The standard body of primary evidence would seem to make it clear that Cleisthenes was responsible for the law on ostracism at Athens. The only contrary element is Harpocration’s use of Androtion (FGrH 324) F 6, when he talks of Hipparchos’ ostracism in 488/7, . However, verbal similarities and other considerations make it likely that Androtion was the source for Athenaion Politeia (henceforth Ath.Pol.) 22 and Philochoros (FGrH 328) F 30, both of which maintain a Cleisthenic origin for the law, so that this will have been Androtion’s view also. It is easy enough to see how Harpocration, in a passage where, let us remember, he is concerned with Hipparchos, not ostracism, could have been loose or confused in his usage. Unfortunately, the rediscovery of a late Byzantine account of ostracism has led to the supposition that there is a difference between Ath.Pol. and Androtion, but that in a way both were right.

This article re-examines the ‘commemorative medallions’ of Antoninus Pius, a series of medallions showing the early history of Rome. It is suggested that these pieces should be seen not in a Saecular Games context but as a continuation of Hadrianic precedent, probably connected with the construction of the Temple of Venus and Rome. These medallions represent a wider imperial emphasis on the distant past under both Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, an interest that we observe in other coin types, public building works and perhaps also works of literature. A detailed examination of these Pius medallions reveals that their iconography was drawn from earlier types, and that they in turn inspired later imagery. This phenomenon reveals a certain intertextuality in numismatic language, and suggests that coin imagery did not merely grace Rome’s currency, but was recorded and was accessible to later generations. These medallions, truly ‘monuments in miniature’, reveal a new understanding of Pius’ reign and his (self-)presentation as Hadrian’s successor.

For the history of the Roman administration in the early Imperial period we would seem to be well placed. There is an abundance of data on officials at all levels, their functions, careers, families, status and power – and from sources of every kind, literary, epigraphic, juridical, papyrological and archaeological. We know of hundreds, even thousands of such officials. The time would therefore seem ripe for not only a comprehensive descriptive account of the Imperial administration but also for a structural analysis of the system itself, the relationship to one another of the main institutional elements that constituted it: the emperor, the senatorial and equestrian hierarchy, the Imperial freedman and slave officials, and the interaction of all these with administration at municipal level. But a prime requirement for such an account and analysis is the assurance that we can organize the data and place the officials in the right chronological order. A reliable chronology is essential if we are to trace institutional change in the medium and short term. In this regard the Imperial freedman and slave officials are of major importance. In training and experience they make up the professional ‘civil service’ of the early empire – as contrasted with the relatively ‘amateur’ administrative role played by senatorial legati and equestrian procuratores, whose more spasmodic careers were more susceptible to influences of patronage. But it is precisely in the careers of the Imperial freedmen and slaves that chronological problems are most acute and caution most necessary, partly because of the numbers involved and partly in the interpretation of nomenclature.

The Lament for Adonis or Epitaphios Adonidos has since the mid-sixteenth century commonly been known as ‘Bion 1’. In editions of Greek Bucolic it comes along with four long and four short poems allegedly by Moschus, a number of short poems or fragments by Bion of Smyrna, and a long fragment (32 lines) also since 1568 often attributed to him. This subcollection is sometimes conveniently called ‘Minor Bucolic’: ‘minor’ in relation to the much bulkier surviving work of Theocritus and ‘bucolic’ apparently only by association with him and through the clear reputation of Moschus and Bion in ancient times as bucolic writers. Editions of Minor Bucolic, i.e. Moschus and Bion published other than as an appendix to Theocritus (though sometimes combined with Callimachus, Musaeus, or ‘the Nine Poetesses’), appeared in 1565 (Meetkercke, Bruges), 1568 (Orsini, Rome), 1655 (Whitford, London), 1686 (Longepierre, Paris), and then copiously in the eighteenth century; I count at least eight in the years 1746-1795.

So much has been written about Menander's Dis Exapaton and its correspondence to Plautus' Bacchides that little more than a quarter of a century after the publication of its longest and most important fragmentary remains, the so-called ‘Dis Exapaton papyrus’, it seems almost foolhardy to assert there is anything new to be said about Plautus' workmanship or the relationship between the Roman play and its model. But there is. Most studies have focused on direct comparison of Menander's and Plautus' texts through detailed examination of the deletions and insertions, mutations and mutilations that Plautus committed or achieved, depending on one's perspective. We limit our profits, however, when we limit our vision and there is more known about Menander's Dis Exapaton than just what corresponds directly to Bacchides 494-561. By addressing closely the wider context of Plautus' drama, especially the various methods he is known to have used in reconstituting Greek plays for the Roman stage, and applying that to what we know about his and Menander's drama in general, we stand to gain further insight into Plautus' innovations as well as an important reminder of the traps and pitfalls inherent in dealing with fragmentary remains. Dis Exapaton is, after all, not the only incomplete work here; Bacchides is not preserved intact, either.

May I begin by thanking you sincerely for inviting me to give this Todd Memorial Lecture? I am sensible of the honour, not only in memory of the pioneer Australian Latinist whose name it bears, but in view of the roll-call of Classical scholars who have spoken before me. I am particularly conscious of my own debt to two predecessors here, the unforgettable Sir Ronald Syme and my former teacher Gordon Williams, who from their different viewpoints have had a considerable influence on present day approaches to Augustan—and some would say un-Augustan—poetry.

I shall be talking today about two kinds of fasti or calendar, the public, inscribed, fasti of Augustan Rome, and the poetic Fasti of Ovid, the last great poet of the age of Augustus. But I should first introduce both calendar and calendar poem, before moving on to discuss the interpretative battle which has recently developed over Ovid's complex but fascinating work.

One of the hallmarks of Latin love poetry is its seemingly oppositional stance toward traditional Roman values. As I and others have recently argued, however, critical approaches that merely focus on a search for oppositional ideology in Roman poetry are not only reductionist but also fail to do justice to the complex literary strategies at work in those texts. As Matthew Santirocco suggests, Augustan literature does not simply reflect a pre-existing ideology but rather participates interactively in its production. It seems to me that mis applies equally well to Catullus. By problematizing the poet's relationship to male public culture, Catullus sets the stage not only for the elegists’ ambivalent stance toward political life, but also for their ambiguous gender identifications.

The crucial point about this passage was well brought out by R. Hackforth: the immortality here envisaged ‘does not spring directly from the apprehension of , but from the begetting of true virtue (sc. in another’s soul).’ And Hackforth drew the conclusion that ‘consequently the philosopher can no more than the ordinary man become immortal (note ) save by vicarious self-perpetuation.’ The importance of this contention is that it offers us a Plato without a belief in personal immortality such as is prominent in other dialogues in which a similar version of the theory of Forms appears and that, because of this difference, the ‘ascent’ passage and the explanation of the creativity eros cannot be used directly in conjunction with dialogues in which a conflicting view of immortality appears, as part of a Platonic theory of eros.

Over the centuries, the fabulous adventures of Alexander the Great have become as prominent in art and literature as his historical achievements. Medieval artists in particular are frequent sources of depictions of the hero in such adventures as the search for the water of life, the flight into the air in a basket borne by eagles, the descent into the sea in a diving bell, the interview with the talking trees of India and the visit to the dwellings of the gods. Familiar as these episodes are—or were—it is easy for us to forget how completely new a thing they represent in the tradition of Greek prose writing. With the decipherments of cuneiform some one hundred years ago, a number of scholars concluded that they could not have been developed entirely within the Greek tradition, and posited direct influence from one or more Babylonian or other near eastern sources or traditions to explain the occurrence in Greek literature of these curious tales. Despite the antiquity of these arguments, they have been accepted without examination by many more recent writers on the Alexander Romance.

It appears that the beginning of Suetonius’ Divus Iulius is now lost. C.L. Roth, in 1865, argued that the work was acephalous by setting out the four things that were missing from the Divus Iulius: first, the title of the work; second, the dedication to Septicius Clarus, which is known to us only from John Lydus’ sixth-century work De Magistratibus 2.6.4; third, the family tree of the Caesars; fourth, the beginning of the Divus Iulius with the details about its Trojan and Alban origins, the origin and name of the Caesars, the omens of future greatness, his education, and his first offices. These were, as Roth saw it, all things Suetonius was in the habit of giving in the extant Lives.1 These things are indeed absent from the text as we have it. It remains to test whether those things are all really standard inclusions in a Suetonian introduction.

This paper approaches the lost beginning of the Divus Iulius by comparing the constructions of Suetonius’ extant openings, in particular the family trees, with Philemon Holland’s reconstruction of 1606. The comparative study will consider how the lost part of the Divus Iulius might reflect what Suetonius includes in other beginnings, and how it might have differed from those others. The study will also set out the elements that Suetonius appears to have considered essential to an introduction, thereby bringing into focus the places where the interests of renaissance authors differed from his own.

Valerius Maximus’ collection of exempla has received attention from modern scholars as a window into the morality of the early imperial period at Rome: for example, the recent work of Rebecca Langlands has drawn out the ethical complexities of the text. Little has been said, however, about the possible formal philosophical context of Valerius’ work since the suggestion of Franz Römer in 1990 that the Facta et Dicta Memorabilia was deliberately structured to represent the Stoic cardinal virtues. This paper argues that there is a place for further study of the language and ideology of Stoicism in the Facta et Dicta Memorabilia. To illustrate this point, chapter 9.13: De Cupiditate Vitae and its accompanying series of three exempla under the title Quam Exquisita Custodia Vsi Sint Quibus Suspecti Domestici Fuerunt are examined in detail. It is argued that Valerius’ selection and framing of his exempla are in close sympathy with Stoic ideas of rational death, the passions, and the importance of self-control.

It is intrinsically plausible that the Odyssey, which freely uses realistic details of many aspects of life on and beside the sea, was informed by real seafaring experience. This paper corroborates that hypothesis. The first part catalogues parallels between details of Odyssean and real-world seafaring. Odyssean type-scenes in particular echo real practice. The second part argues that three larger episodes have real-world parallels—the visit to the Lotos Eaters anticipates incidents of sailors deserting in friendly ports; the escape from Skylla and Charybdis demonstrates a safe course through a turbulent strait, and the encounter with Ino / Leukothea foreshadows the contemporary phenomenon of a sensed presence during a crisis. The pattern of coincidence between the Odyssey and the real world of seafaring constitutes a cumulative argument that suggests that those episodes in particular, and the poem as a whole, was informed by that world—a conclusion with consequences both for our understanding of the poem, and for our knowledge of the early Mediterranean maritime.

In Love by the Numbers Helena Dettmer suggests that poem 17, which begins o Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere longo, belongs to a disparate group of poems within the Catullan corpus, which contains poems with personified inanimate objects. Yet two of that larger group, poem 17 and poem 67 (addressed to a house door or ianua), are more closely drawn together by their settings, which the author hints are northern and specific while leaving them undefined and general. Furthermore, the two represent personified wooden objects, a bridge (poem 17) and a door (poem 67), while the broader group of poems includes personified estates and poetry. Finally, the metre of poem 17 is unique within the Catullan corpus. It sets the poem apart from the others and assists in defining its character.

There is no agreement on when international amicitia between Rome and Athens was first established. This article proposes that the most likely date for it belongs in the context of the later stages of the First Macedonian War (215-205) – specifically, during the mediation attempts of 209 or 208 – rather than the other commonly canvassed candidates, 228,205 and 201-200.

A. H. McDonald's contribution to the study of Rome's reconquest of Gallia Cisalpina raises several important questions concerning that momentous development. Momentous it surely was, for it brought under Roman rule a territory which was to be one of the heartlands of Roman, indeed western, culture in later ages. Another look at some aspects of the conquest and reconquest may thus be forgiven.

A great deal of modern scholarship has been expended on the subject of Plutarch’s sources and on the manner in which he composed his Lives. As a result of the painstaking analyses of the fifty or so cross-references in the Lives, a rough order in which they were probably written can now be descried and this has been a great boon for those who would use the information therein for historical purposes. As regards those Lives dealing with the luminaries of the late Republic, it can be said that the Lucullus and probably the Sertorius were among the first four sets to be written, that the Cicero appeared with the Demosthenes in the fifth set, then came the Sulla, the Brutus, the Caesar, the Pompeius, and subsequently the Crassus, Cato minor, Antony and Marius. (The order of the last four cannot be fixed, nor can the place of the Lives of the Gracchi.) A knowlege of this sequence explains the differences and occasional contradictions between individual Lives by exposing Plutarch’s earlier unfamiliarity with certain traditions and suggesting divergent source traditions which surfaced only when Plutarch was researching a particular character. (This, of course, makes the material even more valuable.)

Although F.M. Cornford’s name was already known to me from his commentary on Plato’s Theaitetos, my first acquaintance with his Thucydides Mythistoricus came in my earliest years of teaching Ancient History in the mid-1970s under the tutelage of the one to whom this essay is dedicated. I have drawn on Cornford’s book regularly when teaching Greek History, and found it useful as a provocation to students reading Thucydides. With the centenary since its publication looming, two years ago I felt it was high time to learn more about the context in which the book arose. Already a generation ago, W.M. Calder III identified Cornford as ‘an outstanding scholar, a personality, and a man involved in the issues of his time’ who merits a biography.

Modern scholars have expressed divergent views on the role played in Athenian law courts by , ‘the most just opinion,’ which the dikasts swore to observe in the heliastic oath. The most common view is that this embodied a principle of equity under which the precise letter of the law could be overridden. Hirzel and Vinogradoff are the leading advocates of this view. A variant has been proposed by Jones and Plescia, whereby this was not the intention of the oath, but it was used by speech-writers and accepted by the jury-courts in this fashion.

A minority view is advanced by Meyer-Laurin, Wolff and Meinecke, that ‘the most just opinion’ was only a subsidiary means of decision, applied only when the law gave no guidance on a particular point. Biscardi proposes a middle way, in that ‘most just opinion did not override the letter of the law but was used as a principle of equity in the interpretation and formulation of the laws.’

After the suppression of Ti. Gracchus, the Roman establishment acted savagely. The bodies of the hundreds killed in the initial massacre were thrown into the Tiber, probably at night, setting a grisly precedent (in that use of the river) that would be followed by Opimius, the younger Marius and Sulla. The action was supervised by an aedile, a certain Lucretius, who thereby acquired the cognomen Vispillo (or Vespillo), no doubt a pejorative title, but one in which he or his family seemed to take pride. The motivations behind the undertaking were possibly various. Removal of the evidence with minimal fuss may have been seen as a desirable way of avoiding further clamour. Hence the night-time operation. If so, it was done from inexperience. Experience would demonstrate that the bodies might neither remain sunk nor float discreetly to the sea. The establishment might also have hoped that the gesture carried with it some of the symbolism of a procuratio prodigiorum—though the agency of an aedile was hardly appropriate for such a commission. Probably the denial of proper burial was foremost in the minds of the enemies of Gracchus.

This paper uses the Greeks' understanding of the optative mood over many centuries to enlarge our knowledge of the origins of formal grammar, of the vernacular Greek language in post-classical times, and of the limitations which imitative Atticism faced when it tried to give new life to a verbal form which had virtually disappeared from the spoken language. Starting with the very beginnings of grammar as a discipline, it argues that Protagoras' contribution to the study of verbal mood has been overlooked, and the Stoics given too much credit. This observation has implications for the larger issue of whether the origin of formal grammar is to be found amongst students of literature or of philosophy. The rest of the paper works through the standard uses of the optative found in Attic and Homeric Greek, examining the explanations and paraphrases of these usages found in ancient and medieval grammarians and scholiasts, and arguing that this material confirms the evidence for the vernacular suggested by the New Testament and papyri, and can also explain some non-classical uses of the optative found in Atticising writers.