Niketas Eugenianos's Drosilla and Charikles is one of four existing Byzantine (12th-century) Greek novels. These novels represent the rebirth of the ancient novel after a hiatus of eight centuries in the deeply Christian world of Constantinople. Written under the Komnenian dynasty and during the time of the crusades these novels revived the pagan Greek world with its pagan gods and beliefs, and also reflected the customs and beliefs of their own time.

Reprinted by arrangement with Oxford University Press, this reader is a perfect vehicle for students transitioning from a grammar text to reading adapted Greek. The selections are chosen for their accessibility and facility to encourage a quick reading. Excerpts from Aesop to Plato strengthen reading and translations skills while introducing the intermediate student to key works from the classical Greek canon.

This standard textbook introduces students to ancient Greek in an organized, systematic way. Review lessons are included at logical intervals and the last six of 79 chapters are reviews of participles, infinitives, subjunctives, optatives, imperatives, and indicatives.

Asclepiades of Samos and Leonidas of Tarentum set the course that later Greek epigrammatists would follow in their choice of subject matter. To Asclepiades, the epigram was a vehicle for personal feeling; in the hands of Leonidas the field was broader, dwelling often on the suffering that attends the poor and destitute.