"A revolutionary new understanding of the most famous and influential building in the world, a thesis that calls into question our basic understanding of the ancient civilization that we most identify with. For more than two millennia, the Parthenon has been revered as the symbol of Western culture, the epitome of the ancient society from which we derive our highest ideals. It was understood to honor the city-state's patron deity Athena, and its intricately...

Alessandro Barchiesi is the Gesue and Helen Spogli Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Classics at Stanford University and professor of Latin literature at the University of Siena, Italy. He is the author of several books and the coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies. The study of Homeric imitations in Vergil has one of the longest traditions in Western culture, starting from the very moment the Aeneid was circulated. Homeric...

Si usted odia los albures, adquiera este libro para ver si mejora. Si le gustan, cómprelo igualmente. Si supone que es un libro pelado, déjelo. En todo caso, forme usted parte de las mayorías que se divierten jugando con las palabras sin hacerse daño, y trate de sumarse a las legiones que luchan por borrarle seriedad a la vida. El buen juego alburero puede ser pícaro y altisonante, pero no lépero. Sergio Corona sostiene con razón que la vulgaridad...

Excerpt: "The greatest artists have expressed themselves so completely in their works, that the story of their lives adds little or nothing to our knowledge of their personality. We know very little about the life of Turner-almost as little, indeed, as we know of Shakespeare's-but in neither case do we seem to have missed anything that would add to our comprehension or enjoyment of their work. With Turner, as with Shakespeare, his art was the perfect...

Con Breve historia del arte paleocristiano y bizantino descubrirá las creaciones artísticas de los primitivos cristianos, surgidas en un mundo plagado de simbología pagana, que el artista paleocristiano reinterpretará para adaptarla a la nueva religión. Desde los sarcófagos de las catacumbas donde se llevaban a cabo los ritos religiosos, hasta su salida al exterior tras la promulgación de los edictos de tolerancia religiosa y su posterior proclamación...

Excerpt: "The object of the following pages is to re-study the character of Turner's art in the light of his sketch-books and drawings from nature. During Turner's lifetime his rooted objection to part with any of his sketches, studies, or notes often formed the subject of ill-natured comment. Yet we owe it to this peculiarity that the drawings and sketches included in the Turner Bequest at the National Gallery comprise practically the whole of the...

Excerpt: "A drawing is a thing to be looked at and not written about. Pages and pages written about it will not make a good drawing bad nor a bad drawing good, nor will they, unfortunately, really equip and instruct anyone, to know the one from the other, should he happen to lack that subtle sense whereby, such things are known, for the reason why one drawing is, justly ranked as a masterpiece while another is, thrown away lies hidden on the plane...

Sometime in the early fourth century BC, an unknown Egyptian master carved an exquisite portrait in dark-green stone. The statue that included this head of a priest, likely a citizen of ancient Memphis, may have been damaged when the Persians conquered Egypt in 343 BC, before it was buried in a temple complex. Its adventures were not over: after almost two millennia, the head was excavated by Auguste Mariette, a founding figure in French archaeology....

This volume presents the proceedings of a conference hosted by the American School of Classical Studies, Athens and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens in 2004. There are additional contributions from Patricia Butz, Robin Osborne, Katherine Schwab, Justin St. P. Walsh, Hilda Westervelt and Lorenz Winkler-Horacek. The contents are divided into four sections I. Structure and Ornament; II. Technique and Agency; III. Myth and Narrative and...

"Aristotle's Poetics is one of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history." "A penetrating, near-contemporary account of Greek tragedy, it demonstrates how the elements of plot, character and spectacle combine to produce 'pity and fear' - and why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. It introduces the crucial concepts of mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis, which...