Greek and Latin Love - by Thea S Thorsen & Iris Brecke & Stephen Harrison (Paperback)

About the Book

This book explores what is commonly known as 'true love' in ancient literature. Through the volume's chapters, written by world-leading as well as younger scholars, this kind of love, with its fringe phenomena and peculiar attributes, is inves

Book Synopsis

It is often claimed that the kind of love that is variously deemed 'romantic' or 'true' did not exist in antiquity. Yet, ancient literature abounds with stories that seem to adhere precisely to this kind of love. This volume focuses on such literature and the concepts of love it espouses. The volume differs from and challenges much existing classical scholarship which has traditionally privileged the theme of sex over love and prose-genres over those of poetry. By conversely focusing on love and poetry, the present volume freshly explores central poets in ancient literature, such Homer, Sappho, Terence, Catullus, Virgil, Horace and Ovid, alongside less canonized, such as the anonymous poet of The Lament for Bion, Philodemus and Sulpicia. The chapters, which are written by world-leading as well as younger scholars, reveal that Greek and Latin concepts of love seem interconnected, that such love is as relevant for hetero- as homoerotic couples, and that such ideas of love follow the mainstream of poetry throughout antiquity. In addition to the general reader interested in the history of love, this volume is relevant for students and scholars of the ancient world and the poetic tradition.

Review Quotes

"The editors are to be commended for producing an extremely useful book that will serve as an indispensable reference point for future research on Greek and Latin love and will further stimulate scholarly interest in this fundamental and fascinating subject." A. N. Michalopoulos, The Classical Review (2022) 1-3.

About the Author

T. S. Thorsen and I. Brecke, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway; S. Harrison, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK.