All the extant letters of Seneca are addressed to a single correspondent, Lucilius. They are among the latest of his writings and are entirely taken up with the discussion of philosophical questions, principally to do with Ethics1—hence the title Epistulae Morales. The 115th letter could, one supposes, be taken to exemplify this particular kind of epistolary composition at its best. The objectof the following discussion is twofold: first by a detailed analysis of the letterit self to establish precisely in what its distinctive literary excellence consists, and secondly by attending to its more representative qualities to form a clearer view of the genre to which it belongs.

Plato's Sophist begins with an attempt to arrive by division at a definition of a Sophist. In the course of the attempt six different descriptions are discussed and the results summarized at 231 c-e. A seventh and final account may be said to occupy the whole of the rest of the dialogue, including the long digression on negative statements. The first five divisions characterize with a considerable amount of satire different types of sophist, or more probably different aspects of the sophistic art. The sixth division (226 a–231 b) is very different. To quote Cornford's words, ‘satire is dropped. The tone is serious and sympathetic, towards the close it becomes eloquent’.

It is a commonplace of modern criticism that every text is to be located within a complex network of cultural practices and material. Students of the ancient world may sometimes feel at a disadvantage; we simply do not have as much information as we would like in order to contextualize thoroughly. This has been especially true in the study of Platonic dialogues. The meagre remains of the writings of the sophists against whom Plato measured himself and of the art to which he refers (to mention only two areas) entail that analysis of Plato is often confined to the structure of his philosophy. Of course, the requirements of Plato's arguments must always be assigned primary importance; the relative lack of information about Plato's cultural context has not prevented detailed exposition of his method and achievements. Occasionally, however, a kindly fate allows us to set a dialogue, or part of it, in its appropriate material and ideological context and to create an interface between literary, philosophical, and archaeological evidence. Such evidence may not alter our evaluation of Plato's arguments on the analytic level, but it can enrich our appreciation of his literary artistry and recapture for us some of the resonance that his work would have had for a contemporary audience.

According to Tacitus, this was Galba's verdict on Nero's fall. The tyrant's undoing had been of his own making. As for what determined the outcome, Galba is unequivocal. Two factors had proved decisive: Nero's immanitas and luxuria.

Jebb in outlining the differences between ancient and modem oratory maintains that while modern orators try to give the impression that their speeches are extempore, the Greeks polished their speeches with fastidious care and were not ashamed to admit laboured preparation. This view, which is widely held, needs considerable qualification. The purpose of this article is:

Plato's use of illustrative material, in the widest sense, is very varied. Parts of the field have had some study—his use of metaphor and simile (still capable, no doubt, of yielding more meaning in relation to his thought) and his use of proverbs, at least as regards subject-matter and sources. The object of the present article is to consider in general what may already have been catalogued somewhere—his quotations from other writers (mainly from poets) and his references to myths and to other stories.

Plutarch, Aet. Graec. 5 = Moralia 292b: ‘Tνες οἱ παρ’ Ἀρκσι καì Λακεδαιμονíοις χρηστο;᾽ Λακεδαιμνιοι Τεγεταις διαλλαγντες ποισαντο συνθκας κα στλην π᾽ Ἀλϕειῳ κοινν νστησαν, ν ᾑ μετ των ἄλλων γγραπται Μεσσηνους κβαλειν κ της χώρας κα μ ξειναι χρηστοὺς ποιειν. ξηγομενος οὐν Ἀριστοτλης τουτ ϕησι δνασθαι τ μ ποκτιννναι βοηθεας χριν τοις λακωνζουσι των Tεγεατων.

The controversy between the Anomalists and Analogists has not, I think, attracted as much of the attention of scholars as it deserves. It was perhaps not a very practical matter, though, as I shall point out presently, it probably had indirectly some important practical results. The interest of the controversy lies rather in the spirit in which it was conducted. Anyone who reads for instance Varro, De Ling. Lat. VIII. 31–32, where the anomalist argues that as in life variety of furniture and the like is necessary for aesthetic enjoyment, so in language anomaly is desirable; or IX. 24, etc., where the analogist argues from the unchanging order that prevails in the heavenly bodies, in the tides, in the continuity of species, will feel that he is moving in a world of thought very different in one way from our own, though in another rather like it. By the analogist language is conceived as a world in itself, much as we conceive of the visible world. Its phenomena are being laid bare and constantly reveal fresh signs of law and order. The investigator sometimes finds facts which prima facie suggest anomaly, but he is as confident that behind them must lie some unifying principle as the scientific man of to-day is with regard to the phenomena of the visible world, as impatient of the suggestion of disorder as he is of any miraculous interference with the order of nature. Even the anomalist, sceptic as he is, approaches the question not in a spirit of mere denial, but of aesthetic consideration. We get a glimpse of a lost point of view. The world of words had a glamour and a wonder for them which it cannot have for us.

Since the Persian Wars, the Areopagus had allegedly usurped certain ‘additional functions’. By removing them, and assigning them instead to the Council, the assembled People, and the jury-courts, Ephialtes undid the last institutional bastion of aristocratic political authority, and set the copestones on Athens' democratic order.

Tragic allusions to contemporary events are not, as a rule, taken on trust, but the Eumenides of Aeschylus provides three notable exceptions. The view that the Athenian-Argive alliance of 462 B.C. (Thuc. 1. 102. 4, Paus. 4. 24. 6–7) is reflected in Eum. 287–91, 667–73, anc^ 762–74 has won wide acceptance, although no systematic theory of the relation between the drama and the historical context has yet been advanced. If demonstration in detail has been wanting, the view seems to be supported by three general considerations. In the first place, the emphasis put on the dramatic declaration of friendship exceeds the requirements of the plot: the acquittal of Orestes rather than his gesture of gratitude to Athens is the natural climax of this part of the drama, 1–777, and yet the gesture has been considered important enough to be heralded twice before it is actually made in 762–74. Secondly, Orestes' declaration is not limited in duration but binding on his successors in perpetuity; it seems, therefore, to have been deliberately formulated in order to react upon historical fact. Thirdly, in instituting the Council of the Areopagus and dwelling upon the importance of its constitutional function (see especially 681–710), Aeschylus seems to have gone out of his way to pass judgement of some sort on the recent reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles; the theory that he has also appreciated their foreign policy on the tragic stage is thus relieved of some of the obvious practical objections and made inherently more plausible.

Augustan poets refer curiously often to the possible composition of a Gigantomachy, as in Prop. 2.1 and 3.9, Ov. Am. 2.1.11 ff., Trist. 2.61 ff. and 331 ff., and the future study of natural philosophy, as in Verg. Georg. 2.475 ff. and Prop. 3.5.25 ff. These ambitions are rejected, abandoned, or firmly set in the future. I suggest that the function of both is closely similar since they provide traditionally sublime themes to contrast the poet's present ‘humbler’’ task.

This paper is an attempt so to construe the arguments of the Hippias Minor as to remove the justification for regarding it as unworthy of Plato either because of its alleged fallaciousness and Sophistic mode of argument or because of its alleged immorality. It focuses, therefore, only on the arguments and their conclusions, steering clear of the dialogue's dramatic and literary aspects. Whereas I do not wish to deny the importance of these aspects to a proper understanding of the dialogue – on the contrary, in a dialogue so heavily laden with irony and caricature, these aspects are necessarily more significant than they are in other dialogues – I do think there is something to be gained from concentrating on the arguments themselves. Although there can be little doubt that Socrates is up to something in the Hippias Minor, the task of determining just what he is up to can only be simplified by clarifying the arguments first.

The Hippias Minor has traditionally been thought to contain two independent arguments, each having its own paradoxical conclusion. The first argument begins, it is said, when Hippias characterizes the two Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus as the true man (⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς) and the false man (⋯ ψευδ⋯ς) respectively. Through its discovery that both the false man and the true man have δύναμις, it results in the paradox that the false man and the true are identical. The second argument, on this view, leaves the subject of ⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς and ⋯ ψευδ⋯ς and compares instead all sorts of agents in intentional and unintentional action. Finding that the intentional agent is in every case better than the unintentional, the argument concludes that the intentional evil-doer is also better than the unintentional. Viewing the dialogue as thus containing two distinct topics treated in two self-sufficient arguments is perhaps not the best way to understand it.

The evaluation of speeches in ancient histories by modern scholars is very varied. Tarn (p. 286) opened his discussion of ‘The speeches in Arrian’ with the following words:

Speaking generally, one expects a speech in any ancient historian to be a fabrication, either composed by the historian himself or by a predecessor, or else some exercise from one of the schools or rhetoric which he had adopted.

On the other hand, according to Fornara (p. 143), ‘the fact does not seem to have been sufficiently appreciated that the ancients unfailingly endorsed the convention that speeches must be reported accurately’. When Fornara made a generalization, he wrote as follows:

The ancients had unanimously adopted the Thucydidean principle of honest reporting of the things that were said as well as the things that were done.

In classical writing the description of personal appearance was attempted in various ways. At one extreme the mere ‘passport-identification’ was concernedto enumerate distinguishing characteristics in order to ensure, for example, that a runaway slave or a recalcitrant taxpayer could be identified.