, philosophical, and theological import including the nature of divinity, the immortality of the soul, the sources of good and evil, the injustice of vengeance, the tyranny of pleasures and desires, the contribution of the liberal arts, and the pursuit of happiness, among many others. These addresses are conveniently labeled orations, but their fluid and hybrid style resists precise generic categorization, so that they could also be called discourses, speeches, lectures, talks, inquiries, essays, or even sermons.

In his orations Maximus strove to elucidate the philosophical life of virtue, especially as exemplified in the career of Socrates and in the writings of Plato, inviting his audience, sometimes addressed as young men, to share in his knowledge, to appreciate his fresh presentation of philosophical topics, and perhaps even to join him in pursuing philosophy. Drawing on the Hellenic cultural tradition from Homer to the death of Alexander the Great, Maximus offers a rich collection of the famous philosophical, literary, and historical figures, events, ideas, successes, and failures that constituted Greek paideia in the so-called Second Sophistic era.

This edition of Maximus’ Philosophical Orations offers a fresh translation, ample annotation, and a text fully informed by current scholarship.

A Platonic evangelist’s lectures on the good life.

Maximus of Tyre, active probably in the latter half of the second century AD, was a devoted Platonist whose only surviving work consists of forty-one brief addresses on various topics of ethical, philosophical, and theological import including the nature of divinity, the immortality of the soul, the sources of good and evil, the injustice of vengeance, the tyranny of pleasures and desires, the contribution of the liberal arts, and the pursuit of happiness, among many others. These addresses are conveniently labeled orations, but their fluid and hybrid style resists precise generic categorization, so that they could also be called discourses, speeches, lectures, talks, inquiries, essays, or even sermons.

In his orations Maximus strove to elucidate the philosophical life of virtue, especially as exemplified in the career of Socrates and in the writings of Plato, inviting his audience, sometimes addressed as young men, to share in his knowledge, to appreciate his fresh presentation of philosophical topics, and perhaps even to join him in pursuing philosophy. Drawing on the Hellenic cultural tradition from Homer to the death of Alexander the Great, Maximus offers a rich collection of the famous philosophical, literary, and historical figures, events, ideas, successes, and failures that constituted Greek paideia in the so-called Second Sophistic era.

This edition of Maximus’ Philosophical Orations offers a fresh translation, ample annotation, and a text fully informed by current scholarship.