Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In this text Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική, which refers to poetry and more literally "the poetic art," deriving from the term for "poet; author; maker," ποιητής. Aristotle divides the art of poetry into verse drama, lyric poetry, and epic. The genres all share the function of mimesis, or imitation of life, but differ in three ways that Aristotle describes:
- Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter, and melody.
- Difference of goodness in the characters.
- Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out.
On the Sublime is a Roman-era Greek work of literary criticism dated to the 1st century C.E. Its author is unknown, but is conventionally referred to as Longinus or Pseudo-Longinus. It is regarded as a classic work on aesthetics and the effects of good writing. The treatise highlights examples of good and bad writing from the previous millennium, focusing particularly on what may lead to the sublime.
Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period, are the two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, set in an idealized archaic past today identified as having some relation to the Mycenaean era. These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod, the Theogony and Works and Days, constituted the major foundations of the Greek literary tradition that would continue into the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.
Sir Kenneth James Dover, was a distinguished British classical scholar and academic. He was president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1976 to 1986. In addition, he was president of the British Academy from 1978 to 1981, and chancellor of the University of St Andrews from 1981 to 2005. A scholar of Greek prose and Aristophanic comedy, he was also the author of Greek Homosexuality (1978), a key text on the subject.
Old Comedy is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians. The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with their daring political commentary and abundance of sexual innuendo, effectively and by 'de facto' define the genre as it is in the West today. It is important to note that the only extant plays of Old Comedy are credited to Aristophanes. There are only fragments and 'testimonia' of all other Old Comedy playwrights and plays.
Jonathan Barnes, FBA is an English scholar of Aristotelian and ancient philosophy.
John Lloyd Ackrill, was an English philosopher and classicist who specialized in Ancient Greek philosophy, especially the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Ackrill has been said to be, along with Gregory Vlastos and G. E. L. Owen, "one of the most important figures responsible for the upsurge of interest in ancient Greek philosophy among Anglo-American philosophers of the second half of this century".
Georges Maximilien Antoine Grube was a Canadian scholar, university professor and democratic socialist political activist. Grube was a classicist and translator of Plato, Aristotle, Longinus and Marcus Aurelius. He was one of the founders of the New Democratic Party of Canada and ran unsuccessfully for election as an NDP candidate in Canadian federal elections.
Edith Hall, is a British scholar of classics, specialising in ancient Greek literature and cultural history, and professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. From 2006 until 2011 she held a Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she founded and directed the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome until November 2011. She resigned over a dispute regarding funding for classics after leading a public campaign, which was successful, to prevent cuts to or the closure of the Royal Holloway Classics department. Until 2022, she was a professor at the Department of Classics at King's College London. She also co-founded and is Consultant Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford University, Chair of the Gilbert Murray Trust, and Judge on the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry translation. Her prizewinning doctoral thesis was awarded at Oxford. In 2012 she was awarded a Humboldt Research Prize to study ancient Greek theatre in the Black Sea, and in 2014 she was elected to the Academy of Europe. She lives in Cambridgeshire.
Terence Henry Irwin FBA, usually cited as T. H. Irwin, is a scholar and philosopher specializing in ancient Greek philosophy and the history of ethics. He was the Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, from 2007 until 2017.
Richard Lawrence Hunter FBA is an Australian classical scholar. From 2001 to 2021, he was the 37th Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge.
Amphicrates of Athens was a sophist and rhetorician.
Donald Andrew Frank Moore Russell, was a British classicist and academic. He was Professor of Classical Literature at the University of Oxford between 1985 and 1988, and a fellow and tutor of classics at St John's College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1988: he was an emeritus professor and emeritus fellow. Russell died in February 2020 at the age of 99.
Philip Russell Hardie, FBA is a specialist in Latin literature at the University of Cambridge. He has written especially on Virgil, Ovid, and Lucretius, and on the influence of these writers on the literature, art, and ideology of later centuries.
Sarah Jean Broadie was a British philosopher, a Professor of Moral Philosophy and Wardlaw Professor at the University of St Andrews. Broadie specialised in ancient philosophy, with a particular emphasis on Aristotle and Plato. Her work engages with metaphysics and both ancient and contemporary ethics. She achieved numerous honours throughout her career as an academic philosopher. Broadie studied Greats at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating in 1960. Previously she worked at the University of Edinburgh, University of Texas at Austin, Yale, Rutgers, and Princeton.
Nicholas Hugh Roe, FBA, FRSE is a scholar of English literature and an academic, specialising in romantic literature and culture. Since 1996, he has been Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews. After completing his undergraduate degrees and doctorate at Trinity College, Oxford, Roe joined St Andrews as a lecturer in English in 1985; he was promoted to reader in 1993.
Douglas Maurice MacDowell, was a British classical scholar. His early career was as a teacher, first in the British Army as part of his national service and then at two private school. He then moved into academia and was a lecturer at the University of Manchester. Finally, for thirty years, he was Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow.
Malcolm Schofield, is a British classicist and academic, specialising in ancient philosophy.
Hamish Marshall Scott, was a Scottish historian and academic. He was Professor of International History then Wardlaw Professor of International History at the University of St Andrews. Having studied at the University of Edinburgh and the London School of Economics, he began his career lecturing at the University of Birmingham.
