This article analyses two texts, Caesar's Bellum Civile and Catullus' Carmen 12, as a window onto linguistic politics in mid-first century Rome. Both writers use ‘codeswitches’ between Latin and Greek as a means of indirect characterisation of the subjects of their texts. On one hand, isolated switches into Greek in Caesar's text contribute to the sense of foreignness with which Caesar polemically characterises Pompey throughout the Bellum Civile. On the other hand, Catullus' use of the word mnemosynum in his twelfth poem is part of the establishment of a sophisticated language of elite aestheticism from which the napkin-thief Asinius is pointedly excluded. Both these authors have connections to a larger first century controversy that fixated on Latin linguistic purity — a controversy in which politics and language use were inextricably linked.

This article explores the part played by Mount Ida in the Iliad. It begins with some consideration of Ida in the early ‘history’ of Troy – the stories of Dardanus and the early line of Trojan kings. The city of Troy (Ilios) has its origins on Mount Ida, and the mountain remains very dear to the Trojans in many different ways. The rivers at Troy have their source on the mountain, and the Trojans acquire their water and wood from there. Moreover, the mountain is a central part of Trojan religious life, including the peak at Gargarus, where Zeus resides for a significant part of the poem. This article considers the two journeys of Zeus to Mount Ida from Olympus in the Iliad, and the ways that these are dealt with in the text. It raises questions about the rationale for and the effect of his visits there. It is argued that the poet uses Zeus’s absence from Olympus to ‘open up’ the cosmos, and permit new kinds of divine conduct and intervention. The article concludes with some consideration of the fact that the text offers no reference to the return of Zeus from Ida to Olympus prior to the council of the gods and Theomachy in Book 20.

The medism and death of Pausanias, the son of Kleombrotos, is an old problem that is still with us. The chief source is Thucydides, who devotes a digression (1.128-38) to the parallel lives of Pausanias and Themistokles. Thucydides generally repressed his interest in biography, as Gomme once observed, remarking that in this, more than anything else, he showed his determination not to write like Herodotus, and not to beguile his readers with what was merely attractive. But at 1.128-38, he writes in a Herodotean vein, employing a style which shows marked differences with the rest of the History, and some lack of critical judgement in evaluating his evidence. There is much truth in Meiggs’ remark that ‘had Thucydides’ account been written by any other Greek historian, it would not have been taken seriously.’

We treasure both Gaius Valerius Catullus and Quintus Horatius Flaccus for their literary gifts and for their lyrics on the power of love and the pleasures of sophisticated urban living. We also, and often, treasure Catullus and Horace together; after all, both poets share a number of distinctive interests: metrically, stylistically, thematically, and what one might call professionally.

Among these common professional interests is their shared literary debt to a female predecessor, the early sixth century BCE Greek poet Sappho. For this reason alone, one might expect Catullus and Horace to acknowledge the presence and activity of female poets, and especially women erotic poets, in their own Roman milieu. I would like to argue that both Catullus and Horace in fact make such acknowledgments, but do so in strikingly different ways.

De Ste. Croix famously argued that Aristophanes had a conservative political outlook and attempted to use his comedies to win over lower-class audiences to this minority point of view. The ongoing influence of his interpretation has meant that Old Comedy has been largely ignored in the historiography of Athenian popular culture. This article extends earlier critiques of de Ste. Croix by systematically comparing how Aristophanes and the indisputably popular genre of fourth-century oratory represented the social classes of the Athenians and political leaders. The striking parallels between the two suggest that Aristophanes, far from advocating a minority position, exploited the rich and, at times, contradictory views of lower-class citizens for comic and ultimately competitive ends. As a consequence his plays are valuable evidence for Athenian popular culture and help to correct the markedly fourth-century bias in the writing of Athenian cultural history.

Hecuba and The Trojan Women have much of their material in common. Both plays have a chorus of captive Trojan women who are waiting at or near Troy just before they sail with their new masters to Greece. Both groups sing at some length about their slave condition, about the question of where precisely in Greece they will be taken and about the night of Troy’s fall. Hecuba is the protagonist of both plays and they are largely concerned with the destruction of her family. In Hecuba Polydorus is killed before the play’s opening (though Hecuba does not know this) and the cruel killing of Polyxena engages our attention for a considerable time; in The Trojan Women Polyxena is killed before the play’s opening (though Hecuba does not know this) and the cruel killing of Astyanax engages our attention for a considerable time. In both plays Talthybius is the sympathetic announcer of brutal Greek decisions and Odysseus (whether on or off the stage) is the cynical politician whose pressure is held responsible for the deaths of Polyxena and Astyanax respectively.

Basil of Caesarea (AD 329–378), his brother, Gregory of Nyssa (335–394), and their friend, Gregory Nazianzen (328–389), are a group of three great Christian thinkers of the late 4th century AD known as the ‘Cappadocian Fathers’. All were steeped in the culture of traditional Hellenism, and at the same time were great theologians and leaders who steered the Christian church of the eastern Roman empire in the turbulent years of the late 4th century. Theologically they are best known for bringing to a close the Arian controversy that had wracked the Christian church for most of the 4th century. Basil, called ‘the Great’ in the Christian tradition for his leading role in steering the Arian controversy to a conclusion, is also known for his reforms of the unruly ascetic movement in Asia Minor, documented in such works as his Asketikon. As a result of his labours he effectively established Greek cenobitic (common-life) monasticism. But his influence as a preceptor of Christian monasticism was destined to spread far, both east in Syria and in the Latin West. A Latin translation was an important source of the Rule of St Benedict, which set the tone of western monasticism for many centuries to come.

This essay seeks to establish the parameters of our uncertainty concerning one of the most difficult periods of Roman history, the period between the traditional end of the Roman monarchy and the passing of the Licinio-Sextian legislation. In addition to some methodological observations, the essay attempts to offer a model for understanding Roman choices and decisions in a period of change and transformation.

In the pantheon of poets of all cultures and ages, Homer (however we respond to the ‘Homeric Question’) has a unique place. His primacy is due to the fact that his two epic poems encapsulated Hellenic culture, both for the Greeks themselves, and for others steeped in the ‘European tradition’ whether in antiquity or in subsequent ages. So much is this the case that the very name ‘Homer’ became an abstraction, summing up what it was to be Hellenic. All literature written by Greeks, in the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Imperial periods, and much that was produced by others (including in Latin), looks back to the Iliad and the Odyssey, takes its rise from them, finds its locus in them. A canonicity was conferred on these poems such as on no other Greek text in equal degree. If Shakespeare was representative of an entire age in one culture, Homer summed up a culture itself.

The most commonly held interpretation of this play has been well summed up as follows: ‘Ismene utters in the words addressed to Oedipus in line 394 “Now the gods are setting you right; previously they ruined you” the object of our play.’ On this view, the main theme of the play is the divine restoration of Oedipus. ‘He whom the gods have smitten as a criminal, whom men have rejected as impious, is seen rehabilitated, venerated, glorified almost equally to a divine being, and will find a compensation for his undeserved sufferings in an apotheosis which will make of him the benign genius of a country.’ Oedipus’ sufferings have taught him humility: ‘I ask little, and get even less than that little, but this suffices me, for my suffering, my companion the length of time, and my nobility have taught me patience.’ ‘Precisely because he is a hero, he is humble.’ The combination of moral exaltation and physical degradation generates a new spiritual power which becomes increasingly evident as the play progresses: ‘Foreknowledge of the future belongs to Oedipus because he is more than man... To Creon’s taunts he replies with a declaration of his own superior power. Only a hero can do this with assurance.’ The process culminates in his mysterious end, whether we can call it an apotheosis or not: ‘We do not know precisely what his state will be, but we can be sure that he will be conscious and active, rather as Protesilaus was believed to be able to punish the wrongdoer from the grave because the gods gave him special favour.’ He is thus a kind of anticipation of Christ.

It has long been recognised that the word tyrannos and related forms are often used in Greek where the English derivative ‘tyrant’ is an inappropriate translation. This has led some modern writers to consider the word to be a synonym for basileus, and simply to mean ‘king’. Wilamowitz concluded that the pejorative use of the word, which has been carried over into the English ‘tyrant’, was a late development, stemming from Plato. Andrewes holds a similar view, that before the fourth century the word was neutral and that a ‘monarch’ could be addressed as ‘tyrant’ in compliment.

The public career of M. Ulpius Appuleius Eurykles spanned most of the second half of the second century. He is recorded as a representative of his native city Aezani at the Panhellenion in Athens for the year 156/7. This was probably the last year of his four-year term. During that period Eurykles distinguished himself in the eyes of both his fellow Panhellenes and Athenian society for, after he left Athens and returned to Asia, four letters of commendation were sent on his behalf: two to Aezani and two to the koinon of Asia. A fifth letter was also directed by the Panhellenion to the emperor Antoninus Pius in which the virtues of Eurykles were drawn to his attention.

The status and activities of Polyperchon in the period following 315 B.C. remain obscure to scholars, even after the several detailed reconstructions of the Diadochian era that were made during the 1980s. Heckel refers to him as a ‘jackal among lions’, Hornblower as one of the ‘second-class’ generals. He was propelled to prominence upon inheriting Antipater’s mantle as guardian of the young kings and supreme commander in late 319 (Diod. 18.48.4), and had ample opportunity to make himself the dominant figure among Alexander the Great’s Successors in Europe. However, he was indecisive, unlucky, and more than a little incompetent in his handling of affairs in Greece and Macedonia over the next two years, being thoroughly outmanoeuvred on the military, diplomatic, and propaganda fronts by Antipater’s son, Cassander. By 316 Polyperchon had lost custody of the royal family, and was little more than a fugitive in Aetolia, but ambiguity regarding his legal and diplomatic status in relation to the regency and the other Diadochs continued to dog him until his disappearance from recorded history some fifteen years later.

‘As in the decade after C. Gracchus' murder, so in the decade after Saturninus’ murder popular fervor abated …’

In the unexceptional judgement quoted above Saturninus is clearly identified with the ‘popular cause’ and from that equation all sorts of assumptions flow. The presumption that Marius turned to Saturninus (as to Glaucia) because he needed his strengths, amongst which, it is assumed, was his influence with the populace, is rarely challenged. That is understandable. The presumption of Saturninus' popularity would seem to be based on ancient judgement.

An historian is only as good as his sources, and an assessment of any historian rests primarily on an assessment of his ability to find, to choose, and to utilise historical sources. In this regard we may, I believe, credit Ephorus, the most important of the fourth century B.C. historians, with a large degree of achievement. Before we turn to the main body of this paper, however, I must prefix some comments on the size and nature of the Ephoran corpus which chance has transmitted to us. Felix Jacoby consciously chose not to print all that has survived of Ephorus under FGrHist 70. Jacoby limited himself to those passages which specifically cited Ephorus as author of the transmitted information.

In late 46, Caesar decided not to hold elections for 45, but instead to take the unprecedented step of nominating six or eight officials called praefecti urbi to act in place of the praetors, quaestors and curule aediles. In this way, he made his most openly autocratic inroads into the traditional Republican constitution. Because of the traumatic effect that this had on the governing class and the Roman structure of government, this office, which Caesar completely adapted, deserves special consideration.

In the past couple of decades, scholarship on Graeco–Roman religion has been dominated by an approach which emphasises the social function of religion rather than matters relating to emotion and belief (Part I below). There is much in the new approach which is enlightening, but for various reasons it should not be allowed to supersede the traditional or psychological approach completely (II). In particular I would like to argue in this paper that the phenomenon of cult for mortals in the Graeco-Roman world can only be understood through a combination of the two modern approaches, because the figure of the ideal benefactor, which I take to underlie cult for mortals, presumed both a concern for relationship structuring and an emotional response. Indeed, the ambiguous interface between the social plane and the psychological plane was fundamental to the success and persistence of such cult (III).

Green (1978) overturned the standard view of Romans' desire to compare themselves with Alexander the Great. He especially criticised the too-credulous acceptance of Caesar's ‘Alexander complex’. Gruen (1998) and Martin (1998) extended Green's arguments to include Pompeius. This paper argues that in attempting to redress the balance Green, Gruen and Martin go too far. Alexander was a powerful icon in first-century BC Rome but the desire to be compared to him grew out of specific, not general, considerations. In the case of Pompeius and Caesar, emulation of Alexander was as much about competition between themselves as it was about any third party.

One of the remarkable features of ancient Greek is its tendency to use the optative with ἂν in circumstances in which English would use a more direct statement or question with present or future indicative. When judged in relation to time (as has been usual for several centuries) this optative is in some circumstances seen to have past reference, but there was from Homer through to the classical period a growing tendency for such ‘past’ potentials to be expressed by means of the past tenses of the indicative. My studies in Greek aspect have led me to discount the time element in considering the ancient Greek verb, and I have stated in my Greek Grammar for Students that even in potential statements using the indicative the distinction between the imperfect, aorist and pluperfect tenses ‘is purely that of aspect, the time reference being understood from the context’. In this paper I wish to explore this area a little more and to make some suggestions about some uses of the imperfect tense which I now see are related to the development of potential expressions.

‘I have omitted Idylls xxiii and xxvi, because they are dull, stupid and worthless poems, and certainly not by Theocritus.’ R.C. Trevelyan’s words in the introduction to his translation of Theokritos (Cambridge, 1947, but the introduction significantly dates from 1925) make quaint reading today. I present no brief for the Erastes (Idyll xxiii), but even before the contribution made to the complexity of the Bacchantes (Idyll xxvi) by Pap. Antin. (3 in Gow’s sigla), it should have been obvious to the reader that the poem had the texture of quicksand and that its curious description of Pentheus’ offence and death, no less its elaborate protestations of piety, cried caution to the confident strider. But if there is tragedy in the failure to detect quicksands, the traveller can scarcely feel more secure in the services of three professional guides who have recently plotted three different courses for him.