Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Reading the classics today - the classical
canon - the classics in translation - the form
and pronunciation of Greek and Latin names
- metre in classical verse - dates - Roman
numerals - maps
I The Homeric age
1 The spread of civilisation: the past in the
present - from neolithic tribalism to the
first cities - the Minoans
2 The Greeks: the Mycenaeans - Dark-Age
Greece - the Greek language - the Greek
alphabet - Bronze-Age society and culture
- Mycenaean religion
3 Homer and epic poetry: the background
- the Iliad - the Odyssey - Hesiod
II Greece in the fifth century BC
From Archaic to early-Classical Greece:
Athens - Sparta - the Persian Wars - women,
resident foreigners, and slaves - colonisation
5 Religion, the arts, education, and books:
religious beliefs and practices - architecture
- painting - sculpture - music - education,
literacy, and books
6 Lyric poetry: Pindar and his predecessors:
the lyric - Sappho and Anacreon - Pindar
7 Sophocles and Athenian drama: tragedy - the
three tragedians - Aeschylus - Sophocles -
Euripides - Aristophanes and comedy
8 Herodotus and Greek history: Greek historians
- Herodotus and the Persian Wars - Thucydides
and the Peloponnesian War - Xenophon and
the Persian Expedition
9 Plato and philosophy: the pre-Socratics -
Socrates - Plato - Aristotle
Interchapter: the Hellenistic age
Alexanders empire and its successors
- language and society - the visual arts
- literature - history - philosophy and
science - scholarship and libraries
III Late-Republican and early-Imperial Rome
10 The expansion of Rome: from city-state to
superstate - the Latin languag~ - Roman names
11 Republic and Empire: conquest abroad, strife
at home - politics and society - religion
12 Maintaining the state: economics and
technology - the Roman army
13 The arts: painting, sculpture, and architecture
- drama: Plautus, Terence, Seneca - education,
books, and libraries
14 Cicero: rhetoric and philosophy - the legacy of
Greece: rhetoric, philosophy - Cicero - Seneca
15 Virgil: from pastoral to epic - Theocritus and
pastoral poetry - Virgil - the Eclogues -
the Georgics - the Aeneid - Virgils reputation
and influence
16 Horace: epigram, lyric, and satire - Catullus
- Horace - Juvenal
17 Ovid: love poetry and the novel - Ovid -
the novel - Longus - Petronius - Apuleius
18 Tacitus and Roman history: Roman historians
- Caesar and the Gallic War - SaUust - Livy -
Tacitus - Plutarch - Suetonius
Afterword
Appendix: Classical studies
The survival of ancient texts - the
transmission of texts - textual
scholarship - history and archaeology
Reference bibliography
Index and guide to pronunciation