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In this volume a distinguished international group of ancient historians explores the classical antiquity that Glen W. Bowersock has given us over a scholarly career of almost fifty years at Harvard and the Institute for Advanced Study, described by Aldo Schiavone in his introduction as "a world of plurality and of the multifarious, of the ethnic and cultural melting pot, the world of Romanized Greekness and Hellenized Romaness, of open, shifting identities, of travels, curiosities and exchanges, of East permeating West and the West understanding the East, of seas that unite much more than they divide, of malleability, pliability, and constant integration."

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Solomon and Marcolf enjoyed an extraordinary heyday in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Its first half constitutes a dialogue, mostly of one-liners, between King Solomon and a wily, earthy, and irreverent rustic named Marcolf, while its second recounts tricks that the peasant plays upon the ruler. Although less known than Till Eulenspiegel, Solomon and Marcolf was printed not only in Latin but also in German, English, Italian, and other European languages. Marcolf was associated closely with Aesop as well as with practical jokers and clowns in vogue in early modern literature. Today Solomon and Marcolf has notoriety from its mention in Gargantua and its analysis by Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World.

Traditions about Solomon and Marcolf became widespread at the very latest by 1000, but perhaps centuries earlier. The Latin prose as it has been preserved is likely to have taken shape around 1200, but the earliest extant manuscript dates from 1410. Tantalizing bits of evidence point to connections between Marcolf and the Near East. Thus the contest with Marcolf was related to riddle competitions between King Solomon on the one hand and King Hiram of Tyre or the Queen of Sheba on the other.

Solomon and Marcolf, not put into English since 1492, is here presented with the Latin and a facing translation. In addition to a substantial introduction, the text comes with a detailed commentary that clarifies difficulties in language and identifies proverbial material and narrative motifs. The commentary is illustrated with reproductions of the woodcut illustrations from the 1514 printing of the Latin. The volume contains appendices with supplementary materials, especially sources, analogues, and testimonia; a bibliography; and indices.

Jan M. Ziolkowski is Director of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington and Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin at Harvard University.

Jacket illustration: Frontispiece of Collationes quas dicuntur fecisse mutuo rex Salomon sapientissimus et Marcolphus …, printed by Johann Weissenburger in Landshut, Germany, on May 14, 1514 (Munich, Staatsbibliothek, L.eleg.m.250, 9)

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The Greek orator Dio Chrysostom is a colorful figure, and along with Plutarch one of the major sources of information about Greek civilization during the early Roman Empire. Christopher P. Jones offers here the first full-length portrait of Dio in English and, at the same time, a view of life in cities such as Alexandria, Tarsus, and Rhodes in the first centuries of our era.

Skillfully combining literary and historical evidence, Mr. Jones describes Dio’s birthplace, education, and early career. He examines the civic speeches for what they reveal about Dio’s life and art, as well as the life, thought, and language of Greek cities in this period. From these and other works he reinterprets Dio’s attitude toward the emperors and Rome. The account is as lucid and pleasantly written as it is carefully documented.