This paper focusses on two lines in what counts as our best available literary source for the study of religious life in the Roman Near East. In paragraph 5 of Περὶ τῆς Συρίης Θεοῦ (On the Syrian Goddess), a treatise professing to describe the temple and cult at Hierapolis, a place in northern Syria also known by its indigenous names of Manbog or Bambyce, the author writes:

The recent paper of J. Harward (Classical Quarterly, XXII., pp. 143–154) on the seventh and eighth Platonic Epistles deserves an answer. He suggests that Plato's statement at the beginning of the seventh Epistle, that he had received a communication from the friends of Dion, is a literary fiction. Supposing then that this suggestion is correct, he maintains the view that Plato, having no knowledge of the death of Dion's son before his father's assassination in 354 B.C., refers to him as Hipparinus without qualification in the seventh Epistle (324a), and as Dion's son, giving no name, in the eighth Epistle (355e).

Over a hundred instances of the word ὕμνος from extant archaic poetry demonstrate that the Greek hymn was understood broadly as a song of praise. The majority of these instances comes from Pindar, who regularly uses the term to describe his poems celebrating athletic victors. Indeed, Pindar and his contemporaries saw the ὕμνος as a powerful vehicle for praising gods, heroes, men and their achievements—often in service of an ideological agenda. Writing a century later Plato used the term frequently and with much the same range. A survey of his usage reveals instances of ὕμνοι for gods, daimones, heroes, ancestors, leading citizens, noble deeds, sites and landscapes. Despite abundant evidence of Plato's own practice, studies of the Greek hymn posit an extreme narrowing of the genre in the classical period and cite the philosopher as the sole witness to, if not the originator of, this development. Two passages in particular, one from the Republic and one from the Laws, are seen to support the claim that by the fourth century b.c.e. the term ὕμνος refers exclusively to songs for gods. In Republic Book 10, we find the memorable edict on poetic censorship: ‘But we must know that of poetry only ὕμνοι for the gods and ἐγκώμια for the good must be admitted into our city.’ Laws Book 3 offers what appears to be an even more straightforward pronouncement: ‘Back then our music was divided according to its various types and arrangements; and a certain type of song was prayers to the gods, and these were called by the name ὕμνοι.’ From these two statements has arisen the consensus that Plato saw a divine recipient as the defining feature of the ὕμνος and, moreover, that this position reflects the communis opinio from at least the fourth century b.c.e. onward.

In the Politics, Aristotle maintains, contrary to his predecessors, that there is a distinctive mode of authority that husbands should exercise over their wives. He even coins a word for it: γαμιϰή, ‘the marital art’ or ‘marital rule’ (Pol. 1.3, 1253b8–10; 1.12, 1259a37–9). Marital rule is supposed to differ from the authority that fathers have over their children and from the kind of rule that citizens exercise over one another. Yet it is not clear whether there is any conceptual space between political and paternal rule for marital rule to occupy. Where fathers rule and children are ruled, citizens take turns ruling and being ruled. Husbands, however, either share their rule with their wives, or they do not. If they do not, then marital rule seems indistinct from paternal rule; if they do, then it seems indistinct from political rule. To add to the confusion, Aristotle says that husbands properly rule their wives politically, but without alternating in positions of ruling and being ruled. On its face, this idea seems flatly contradictory. Political rule just is shared, reciprocal rule, and so if the husband rules permanently and his wife is merely ruled, then his rule cannot be political. So Aristotle's own description of marital rule appears inconsistent, and in any case it is difficult to see how marital rule could have the distinctive character that he insists it does.

While it is no secret that Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica explores civil-war themes at great length, the conflicts arising on the island of Peuce between the Colchians and the Argonauts and within the Argonautic party itself in the epic's final book (8.217–467) have been overlooked in critical studies of Valerian civil war. This article argues that Valerius presents the conflicts on Peuce as examples of civil war—emphasizing the bonds of kinship between the conflicting parties and illustrating effects of this discord using imagery of stasis and cosmic dissolution associated with civil war in the wider Latin literary tradition—and thus invites reflection on the development and manifestation of internecine strife within the Argonautica.

Two herdsmen meet and bicker; bargain over a stake; duel in balladeering; and ballot their umpire for a final decision. The first half of their poem dramatizes the process of challenge and defiance from which the bout materializes; the result is a draw. Critics attempt what none of its three herdsmen try out loud, namely to solve the pair of riddles with which the song-contest ends, before the judge pronounces the result. Solutions range between putative attribution to the bucolic minds of the riddlers, and ascription to their creator, the intellectual, urban, bookish, Hellenizing poetaster, who here, in any event, dares a touch of rustic needling that he precisely did not find in his studies in Theocritea, which include no riddles. Solution has generally seemed the self-evident challenge to scholar-readers.

In the publication of their second journal of archaeological travels in Cilicia, Bean and Mitford included the text of an unusual inscription from the site of ancient Syedra. The text has previously been discussed by Louis Robert, by the Hungarian historian of piracy Egon Maróti, and also by H. W. Parke. Although all four made suggestions about the date and interpretation of the inscription, no firm conclusions were reached.

Among the many points of interest in N.G. Wilson's admirable new text of Aristophanes is his handling of the closing scene of Lysistrata, and in particular the question of the heroine's role in that scene. In the new OCT we find the short speech 1273–8 ascribed to Lysistrata, while the apparatus notes ‘legato tribuunt quidam’ (in other words, to one of the Athenian males already on stage). The song which follows (1279–90) is also given to Lysistrata, but the apparatus comments ‘quis canat incertum est.’ Finally Lysistrata is presumed to speak the single line 1295 inviting the Spartan ambassador to sing a fresh song.

Lucian's Hippias or The Bath, traditionally considered to be a straight-faced encomium of a historical architect and real-life bath-house of the Antonine period, is now often judged to be a work of satire, though what exactly is being satirized has remained elusive. This article argues that the architect ‘Hippias’ is closely modelled on Plato's caricature of the sophist Hippias of Elis in the Hippias Minor, and that his bath-house is a comic extrapolation from the sophist's home-made oil-flask and strigil. Lucian's Hippias should be read as a parody of contemporary prose encomia of public buildings.

The theme of the second declamation of Calpurnius Flaccus is ‘Matrona Aethiopem peperit. Arguitur adulterii’. In one of the excerpts (ed. L. Håkanson [Stuttgart, 1978], pp. 2, 6–10), the accuser is arguing that for a white woman with a white husband to produce a black child is certain proof of adultery, for individual races have fixed physical characteristics to distinguish them. I give the text as argued for by W. S. Watt (Eranos 94 [1996], 123).

On 15 March 46 Claudius published at Baiae an edict enfranchising the Anauni, Tulliasses and Sinduni. The citizenship of these tribespeople in the Italian Alps had previously been uncertain: they were attached to the nearby municipium of Tridentum, which already enjoyed Roman citizenship, but were themselves no more than de facto Roman citizens. Claudius now confirmed their legal status as Romans.

The new historical inscription from Epidaurus has provided us with a unique piece of documentary evidence on Greek federal constitutions. In this article I propose to study the principal points of constitutional interest contained in it. I have based my text on that of Professor Wilcken and M. Kougeas; and I follow Professor Wilcken and Mr. Tarn in identifying the new document with the constitution which Demetrius Poliorcetes imposed upon his pan-Hellenic League in 303–2 B.C.

In the first part of this paper an attempt was made to show by various considerations that the second Suasoria of cod. Vat. lat. 3864 cannot be the work of Sallust. There still remains, however, a final argument which, partly because through some mischance it has never been elaborated before and partly because it leads to a slightly more definite conclusion than the foregoing, deserves separate and fuller statement. The critic whose name is most closely associated with the view that these two Suasoriae are not by a single hand is Hellwig; and though his work is now generally ignored—to some extent perhaps because he omitted the more convincing reasons for the theory he was urging—a fresh examination of the evidence may suggest that, so long as he is merely combating the assumption of single authorship, Hellwig is on the right lines. After that, unfortunately, he goes completely astray: in trying to prove that the second Suasoria is Sallustian and the first an inferior imitation, he is wide of the mark. Had he only taken a hint already available in Schenkl's review of Jordan and backed the first as authentic, he might have saved his successors much controversy.

This line has long been a crux in the interpretation of Pindar, and there is still no consensus on its syntax or meaning. The conclusions reached by Stefan Radt (Mnem. n.s 19 (1966), 148–74) and Richard Stoneman (Quad. Urb. 31 (1979), 65–70) in the most recent studies of the problem are in all respects at variance. The cardinal difficulty of0 the line is the sense of , which must be elucidated before one can attempt to disentangle the syntax. I believe that previous commentators have overlooked or misapplied crucial parallel passages because of their preconceptions about the nature of the metaphor here.

The text of each passage commented on is that of Housman except where otherwise stated. The following editions of Lucan or other works concerned with him are indicated by the scholar's name only: (i) Text: A. E. Housman (Oxford, 1926). (ii) Text with commentary: F. Oudendorp (Leiden, 1728); P. Burman (Leiden, 1740); C. H. Weise (Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1835); C. E. Haskins (London, 1887); R. J. Getty, Book 1 (Cambridge, 1940).