The study of narrative, narratology, has for some decades now been a well-established subdiscipline within the large field of critical methodology. Even classical scholars generally resistant to theory have found it acceptable. In part this can be explained by its classical ancestry: it was Plato who emphasised the importance of distinguishing narrator-voice and character-voice, and Aristotle who identified some of the key elements constituting plot structured as story. Part of the success of narratology is also due to the distinction of its classical practitioners. Naturally, the main emphasis among the studies of classical texts has been upon the major narrative forms, epic and the novel; but broader examination of the whole generic range has extended the scope of this method, and the first volume of an encyclopaedic study of narrator and narration in classical literature has recently appeared.

In 1903, in the preface to the first volume of his edition of Manilius, Housman wrote:

… we now witness in Germany pretty much what happened in England after 1825, when our own great age of scholarship, begun in 1691 by Bentley's Epistola ad Millium, was ended by the successive strokes of doom which consigned Dobree and Elmsley to the grave and Blomfield to the bishopric of Chester. England disappeared from the fellowship of nations for the next forty years.

(Housman (1903) xlii)

The name which lurks unspoken behind this paragraph is that of Richard Porson, and Dobree, Elmsley and Blomfield, whose names are spoken, were all in different ways his disciples. Although Porson had no pupils and gave no lectures, in the generation just after his death he had a number of followers who cultivated his memory and emulated his style, at least before they were removed to higher spheres by death or preferment to bishoprics. If the cultivation of his scholarly style can be called Porsonianism, it was the cult of Porson himself after his death in 1808, centred on Trinity College, Cambridge, for which three years later the Oxford scholar Peter Elmsley coined the name ‘Porsoniasm’. As one might expect, the name-giver was an outsider. Yet as his inclusion in Housman's sketch indicates, Elmsley could be called a Porsonian, and indeed in 1911, in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Latin at Cambridge, Housman remarked that ‘scholarship meant to Elmsley what it meant to Dobree’ (Housman (1969) 25). But though Elmsley was a Porsonian, he was not (if I may venture a hapax of my own) a Porsoniast.

In book 6 of the Thebaid, Statius puts on a funeral for a baby prince (Opheltes) accidentally crushed by the flick of a giant serpent's tail, while his nurse is busy telling her life story to the leaders of the Argive army on their way to Thebes. The Argives hold full-scale funeral games, which represent an opportunity to play with epic predecessors and create a new world between Greece and Rome, epic and reality. At 268–95, nine days after Opheltes' funeral pyre has burnt out, after the crowd have arrived for the games and before the chariot race, Statius stages a procession. I give the full passage:

exin magnanimum series antiqua parentum

inuehitur, miris in uultum animata figuris.

primus anhelantem duro Tirynthius angens

pectoris attritu sua frangit in ossa leonem.

haud ilium impauidi quamuis et in aere suumque

Inachidae uidere decus. pater ordine iuncto

laeuus harundineae recubans super aggere ripae

cernitur emissaeque indulgens Inachus urnae.

Io post tergum, iam prona dolorque parentis,

spectat inocciduis stellatum uisibus Argum.

ast illam melior Phariis erexerat aruis

Iuppiter atque hospes iam tunc Aurora colebat.

Tantalus inde parens, non qui fallentibus undis

inminet aut refugae sterilem rapit aera siluae,

sed pius et magni uehitur conuiua Tonantis.

parte alia uictor curru Neptunia tendit

lora Pelops, prensatque rotas auriga natantes

Myrtilos et uolucri iam iamque relinquitur axe.

et grauis Acrisius speciesque horrenda Coroebi

et Danae culpata sinus et in amne reperto

tristis Amymone, paruoque Alcmena superbit

Hercule tergemina crinem circumdata luna.

iungunt discordes inimica in foedera dextras

Belidae fratres, sed uultu mitior astat

Aegyptus; Danai manifestum agnoscere ficto

ore notas pacisque malae noctisque futurae.

mille dehinc species, tandem satiata uoluptas

praestantesque uiros uocat ad sua praemia uirtus.

(Thebaid 6.268-95)

Ever since the decipherment of Linear B, a large amount has been written on Mycenaean spelling. The basic rules were established very quickly, although the debate is still continuing as to the theoretical basis of Mycenaean spelling; various models have been proposed here. One of the most serious problems for all existing models is that at the edges, there is spelling variation that simply cannot be captured by one and the same algorithm. Here, we shall look at two such cases:

• the graphic rendering of the subphonemic glides j and w as in e.g. i-je-re-u, a-re-ku-tu-ru-wo which can be contrasted with later Greek ἱερεύς and ἀλεκτρυών where the glides are not or not routinely indicated;

• and so-called plene writing; this term is used in a variety of meanings. Here, we shall deal with the graphic rendering of consonants in the coda of final syllables where the standard spelling rules would predict their omission, e.g. wa-na-ka rendering /wanaks/ where the spelling rules would predict a rendering wa-na.

Hesiod's Theogony contains three similes, each of which elaborates a climactic moment in Zeus' securing of power: an image of bees (594–602) describes the nature of women in the Pandora episode, the aftermath of Zeus' triumph over Prometheus; battle resounds with a crash as if earth and heaven are coming together (699–705) in the climax of the Titanomachy, wherein Zeus and the Olympians overcome the Titans; and Zeus is likened to a craftsman melting ore (861–7) during his conquest of his final challenger, Typhoeus. In each episode complemented by a simile, Zeus' power attains greater stability; in the aftermath of the last of these episodes, the Typhonomachy, his power achieves permanent ascendancy (881–5). Despite the prominent occasions of these similes, they stand largely unexplored. This paper considers the simile of metallurgy in the Typhonomachy, the simile that reconfigures Zeus' final acquisition of power. Positioned at such a critical moment, attention to this simile promises to reveal elements fundamental to an understanding of Zeus' ultimate power.

Beckett's verbal duel is reminiscent of Aristophanic routines between two characters in which the name of the game seems to be to cap the boast, threat or insult hurled by the opposing character. Several recent studies have pointed to the importance of capping to the character and meaning of Aristophanic comedy. Ian Ruffell shows that verbal routines in which a joke is elaborated and capped by another are integral to Aristophanes' comic mode. He has also argued that Old Comedy is partly constituted through a generic requirement that each play deploy an intertextual rhetoric of innovation in which the playwright parades the way in which he has ingeniously capped the plots, routines and conceits of a rival's previous offering. Derek Collins has demonstrated that some of the social and stylistic dynamics of Aristophanic stichomythic and antilabic capping routines have been misunderstood due to a lack of awareness that such routines are part-and-parcel of a wider, cross-generic tradition of performed verse capping. He also shows that this central mode of poetic competition in archaic, classical, Hellenistic and Roman imperial Greece can be usefully illuminated by ethnographic and anthropological comparisons.

Throughout the corpus of Latin love elegy, the imaginary tombs envisaged by the elegists for their own personae and for other inhabitants of their poetic world display a striking tendency to take on the characteristic attributes and personalities of those interred within. The final resting-place of Propertius, for instance, that self-proclaimed acolyte of Callimachean miniaturism and exclusivity, is to be sequestered from the degrading attentions of the passing populace (Prop. 3.16.25–30) and crowned with the poet's laurel (2.13.33–4). What remains of his meagre form will rest in a ‘tiny little urn’ (paruula testa, 2.13.32) beneath a monument declaring the lover's slavery to a single passion (2.13.35–6), and the grave is to be attended, or so he hopes, by the object of that passion herself (3.16.23–4), or occasionally (though he is not so confident of this) by his patron Maecenas (2.1.71–8). Likewise the memorial designed by Ovid for Corinna's pet parrot - an imitatrix ales endowed with the most distinctive foibles of the elegiac tradition - in Amores 2.6, comprising a burial mound pro corpore magnus (2.6.59) topped with a tombstone described as exiguus (‘tiny’, 2.6.60; cf. Prop. 2.1.72, 2.13.33), exhibits an elegiac emphasis worthy of the parrot's human counterparts among Ovid's poetic predecessors.

How early did Christians make their presence felt in the ancient cemetery under the present church of San Sebastiano in Rome? In this present article I will argue that enigmatic paintings on the attic of a second-century tomb, the tomb of Clodius Hermes, whose subject-matter and provenance is much disputed, are best interpreted as Christian and as representing three Lukan parables from chapters 14–15 (the Lost Sheep, the Great Supper and the Prodigal Son). I will suggest they were the work of a Christian slave or freedman of the household, perhaps a member of the titulus Byzantis on the Clivus Scauri, seeking to win over those coming to honour their dead relatives in the cemetery. It was such a community that was responsible for choosing the site for the joint cult of Peter and Paul in 258. My methodology will be, in the light of scholarly disagreement over the interpretation of the paintings as Christian, (a) to demonstrate the logic of the three scenes as representing linked parables, the likely identity of their author(s) and their apologetic function, with literary support from Tertullian; (b) to show the lack of obvious pagan parallels and argue for the plausibility of parables in the light of their occurrence and function elsewhere; (c) to suggest that such evidence of a Christian presence makes more comprehensible the later choice of the site for the joint cult.

After the decipherment of Linear B and the attribution of phonetic values to most signs, several others still remain undeciphered. Any attempt to reconstruct their phonetic value is beset with difficulties. In this paper we will attempt to set out some basic principles for making reconstructions of undeciphered characters in well-studied scripts. We shall then look specifically at the range of evidence available and the various theories built around the decipherment of Linear B sign *56 trying to construct a strong argument in favour of one possible phonetic attribution. In doing so we shall comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the various arguments, thus illuminating the usefulness of such principles in making a secure attribution.

Principles for secure reconstructions

Most phonetic attributions at this advanced level of script decipherment, where most if not all the basic phonemes or groups of phonemes can be represented through the characters already deciphered, are supported by words that are spelt in two alternative ways, with the undeciphered character and with the deciphered one respectively, enabling the equation of the phonemic value of the two characters. The general principle that governs this decipherment method is that both ‘alternative spellings’ should clearly refer to the same thing. Another principle in this should be that the more complicated the situation, the safer the interpretation as there will be less potential for coincidence.

As Vout (2006) has recently reminded us in this journal, Johann Joachim Winckelmann's History of the art of antiquity (Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, 1st ed. 1764) is widely considered to be a foundational text in the history of art. Advertising itself as the first ‘systematic’ account of ancient art in relation to its geographical, social and political circumstances, Winckelmann filled out the well-known Plinian chronology of artists with a new analysis in terms of a succession of period styles, providing a satisfyingly scientific justification for the preference his contemporaries were beginning to accord to the art of the Greeks. Small wonder then that the book was lauded as a classic as soon as it appeared in Germany and was quickly translated into French and Italian. Nevertheless, it is also hardly surprising that this text, which promised nothing less than a ‘new paradigm’ for the study of antique culture, has always presented problems to its readers. These are partly caused by its magnitude of ambition. Titled, first and foremost, a ‘history’, Winckelmann's magnum opus in fact attempts to be many things: part systematic exploration of the social and physical factors that condition the development of all art; part impassioned disquisition on the essence of beauty; part antiquarian catalogue of the greatest surviving works of Greek and Roman art; part manual of aesthetic taste for aspiring contemporary artists. Few books since Winckelmann's History can have combined bold claims about their importance as historical scholarship with detailed instructions on how to draw a perfectly beautiful face.

The centrally-placed second stasimon of Hippolytus, following Phaedra's exit (to die) at 731, is one of the finest features of Euripides' finest play, with complex imagery. The wish to become a bird and to fly away to a mythical far-western paradise is in line with a familiar topos as an ‘out of this world escape-wish’, here vicarious – echoing (while also transmuting) the desires for concealment, escape and death expressed by Phaedra. ‘Bird-transformation’ and ‘flight to the far west’ are funereal motifs, notably developed (recently?) by Sophocles, and the image of Phaedra as a ‘vanished bird’ will recur at 828 . Then in the second pair of stanzas Phaedra's fate, with the predicted death by hanging, is integrally linked with the ‘white-winged Cretan ship’ that as a doubly bad ὄρνις brought her ‘through beating sea-waves’ from Crete to Athens, with ‘fastening of ropes’ for the ‘going ashore’ at the end of the voyage.

Much has been sufficiently discussed (most recently by Halleran); but many points of detail, in both pairs of stanzas, invite further consideration. I give a modifed text, after Diggle, with modifications also of his apparatus.