Bøger af Edgar Evan Hayes

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. Revised April, 2016.

The aim of this book is to make the Dialogues of the Dead 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 Dialogues of the Dead 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. Since the underworld is the place of final judgment, it is the perfect location to have various figures from history and legend meet and reflect on the choices they made in life. Wealthy men, famous kings, heroes of old, and the gods themselves are all subjected to Lucian's satirical gaze, but always with a combination of learned wit and cleverness.

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 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 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."

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 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 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 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 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.

This volume presents the Greek text of Sophocles' Oedipus Cycle, as edited by Sir Richard Jebb, with a parallel verse translation by Ian Johnston on facing pages, which will be useful to those wishing to read the English translation while referring to the Greek original, or vice versa.