Greek κρατύς and cognates (κράτος, κρατερός, etc.) are related to Vedic krátu- ‘resolve’ and Avestan xratu- ‘[guiding] intellect’. The cumulative phraseological evidence supports this etymological proposal: in at least ten cases, Greek personal names and phrasemes exhibiting a cognate of κρατύς (that is, κράτος and compounds with first member κρατ[α]ι-) combine with terms whose Indo-Iranian linguistic cognates are joined with Vedic krátu- and Avestan xratu-. Furthermore, Indo-Iranian expressions, in which Vedic krátu- and its compounds are referred to a god as attributes, are structurally comparable to Greek κρατὺς Ἀργεϊφόντης. Since Ἀργεϊφόντης is likely to reflect ‘shining (cf. Greek φαίνω) with whiteness/brightness (ἀργει-)’, it is possible to identify Vedic phraseological matches for the Greek formula, namely expressions in which Vedic krátu- and its derivative krátumant- combine with the notion of ‘shining widely’, Vedic ví-bhā (Vedic bhā being a linguistic congener of φαίνω). The phraseological correspondence between Vedic krátu- … agní- ‘Agni, [endowed with] resolve’, and κρατὺς Ἀργεϊφόντης ‘Argeiphontes, endowed with superior might (κράτος)’ may be added to the dossier of common phraseology which the Greek god shares with the Old Indic fire-deity.

A recently published fragment of the fourth-century speechwriter Hyperides contains a speech for the prosecution of Timandrus, accused of mistreating four orphans in his care. This article draws out from the fragment three important contributions to our understanding of Athenian conceptions of family relationships, particularly the relationships of marginalized groups: girls and enslaved people. First, the fragment constitutes a rare portrayal of a relationship between two sisters. Second, the fragment clearly articulates the idea that affective family relationships are not a biological inevitability but arise from socialization, a departure from other fourth-century thinking. Third, the speaker applies this statement to enslaved people, claiming that the separation of children from close family members is so cruel that even slave-traders avoid it in their sale of human beings. Though this claim seems to have been untrue except in a very limited sense, its place in the argumentation of the speech assumes broad recognition of the existence and value of family relationships between enslaved people, vivid evidence of the paradox that slave societies recognized the humanity of people they simultaneously insisted were subhuman.

In a passage from Apollodorus’ Against Neaera ([Dem.] 59.113), the manuscripts have unanimously transmitted the feminine plural genitive of ‘citizen’, πολιτίδων. Since Reiske's 1770 emendation, however, editions of the text have printed the considerably more common masculine form, πολιτῶν. Emphasizing the importance of female citizenship in Athens, this note proposes restoring the manuscript reading of the text.

Arrian's account of Alexander's brief time at Ephesus (Anab. 1.17.10–12) is shot through with political and factional violence, but he nevertheless concludes that Alexander received acclaim for what he did in the city. But what did Alexander actually do at Ephesus? Arrian offers a list of events that historians have traditionally interpreted as connected to Macedonian intervention in Asia Minor before indicating that Alexander put an end to the violence. This article offers a new reading of this passage by situating these events in the context of fourth-century Ephesus to show how Alexander's actions responded to the local conditions that he encountered.

This article presents texts recovered by post-processing of multispectral images from the fifth- or sixth-century underwriting of the palimpsest Codex Climaci Rescriptus. Texts identified include the Anonymous II Proemium to Aratus’ Phaenomena, parts of Eratosthenes’ Catasterisms, Aratus’ Phaenomena lines 71–4 and 282–99 and previously unknown text, including some of the earliest astronomical measurements to survive in any Greek manuscript. Codex Climaci Rescriptus also contains at least three astronomical drawings. These appear to form part of an illustrated manuscript, with considerable textual value not merely on the basis of its age but also of its readings. The manuscript undertexts show significant overlap with the Φ Edition, postulated as ancestor of the various Latin Aratea.

The fragments of a hexameter poem about Dionysus recently discovered in a palimpsest (Sin. Ar. NF 66) reveal some different faces of Dionysus, including an Adonis-figure at the heart of a dispute between two goddesses (Persephone and Aphrodite), and a personified wine-god, Oinos, threatened by the machinations of his enemies in the court of Zeus. These palimpsest texts help to illuminate some of the allusions to the early life of the god that have long puzzled scholars, especially in some of the early Christian apologists and the collection of Orphic Hymns.

This paper argues that Lycophron's Alexandra follows earlier texts in presenting challenges to Agamemnon's power as metaphorical re-enactments of primordial theogonic conflicts between Zeus and the forces of chaos. The Alexandra figures Agamemnon as Zeus and portrays Achilles, Clytemnestra and Cassandra as chthonic monsters opposed to the Olympian order. Employing intertexts with epic and tragedy, the poem highlights these figures’ symbolic antagonism with Agamemnon–Zeus and their connections to each other. It presents a radically resystematized vision of the cosmos that champions the chthonic, the disordered and the feminine over the Olympian, the ordered and the masculine. Cassandra uses this backdrop to reinterpret her own story, inserting herself into the cosmogonic narrative as a resister of Olympian patriarchy who triumphs over masculine domination.

All modern critics have read verses 128–36 of Pseudo-Scymnus’ iambic Periodos to Nicomedes (c.133–110/109 b.c.e.) as a description of the personal autopsies of the author. However, close analysis of both the literary dynamics of the poem and the syntax of the lacunose text that precedes this passage shows that this cannot be the case. This article proposes that Timaeus of Tauromenium (c.350–260 b.c.e.) is a superior candidate for the referent of these lines, and offers a coherent approach to emending the manifestly corrupt text. This reinterpretation makes better sense of the extant text of the Periodos, and allows these verses to be read as a second-century witness to Timaeus’ autoptic prowess.

Scholars have generally underestimated the level of Roman involvement in Africa in the period between the annexation of Carthage in 146 b.c. and Caesar's victory at Thapsus in 46 b.c., and the land in Africa which the Romans annexed has been conventionally called public land (ager publicus). This paper analyses the surviving text of the African provisions of the epigraphic lex agraria of 111 b.c. and notes that the term ager publicus is not attested in the provincial section of the law. The land in Africa appears simply as ager in Africa and the term ager publicus is confined exclusively to Italy in the law of 111. However, Cicero's references to Rullus’ agrarian proposal in 64/3 b.c. in the De lege agraria suggest that the term ager publicus was used to qualify land existing outside Italy in Rullus’ proposal. This paper argues that the concept of ager publicus as opposed to private land developed in Africa between 111 and 63 b.c., and that this was linked to privatization of ager in Africa in this period. The results of this study suggest a high degree of Roman exploitation of African land prior to the Caesarean and Augustan colonies in the 40s b.c.

According to Plutarch (Sert. 7.1–2) and Sallust (Hist. 1.83–4), a certain P. Calpurnius Lanarius killed L. Livius Salinator, a member of Sertorius’ staff in charge of military operations in the Pyrenees, in the early stages of the Sertorian War (82–72 b.c.). Through the analysis of the verb δολοφονέω in Plutarch's and St. Jerome's use of Sallust's Histories, this article seeks to demonstrate that Lanarius was an exile of the Sullan regime who treacherously assassinated his superior Salinator. The article puts forward the suggestion—not hitherto considered—that Lanarius was one of those proscribed.

This article addresses the view that Cicero's Pro Roscio Amerino contains ‘criticism’ of Sulla (the ‘anti-Sulla’ thesis). It argues that there is no evidence of criticism, that Cicero had no incentive to criticize Sulla, and that his attack is aimed solely against Chrysogonus. In particular, the article draws attention to the methodological implications of the ‘anti-Sulla’ thesis, arguing that it is unsound to second-guess Cicero's meaning, to project ‘sarcasm’ onto his words, or to suggest post euentum rewrites; these views, it is argued, owe more to preconceived scholarly notions of Sulla as a tyrant than to actual indications in the text. In addition, the notion that the speech was ‘courageous’ or ‘political’ is challenged, with emphasis being placed on the identity of the nobiles supporting Cicero: these Sullans had nothing to fear from Sulla but, equally, there is little reason to suppose that they were trying to attack him.1

This article applies an intersectional approach to Roman invective (and praise) to elucidate how those at the centre of Roman power exploited discriminatory and laudatory ideologies relating to intersections of identity to sway a Roman jury. Analysing the depiction of an unnamed woman in the Pro Scauro shows how Cicero plays upon normalized prejudices to bias the jury against ista Sarda. These internalized prejudices could also be utilized to discredit women with privileged intersectional identities, as demonstrated by Cicero's portrayal of Clodia and Sassia in the Pro Caelio and the Pro Cluentio, a process that helps reify the marginalization of certain identities.

Critognatus’ speech has long been recognized as heavily by Caesar's hand, although few have questioned whether any speech was delivered by the Arvernian noble at all; and it has long puzzled readers with its contradictory manner and fierce criticism of Rome. But the etymologizing wordplay across several languages demonstrated below (along with other distinctly comical elements) renders it more than likely that both the speech and the speaker are products of the author's imagination. In its Nabokovian mode, it offers a glimpse of Caesar the linguist and introduces a playfulness into the dire situation before Alesia that suggests that the ‘Barley-Muncher’ and his speech should be reconsidered in a different, more humorous light.

An argument in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations (Tusc. 1.39–49) defends psychic immortality by reference to the physical constitution of the soul. This article argues that this ‘Physical Argument’ should be interpreted as a reception of Plato's doctrine of the soul within the philosophical paradigm of the Hellenistic era. After analysing the argument, it is shown that Cicero's proof recasts elements of Plato's Phaedo, in particular the kinship between the soul and the heavens and the soul's essentially contemplative nature, within a corporealist cosmology. The article also argues that Cicero formulates his argument to oppose the Stoic view that the soul's survival after death is only temporary. The Physical Argument emerges as a modernization of Platonic thought, putting Plato into dialogue with contemporary Hellenistic philosophy. Cicero, too, emerges as a more adept philosophical author than is often supposed.

This article proposes and interprets a previously undiscussed connection between Horace's Carmen 2.15 and the description of the Corycian gardener at Virgil's Georgics 4.125–48. It argues that this allusion to Virgil sharpens the moral pessimism of Horace's ode. It first considers the circumstantial, general and formal elements connecting these two poems; it then considers how the model of the Corycian gardener brings further point and nuance to the moralizing message of Carmen 2.15 and the way in which this allusion is meaningfully echoed at Carmen 3.16.

Nothing is known of the poet Grattius except that he was a contemporary of Ovid. However, certain peculiarities in the text of his Cynegetica suggest that he wrote for public performance, that the poem was presented at ludi scaenici where dancers and singers were performing too, that the Palatine temple of Apollo was probably where the event took place, and that the most likely occasion for it was one of the ‘quinquennial’ games celebrating the defeat of Cleopatra.

This article takes as its starting point the frequency with which Ovid refers to his earlier works in his Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. Alongside his treatment of the Metamorphoses in the exile poetry, it is suggested that Ovid refers, on a number of occasions, to his Fasti and the progress he is making on it. He does so by using the incipit of his calendar poem, Tempora; this term is sometimes combined with signa (‘stars’), which are also mentioned in the opening couplet of the Fasti. It is proposed that Ovid's attitude toward his Fasti changes over the course of his exile, during which time he is, at various junctures, editing his calendar, and that some of these changes are discernible in the exile poetry; they result in part from his entertaining the possibility of using his Fasti as leverage in securing a mitigation of his punishment. Poems discussed in detail are Tristia 1.1, 1.7, 2.547–52, 5.3; Epistulae ex Ponto 2.1, 4.8.

This article argues that the text of the Dirae and the Lydia is even more corrupt than current editions give reason to believe, and attempts to emend about a dozen passages.

This article argues that the encounter between Andromache and Ulysses in Seneca's Troades engages with the genre of declamation to juxtapose two different discourses surrounding torture: one focussed on torture's connection to truth, the other on its connection to tyranny. It describes how the Greek general Ulysses, convinced of the danger of letting the Trojan prince Astyanax live, threatens his mother Andromache with physical torture in order to ascertain the truth of Astyanax's whereabouts. However, Ulysses is countered by Andromache's rhetoric, through which, the article shows, she depicts herself as the archetypal heroic victim of a tyrant. It discusses how Ulysses innovates with an effective psychological torture in response. The article sets the scenario within the broader rhetorical context and demonstrates how it reflects debate among the contemporary elite about the necessity of, and the risks from, the rising use of torture by the Julio-Claudian emperors, a debate which resonates in the modern era.

This article offers a new interpretation of the theme of servile ‘crime and punishment’ in the Cena Trimalchionis. Focussing on scenes that directly involve the dinner host, it argues that the domestic justice system that they flesh out adds nuance to the satirical bite of the episode. An initial overview of the instances of ‘crime and punishment’ involving enslaved characters demonstrates how these scenes parade not just Trimalchio's wealth but his masterly power overreaching that of private domini. While previous scholarship understood Trimalchio's questionable chastisements as indicative of this parvenu's pretensions, this article shows that they cumulatively develop an image of a jumbled execution of justice—brought to life through the presence of state functionaries, judicial infrastructures and penalties normally executed by the state. The climax of this image is hidden in plain sight, in a hitherto underappreciated scene involving purple wool (54.3–5), discussion of which proves in conclusion that the instances of servile ‘crime and punishment’ craftily build a subplot that plays on the freedman's imperial authority. The imperial matrix already recognized in several dimensions of the Cena in earlier scholarship unmistakably characterizes Trimalchio's domestic jurisdiction too; arbitrary and unfair, it offers biting comment on the state of Roman justice during the Principate with the progressive channelling of justice through the sole authority of the emperor. In sum, the servile ‘crime and punishment’ theme works as a fierce attack on the imperial government, encouraging broader reconsideration of the target of Petronius’ satirical pen.