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)

Greek poets and painters of all archaic and classical stages actively used the Bronze Age as their major medium of expression. Their plots are made of legends they attribute to Bronze Age places, their characters are heroes, often royal, who contest those places and thrones, and fight at home and overseas for small quantities of metals, horses, cattle, women. The heroic figures of the classical imagination, especially in tragedy, are isolated and highlighted before general backgrounds of palaces, battlefields, sacred shrines, altars and groves, or tombs. The characters often take on aspects that seem to emanate from these settings – kingly, quarrelsome, acquisitive, enemies or puppets of the gods, exposed to and angry at death. The heroes often seem like dead divinities, sentient watchers inside the earth, contemplating contemporary life, like Amphiaraos watching from some breathing cave near Harma in Boiotia, while an image of them is projected on the stage to walk and talk through their remembered, familiar pathea.

<Nocte> tamen insequenti ipso pervigilante in eodem loco alia excitata turris prima luce miraculo hostibus fuit. Simul et oppidi turris quae maximum propugnaculum fuerat, subrutis fundamentis, dehiscere ingentibus rimis et tum [xvi litt.] ṭọ [iii litt.] igni coepit; incendiique simul et ruinae metu territi Contrebienses de muro trepidi refugerunt; et ut legati mitterentur ad dedendam urbem ab universa multitudine conclamatum est. Eadem virtus quae irritaverat oppugnantem victorem placabiliorem fecit. Obsidibus acceptis pecuniae modicam exegit summam armaque omnia ademit. Transfugas liberos vivos ad se adduci iussit; fugitivos, quorum maior multitudo erat, ipsis imperavit ut interficerent. Iugulatos de muro deiecerunt.

Cum magna iactura militum quattuor et quadraginta diebus Contrebia expugnata, relictoque ibi L. Insteio [xvi litt.] ipse ad Hiberum flumen copias reduxit. Ibi hibernaculis secundum oppidum quod Castra Aelia vocatur aedificatis ipse in castris manebat; interdiu conventum sociarum civitatium in oppido agebat. Arma ut fierent pro copiis cuiusque populi per totam provinciam edixerat; quibus inspectis referre vetera arma milites iussit, quae aut itineribus crebris aut oppu [c. xxx litt.] facta erant, novaque iis per centuriones divisit. Equitatum quoque novis instruxit armis, vestimentaque praeparata ante divisa, et stipendium datum.

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.

A. 1, 573–4. urbem quam statuo vestra est; subducite navis;

Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.

Servius says agetur means regetur, a purely ad hoc translation, as Conington observed, and one which is not supported by the remarks of A. J. Bell on the passage (A.J.P. (1919), pp. 198—200). But Conington's own translation is quite as ad hoc. He says that agere is a ‘variety’ for ducere ‘regard’. But it does not follow diat because άγω can mean ‘regard’, ago can do so too. Conington's parallel, 10, 108, Tros Rutulusne fuat, nullo discrimine habebo, is not helpful, as habeo is frequently so used. But there is no example, as far as I know, of ago in this sense.

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).

At Aeneid 1.148–56 Neptune's stilling of the storm roused against Aeneas and the Trojans by Juno is compared with the calming of a mob by a great statesman:

ac ueluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est

seditio saeuitque animis ignobile uulgus

iamque faces et saxa uolant, furor arma ministrat.

tum pietate grauem ac meritis si forte uirum quem

conspexere silent arrectisque auribus astant;

ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet:

sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, aequora postquam

prospiciens genitor caeloque inuectus aperto

flectit equos curruque uolans dat lora secundo.

As has been often remarked, this simile, prominently placed as the first in the poem, is evidently programmatic for the value system of the Aeneid. The ‘pietate grauem ac meritis…uirum’ standing up to and defeating the violence of the mob gives a highly Roman rôle-model (not always successfully followed) for Aeneas, the destined hero overcoming the forces of irrationality, something confirmed by the details of the poem as well as the events of its plot; Aeneas is similarly proclaimed by the Sybil in the Underworld as ‘pietate insignis et armis’ (6.402), while the soothing words of the statesman to the mob (153 ‘ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet’) are clearly echoed in the soothing words Aeneas addresses to his storm-shaken sailors in the very next scene of the poem (197 ‘dictis maerentia pectora mulcet’).

Reunited after nearly twenty years' separation, Odysseus and Penelope retire at last to bed, οἱ μὲν ἔπειτα | ἀσπάσιοι λέκτροιο παλαιοῦ θεσμὸν ἵκοντο (Od. 23.295–6). This, we are told in the scholia, was for the two greatest Homeric scholars of antiquity the τέλος; of the Odyssey: τοῦτο τέλος τῆς Όδυσσείας φησὶν Άρίσταρχος καὶ Άρισιοφάνης (H, M, Q), Άρισιοφάνης δὲ καὶ Άρίσταρχος πέρας τῆςΌδυσσείας τοῦτο ποιοῦνται (M, V, Vind. 133). The interpretation of this testimony poses one of the most important problems of Homeric scholarship; Bethe did not exaggerate its significance when he wrote ‘Es hängt von der Auffassung dieses Scholions die Beurteilung unserer Homerüberlieferung überhaupt ab und mit ihr die Frage, was der Kritik gegenüber der Ilias und Odyssee erlaubt ist’. (‘The interpretation of this scholium is of vital significance for our view of the transmission of the Homeric text as a whole, and for the question of the proper limits of criticism where the Iliad and Odyssey are concerned’.) Here, as all too often, we are frustrated by the abbreviated condition of the Odyssey-scholia which, as the poem draws to a close, reflect in their increasing concision the diminishing energies of those to whom we owe our knowledge of ancient Homeric scholarship, Prima facie, the note tells us that Aristophanes and Aristarchus took 23.296 as the limit of the Odyssey; this is commonly understood to mean that they judged the Epilogue to be unhomeric, but this interpretation is not free from difficulty, and some have maintained that the note represents aesthetic criticism.

This article reads Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy in dialogue with Euripides’ Trojan Women, synthesising a Nietzschean reading of Euripides’ tragedy with, as it were, a Euripidean reading of Nietzsche's theorisation of the tragic. It focuses on the way in which both texts confront the threat of nihilism in the face of human suffering and attempt to redeem or transfigure it. This is manifested internally and self- consciously in Euripides’ play through the actions of Hecuba and the chorus, who seem both to exhibit what Nietzsche might call a ‘pessimism of strength’, and to express Nietzsche's fundamental claim that ‘only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified’. Yet Trojan Women ultimately resists Nietzschean theorising – a form of critical resistance which, as it will turn out, is already anticipated by Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. More than a close study of two texts, this dialogic reading also has some big implications for thinking through the relationship between philosophy and tragedy in general.

This paper seeks to highlight and assess the presence of allusions to Roman military apparatus in Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe. In the introduction, I contextualise the argument within the history of scholarship on the novel, and discuss issues relating to the author's date, Aphrodisian provenance and readership. I then divide the argument into three parts. At the end of the novel, Chaereas returns to Syracuse and publicly displays the spoils won from the east in a manner that, I argue, is highly suggestive of the Roman triumph (Part i). He then extends a grant of citizenship to the Greek element of his army and issues them cash donatives, while Hermocrates gives farmland to the Egyptians. As I demonstrate, this is characteristic of what happens upon the demobilisation of Roman military manpower (especially the auxilia) (Part ii). I then draw out the ramifications of an imperial-era author who represents Greek military exploits against the Persians, writing during a period in which Greeks were not interested in military endeavours (Part iii).

The Neopythagorean Diotogenes, author of a lost treatise On Kingship of which some fragments have come down to us in Stobaeus’ Anthology, is a largely neglected writer. Scholars either ignore him or briefly discuss him in the context of general overviews of Greek political thinking, usually comparing him to other Neopythagoreans such as Sthenidas and Ecphantus. This article argues that Diotogenes deserves to be read for his own sake, as a creative and subtle thinker who managed to contribute to his own philosophical tradition by benefiting from Homeric exegesis and by taking into account the more concrete demands of daily life.

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.

Questions of how ancient books were produced, how they were valued and what they represented in particular contexts, and how they interacted with the texts inscribed on them have been increasingly to the fore in recent years. This article will focus on the last of these questions, firstly examining the local role of material inscription in a single poem of Propertius, and then moving on to consider issues pertaining to the structure of the collection and how approaches to the poetry book are conditioned by and interact with its materiality. Central to this analysis is a conception of the book not as a neutral purveyor of meanings which exist outside it, but as a part of the processes by which meaning is created and maintained.

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.

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.