This volume provides, in translation, the principal texts of literary criticism, including Aristotle's Poetics, Horace's Art of Poetry, Longinus' on Sublimity, Tacitus' Dialogues, and extracts from Plato and Plutarch.

D. A. Russell is Professor of Classical Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford and M. Winterbottom is a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford.

Plato: Ion: Republic 2-3; Republic 10; Aristotle: Poetics; Horace: A Letter to Augustus; The Art of Poetry; Tacitus: Dialogue on Orators; `Longinus': On Sublimity; Dio of Prusa: Philoctetes in the Tragedians; Plutarch: On the Study of Poetry