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Menander (?344/3-292/1 BCE), the dominant figure in New Comedy, wrote over 100 plays, of which one complete play, substantial portions of six others, and smaller but interesting fragments have been recovered. The complete play, Dyskolos (The Peevish Fellow), won first prize in Athens in 317 BCE.

Nearly all the works Aristotle (384-322 BCE) prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda (some are spurious). They can be categorized as practical; logical; physical; metaphysical; on art; other; fragments.

Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) produced in his Natural History a vast compendium of Roman knowledge. Topics included are the mathematics and metrology of the universe; world geography and ethnography; human anthropology and physiology; zoology; botany, agriculture, and horticulture; medicine; minerals, fine arts, and gemstones.

Brings together, with explanatory notes, the work of the Hellenistic comic playwright, Menander. This volume contains the surviving portions of ten plays, including "Misoumenos" ("The Man She Hated"), which presents the flawed relationship of a soldier and a captive girl.

Describes a series of dinner parties at which the guests quote extensively from Greek literature. This work (which dates to the very end of the 2nd century A.D.) also contains a range of information about different cuisines, the music and entertainments that ornamented banquets, and the intellectual talk that was the heart of Greek conviviality.

Eight works or parts of works were ascribed to Manetho, a third century BCE Egyptian, all on history and religion and all apparently in Greek. They survive only as quoted by other writers and include the spurious Book of Sothis. The Kings of Thebes (in Egypt) and the Old Chronicle are doubtful.

Enquiry into Plants and De Causis Plantarum by Theophrastus (c. 370-c. 285 BCE) are a counterpart to Aristotle's zoological work and the most important botanical work of antiquity now extant. In the former Theophrastus classifies and describes. His On Odours and Weather Signs are minor treatises.

The surviving works of the Roman Emperor Julian "the Apostate" (331 or 332-363 CE) include eight Orations; Misopogon (Beard-hater), assailing the morals of the people of Antioch; more than eighty Letters; and fragments of Against the Galileans, written mainly to show that the Old Testament lacks evidence for the idea of Christianity.

We know more of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, than of any other Roman. Besides much else, his work conveys the turmoil of his time, and the part he played in a period that saw the rise and fall of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic.

The classical and Christian worlds meet in Boethius (c. 480-524 CE), the last writer of purely literary Latin from antiquity. His Tractates examine the Trinity and incarnation in Aristotelian terms. His Consolation of Philosophy, a dialogue between himself and Philosophy, is theistic in tone but draws on Greek, especially Neoplatonist, sources.

Attributed to Apollodorus of Athens (born c. 180 BCE), but probably composed in the first or second century BCE, the Library provides a grand summary of Greek myths and heroic legends about the origin and early history of the world and of the Hellenic people.

Claudius Claudianus (c. 370-c. 410 CE) gives us important knowledge of Honorius's time and displays poetic as well as rhetorical skill, command of language, and diversity. A panegyric on the brothers Probinus and Olybrius (consuls together in 395 CE) was followed mostly by epics in hexameters, but also by elegiacs, epistles, epigrams, and idylls.

Demosthenes (384-322 BCE), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who also became a champion of Athenian greatness and Greek resistance to Philip of Macedon. His steadfastness, pungent argument, and control of language gained him early reputation as the best of Greek orators, and his works provide vivid pictures of contemporary life.

In Secret History the Byzantine historian Procopius (late fifth century to after 558 CE) attacks the sixth century CE emperor Justinian and empress Theodora and alleges their ruinous effect on the Roman empire. Procopius' pen is particularly sharp in portraying Theodora's lewdness, duplicity, cruelty, spite, vanity and pride.

Antiphon of Athens, born c. 480 BCE, disliked democracy and was an ardent oligarch. Of his fifteen extant works three concern real murder cases. The others are academic exercises. Andocides of Athens, born c. 440 BCE, disliked the extremes of democracy and oligarchy. Of his four extant speeches Against Alcibiades is doubtful.

Extant early Latin writings from the seventh or sixth to the first century BCE include epic, drama, satire, translation and paraphrase, hymns, stage history and practice, and other works by Ennius, Caecilius, Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Pacuvius, Accius, Lucilius, and other anonymous authors; the Twelve Tables of Roman law; archaic inscriptions.

Chariton's Callirhoe, subtitled "Love Story in Syracuse," is a fast-paced historical romance of the first century CE and the oldest extant novel.

Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 386 BCE) has been admired since antiquity for his wit, fantasy, language, and satire. In Acharnians a small landowner, tired of the Peloponnesian War, magically arranges a personal peace treaty; and Knights, perhaps the most biting satire of a political figure (Cleon) ever written.

We know more of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, than of any other Roman. Besides much else, his work conveys the turmoil of his time, and the part he played in a period that saw the rise and fall of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic.

In his treatises Hygiene, Thrasybulus, and On Exercise with a Small Ball, Galen of Pergamum addresses topics of preventive medicine, health, and wellness that continue to resonate with practices of modern doctors and physical therapists.

In Heroides, Ovid (43 BCE-17CE) allows legendary women to narrate their memories and express their emotions in verse letters to absent husbands and lovers. Ovid's Amores are three books of elegies ostensibly about the poet's love affair with his mistress Corinna.

The poetry of Horace (born 65 BCE) is richly varied, its focus moving between public and private concerns, urban and rural settings, Stoic and Epicurean thought. In the Satires Horace mocks himself as well as the world. His verse epistles include the Art of Poetry, in which he famously expounds his literary theory.

Lucretius lived ca. 99-ca. 55 BCE, but the details of his career are unknown. In his didactic poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) he expounds Epicurean philosophy so as to dispel fear of the gods and death, and promote spiritual tranquility.

Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 386 BCE) has been admired since antiquity for his wit, fantasy, language, and satire. Traditional Aeschylus and modern Euripides compete in Frogs. In Assemblywomen, Athenian women plot against male misgovernance. The humor and morality of Wealth made it the most popular of Aristophanes's plays until the Renaissance.

Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BCE) is the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art forms. Seven of his eighty or so plays survive complete, including the Oresteia trilogy and the Persians, the only extant Greek historical drama. Fragments of his lost plays also survive.

Euripides (c. 485-406 BCE) has been prized in every age for his emotional and intellectual drama. Eighteen of his ninety or so plays survive complete, including Medea, Hippolytus, and Bacchae, one of the great masterpieces of the tragic genre. Fragments of his lost plays also survive.

This text contains, in two volumes, a new edition and translation of the four books of victory odes, along with surviving fragments of Pindar's other poems. This is Volume One.

The History of Herodian (born c. 178-179 CE) is one of the few literary historical sources for the period of the Roman empire from the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (180 CE) to the accession of Gordian III (238), a period in which we can see turbulence and the onset of revolution.

We know more of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, than of any other Roman. Besides much else, his work conveys the turmoil of his time, and the part he played in a period that saw the rise and fall of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic.

The most important poets writing in Greek in the sixth century BCE came from Sicily and southern Italy. They included Stesichorus, Ibycus, and Simonides, as well as Arion, Lasus, and Pratinas.