Scholarly interest in epiteichismos has, for various reasons, been centred almost exclusively upon the Athenian occupation of Pylos and the Spartan occupation of Decelea. In occupying Pylos the Athenians were adopting epiteichismos for the first time, as were the Spartans in occupying Decelea. Both enterprises were on a considerable scale and deeply influenced the course of the Peloponnesian war, though neither so decisively as had initially seemed likely. Another source of interest in them is their link with the perennial problem of speeches in Thucydides. The Thucydidean versions of speeches delivered shortly before the outbreak of the Archidamian war include references to the possibility that epiteichismos might be attempted by both sides (1. 122. 1; 142. 3–4), although in fact Athens did not do so until 425, and then partly by accident, and Sparta not until much later. These puzzling references have been thought by some scholars to be anachronistic, while others have disputed this inference, maintaining that even before the war military leaders had in mind the possibility of epiteichismos. A similar if less vexed problem arises from the fact that the occupation of Decelea, vigorously recommended by Alcibiades in the Thucydidean version of his speech at Sparta at the end of 415 and apparently accepted with enthusiasm (6. 93. 1–2), was not implemented until the spring of 413.

The aim of this paper is to propose a new and more satisfactory context for a fragment from one of Ennius’ tragedies preserved in Cicero and discussed by a late scholiast on the Ciceronian passage. It will be shown that the scholiast, or more likely the source upon which he drew, had in front of him a bit more of the Ennian passage than the partial line preserved in Cicero and that the scholiast drew a false conclusion concerning the identity of one of the interlocutors from the way in which one speaker addressed the other. Previous scholars have sought to remove the inconsistency in the scholiast's sketch of the scene either by changing the locale of the dialogue or by correcting the scholiast's identification of the out-of-place speaker. It will be shown that a more productive line of investigation is to seek to discover the underlying cause of the scholiast's apparent error. The identification of the cause not only sheds light on the fate of Ennius’ text in Late Antiquity but permits us to restore, by means of conjecture, an additional word to the corpus of Ennius’ tragedies, a word that is a favourite of his in the Annales, but until now has not been attested in a Roman tragedy before the age of Seneca.

Among our earliest extant references to the word ‘philosophize’ is an unfamiliar one, from the mythographer Herodorus of Pontic Heraclea, whose son Bryson associated with Plato and Aristotle. A Byzantine compiler quotes Herodorus, probably from his book on Heracles, as saying that his hero ‘philosophized until death’ (φιλοσοφήσας μέχρι θανάτου, FGrHist 31 F 14). This is a surprising claim in light of the fifth/fourth-century b.c. view of Heracles as long-toiling but not intellectual. Euripides' Licymnius characterizes him as ‘unimpressive and unadorned, good to the greatest degree, confined from all sophia in action, unversed in talking’ (φαῦλον ἄκομψον, τὰ μέγιστ᾽ ἀγαθόν, | πᾶσαν ἐν ἔργῳ περιτεμνόμενον | σοφίαν, λέσχης ἀτρίβωνα, fr. 473 TGF). Heracles is thus explicitly distinguished from those who strive for dialectical understanding or theoretical knowledge.

In March 2005 a rescue excavation uncovered a spectacular new epigraphic find from Thebes. Now on display in the Archaeological Museum of Thebes, a column drum 0.41 m in height has inscribed on it two identical epigrams, one (the older one) written vertically in Boeotian script and a second (later) Ionian copy written horizontally on the other side. Nikolaos Papazarkadas published the editio princeps of the epigram in 2014, using both inscriptions to create a composite text. As Papazarkadas realized, the column drum, which has a chi-shaped orifice at one end meant to hold a stationary object, at one point displayed a ‘shining shield’ (φαεννὰν | [ἀσπ]ίδα, lines 3–4) that Herodotus had seen in the temple of Apollo Ismenius in Thebes. Moreover, this shield was interpreted by Herodotus (relying on the language of the inscription and likely on the commentary of temple staff) as having been dedicated by the Lydian king Croesus to the hero Amphiaraus, when he was ‘testing’ the various oracles in Greece in order to decide on a course of action against his rival Cyrus of Persia.

Hellenistic ruler cult has generated much scholarly interest and an enormous bibliography; yet, existing studies have tended to focus on the communal character of the phenomenon, whereas the role of private individuals (if any) in ruler worship has attracted little attention. This article seeks to redress this neglect. The starting point of the present study is an inscription Διὶ | καὶ βασιλεῖ | Φιλίππωι Σωτῆρι on a rectangular marble plaque from Maroneia in Thrace. Since the text was published in 1991, it has been disputed whether the king in question is Philip II or Philip V of Macedon. The question is further complicated by a newly published text from Thasos, plausibly restored to read [Β]ασιλέως Φιλί[ππου] | σωτῆρος. The identity of the king in these texts is a matter of great historical significance: if Philip II is meant, not only would this impinge on the question of his divinity, he would also be the first king called Sōtēr, thus providing the earliest attestation of a cult epithet spreading from the traditional gods to monarchs. The first part of this article will re-examine the king's identity by studying these two texts in connection with other dedications similarly addressed to a ‘King Philip’ and apparently set up by private individuals. The second will move beyond Macedonia: it will draw on potential parallels from the Attalid, Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms and explore the possible contexts in which individuals set up similar objects. It will be demonstrated that, while there is evidence from other Hellenistic kingdoms of seemingly ‘private’ dedications set up according to civic or royal commands, in Macedonia the piecemeal and isolated nature of the evidence does not permit a conclusive answer. But whether set up spontaneously or by civic command, these objects provide important evidence for the interaction between the public and the private aspects of ruler worship.

A conjecture made by Lambinus in 1565 proposes replacement of difficilest (present in the three authoritative manuscripts O, Q and V) at 3.361 with desiperest. Although commonly printed until the end of the nineteenth century (including in Lachmann's famous edition and Heinze's edition of Book 3, but excluding Wakefield's and Munro's), in the twentieth century the conjecture fell out of favour, both in editions of the entire De rerum natura (DRN) and of Book 3; the manuscript reading of difficilest has been kept by editors since 1900: Duff, Bailey, Martin, Kenney, Müller, Smith and Brown. But with this consensus there are problems, and there are several reasons for preferring Lambinus' conjecture.

As they appear in E.J. Kenney's Cambridge edition, these lines are:

iam triplex animi est igitur natura reperta,
nec tamen haec sat sunt ad sensum cuncta creandum,
nil horum quoniam recipit mens posse creare
sensiferos motus et mens quaecumque volutat.        240
quarta quoque his igitur quaedam natura necessest
adtribuatur …

The centrality of sacrifice in ancient life has elicited a steady stream of scholarship on the subject that continues unabated. Treatments of the ritual in the works of the philosophical authors of this period and, in particular, within Late Platonism are less prevalent. The occasional references to θυσία in modern studies tend to be chronologically front-loaded and to focus primarily on Porphyry of Tyre (c. 234 c.e.–c. 305 c.e.) and Iamblichus of Chalcis (third–fourth centuries c.e.), two of the initial philosophers in the tradition. The official resurgence of the practice under the emperor Julian (reigned 360–3 c.e.) in the wake of the limitations on and outright bans of the practice by Constantine and his sons, along with the brief explication of sacrifice by Julian's comrade, Sallustius, have also received some scholarly attention. The fortunes of the ritual in the Platonic Academy of fifth-century Athens have come under even less scrutiny. This essay seeks to make its own contribution to the study of sacrifice in Late Platonic philosophy.

In recent years, the starting-dates of both the Historiae and the Annales of Tacitus have been criticized. In the case of the Historiae, Hainsworth has claimed that Tacitus chose to start his narrative with the events of A.D. 69, because for various reasons the events of A.D. 68 were an embarrassment to him. Syme has suggested, in the case of the Annales, that by starting with the accession of Tiberius, Tacitus has barred himself from a proper understanding of that principate.

Euboulos' 'αγκελ⋯ων is represented by only four fragments (frr. 1–3 frr. 1–4 Hunter), all culled from Athenaeus, which tell us nothing about the plot of the play or about the identity of its titular character. R. L. Hunter, in his recent commentary on Euboulos, discusses at length the name 'αγκελ⋯ων and concludes that it could belong to either (1) a humble and poor man; (2) ‘a character from folklore notorious for sexual relations with his mother’ ; or (3)’ a wily slave such as those foreshadowed in Aristophanes and familiar from New Comedy'. In view of our ignorance of the play's plot, each of these possibilities has an equal claim to our consideration. I believe, however, that the context in which the fragments are embedded in Athenaeus allows us to refine our understanding of the name even further.