Robert Browning

Traces the history, society, culture, and lasting influences of the Byzantine Empire, which grew from the decaying Roman empire and ruled from Constantinople from the fourth to the end of the fifteenth century.

Nineteen poems by Robert Browning include "My Last Duchess," "Porphyria's Lover," "Fra Lippo Lippi," and "Love among the Ruins."

Browning's dramatic poem The Ring and the Book narrates the trial of a Roman for the death of his wife and her parents. He suspected his wife of having an affair with a cleric. The man appeals his sentence, though unsuccessfully. The poem is narrated by many different voices, each adding their version of events to the whole in a series of monologues.

The Pied Piper pipes the village free of rats, and when the villagers refuse to pay him for the service he pipes away their children as well.

"The Greeks were the inventors of history as we understand it. Yet their historiography remained rooted in myth, and the social context of the inventions for which we rightly treasure their achievements - democracy, philosophy, theatre - was often deeply alien to our own way of thinking and acting. The aim of this book is to explore that achievement. Paul Cartledge does so by presenting a fascinating portrait of the Greeks in terms of their own self-image, and explores how the dominant Greeks - adult, male, citizens - sought, with limited success, to define themselves in polar opposition to non-Greeks, women, non-citizens, slaves, and gods."--BOOK JACKET.