Bøker i Robson Classical Lectures-serien

Based on Elaine Fantham's 2004 Robson lectures, Latin Poets and Italian Gods reconstructs the response of Roman poets in the late republic and Augustan age to the rural cults of central Italy. Study of Roman gods is often limited to the grand equivalents of the Olympian Greek deities such as Jupiter, Mars, and Juno. However, real-life Italians gave a lot of their affection and loyalty to humbler gods with no Greek equivalent: local nymphs who supplied healing waters, the great Tiber river and other lesser rivers, the lusty garden god Priapus, and more.Latin Poets and Italian Gods surveys the representation of these old country gods in poets from Plautus to Statius. Fantham offers historical and epigraphic evidence of worship offered to these colourful lesser spirits and reveals the emotional importance of local Italian deities to the sophisticated poets of the Augustan age.

The work features an edition of the reaper inscription, and a commentary on it. It is also lavishly illustrated to demonstrate the important iconic and pictorial dimensions of the story.

Lucid, insightful, and innovative, the essays in Roman Social Imaginaries constitute some of today's most original thinking about the power of language in the ancient world.

Dalzell presents three of the major didactic poems in the classical canon, the De rerum natura of Lucretius, the Georgics of Virgil, and the Ars amatoria of Ovid, and considers what tools are available for their understanding.

Latin Poets and Italian Gods reconstructs the response of Roman poets in the late republic and Augustan age to the rural cults of central Italy.

In his preface Rudd writes: 'Everyone knows of the Classical Tradition - comprehending it is another matter.' This book brings it closer to our understanding.