Homer

Peter Green

"A new translation of Homer's Iliad, with introduction, notes, synopsis, and glossary."--Provided by publisher.

A New Translation by Peter Green

The Iliad

Looks at the background, life, and military leadership of this ruler of the ancient world

A Historical Biography

Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.

Alexander the Great

The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Hellenistic Culture and Society)

Alexander to Actium

Gaius Valerius Catullus

"Peter Green is an outstanding translator. The reader’s excited anticipation of pleasure and instruction on receiving a new translation of a Latin poet by Green is not disappointed. This is a labor of love which makes Catullus accessible to the Latinless reader and more familiar to those who can read Latin."—Susan Treggiari, Stanford University "For almost half a century Peter Green has been one of the finest of all modern translators of classical verse. His Catullus is well up to his usual form—recapturing for a contemporary audience the wit, malice, erudition and erotic charm of the Latin original."—Mary Beard, author of The Parthenon

A Bilingual Edition

The Poems of Catullus

Green provides accounts of both Persian and Greek strategies which are both clear and persuasive. He displays everyday details regarding the lives of soldiers, statesmen, and ordinary citizens

The Greco-Persian Wars

The Hellenistic era witnessed the overlap of antiquity's two great Western civilizations, the Greek and the Roman. This was the epoch of Alexander's vast expansion of the Greco-Macedonian world, the rise and fall of his successors' major dynasties in Egypt and Asia, and, ultimately, the establishment of Rome as the first Mediterranean superpower. The Hellenistic Age chronicles the years 336 to 30 BCE, from the days of Philip and Alexander of Macedon to the death of Cleopatra and the final triumph of Caesar's heir, the young Augustus. Peter Green's remarkably far-ranging study covers the prevalent themes and events of those centuries: the Hellenization of an immense swath of the known world–from Egypt to India–by Alexander's conquests; the lengthy and chaotic partition of this empire by rival Macedonian marshals after Alexander's death; the decline of the polis (city state) as the predominant political institution; and, finally, Rome's moment of transition from republican to imperial rule. Predictably, this is a story of war and power-politics, and of the developing fortunes of art, science, and statecraft in the areas where Alexander's coming disseminated Hellenic culture. It is a rich narrative tapestry of warlords, libertines, philosophers, courtesans and courtiers, dramatists, historians, scientists, merchants, mercenaries, and provocateurs of every stripe, spun by an accomplished classicist with an uncanny knack for infusing life into the distant past, and applying fresh insights that make ancient history seem alarmingly relevant to our own times. To consider the three centuries prior to the dawn of the common era in a single short volume demands a scholar with a great command of both subject and narrative line. The Hellenistic Age is that rare book that manages to coalesce a broad spectrum of events, persons, and themes into one brief, indispensable, and amazingly accessible survey.

A History

The Hellenistic Age

Kenneth Grahame, 1859-1932

This biography begins not with one of the universally known incidents of Alexander's life, but with an account of his father, Philip of Macedonia, whose many-territoried empire was the first on the continent of Europe to have an effectively centralized government and military. What Philip and Macedonia had to offer, Alexander made his own, but Philip and Macedonia also made Alexander form an important context for understanding Alexander himself. Yet his origins and training do not fully explain the man. After he was named hegemon of the Hellenic League, many philosophers came to congratulate Alexander, but one was conspicuous by his absence: Diogenes the Cynic, an ascetic who lived in a clay tub. Piqued and curious, Alexander himself visited the philosopher, who, when asked if there was anything Alexander could do for him, made the famous reply, "Don't stand between me and the sun." Alexander's courtiers jeered, but Alexander silenced them: "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." This remark was as unexpected in Alexander as it would be in a modern leader. -- Publisher.

Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 B.C.

"One of the best novels set in the Classical world."—Gore Vidal

A Novel about Sappho of Lesbos

The Laughter of Aphrodite

Simone de Beauvoir

The second volume in Simone de Beauvoir’s celebrated autobiography recalls her formative years in Paris when she began to emerge as a public figure First published in 1960, The Prime of Life offers an intimate, captivating picture of Simone de Beauvoir in her twenties, thirties and forties. Beginning as a recent graduate from the Sorbonne teaching high-school girls, we see de Beauvoir revel in the freedom her new financial independence brings. We see her and Jean-Paul Sartre recognise the powerful romantic and intellectual partnership they have found in one another, as they fall in love and define their own unconventional parameters. The Second World War comes, bringing austerity, violence and questions of the reality of freedom and individual responsibility into de Beauvoir’s life. As relevant and penetrating as when first published, The Prime of Life offers rare insight into a truly fascinating mind.

The Prime of Life

Alexander the Great. Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C., Etc. (Revised and Enlarged Edition.).

Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B.C.

For the British 1st Airborne Division Operation Market Garden in September 1944 was a disaster. The Division was eliminated as a fighting force with around a half of its men were captured. The Germans were faced with dealing with 6,000 prisoners in a fortnight; many of them seriously wounded. Somehow the men were processed and despatched to camps around Germany and German occupied eastern Europe. Here the men experienced the reality of the collapsing regime – little food and shrinking frontiers. Once liberated in 1945 returning former prisoners were required to complete liberation questionnaires. Some refused. Others returned before ’Operation Endor’ to handle released men and their repatriation to Britain was in place. Around a third did. However the questionnaires that do exist give an picture of every day experience for the 2,357 of these elite troops’ time in captivity from capture to release. They show that German procedures still operating, but that men were often treated inhumanely, when moved to camps by closed box cars and when camps were evacuated. Although their interrogators were interested in Allied aircraft and airfields, their interrogators were also concerned the effect of the new miracle weapons and with politics, how Germany would be treated after an Allied victory? Nevertheless the airborne men’s morale remained high; carrying out sabotage at artificial oil plants, railway repairs, factories and mines. Some overcame their guards when being evacuated at the end of the War, in some cases joining the Resistance. They record help received from Dutch, French and German civilians.

Men's Experiences in Their Own Words

Captured at Arnhem

David Evans

Derrick Morris

Colin Theaker

This book addresses issues concerning the engineering of system prod ucts that make use of computing technology. These systems may be prod ucts in their own right, for example a computer, or they may be the computerised control systems inside larger products, such as factory automation systems, transportation systems and vehicles, and personal appliances such as portable telephones. In using the term engineering the authors have in mind a development process that operates in an integrated sequence of steps, employing defined techniques that have some scientific basis. Furthermore we expect the operation of the stages to be subject to controls and standards that result in a product fit for its intended purpose, both in the hands of its users and as a business venture. Thus the process must take account of a wide range of requirements relating to function, cost, size, reliabili ty and so on. It is more difficult to define the meaning of computing technology. These days this involves much more than computers and software. For example, many tasks that might be performed by software running in a general purpose computer can also be performed directly by the basic technology used to construct a computer, namely digital hardware. However, hardware need not always be digital; we live in an analogue world, hence analogue signals appear on the boundaries of our systems and it can sometimes be advantageous to allow them to penetrate further.

Object Oriented Computer Systems Engineering

This is a reissue, with a new introduction and an update to the bibliography, of the original edition, published in 1970 as The Year of Salamis in England and as Xerxes at Salamis in the U.S. The long and bitter struggle between the great Persian Empire and the fledgling Greek states reached its high point with the extraordinary Greek victory at Salamis in 480 B.C. The astonishing sea battle banished forever the specter of Persian invasion and occupation. Peter Green brilliantly retells this historic moment, evoking the whole dramatic sweep of events that the Persian offensive set in motion. The massive Greek victory, despite the Greeks' inferior numbers, opened the way for the historic evolution of the Greek states in a climate of creativity, independence, and democracy, one that provided a model and an inspiration for centuries to come. Green's accounts of both Persian and Greek strategies are clear and persuasive; equally convincing are his everyday details regarding the lives of soldiers, statesmen, and ordinary citizens. He has first-hand knowledge of the land and sea he describes, as well as full command of original sources and modern scholarship. With a new foreword, The Greco-Persian Wars is a book that lovers of fine historical writing will greet with pleasure.

Best-selling classicist Peter Green recreates the life and times of the Greek lyric poet Sappho in this beautifully conceived, sharply detailed work of historical imagination. We meet Sappho at the age of fifty, when she is shaken by her fatal and final love affair with Phaon. She narrates her own story from the vantage point of self-questioning middle age, and her candid meditations make intimate, engrossing reading. Only fragments of Sappho's poetry survive. In imagining Sappho's life Green found his task "rather like that of an archaeologist reassembling some amphora from hundreds of shards—of which more than half are missing." Yet, in his synthesis of historical evidence and ebullient invention, Green produces a seamless, moving, and persuasive portrait. He recreates Sappho's life by interweaving her surviving poetry into the narrative, not as quotations, but as her own imagined speeches and thoughts. Sappho's life spanned one of the most exciting periods in Greek history. Green's novel, full of details about daily life on ancient Lesbos, draws the reader into the political and social climate of her world: the civil strife accompanying the transition from aristocracy to mercantilism, the household relations between slave and aristocrat, the details of sea travel in the Aegean. Green wrote the novel while living on Lesbos, and his graceful rendering of the landscape, the rhythms of the seasons, and the varied flora of Sappho's island pervades the narrative. Sappho's poetry reveals a direct, spontaneous woman who eschewed artifice and embellishment. Green's extraordinary talent captures those qualities and brings this woman of unflinching honesty very much to life.

Roger Payne

This Volume contains the Keynote, Invited and Full Contributed papers presented at COMPSTAT'98. A companion volume (Payne & Lane, 1998) contains papers describing the Short Communications and Posters. COMPSTAT is a one-week conference held every two years under the auspices of the International Association of Statistical Computing, a section of the International Statistical Institute. COMPSTAT'98 is organised by IACR-Rothamsted, IACR-Long Ashton, the University of Bristol Department of Mathematics and the University of Bath Department of Mathematical Sciences. It is taking place from 24-28 August 1998 at University of Bristol. Previous COMPSTATs (from 1974-1996) were in Vienna, Berlin, Leiden, Edinburgh, Toulouse, Prague, Rome, Copenhagen, Dubrovnik, Neuchatel, Vienna and Barcelona. The conference is the main European forum for developments at the interface between statistics and computing. This was encapsulated as follows in the COMPSTAT'98 Call for Papers. Statistical computing provides the link between statistical theory and applied statistics. The scientific programme of COMPSTAT ranges over all aspects of this link, from the development and implementation of new computer-based statistical methodology through to innovative applications and software evaluation. The programme should appeal to anyone working in statistics and using computers, whether in universities, industrial companies, research institutes or as software developers.

Peter Green

Books

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