Theocritus, Idyll 26 is short, starkly dramatic, and highly puzzling. Gow (1952) and his predecessors generally regarded it as bad, or even un Theocritean; and many of its details remain obscure. Lines 27–32 in particular present acute problems; and, as Gow (1952) II.475 wrote, ‘no explanation of the poem as a whole can be satisfactory unless it accounts for these mysterious lines’. No ancient scholia survive (except for scraps in P3), and Idyll 26 in isolation offers scant indications of a cultural or social context. In consequence any new attempt to increase understanding of Idyll 26 must inevitably be speculative, particularly when it moves from text-based, literary aspects to more general questions about the idyll. Such an effort may, however, seem more worthwhile nowadays, when the characteristics of professional hellenistic poetry can more easily be recognised in Idyll 26.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Statius' Thebaid is a rarity. More of the surviving Latin epics of the classical period are incomplete or unfinished than not: Lucan's Bellum civile, Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, Statius' Achilleid, perhaps Silius Italicus' Punica and of course Virgil's Aeneid (although his dissatisfaction may relate to polish rather than scope: we do not know). Only Ovid's Metamorphoses and Statius' Thebaid seem complete. Yet the question of epic endings casts a fascination upon critics, especially perhaps where the ending does not exist or where there is evidence that it is not the ending planned by the author. Critics use their interpretations of the endings to inscribe meaning in the preceding text and to clinch one reading against another. The readings advanced enact different kinds of closure or refuse to see any closure at all.

It seems paradoxical that one of the few epics to survive complete has not yet received a full stint of attention devoted to its ending. In this paper, my purpose is to situate the end of the Thebaid in its literary and ideological context. This involves examining how the close of the poem interacts with earlier epic, particularly with the Aeneid. My argument is that Statius offers a supplement to, or even a critique of, the open-endedness of the Aeneid in the form of a triptych of resounding endings. I shall then suggest that there are other elements in Statius' closural strategy which are highlighted by a consideration of his Romanisation of his Greek material.

The relationship between poetry and the visual arts is seldom close and never simple. But special difficulties attend the study of it in the eighth century before Christ in Greece, when evidence is not only in excessively short supply but, when it does come, is almost by definition ambiguous. On the whole question of the interpretation of Late Geometric vase-painting and other eighth-century art, there are well-established opposing positions: each new discovery finds a different interpretation on the part of what may be called the optimists – those who seek for correspondences between the Homeric epics and the visual arts – and of the sceptics, who habitually argue that there is no evidence for anything of the kind. Each party appears to have found an outlet for the promulgation of its view, inasmuch as many general or semi-popular accounts of Geometric and other early Greek art present it as having a major mythological content derived from epic poetry; while many closer scholarly studies, deploying an array of iconographical learning and strict logic, nowadays reach the opposite conclusion, that there is little or no narrative content of any kind, mythological or otherwise, and no significant contact with epic, until the end of the Geometric period.

Xenophon records that in 371 an embassy was sent from Athens to Sparta in order to negotiate a settlement. His account contains several peculiar features concerning both the procedure of the embassy and the personnel employed. To submit the historical writings of Xenophon to close and detailed scrutiny is often an unrewarding task, yet it is well to bear in mind that at the time of the events under discussion Xenophon, who had been exiled from Athens, was resident in the Peloponnese and he ought therefore to have been in a position to combine an understanding of the political workings of Athens with a knowledge of what went on in Sparta.

We read that Callias the son of Hipponicus, Autocles the son of Strombichides, Demostratus the son of Aristophon, Aristocles, Cephisodotus, Melanopus and Lycaethus, seven names in all, were sent as envoys, and further that the popular orator Callistratus was also present in Sparta. Included in the account are three speeches which at first sight are discordant and which Xenophon attributes to Callias, Autocles and Callistratus.

§1. The Homeric case form in -ϕι corresponds to the Indo-European instrumental plural morph *-bhi(s)2 which roughly corresponds to the senses of the English preposition with, expressing both the instrument of verbal action (‘He killed Dr Black with the lead piping’) and the notion of comitativity (‘He was with Col. Mustard’): yet Homeric -ϕι seemingly stands as a generic oblique case marker in all numbers. Except for literary dialects in which it may be regarded as an epic feature, it was unparalleled in Greek until the decipherment of Linear B demonstrated that Mycenaean knew a case form spelled -pi, which may be taken as standing for /-phi/ (the Linear B script making no distinction between the voiced, voiceless and aspirated stops), functioning probably only as a plural, and in declensions other than the thematic. While -ϕι and -pi have a certain degree of overlap in their function and formations, the Homeric and Mycenaean forms also show significant differences; this paper examines and attempts to explain those differences.

In his Panathenaicus, which was issued in 339 BC, Isocrates condemns Athenians for their rampant bribery:

[Formerly] those who had been elected to office were expected to neglect their own property, and also to abstain no less from those perquisites (λημμάτων) which nowadays the officials have become accustomed to gain than from the sacred treasures; who under the current circumstances would have such sense of self-restraint? (Isoc. 12.145)

There are many references suggesting that the Athenians not only deplored but also had strict attitudes towards bribery, which they considered to be a distinct crime. What should not be overlooked, however, is that the Greeks had their traditional values concerning gifts and reciprocity, according to which they were expected to give in return when given something. In so-called Homeric society gift-giving was one of the most fundamental principles of social relationships, as is notably pointed out by M. I. Finley. That the Greek word dôra, which is most commonly used to mean bribery, originally refers to gifts in general epitomises the ambivalence of Greek values concerning bribery.

Pausanias' qualities as a historian have long been the subject of scholarly attention, not least because some of his historical accounts present modern commentators with seemingly insurmountable problems. In fact, there is no denying that at times, Pausanias gets his history spectacularly wrong. Such apparent errors are all the more problematic because Pausanias' version is sometimes incompatible with major historical works which he, as a very well-read man, should have known. Do we have to assume that Pausanias sometimes chose to present historical accounts which he himself could identify as inaccurate or at least as clashing with other literary works?

In this article I investigate Pausanias' description of Mantinea which contains two of the most blatant examples of his inaccurate historical accounts, both set in the third century BC, and both incompatible with alternative sources: we are offered a lengthy description of a battle that probably never took place, and Pausanias' version of Mantinea's fate after its defeat in 222 BC seems a complete reversal of what Polybius reported much closer to the time. I use these examples to demonstrate how such idiosyncratic versions of history could develop and survive within their local context, and why they may have seemed an attractive addition to Pausanias' Periegesis.

This article is the first to consider book 8 of the Palatine Anthology as an integrated collection. Book 8 consists of funerary epigrams of Gregory of Nazianzus. We consider how the book is structured as a coherent collection, what its place in the Palatine Anthology is and, above all, how these underdiscussed poems contribute to the changing discourse of death in fourth-century Christianity. We also look at how the poems contribute to the Byzantine culture in which the Palatine Anthology was put together. The article reveals how Gregory rewrites both the positive values of death in a Christian community and negative descriptions of those who transgress such values.

The earliest surviving poetic representation of Euripides, outside of comedy, appears in a piece of early third-century Alexandrian poetry and the picture it paints of the Athenian tragedian is in some ways a surprising one. In his ‘Catalogue of loves’, a terribly corrupt fragment from the third book of the Leontion, Hermesianax of Colophon introduces his lines on Euripides' doomed romantic infatuation with the affirmation that ‘even he’ (ϰἀϰεîνον), that notorious hater of women, was once ‘struck by the crooked bow’. Night did not relieve his suffering,

ἀλλὰ Μαϰηδονίων πάσας ϰατενίσατο λαύρας
Αἰγάων μεθέπων Ἀρχέλεω ταμίην, 66
εἰσόϰε <δὴ> δαίμων Εὐριπίδῃ εὕρετ᾿ ὄλεθρον
Ἀρριβίου στυγνῶν ἀντιάσαντι ϰυνῶν. (7.65–8)

66 Αἰγάων Bergk: αἰγιεων A

Rather he went down all the alleyways of Macedonian Aegae
in pursuit of the housemaid of Archelaus,
until a daemon found death for Euripides
when he came across the hated hounds of Arribius.

While one of the themes Hermesianax' catalogue foregrounds is how lovesick poets of the past left home to pursue their beloveds abroad, the lines on Euripides are remarkable for their elision of this poet's native Attica.

This poem is Catullus' reply to a letter from a friend called (probably) Manlius and it consists of three separate paragraphs: introduction (1–14), response (15–36), conclusion (37–40).

This first paragraph itself consists of two parts: Catullus' recapitulation of the points made in Manlius' original letter (1–10), and an indication of what his response to that letter will be (11–14). From 1–2 it emerges that Manlius has experienced a crisis, and from 3–4 that he described himself in metaphorical terms as a shipwrecked person needing to be rescued by Catullus. From 5–8 we learn what Manlius' crisis was: he has lost his girlfriend and cannot sleep (5–6), and he derives no pleasure from the poetry of old writers (7–8). From line 10 we discover that Manlius has asked Catullus for munera et Musarum … et Veneris. What are these gifts? Some scholars have assumed that line 10 is an example of hendiadys and that only one gift has been requested, viz. erotic poetry; but it is clear from the word utriusque in 39 that two separate items have been requested, in which case the munera Musarum and munera Veneris must be two separate things. This is, after all, exactly what we should expect in the light of 5–8, where Manlius is represented as having made two separate complaints (neque … Venus … nec … Musae – 10 et Musarum … et Veneris).

This paper summarises the results of an investigation into sentence-beginnings made as part of an attempt to find an approach to word order which would be effective in revealing linguistic continuity as well as coping with the complexity of facts. Its point of origin is the intuition that for a native speaker the process of understanding what is said or written ought to be, at least within reasonable limits, both continuous and in some way in keeping with the order in which the utterance or text is presented.

Utterances are linear and temporal, and the ear passes what it receives to the brain in a sequential order that matches the auditory stimulus itself, a fact reflected in the way we write and read; it would be anomalous (though by no means impossible within certian limitations) if the brain were to process the incoming material in some other order. It is therefore worth considering the order in which discourse elements are represented.

The object of this paper is to demonstrate an intimate coherence of thought on the problems of flux and language between the Cratylus, Theaetetus and Timaeus, and as a consequence to salvage the traditional view that the Theaetetus and Timaeus both propound versions of Plato's own theory of perception. This undertaking will involve grappling with views which were given their most forceful expression by Owen, but which have frequently been adopted and marshalled afresh since his classic article. The burden of these views is that the Cratylus and Theaetetus are engaged in analytical work which is more sophisticated than anything in the Timaeus; that this is supported by a number of points on which they are demonstrably correcting the Timaeus (and other earlier works); and that the similarities on the subject of perception, for example, are to be explained on the grounds that Plato in the Theaetetus is concerned to expose the essential incoherence of the basis on which a theory such as that of the Timaeus rests. It will be desirable, therefore, to examine first the passages on which this argument is principally based.

Greek comedy is full of quotable maxims. According to a literal reading, the comedians might be seen as custodians of traditional gnomic wisdom, along with their tragic counterparts. Nevertheless, it is argued here that maxims in comedy are different from maxims in other contexts. Comic maxims typically appear ‘within inverted commas’, not just in a literal sense (because of their inherent ‘quotationality’) but in a figurative sense (because of their pervasive irony and self-consciousness). Examples from Menander, Antiphanes, Diphilus and others are used to demonstrate that the comedians can be seen as playing around with the content and form of traditional wisdom. Sometimes they seem to be poking fun at the maxim as a medium of expression, or at tragic maxims, or at the habit of quotation itself.

Philostratus’ Heroicus betrays an obsession with statues that demands explanation. Just as cult statues of epic heroes litter the contemporary second-century CE landscape, so do they litter Philostratus’ text. No story of a hero is distinct from an ecphrasis of that hero's statue, and in practice a request for the one is a request for the other. Lifeless heroes (Protesilaus first and foremost) become vividly ‘alive’ in the imagination of their devotees and, occasionally, their Zoilean adversaries. As the lines between reality and fantasy blur, Philostratus’ critique of material cultural practices accompanies and fortifies his better known Homerkritik.

My concern is with the account in Ennius’ Annals of Romulus and Remus and the foundation of Rome, in particular with the verses which Cicero made his brother Quintus quote at Diu.I. 107 (= Ann. 77-96 V2)