This article subjects the final part of the treatise Expositio et ratio omnium formarum (Systematic presentation of all figures), included in the Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum and commonly ascribed to Balbus, to fresh philological scrutiny (Balbus gromaticus pp. 107.10–108.8 ed. Lachmann). The passage deals with methods of constructing right angles for the purpose of drawing rectangular and rectilinear figures. On the basis of a reconsideration of the preserved textual witnesses and previous scholarship, the passage is critically and interpretatively studied in the form of a running commentary.

This paper takes issue with two widely held views on Drakon. The first is the claim made at least as early as the fourth century BC that only the homicide laws survived the subsequent intervention of Solon; the second is the repeated assertion that Drakon's laws were uniformly harsh. It argues that more of Drakon's work survived into the Classical period, both in substance and in procedure, than the Athenians realised or admitted, and that the harshness has been exaggerated.

This paper investigates the ‘prehistory’ of automata in fourth-century Greece. It argues, first, that automata appear more frequently in the philosophy and drama of this period than has usually been recognised; second, that robots function in classical Greek literature as a utopian substitute for slavery or other forms of bound labour; and, finally, that the failure of Hellenistic automata to realise this utopia illustrates some basic constraints on the power of technology to disturb social institutions in the ancient world.

Similes are a prominent feature of epithalamia, with poets comparing the bride and groom to characters from myth or to elements of the natural world. Catullus wrote two epithalamia (61 and 62), together with two other poems with marked epithalamian characteristics (64 and 68). This paper examines the question of why similes are so important to the genre of epithalamium, concentrating on Catullus 61, which is particularly rich in its deployment of comparison. The paper argues that comparison is crucial to the themes of Roman marriage: similes locate the human institution of marriage between the poles of myth and nature, and they afford a vehicle for considering the way marriage links together the disparate terms of male and female.

This article explores a neglected period in the history of classical scholarship: the first decades of the eighteenth century. It focuses on the tension between an evolving idea of method, and the tradition of personal polemic which had been an important part of the culture of scholarship since the Renaissance. There are two case studies: the conflict between Jean Le Clerc and Pieter Burman, and the controversy that followed Richard Bentley's edition of Horace's Odes. Both demonstrate the need to revise current paradigms for writing the history of scholarship, and invite us to reconsider the role of methodology in producing of scholarly authority.

This paper draws attention to the unprecedented prominence of metaphors of enslavement to Rome in the historical narratives of Florus and Cassius Dio. Following an analysis of the thematic importance of the trope in their respective works, I point to further parallels in Herodian and Justin which suggest that the trope proved particularly productive in both Latin and Greek historiography in the late second and early third centuries CE. The end of the paper considers broader cultural developments that might underlie this phenomenon, notably the proliferation of dominus as an epithet for the emperor and the ongoing enfranchisement of provincials.

This article analyses how Callimachus was cited in ancient scholarship on Pindar. A survey of references to literary authors in the scholia establishes that commentaries provided only minimal specification of relations between the texts concerned. Despite this, commentaries were important intertextual sites. In providing information that supplements Pindar's texts, citations of Callimachus contribute to the latter's canonical status by treating his poetry as an authoritative source of mythological and historical details. The juxtaposition of the two authors in commentaries also allowed for an exploration of their literary relationship.

This paper considers a Sapphic poem written by E. E. Cummings: ‘the phonograph may(if it likes)be prophe’, which takes aim at Ezra Pound's relationship to the classical tradition and in particular at Pound's classicising use of quantitative metre. Cummings’ humourous but biting poem comments on Pound's literary ideas in the light of his fascist politics. Cummings’ poem constructs a layered discussion about ownership of the Classical tradition and about the privileging of the Classical aesthetic versus the English ear in English-language poetry. Thus Cummings offers both a critique of Pound and, implicitly, a literary argument concerning the role of the Classics in English verse.