When we say "epigram," we mean "Martial"--whether we know it or not. After Martial, a Roman poet of the first century AD, epigram would always mean satirical epigram: a short, funny poem with a sting in its tail. But Martial was an imitator. He copied and adapted the real innovators: the Greek poets who were already turning epigram into antiquity's sharpest--and shortest--form of satirical humor. This book finally gives them their due, uncovering a forgotten world of wicked puns and violent slapstick.

Greek Epigram in the Roman Empire: Martial's Forgotten Rivals (Oxford Classical Monographs)

Literature & Fiction

Nisbet, Gideon

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

"If you're one of those terribly serious readers, now is a good time to leave." The poet we call Martial, Marcus Valerius Martialis, lived by his wits in first-century Rome. Pounding the mean streets of the Empire's capital, he takes apart the pretensions, addictions, and cruelties of its inhabitants with perfect comic timing and killer punchlines. Social climbers and sex-offenders, rogue traders and two-faced preachers - all are subject to his forensic annihilations and often foul-mouthed verses. Packed with incident and detail, Martial's epigrams bring Rome vividly to life in all its variety; biting satire rubs alongside tender friendship, lust for life beside sorrow for loss. Gossipy, clever, and above all entertaining, they express amusement as much as indignation at the vices they expose. This selection brings Martial to a twenty-first century readership in a prose translation that pulls no punches and presents him in all his moods. It establishes his originality as a literary author, and the significance of his achievement as the poet who conquered epigram for Rome. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Epigrams: With parallel Latin text (Oxford World's Classics)

Martial

Classics

Greek Epigram in Reception is a chronological survey of the reception history of the Greek Anthology, a Byzantine collection of ancient Greek short poems known as epigrams. Tracing the strange evolution of the Greek Anthology from the early nineteenth century to the years after the first World War, the volume analyses the complex webs of rhetoric that are spun as writers and translators bring their different agendas to bear on the Anthology's text, pruning it to meet their needs. As so little was known about its poets, and because it stood for the "Anthology" of the Greeks and their culture, the text became the battleground during the 1870s-90s on which normative and dissident interpretations of Ancient Greece were fought out. An emergent mass readership became caught between opposing and rhetorically loaded accounts, casting the Anthology and thus the ancient race on whom the British were supposed to be modelling themselves as patriots and doting spouses or lovers of male Beauty, like the Decadent sensation Oscar Wilde. The after-effects of this cultural war were to stretch into the 1920s, and still echo today.

Greek Epigram in Reception: J. A. Symonds, Oscar Wilde, and the Invention of Desire, 1805-1929 (Classical Presences)

This is an introduction to the ancient genre of epigram, short poems literally written or inscribed 'on' an object or figuratively 'on' a topic. The authors set out what epigram means and why it matters, exploring its roots in inscriptions on stone and its literary flourishing in the Hellenistic world after Alexander. They trace its migration from Greece to Rome, where its most famous exponent was Martial, and consider the continuation of Greek epigram under the Roman empire in the so-called 'Second Sophistic'. The final chapter shows how Greek epigram achieved new importance in the nineteenth century as raw material for stories about the classical past.

Epigram (New Surveys in the Classics, Series Number 38)

Livingstone, Niall

Cambridge University Press

This book explores the changing fortunes of the heroes of Greek myth and history in the melting pot of popular culture. Using little-known examples, classicist and film fan Gideon Nisbet charts the hidden history of Greece in the twentieth-century imagination, from film to science fiction and comics. As the twenty-first century began, no less than seven production companies were declaring their intention to turn Alexander the Great into a wide-screen hero. The rivalry was intense, the resulting media circus unprecedented. How could a long-dead warlord generate so much movie-industry gossip in the present day? And why, in a century of film-making, had so few versions of his story – or that of Troy’s fall – made it to the big screen? When did we last see Classical Athens or Sparta in a movie? In the aftermath of Gladiator (2000), with Hollywood studios rushing to revisit the ancient world with Troy and Alexander (both 2004), these questions take on renewed significance. Nisbet here unpacks the ideas that continue to make Greece hot property in Hollywood. His lively exploration, which assumes no prior expertise in classical or film studies, will appeal to anyone with an interest in ‘reception’: the present day’s continual re-use and re-invention of the past.

Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture (Greece and Rome Live)

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Bristol Phoenix Press, Univ of Exeter

This book explores the changing fortunes of the heroes of Greek myth and history in the melting pot of popular culture. Using little-known examples, classicist and film fan Gideon Nisbet charts the hidden history of Greece in the twentieth-century imagination, from film to science fiction and comics. As the twenty-first century began, no less than seven production companies were declaring their intention to turn Alexander the Great into a wide-screen hero. The rivalry was intense, the resulting media circus unprecedented. How could a long-dead warlord generate so much movie-industry gossip in the present day? And why, in a century of film-making, had so few versions of his story - or that of Troy's fall - made it to the big screen? When did we last see Classical Athens or Sparta in a movie? In the aftermath of Gladiator (2000), with Hollywood studios rushing to revisit the ancient world with Troy and Alexander (both 2004), these questions take on renewed significance.Nisbet here unpacks the ideas that continue to make Greece hot property in Hollywood. His lively exploration, which assumes no prior expertise in classical or film studies, will appeal to anyone with an interest in 'reception': the present day's continual re-use and re-invention of the past.

Liverpool University Press

TThis revised and expanded second edition responds to new developments in the reception of Greece in contemporary popular culture, and particularly the impact of the film "300" (2006). Why, in a century of film-making, have so few versions of the story of Alexander the Great - or that of Troy's fall - made it to the big screen? In the aftermath of "Gladiator" (2000), with Hollywood studios rushing to revisit the ancient world with "Troy" and "Alexander" (both 2004), this question takes on renewed significance. Nisbet unpacks the ideas that continue to make Greece hot property - often too hot for Hollywood to handle. His lively explorations, which assume no prior expertise in classical or film studies, will appeal to all with an interest in 'reception': the present day's re-use and re-invention of the past.

Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture (Revised second edition) (Greece and Rome Live)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nisbet, Gideon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Nisbet, Gideon

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nisbet, Gideon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Greek Epigram in the Roman Empire: Martial's Forgotten Rivals (Oxford Classical Monographs)

Epigrams: With parallel Latin text (Oxford World's Classics)

Greek Epigram in Reception: J. A. Symonds, Oscar Wilde, and the Invention of Desire, 1805-1929 (Classical Presences)

Epigram (New Surveys in the Classics, Series Number 38)

Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture (Greece and Rome Live)

Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture (Greece and Rome Live)

Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture (Revised second edition) (Greece and Rome Live)