Greek and Roman Aesthetics

An anthology of works commenting on the perception of beauty in art, structure and style in literature, and aesthetic judgement.

Oleg V. Bychkov (Edited and translated by), Anne Sheppard (Edited and translated by)

9780521839280, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 June 2010

294 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm, 0.59 kg

"....This book, or one much like it, can take the place of the reading lists that many instructors compile when teaching the history of aesthetics.... professor can now use Greek and Roman Aesthetics by itself, whether for graduate or upper-undergraduate courses.... Bychkov and Sheppard have produced an engaging, scholarly, wide ranging, and handsome book that I will be using in the classroom very soon, as no doubt many other instructors also will."
--Nickolas Pappas, City College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, Philosophical Inquiry

This anthology of philosophical texts by Greek and Roman authors brings together works from the late fifth century BC to the sixth century AD that comment on major aesthetic issues such as the perception of beauty and harmony in music and the visual arts, structure and style in literature, and aesthetic judgement. It includes important texts by Plato and Aristotle on the status and the role of the arts in society and in education, and Longinus' reflections on the sublime in literature, in addition to less well-known writings by Philodemus, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, Augustine and Proclus. Most of the texts have been newly translated for this volume, and some are available in English for the first time. A detailed introduction traces the development of classical aesthetics from its roots in Platonism and Aristotelianism to its ultimate form in late Antiquity.

Gorgias: Encomium of Helen
Plato: Ion
Hippias Major
Symposium
Republic
Phaedrus
Timaeus
Sophist
Xenophon: Memoirs of Socrates
Aristotle: Poetics
Politics
Philodemus: On Poems
On Music
Cicero: On Rhetorical Invention
On the Ideal Orator
Orator
On Moral Ends
On the Nature of the Gods
Tusculan Disputations
On Duties
Seneca: Letters to Lucilius
On the Award and Reception of Favours
Longinus: On Sublimity: Philostratus: Life of Apollonius of Tyana
Pictures
Philostratus the Younger: Pictures
Aristides Quintilianus: On Music
Plotinus: Enneads
Augustine: On Order
On Music
On True Religion
On Free Choice of the Will
Confessions
On the Trinity
Proclus: Commentary on the Timaeus
Commentary on the Republic
Anonymous: Prolegomena to the Philosophy of Plato.

Subject Areas: History of Western philosophy [HPC], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]