Homer in Stone

David Petrain received his PhD in Classical Philology from the Department of the Classics at Harvard University, Massachusetts. He is a scholar of Greek and Latin language and literature with expertise in the art and material culture of ancient Rome. His articles about ancient poetry and other texts written on papyrus or inscribed in stone have appeared in the Transactions of the American Philological Association, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, and Mnemosyne. His co-edited volume, The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry (with Jan Kwapisz and Mikolaj Szymanski), was published in 2012.

• Introduction; 1. Reading visual narrative in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds; 2. Tabula and taxis; 3. The semantics of the center; 4. Narrative in frieze and panel; 5. Findspots, display contexts, and the Roman public library; 6. Epic in miniature; Appendix 1. Conspectus of the Tabulae Iliacae; Appendix 2. Description of selected Tabulae: texts and images.

'… this is an instructive and rewarding study of a topic that can seem abstruse and that has endangered controversy. … Given this work's clear presentation of evidence, balance of iconographic and literary interpretation, and lucid argument, I would advise scholars new to the topic to start with it first.' Jonathon Burgess, The Classical Journal