This edition’s selected passages from Tacitus’ historical and minor works give a sample of a Latin author acknowledged as one of the most difficult—and also the most rewarding. Rutledge presents a Tacitus he unapologetically terms “the greatest of the Roman historians” in reading selections that highlight major subjects and themes: the corruption of power, confrontation with barbarians, and narratives of historically significant episodes, many marked by the era’s signature violence, promiscuity, and murderous death. Tacitus’ stylistic brilliance likewise finds its due here: his powerful language, vivid character portrayal, use of speeches, and the authority he claims for himself as historian. The commentary addresses problems Tacitean syntax and grammar may pose for readers new to the author, and helps to situate Tacitus among other Roman historians.

This volume, intended for third- and fourth-year college and advanced high-school use, presents a selection of annotated passages in Latin from six plays by Terence: Andria, Heauton, Phormio, Hecyra, Eunuchus, and Adelphoe. The introduction discusses Terence's enrichment of the comic genre he inherited from the Greeks and the hallmarks of his second-century BC Latin and its grammar.

Albius Tibullus, considered along with Ovid and Propertius one of the canonical elegists of the Augustan period, was in antiquity deemed the most accomplished of the three. Quintilian sums it up nicely: “In my opinion Tibullus is a very elegant and concise author. There are those who prefer Propertius.” Modern critics, however, have not always been as favorable. The dreamlike quality of Tibullus’s text is sometimes cited as evidence that his poems are smooth or soft, and lacking formal integrity. Paul Allen Miller argues instead for seeing them as a complex tissue of related, interwoven, and sometimes contradictory themes. Miller’s commentary, informed by modern scholarship, accepts the challenge of elucidating the often complex logic of the selected poems.

Read less than it deserves at the undergraduate level, Apuleius' Metamorphoses tells the story of Lucius the ass-man and his encounters with sex, magic, robbers, storytellers, slaves, and finally the Goddess. From the cruel mockery of the Festival of Laughter to the sweet tale of Cupid and Psyche, from adventures that question human-animal boundaries to the profoundly spiritual conclusion, Apuleius constantly mingles the serious and comic, the bizarre and surreal with the quotidian details of ancient life.

Ovid’s poetry, once regarded as superficial in comparison to that of other Augustan poets, is now hailed for its artistry, its mastery at storytelling, and the profound influence it has had on literature and art from the poet’s own time to the present day.