This article studies a Euripidean innovation: the introduction into tragic language and the subsequent (selective) usage of the expression oὐκ ἂν δυναίμην by Euripides. This negative potential optative appears sixteen times within the surviving Euripidean corpus, as a stereotypical syntactic structure that is intertwined with dramatic content and meaning. But, surprisingly, this expression is absent from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and all other tragedians. Through close reading of the sixteen Euripidean cases, the article traces and defines the conspicuous context of this expression: oὐκ ἂν δυναίμην is uttered by high-status individuals (for example, members of a royal family), when they envisage the impossible/unattainable in present and future within an intensely emotional atmosphere (ranging from hatred and loathing to agonising grief and despair), during pivotal moments of the play. Metrical convenience is also served, as the expression covers the first five elements of the iambic trimeter.

There has been much discussion in recent years as to whether the Athenian amnesty of 403 BC can be understood in terms of political forgiveness. A number of scholars have denied that it can. Nevertheless, if the oaths, covenants, and laws are properly analysed, it will become clear that, though ancillary to the earliest clauses of the agreement, the promise μὴ μνησικακεῖν was a blanket measure forbidding prosecutions for crimes under the Thirty and before in the courts after 403. The covenants (συνθῆκαι) chiefly laid down conditions for future relations between Athens and Eleusis. The promise not to dredge up the past was just one concern, and should not be confused with the agreement in its entirety. This article re-examines the agreement as a whole in light of recent discussion of the meaning of amnesty in the ancient world, and argues that the oath μὴ μνησικακεῖν, sworn subsequently, affirmed just one of the covenants, not, as is sometimes held, every covenant. Other clauses may have been re-affirmed by separate oaths. The legislation (νόμοι) which followed was designed to give clearer legal definition to μὴ μνησικακεῖν, but was distinct and separate from the covenants of amnesty.

In modern scholarship a distinctly ‘Homeric’ presentation of the ancient Macedonian kings and their court still endures, in spite of recent notes on the use of ‘artifice’ in key ancient accounts. Although the adventures and achievements of Alexander the Great are certainly imbued with epic colour, to extend those literary tropes and topoi to the rule of earlier kings (and to wider Macedonian society) is often to misunderstand and misrepresent the ancient evidence.

This paper offers a fresh review of the presentation of the early-Macedonian monarchy in the ancient sources, and considers the depiction of the Argead dynasty in both hostile and more-sympathetic accounts. It highlights the importance of another mythological model for these ancient kings: one that was supremely heroic, but not Homeric. The Argead appropriation of Heracles, Pindar’s ‘hero god’ (ἥρως θεός: Nem. 3.22), was a key part of the self-representation of successive kings. Undoubtedly the crucial paradigm for Macedonian rulers, Heracles provided them with an identity and authority that appealed to diverse audiences, and it is time to consider the subtlety of the Argead presentation of their dynasty as Heraclid.

In 55 BC, Caesar massacred reportedly 400,000 Usipetes and Tencteri. When a supplicatio was proposed in the senate, M. Cato moved instead that Caesar should be surrendered to the enemy. This paper offers a technical analysis of an episode which, while well known, has not always been well understood. What Cato proposed was deditio (surrender) on the grounds that Caesar had committed a breach of fides (breach of truce and/or mistreatment of ambassadors) and thus an offence against the gods. Deditio was a means of expiation, so that Caesar alone should suffer for his crime, as in the famous case of C. Hostilius Mancinus in 136. Cato’s motivations were obviously political, but the technical and religious nature of his allegations meant they could not be ignored. Caesar, I argue, felt obliged to respond, and does so in BG 4 within particular constraints imposed by the nature of fides and deditio.

Caesar’s speech Pro Bithynis is usually considered to be an expression of the positive relationships between Caesar and the Kingdom of Bithynia. The context in which the speech was delivered is, however, unclear.

By means of a lexical analysis of the two extant fragments of the Pro Bithynis, this paper aims at providing a new interpretation of the speech and its historical background. Caesar probably delivered the speech not immediately after King Nicomedes’s death – as commonly accepted – but after the Roman siege of Heraclea Pontica, when the proconsul M. Aurelius Cotta, Caesar’s propinquus, was accused of having sacked the city.

As had already happened in Macedonia (thanks to Dolabella’s prosecution) and in Greece (Caesar represented some Greeks in a process against C. Antonius around 79 BC), the Bithynian affair represented a further occasion for Caesar to win over friends and allies among foreign communities.

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.