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