Ben Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having "small Latin and less Greek." But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Shaped by his grammar school education in Roman literature, history, and rhetoric, he moved to London, a city that modeled itself on ancient Rome. He worked in a theatrical profession that had inherited the conventions and forms of classical drama, and he read deeply in Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca. In a book...

In this set of 24 lectures, Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, University of Maryland, introduces the student to the primary characters and most important stories of classical Greek and Roman mythology. She also surveys some of the leading theoretical approaches to understanding myth in general and classical myth in particular.

"Myths are stories that have been told over hundreds of years to help explain why the world works the way it does. They're filled with powerful magic, mysterious monsters, and fantastical beasts, but also brave heroes on exciting adventures that teach us about right and wrong. From the Japanese myth of Momotarō The Peach Boy and his loyal animal friends to the Slavic myth of Vasilisa the Wise and her enchanted doll, this beautifully illustrated collection...

"In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in illuminating and sometimes surprising ways. Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture's Greek and Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works (Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a "Greek DNA" in our responses...

An introduction to the character of Aeneas and his importance in Greek and Roman mythology.

The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance recounts the almost untold story of how the rediscovery of the pagan, mythological imagination during the Renaissance brought a profound transformation to European culture. This highly illustrated book, available for the first time in paperback, shows that the pagan imagination existed side-by-side -- often uneasily -- with the official symbols, doctrines, and art of the Church. Godwin carefully documents how pagan...

"In the early seventeenth century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a book. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from reading too many books of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That book, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes,...