Benjamin Sammons, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Classics, Queens College

Benjamin Sammons has published widely on ancient Greek literature and teaches at Queens College in the City University of New York.

"Martin West once criticised a book on early Greek Epic as 'unimaginative' (CR21 (1971) 69) while containing 'speculations hardly worth writing down'. The adjective could never be used of this book, which indeed, in at least one reader, inspired musings on the very meaning of that word and its place in classical studies." - Malcolm Davies, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

"Sammons has succeeded admirably in recovering those poems as works of art." - Classical Journal-Online

"Brilliant in execution, his demonstration of these two points makes these poems come alive. S. brings them out of the shadows cast by the Homeric epics and, put simply, makes them sound good. His analysis imparts a greater degree of cohesion and coherence to the poems than previous investigations have detected. One comes away from this book wishing that they had survived ... This book will guide scholars of ancient Greek epic for years to come. Moreover, written by a practiced stylist, it will be accessible to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. One will give it pride of place in a course on ancient Greek epic broadly construed." - Classical Philology

"[Sammon's] study, even when dealing with problematic issues, proves to be an invaluable tool for students and scholars alike. Despite the problems posed by the fragmentary nature of his material, S. succeeds in doing justice to the cyclic poets by identifying and bringing to the surface the narrative and structural devices employed in their composition, while steering away from speculative reconstructions of the poems. S.'s innovative study has opened the way for a positive revaluation of the Greek Epic Cycle, and no further study of the subject can afford not to take his contribution into account." - Classical Review

"Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." - S.E. Goins, CHOICE