The aim of this book is to make Lucian's A True Story accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. Lucian's A True Story is a great text for intermediate readers. Its breathless narrative does not involve many complex sentences or constructions; there is some unusual vocabulary and a few departures from Attic Greek, but for the most part it is a straightforward narrative that is fun and interesting by one of antiquity's cleverest authors. In A True Story, Lucian parodies accounts of fanciful adventures and travel to incredible places by authors such as Ctesias and Iambulus. The story's combination of mockery and learning makes it an excellent example of the Greek literature of the imperial period. Revised August, 2014.
The aim of this book is to make The Judgment of the Goddesses by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE -190) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. Lucian's The Judgment of the Goddesses is one of Lucian's shorter works and is a great text for intermediate readers. It is in dialogue form and fun to read, with few complicated sentences. The dialogue features the story of Paris' fateful decision to award first prize to Aphrodite in a beauty contest. Aphrodite had promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world (Helen, the wife of Menelaus) as a bride if he chose her. This becomes the cause of the Trojan War, the greatest of the classical epic stories. In typical fashion, Lucian presents the characters in the story humorously, the goddesses as well as Paris. Each of the goddesses tries to pry some information about Paris out of Hermes, complains about the unfair practices of the others, and shamelessly bribes the judge. For his part Paris is interested only in the relative value of the bribes, but this does not prevent him from insisting that he inspect each of three beauties naked. There are hints of the relentless hostility that Athena and Hera, the two losers in the contest, will come to hold toward the Trojans in the epic tradition.
The aim of this book is to make Lucian's Dialogues of the Sea Gods accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. Lucian's Dialogues of the Sea Gods is a great text for intermediate readers. The dialogues are breezy and fun to read with relatively simple sentence structure. Typical for Lucian, classical literature is the source for most of the material, with amusing takes on traditional stories and scenarios. Sea deities tend to be rather minor characters in Greek myths, and in these texts we see Lucian recasting some famous incidents by centralizing the point of view of such minor characters: Nereids, dolphins, fountains, winds, and even the Sea herself weigh in on various events and present novel narrative perspectives on them.
The aim of this book is to make Lucian's On the Syrian Goddess accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. On the Syrian Goddess is a great text for intermediate readers. The simple sentence structure and straightforward presentation make it easy and enjoyable to read, while its subject matter, the cult and sanctuary of Atargatis in Hierapolis, is interesting at many levels. The author recounts personal observations about the worship of this Near Eastern goddess, whose cult included numerous exotic practices, such as temple prostitution and self-castration. There is a version of the Near Eastern flood story as well as unusual versions of myths familiar from Greek mythology. In addition, the author has crafted a careful imitation of the Ionic prose of Herodotus, a dialect that existed only as a literary artifact at the time of the work's composition.
The aim of this book is to make Lucian's The Ass accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. The Ass is a great intermediate Greek text. The narrative is fast-paced and funny, and the language is fairly simple and easy to follow. Unlike its better-known Latin relative, Apuleius' Golden Ass, Lucian's The Ass is an unpretentious satirical text that tells a funny story in a casual and light-hearted manner. There is little moralizing or didacticism in the story, and unlike the hero of Apuleius's version of the story, there is no religious or philosophical illumination at the end. The final episode is a funny twist of events completely in tune with the tenor of the rest of the novel. There is a hilarious love-making episode with lots of double-entendre, and other episodes that portray the doings of various low-life characters who are rarely present in ancient literature at all. Thieves, religious charlatans, witches, millers, servants, soldiers and bakers all find a place in this strange story of chance and magic.
The aim of this book is to make accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek three examples of Lucian's Prolaliai, or "Introductory Lectures" (A Literary Prometheus, Dionysus and Heracles). The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the texts, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. In each of these texts, Lucian reflects on aspects of his performance, on the hybrid nature of his new genre, the comic dialogue, and his own cultural hybridity, as an outsider engaged with the canon of traditional Greek culture he has mastered. As such these readings are typical of their author as well as the brilliant period of Greek literature known as the Second Sophistic.
The aim of this book is to make Plutarch's Dialogue on Love accessible to intermediate students of Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. The Dialogue on Love is a great intermediate Greek text. Its discussion of the merits and pitfalls of passion and desire is grounded in the philosophical tradition reaching back to Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, but Plutarch's treatment of these themes includes a novel celebration of marriage and the love of women, reinforced by the dramatic setting and background action to the dialogue. It is thus a great example of the imperial period of Greek literature, when figures like Plutarch engaged in a lively dialogue with their classical cultural heritage.
The aim of this book is to make Hippocrates' On Airs, Waters and Places and the Hippocratic Oath accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. Hippocrates' On Airs, Waters and Places is a great text for intermediate readers. The simple sentence structure makes it easy to read, while its subject matter, the impact of climate on disease and character, is interesting for a number of reasons. The presentation falls roughly into two halves, the first detailing various environmental factors that contribute to specific diseases, the second more ethnographic in its account of the differences between Asians and Europeans as a function of their environment and customs.
The aim of this book is to make three of the Roman physician Galen's shorter works (On my Own Books, On the Order of my Own Books, and That the Best Physician is also a Philosopher) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. Although Galen can be a little difficult at times, his language gets easier and more predictable with practice, and these three works are a great introduction to this fascinating figure. They are not strictly speaking medical works, but reflections on his own work and thought that throw extraordinary light on the relationship of the medical profession in antiquity to wider currents of thought in the brilliant period of Greek literature known as the "second sophistic.
In the Greek world under the Roman Empire, the tradition of rhetorical learning reached its heyday in the second century A.D., with the cultural movement named as “Second Sophistic”. Despite the emphasis on rhetoric, literary culture lato senso was was also part of it, granting a special place to poetics and literary criticism. In the wake of this hermeneutical and interdisciplinary approach, the papers assembled in this volume explore signi cant issues, which are linked to the narrative structure of the ancient novel and to the tradition of rhetorical training, both envisaged as a web of well-constructed narrative devices.
The aim of this book is to make Zeus the Tragedian by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 -190 CE) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. In Zeus the Tragedian Lucian weaves an amusing dialogue out of a whole range of literary genres and styles, making full use of his impressive mastery of classical literature and language.
The aim of this book is to make the Gospel of John accessible simultaneously to intermediate students of Ancient Greek and Latin. There are lots of resources available for the study of John's gospel, particularly in Greek, but this edition juxtaposes the Greek text to one of its most famous translations: the rendering into Latin by St. Jerome known as the vulgate. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek and/or Latin while reading one of the key texts of early Christianity. For those who know both Greek and Latin, it will be possible to use one language as a resource to read the other. Meanwhile, the vulgate is a key index of how the Greek text was understood by early Christians in the Latin west. The Gospel of John is a great text for intermediate readers of both Greek and Latin. It is one of our best examples of koine Greek, the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean for centuries after the time of Alexander the Great. The sentence structure is very simple and there is a great deal of repetition in vocabulary and syntax. The Latin translation follows the Greek closely, translating word for word as much as possible, so that it is a fascinating exercise in translation.
The aim of this book is to make the story of "Cupid and Psyche" from Apuleius' The Golden Ass accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Latin. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Latin while enjoying one of the most delightful stories from antiquity. Apuleius' "Cupid and Psyche" is a great text for intermediate readers. Its plot resembles fairy tales such as "Beauty and the Beast" and "Cinderella," but its literary texture is typical of the rest of the Golden Ass. With its narrative of betrayal and redemption and a harrowing descent into the underworld, the tale of Cupid and Psyche has been viewed as a parallel to the The Golden Ass as a whole, as well as an allegory for the redemption of the soul. But it has also been admired as a light-hearted fairy tale ending in marital bliss - a simple tale told to a frightened captive girl. Like many fairy tales, however, this one includes dark and disturbing elements that also parallel the dark conclusion to the captive girl's own tale in The Golden Ass.
The aim of this book is to make the Priapea (or Corpus Priapeorum or Carmina Priapea) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Latin. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Latin while enjoying a fascinating group of poems. The Priapea is a great text for intermediate readers. The sentence structure is fairly simple, and the range of syntax is rather narrow. However, there are many off-color jokes and double entendre that require some thoughtful attention to the connotations of many ordinary words. There is considerable wittiness deployed in creating variations on a small number of obscene themes and scenarios, so that there are examples of the whole range of technique in Roman poetic practice.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The world-famous cosmologist and author of A Brief History of Time leaves us with his final thoughts on the biggest questions facing humankind. “Hawking’s parting gift to humanity . . . a book every thinking person worried about humanity’s future should read.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Forbes • The Guardian • Wired Stephen Hawking was the most renowned scientist since Einstein, known both for his groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology and for his mischievous sense of humor. He educated millions of readers about the origins of the universe and the nature of black holes, and inspired millions more by defying a terrifying early prognosis of ALS, which originally gave him only two years to live. In later life he could communicate only by using a few facial muscles, but he continued to advance his field and serve as a revered voice on social and humanitarian issues. Hawking not only unraveled some of the universe’s greatest mysteries but also believed science plays a critical role in fixing problems here on Earth. Now, as we face immense challenges on our planet—including climate change, the threat of nuclear war, and the development of artificial intelligence—he turns his attention to the most urgent issues facing us. Will humanity survive? Should we colonize space? Does God exist? These are just a few of the questions Hawking addresses in this wide-ranging, passionately argued final book from one of the greatest minds in history. Featuring a foreword by Eddie Redmayne, who won an Oscar playing Stephen Hawking, an introduction by Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne, and an afterword from Hawking’s daughter, Lucy, Brief Answers to the Big Questions is a brilliant last message to the world. Praise for Brief Answers to the Big Questions “[Hawking is] a symbol of the soaring power of the human mind.”—The Washington Post “Hawking’s final message to readers . . . is a hopeful one.”—CNN “Brisk, lucid peeks into the future of science and of humanity.”—The Wall Street Journal “Hawking pulls no punches on subjects like machines taking over, the biggest threat to Earth, and the possibilities of intelligent life in space.”—Quartz “Effortlessly instructive, absorbing, up to the minute and—where it matters—witty.”—The Guardian “This beautiful little book is a fitting last twinkle from a new star in the firmament above.”—The Telegraph
This title features facts, figures, stats and trivia on legions of record-breakers, record losers, actors, singers, sportsmen, historical figures, the famous and infamous, felons, inventors, rulers, heartthrobs, politicians and scientists called Stephen.
With commentary by the greatest physicist of our time, Stephen Hawking, this anthology has garnered impressive reviews. PW has called it "a gem of a collection" while New Scientist magazine notes the "thrill of reading Einstein's own words." From the writings that revealed the famous Theory of Relativity, to other papers that shook the scientific world of the 20th century, A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion belongs in every science fan's library.
In the years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History Of Time has established itself as a landmark volume in scientific writing. It has become an international publishing phenomenon, translated into forty languages and selling over nine million copies. The book was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the nature of the universe, but since that time there have been extraordinary advances in the technology of macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawkin's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the fabric of space-time that he had projected. Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these many observations, as well as his recent research, for this expanded edition Professor Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, written an entirely new chapter on the fascinating subject of wormholes and time travel, and updated the original chapters. In addition, to heighten understanding of complex concepts that readers may have found difficult to grasp despite the clarity and wit of Professor Hawking's writing, this edition is enhanced throughout with more than 240 full-color illustrations, including satellite images, photographs made made possible by spectacular technological advance such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and computer generated images of three and four-dimensional realities. Detailed captions clarify these illustrations, enable readers to experience the vastness of intergalactic space, the nature of black holes, and the microcosmic world of particle physics in which matters and antimatter collide. A classic work that now brings to the reader the latest understanding of cosmology, A Brief History Of Time is the story of the ongoing search for t he tantalizing secrets at the heart of time and space.
Available for the first time, this is a unique opportunity to explore the cosmoswith "the greatest mind since Einstein". Not since "A Brief History of Time", has Hawkins so succinctly and entertainingly delved into the most complex theories of physics. These seven lectures will open your mind to the rich history of scientific thought and the fascinating complexities of the universe we live in.
Elizabeth has just come out of a long-term relationship with her boyfriend. Alone in her Victorian house, she begins to think she is going mad. Then she discovers she is being stalked, and that the means of surviving can be as shocking as surrender. Originally published: London: Virago, 1997.
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