Much has been written about Herakles, one of the most significant figures in ancient Greek culture. However, despite the recent range of illuminating studies of various female mythical figures as reflected in both literary and pictorial sources, little attention has been paid to Alkmene, mother of the superhero. Alkmene stands, of course, alongside a number of other mortal women in Greek myth, including most notably Antiope, Danae, Europe, Io and Semele, who bear sons to Zeus. Despite her relationship with Zeus, however, and although undergoing more than her fair share of trials, she is never forced into the sort of extreme dislocation suffered by these other women, being presented to some extent as a ‘normal’ wife (of Amphitryon) and mother. The purpose of this paper is to explore the earliest surviving substantial literary portrait of her, found in a passage from Book Four of the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women which was later incorporated as preface to the Shield of Herakles.

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.

quando ego non timui graviora pericula veris?
res est solliciti plena timoris amor.
in te fingebam violentos Troas ituros;
nomine in Hectoreo pallida semper eram.
15 sive quis Antilochum narrabat ab Hectore victum, Antilochus nostri causa timoris erat;
sive Menoetiadenfalsis cecidisse sub armis flebam successu posse carere dolos.
sanguine Tlepolemus Lyciam tepefecerat hastam, 20 Tlepolemi leto cura novata mea est.
denique quisquis erat castris iugulatus Achivis, frigidius glacie pectus amantis erat.
(Ovid, Her. 1.11–22)

Lines 15-16 of Penelope’s letter have given rise to much debate over the years because numerous scholars have found that the couplet contains a mistake over the fate of Antilochus. Some attribute the mistake to scribal corruption in the transmission of the text, others to Ovid himself. Such a cloud of scholarly dust has the passage raised that no apology is necessary for yet another attempt to clarify so minor a point. The crux of the problem lies in the meaning of victum.

Of the c. 270 inscribed Greek and Latin inscriptions held at Burdur Archaeological Museum in Turkey, only three definitely are metrical, all of which are in Greek. A fourth, fragmentary item reused as a Moslem gravestone has not been located during research at the Museum in the last decade. The one presented here is unpublished, and will be included more briefly in an edition of all the Greek and Latin inscriptions at Burdur which is currently being prepared for publication by R. A. Kearsley and the present writer. As with the other unpublished verse text (inv. 23.43.88, also funerary), there is no specific provenance known, but both can be attributed generally to the region of Pisidia. The other inscription, first published last century, was brought into the Museum from Akören in 1994 (inv. no. 499.141.94); it has been presented in an improved edition with commentary and photographs elsewhere.

The extant Notitia Dignitatum describes itself as a list of the highest civilian and military officials of the Roman state and their administrations, or rather as two such lists, one for the parts of the empire in the East and one for the parts in the West. Each begins with a list of officials (the so-called index), followed by separate entries for these officials (the so-called chapters). These modern labels are dangerously familiarising devices which set up anachronistic preconceptions about the nature of the text and its parts. I shall refer to the two lists as the initial list and the sectional lists. The latter all have a similar structure, being divided into three parts: (i) an illustration representing the jurisdiction of the official in a primarily visual form; (ii) a list of the functions and/or other officials within his jurisdiction; (iii) a list of his bureaucratic staff. The text first surfaces in fifteenth century copies of a probably Carolingian manuscript in the Codex Spirensis.

When the late fifteenth-century humanist Domizio Calderini began his project of lecturing and then compiling printed commentaries on such ‘difficult’ authors as Juvenal, Martial, Statius and Propertius, the elder Pliny’s Natural History, with its treasure trove of multifarious information, was one of his main sources. Indeed, the frequency with which the notes on Silius Italicus which are the subject of this paper draw on the Natural History was one of the factors supporting their attribution to Domizio Calderini. The notes stemming from Calderini’s lectures on Silius probably date from 1470-73. In his extant works, in the commentaries on Martial, Juvenal, Statius Silvae and Ovid Ibis, Calderini makes specific references back to his lectures on Silius sixteen times with such phrases as ‘in commentariis Silii recitavimus’ (ad Stat. Silv. 2.2.61) and ‘ut apud Silium exposuimus’ (ad Mart. 1.87.5).

The abridged version of The Golden Bough has in the 1990s alone been reissued in several paperback editions. This would have pleased its author, with his penchant for successive editions and modifications of his own works. Sir James Frazer is still being read, at least in epitome, despite the fact that his anthropological work is apparently considered something of a dinosaur. At the same time, bemused Classics undergraduates are still getting their first contact with Ovid’s Fasti through Frazer’s Loeb translation of 1931, and doing battle with his 1929 commentary as the only one available in English on Ovid’s calendar-poem in its entirety.