The ‘turgid archaisms’ of Paul the Silentiary's style have ensured that his two hexameter Ekphrases, describing the Emperor Justinian's sixth-century church of S. Sophia in Constantinople and its ambo, have lately attracted little interest, except among art historians who seek to extract nuggets of architectural information. On the other hand, the eighty or so pagan epigrams by Paul which are preserved in the Palatine and Planudean Anthologies have received attention in recent years both because of their literary interest and for the social and historical information which they contain. In my opinion, the much more substantial Ekphrases likewise deserve to be examined as literary and historical documents. The title Ekphrasis disguises the historical interest of the works: unlike the majority of the epigrams, these poems are no mere literary exercises, but official, public works, undoubtedly commissioned by Justinian, and delivered on specific and identifiable occasions. Only the central portion of the major poem describing S. Sophia comprises technical architectural ekphrasis; this is preceded and followed by panegyrical material appropriate to the occasion of recitation which together takes up almost half the total length of the poem (462 lines out of 1029). Here the Emperor Justinian, patron of the church, and Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, are praised, and the events leading up to the occasion of the poem sketched. This topical part of the work provides evidence for the ceremonial which accompanied the poem's recitation and demonstrates the type of imperial propaganda pertinent to the end of the reign of Justinian. Moreover, an explanation for a limited number of stylistic flaws in a work which, by contemporary standards at least, is of high literary quality, may lie in the recognition that Paul was obliged to complete his poem in time for a specific occasion. It is with these three occasional aspects of the work that I shall here be concerned.

In the second Nekyia Hermes conducts to Hades the souls of the suitors slain by Odysseus:

Even in antiquity the identification of the Λευκ⋯ς πέτρη was a conundrum. It would seem that no ancient Greek scholar could plausibly locate this rock. According to the scholion in the codex Venetus Marcianus 613, one of the many reasons Aristarchos gave for athetising the whole of the second Nekyia was ⋯λλ' οὐδ⋯ ἔοικεν εἰς Ἅιδου λευκ⋯ν εἶναι πέτραν. Certainly Hades had πέτραι, but traditionally they were ‘black-hearted’ or ‘blood-red’, not λευκαί. As an example of the lengths to which scholiasts were driven to justify the epithet Λευκάς, the scholion in the British Library codex Harley 5674 has the unhelpful explanation οἱ γ⋯ρ νεκροί ⋯κλείψαντος το⋯ αἵματος λευκοειδεῖς ⋯ρ⋯νται. Eustathios' attempt is not much better; he writes ἰστέον δ⋯ ὅτι Λευκάδα μέν πέτραν ⋯ μ⋯θος πρ⋯ς τῷ Ἅιδῃ πλάττει ἢ κατ⋯ ⋯ντίɸρασιν, μ⋯λας γ⋯ρ ⋯κεῖ σκότος, ἢ κα⋯ δι⋯ τούς ⋯σχάτους τ⋯ς ⋯κεῖ γ⋯ς τόπους, οὓς εἰκ⋯ς τ⋯ν ᾓλιον ἔτι διαλευκαίνειν δυόμενον. At Od. 10.515, in commenting on the πέτρη where the Pyriphlegethôn and the Kôkytos flow into the Acherôn, he ventures the suggestion ἴσως δ⋯ εἴη ἂν αὕτη ⋯ ⋯ν τοῖς μετ⋯ τα⋯τα λεχθησομένη Λευκ⋯ς πέτρα, which is obviously a mere guess. It would be a waste of time to record the conjectural attempts of modern scholars to locate the Λευκ⋯ς πέτρη in Hades, for if the ‘Rock Leukas’ was across the Ocean, near the ‘Gates of the Sun’ and the ‘Land of Dreams’, we cannot reasonably hope to identify it.

Little is known about phratries in ancient Athens. The few surviving pieces of evidence, both literary and epigraphical, do not provide an adequate basis for a convincing reconstruction of most details. It may be possible, however, to say something more about the number and size, even if not about the organization and function, of phratries in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.

The purpose of this note is to show how IG II2.2344 is relevant to the question of phratries. It is a list of twenty names with patronymics, comprising three families and two isolated individuals, under the heading,

Δι⋯ς ⋮ Φρατρίο ⋮ Ἀθην⋯ας ⋮ Φρα[τρίας] | οἵδε ɸρ⋯τερες

The inscription is in the form of a dedication, and after Δι⋯ς ⋮ Φρατρίο ⋮ Ἀθην⋯ας ⋮ Φρα[τρίας] one should understand στήλη or ἱερ⋯ στήλη. There are several other examples of this form of dedication, though none is exactly parallel. The stele was most likely set up in the sanctuary of the phratry, and that would explain why a list of phratry members should be in the form of a dedication. In the absence of other criteria, the inscription is dated by letter forms to the early fourth century.

Surprisingly enough this inscription has been either ignored or curtly dismissed in the literature concerning the number and nature of Athenian phratries. In 1902 Alfred Körte concluded that this list of twenty names constituted the total membership of a phratry. But in 1910 Anton von Premerstein maintained that the list was only of a single thiasos within a phratry. We know that by the beginning of the fourth century phratries were subdivided into units called thiasoi, which are to be distinguished from the private religious associations of the same name. Von Premerstein argued that the constant appeals of the orators to the testimony of phratry members render it very unlikely that one phratry could be so small as to have only twenty members, even if there were more than twelve phratries altogether.

At W.D. 202–12 Hesiod relates his αἶνος for the edification of the recalcitrant βασιλ⋯ες, who must themselves admit the truth of the fable's moral (ɸρονέουσι κα⋯ αὐτοῖς). A hawk has seized a nightingale, and crushes her cries of misery by saying that she is in the claws of one who is πολλ⋯ν ⋯ρείων and who is therefore at liberty to dispense with her as he pleases: anyone who tries to resist κρείσσονες is mad, for he has no chance of winning and merely adds physical pain to the shame of defeat.

Just what were the βασιλ⋯ες to have made of this? Hesiod's most recent editor (and champion) claims that ‘Hesiod does not manage to make it [the αἶνος] into a lesson for them [the kings]’, and ‘can only proceed by saying “Well, don't you behave like that” (213, with Perses replacing the incorrigible kings)’.

A general consensus has emerged among twentieth-century commentators on the Aeneid that pater ipse…superum must be taken together and understood as referring to the father of the gods and not to Mars, sire of Romulus. What remains a subject of debate is the meaning of honor here and its particular association with Jupiter. Does it betoken the abstraction itself or a concrete manifestation of it? Austin, following Donatus, opts for the former alternative (‘probably no more than “majesty”’), Norden and R. D. Williams for the latter. Of these the first finds a reference to the Zeus-given sceptre of kings, the second to Jove's thunderbolt.

The language of the passage argues in favour of metonymy for two reasons. First, we expect Anchises, when showing off Romulus, to adhere to the pattern he has already set in the two portions of his parade which have preceded. In the case of the initial hero, Silvius, we attend largely to genealogical background (760–6). The second segment, a group made up of Procas, Capys, Numitor and Aeneas Silvius, elicits from Aeneas' father a series of exclamations on the valour of their res gestae (767–77). Yet each also has a tangible symbol of martial virtus that distinguishes him.

In a recent note, D. Braund has challenged my identification of the Pollio (Josephus, Antiquities 15.343) at whose home in Rome Herod's sons Alexander and Aristobulus stayed in 22 b.c. as Gaius Asinius Pollio, the famous consul of 40 b.c., who was a close friend of Julius Caesar and to whom Virgil dedicated his Fourth Eclogue. Braund's argument rests upon five grounds. (1) If this Pollio were a man of the stature of Asinius Pollio, we would expect Josephus to make his identity clear and not to describe him solely as one of Herod's most devoted friends (⋯νδρ⋯ς τ⋯ν μάλιστα σπουδασάντων περ⋯ τ⋯ν Ἡρώδου ɸιλίαν). (2) Josephus' reference to Pollio here is different from the definite references to Asinius Pollio elsewhere in Josephus, where he is referred to as Asinius (Ant. 14.138) or Gaius Asinius Pollio (Ant. 14.389). (3) In the latter passage his name is spelled Πωλίωνος, whereas the name of the host of Herod's sons is spelled Πολλίωνος. (4) When Herod sent two other sons to Rome, they stayed ‘with a certain Jew’ (Ant. 17.20), and hence it seems likely that the two other sons likewise stayed with a Jew. (5) Asinius' role in the elevation by the Roman Senate of Herod to the kingship of Judaea was no greater than that of any other magistrate.