This article adopts a revisionist approach to the intertextual relationship between Statius’ Thebaid and Silius Italicus’ Punica, two contemporary Flavian epics that interact with one another (first century a.d.). As such, this is not only an excellent illustration of intertextuality in action but also a prime example of how texts can be read in either direction depending on which takes precedence. Since both epics overlap in time, it is precisely the difficulty in establishing the direction of influence between the two poets that opens up texts in creative ways by allowing further readings. Of course, such an overlap calls for a shift in power from the author onto the reader in constructing meaning in text. However, textual evidence only allows us to do so much. It is my contention that Statius could not have interacted with Silius’ Punica beyond a.d. 92, which is the year when he published his Thebaid. This is also the year when Silius is thought to have composed Book 12 of the Punica. Therefore, Statius could only effectively engage with Silius up to Punica Book 12, it seems, while Silius carried on writing the remainder of his seventeen-book-long epic. Still, there is ample material from Statius’ Thebaid and Silius’ Punica Books 1–12 to explore in terms of mutual influence. A critical trend in Flavian scholarship has produced a list of parallels between the two epics showing Silius’ potential borrowing from Statius and vice versa. As recently discussed in Ripoll's study, the most significant parallel inviting close comparison is Hannibal's siege of Rome in Punica Book 12 and Capaneus’ assault on Thebes in Thebaid Book 10. In this article, I would like to return to these two specific episodes and read them alongside each other. The purpose of the reading is to evaluate whether this single interaction changes the model of how we think about the intertextual activity between Silius and Statius, before the final publication of the Thebaid in a.d. 92, when Statius could still revise, amend and polish in the light of the Punica.

This article reconsiders the historical and typological relation between Greek maturation rituals and Greek mystery religion. Particular attention is given to the word κλεινός (‘illustrious’) and its ritual uses in two roughly contemporary Late Classical sources: an Orphic-Bacchic funerary gold leaf from Hipponion in Magna Graecia and Ephorus’ account of a Cretan pederastic age-transition rite. In both contexts, κλεινός marks an elevated status conferred by initiation. (This usage finds antecedents in Alcman's Partheneia.) Without positing direct development between puberty rites and mysteries, the article argues on the basis of shared vocabulary and other ritual elements that age-transitions influenced the ideology of mystery cults. It is further claimed that puberty rites and mysteries performed similar functions in their respective social contexts, despite obvious differences of prestige and visibility. Age-transition rites have been analysed in Bourdieu's terms as ‘rites of institution’, in which young elites were publicly affirmed in civic roles: private mysteries can be described in analogous but opposed terms as rites of ‘counter-institution’, in which familiar ritual language and symbols of elite status were used to construct an alternative ‘imagined community’ of mystery initiates.

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.

Among the late fifth-century regulations governing the wine-trade in Thasos is a ban on κοτυλιζεῖν (‘selling wine in half-pint measures’, or more generally ‘breaking bulk’). It is normally characterized as a law of rather narrow relevance, something to do with maintaining the quality of Thasian wines and guarding against false measures. Here I want to examine the possibility that it is in fact a highly political measure on the part of a government hostile to the demos, an attempt to ban an institution identified with democracy–the public bar.

In the fourth book of the Aeneid Virgil presents the epic's titular hero as fated to found Rome, initially neglecting and ultimately reassuming his mission, all the while being accorded praise or blame for his progress. In this article I shall re-examine Virgil's use of the specifically Chrysippan Stoic doctrine of Fate and human responsibility in Aeneid 4, with a focus on three key points: the role of assent in creating a compatibility of Fate and human responsibility; the ‘Lazy Argument’, the position that Chrysippus combatted, that if things are fated they will happen without any effort on my part; and the Stoic conception of Fate as a chain of causes that includes human assents. I shall argue that Virgil's impeccable, almost obsessive, scholarship results in a detailed homage to Chrysippan Stoic doctrine that actually alludes to its finer points. I restrict my comments to Book Four on the grounds that the Dido-episode tests to the limit Aeneas’ resolve to ‘follow … Italy’ (361), even if non sponte, and that the juxtaposition with Dido sheds added light on the picture. I hope thereby to contribute to a topic of research that deserves renewed investigation using the discoveries in Hellenistic philosophy over the last two generations.

Philosophical influences in the personality and public life of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, consul in 147 and 134 b.c., were once emphasized in scholarship. In 1892, Schmekel demonstrated the reception of Stoic philosophy in the second half of the second century b.c. among the philhellenic members of the governing elite in general, and statesmen like Scipio Aemilianus in particular, in what he called the ‘Roman Enlightenment’. In the 1920s and 1930s, Kaerst showed influences of Stoic philosophy on Scipio, contemporary politics and the Principate to come, while Capelle and Pohlenz identified Stoic ideas in Scipio's foreign and domestic policies. Together they formed a body of scholarship which held that Scipio possessed a serious interest in philosophy which defined his character and informed his public life. In the 1960s, the challenge to this scholarship was led by Strasburger in two articles, and by Astin in his 1967 biography. Both scholars downplayed and devalued philosophical influences on Scipio and denied him the pursuit of the Greek virtuous life. They placed him within the traditions of the Roman elite, ambitious for glory and results-driven, and they have successfully formed influential views to this end, despite the critique made by Erskine. Astin remained the authoritative study of Scipio and there was much in his Realpolitik that scholarship found compelling, even when it allowed Scipio an attachment to Greek culture. For example, Gruen, Elvers and Badian acknowledged Scipio's interest in Greek culture and philosophy, in combination with the practices and goals of a traditional Roman aristocrat, but they placed their accent on the latter by affirming that Greek learning did not change the current of a traditional aristocratic life. The contention of this article is that the pre-Strasburger/Astin interpretation of Scipio, despite its shortcomings, was indeed correct to detect a deep current of philosophical influences on Scipio. The article argues that the evidence demonstrates that in education, character and public life Scipio was informed by the Greek moral and political tradition; that Scipio had claimed to possess the cardinal virtues, derived ultimately from Plato; and that he had acted under a moral imperative of power formulated by the Stoic philosopher Panaetius; the conclusion will address the ethical intention of Scipio.

This article aims to offer a fresh analysis of two passages in the extensive necromancy episode in Lucan's Bellum Ciuile: the ritual to reanimate the dead soldier's corpse (6.667–73), and the surgical procedure Erichtho then proceeds to undertake (6.750–7), resembling the practice of a vivisection. The study will focus mostly on the strong connection of magic to medical traditions in antiquity, with a commentary on, and analysis of, these verses through the lenses of medical vocabulary, themes and motifs. It ultimately concludes that Lucan was familiar with the language and characteristics of the medical tradition, enriched his report with them, and was playing with his audience's knowledge of the same.

The Argive herald is dissuading the king from championing the cause of his petitioners. ‘It is either because they have detected some stupidity that they have come here to you, or because, being in a hopeless position, they are just chancing their arm to see whether or not . For I doubt if they expect that, in your right senses, you would, etc’ For the alleged impersonal use of (‘employed in a sense similar to that of our colloquial to come off, Pearson) editors can quote only two passages of Aeschylus, which I transcribe from Page's text: Su. 527–8 , Ch. 378–9 (‘non intellegunturjmutilum esse iudico inclusis scholiorum fragmentis’, Page).

This article asks what the graffito incised on the Dipylon oinochoē (IG I2 919, eighth century b.c.e.) reveals about the nature of the dance competition that it commemorates. Through a systematic analysis of the evaluative and descriptive meaning of the adjective ἀταλός and its cognates in early Greek epic, it is argued that a narrower definition compared to previous suggestions can be established. The word refers to the carefreeness that is specific to a child or young animal, and its uses typically imply a positive evaluation which is connected not only to the well-being that this carefreeness entails but also to the positive emotion of tenderness and the sentiment of care that it engenders in a perceiver. It is concluded that, when used to specify the criterion by which a dance contest will be adjudicated, the term refers to an aesthetic property that is repeatedly praised in archaic Greek texts in other words: that of dancing with the adorable but short-lived carefree abandon of a child.

Scholars have long seen that Horace's treatment of Homer in this Epistle demands to be read in the tradition of moral allegory in which Ulysses becomes the type of the ‘man of virtue’ (‘rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit / utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulixen’, 17–18): on such a reading, Circe becomes an allegory of foolish passion ‘to which Ulysses’ companions give in through their stultitia, and because of which they lose their reason and become no better than animals. Antisthenes, from whose writings such an allegorising approach probably developed, was regarded as an early Cynic, and the idea became the special province of Cynic-Stoic philosophy; scholars have therefore felt justified in seeing this epistle as a criticism of Epicureanism, represented by the sponsi Penelopae, nebulones, Alcinoique … iuventus, from the point of view of a Cynic or a syncretistic Stoic.

My purpose in this paper is to reassert the traditional view that Athenian women of the classical period regularly had an association with phratries (and incidentally to clarify the nature of that association). As part (though not an essential part) of my argument I adduce an overlooked piece of evidence, a much discussed passage from the Donatus commentary on Terence; for this I provide a new interpretation.

There is some evidence that Athenian women were introduced to their fathers phrateres at birth, or to their husbands' phrateres at marriage, or both. The speaker of Isaeus 3 repeatedly asserts (73, 75, 76, 79) that a certain Pyrrhus would have presented his daughter to his phrateres if she had been legitimate (which he denies). A scholium on Aristophanes, Acharnians 146 (= Suda s.v. Apatouria) may refer to such a practice. Euxitheus calls as witnesses of his mother's citizenship phrateres for whom his father celebrated the wedding feast, the gamelia, on her behalf (Dem. 57.43, 69, Isaeus 3.79); celebration of the gamelia is regarded as proof of the legitimacy of the speaker's mother at Isaeus 8.19. Neither Demosthenes nor Isaeus says that women were formally registered among the phrateres or even present at the feast; but notices in the lexicographers do connect the gamelia with registration among or introduction to the phrateres (Harpocration s.v. gamelia, Suda s.v. gamelia, Etym. Magn. 220.50 s.v. gamelia, Pollux 8.107, Anec. Bekk. 228.5, Schol. Dem. 57.43). Many scholars have accepted these passages as evidence for normal practice at Athens in the classical period.

‘As regards the exegetai three (in number) let the four tribes nominate four (men) each (man) from their own personnel, and let them (i.e. the State) scrutinize whichever three gain most votes and send nine to Delphi to appoint one from each group of three; the scrutiny and the age-qualification shall be the same for them as for the priests. Let these be exegetai for life; as regards a vacancy let the preliminary election be made by the four tribes in which the vacancy may occur.’

I argued in § II. (Ion and Theseus) that in the lost chapters of the Ἀθηναίων Πολιτεία Aristotle recorded (in connexion with the Synoikisis) the creation by Theseus of the Eupatrid Order, from whom the Archons were chosen: that this tallies with Thuc. II. 15: that Thucydides further suggests that the continuous existence of the Areopagus Council dates from the same time: that finally Council and Order stand to each other as patres and patricii did in Rome.

It has frequently been observed that the Prometheus Vinctus shows certain Sophoclean characteristics of rhythm. In order to vary the rhythm of his iambics and to avoid monotony, Sophocles often knits consecutive trimeters closely together by placing at the end of one line some word which looks forward to the next line, and so precludes the reader from stopping for the natural pause after the sixth foot. Sometimes he uses in this way subordinating words which introduce a dependent clause in the next line (Antig. 311); sometimes proclitics (O.C. 495) or quasi-proclitics (O.R. 267). (Sometimes, too, he even allows elision at the end of the trimeter, but this peculiarly Sophoclean device does not concern us now.)

In CR N.S. 10 (1960), 7, I supported L. Purgold's emendation of to in O. T. 230, accepted by Elmsley, wrongly discarded by all editors since, and now omitted even from the apparatus criticus of R. D. Dawe's recent Teubner edition of Sophocles. May I now add that the emendation was also defended, at greater length, by M. Furness in CR 13 (1899), 195–7? The 1899 editor of CR reproduced, at the end of Furness's article, the sueeinct and trenchant Latin in which, in the year 1802, Purgold defended his emendation.

‘ “I desire”’ Jebb, whose note I now take as read. In this and my ensuing discussion I seek to show that never has that meaning. The scholiast's note is a sophism, and Jebb's is another. Jebb says that the primary sense is to love; he prudently leaves unstated the next step in the fallacy, that to love might mean to have just fallen in love with; and he concludes that poetry ‘could easily draw’ the sense to desire. Actually applies as between parents and children, rulers and their subjects, and to other not necessarily amenable persons or not prima facie acceptable things with whom or which one has to associate continually (or, by extension, for a limited time); its general sense is to ‘do with’, to brook; it ranges from like to either extreme, be fond of or tolerate. In its various nuances it resembles which never means to ‘desire’.

Since the days of Merula it has been regularly assumed by editors and critics of Ennius that, despite the express statement of Cicero to the contrary, the Annales did contain some narrative of the events of the first Punic War. Familiar as the passage in the Brutus is, it must be quoted once again: “Tamen illius quem uatibus et Faunis annumerat Ennius Bellum Punicum quasi Myronis opus delectat. Sit Ennius sane, ut est certe, perfectior: qui, si ilium, ut simulat, contemneret, non omnia bella persequens, primm illud Punicum, acerrimum bellum, reliquisset”.