In this volume thirty new studies have been specially commissioned from scholars in seven countries to treat key texts and cultural phenomena from the Homeric age to the medieval period. A wide variety of critical approaches are employed to challenge orthodoxies and to present fresh perspectives on the literature, art and history of classical antiquity, late antiquity and the middle ages. Attractive features of the volume include the treatment of newly emerging areas of inquiry in addition to canonical texts and the representation of views of established international scholars at the forefront of the discipline. A recurrent motif of the volume emerges in the interpretive benefits of combining philological acumen with theoretical and intertextual considerations. This accessible and provocative book will be of interest to classicists, historians, art historians, students of comparative literature, and anyone concerned with the immense cultural legacy of classical Mediterranean civilisation. Greek and Latin quotations are accompanied by translations throughout.