T. E. Franklinos is Fellow of Wolfson College and Lecturer in Classics at Oriel College at the University of Oxford, UK. He has principally published on Latin authors and their transmission, in particular on the works of the Roman elegists, on Vergilian pseudepigrapha and on medieval Latin texts.Rino Modonutti is Associate Professor of Medieval Latin Literature and Medieval and Humanistic Philology at the University of Padova, Italy. He has published on medieval historiography and encyclopedism, and on the tradition and reception of Classical Latin literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

• PrefaceIntroduction1. General Prologue2. The Origins of the Liberal Arts (Book 1)3. In Praise of Latin (Prologue to Book 2)4. The Origins of Poetry (Book 2)5. Latin Elegy (Book 2)6. Vergil (Book 3)7. Horace (Book 3)8. The Rise and Fall of the Arts (Prologue to Book 4)9. The Importance of History (Prologue to Book 5)10. Cicero (Books 10 and 16)NotesBibliographyIndex locorumIndex nominum

This edition makes available a series of brief lives of selected ancient writers, alongside the biographer’s critical survey of literary, generic and historical issues. The Latin text is meticulously prepared, the English translation is excellent, and the Commentary identifies a wide range of literary sources. It should thus serve as a helpful resource to students and scholars of classical and neo-Latin literature.