What seems to be the prevailing doctrine of the particle num is thus set forth in the most recent of major Latin grammars:

‘num ist wahrscheinlich die unerweiterte Form von nunc … num diente also zunächst dazu, dieFragein der lebendigen Rede lebhaft an die Situation anzuknüpfen; es steht oft in erregten Erkundigungsfragen mit unentschiedener Erwartung (z. B. Pit. Merc. 173 obsecro, num nauis periit ?:: saluast nauis); auch bejahende Antwort wird vielfach erwartet … Der in der klassischen Sprache alleinherrschende Gebrauch in Fragen mit erwarteter Antwort ‘nein’ setzte sich zunächst in lebhaften Fragen der Entrüstung oder des Erstaunens fest wie Pit. Asin. 619 sed num fumus est haec mulier quam amplexare?’

The codex Cromwellianus 12 (saec. XV–XVI), one of the most interesting astrological manuscripts of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, contains on p. 450 f., under the heading 'Ιμβρασίου 'Εϕεσίου περί ⋯ρρώστων, the first part of the first part of Ps.-Galen's περι κατακλίσεως νοσούντων, which is, together with a work of Hermes Trismegistos, our principal source for iatromathematics, that is, for diagnosis and prognosis based on certain constellations, above all on the Moon's position in a particular sign of the zodiac. It is not the text itself that calls for notice—since we possess older and better manuscripts of it—but the mention of the author, Imbrasios of Ephesus, which only occurs here.

The statement that masks were not introduced on the Roman stage until after the time of Terence is still repeated by editors (e.g. Menaechmi, Thoresby Jones, 1918, p. 19; Menaechmi, Moseley aria Hammond, 1933, p. 19) and has the support of Pauly Wissowa (Bieber, s.v. ‘Maske’, 1930) as well as Daremberg and Saglio (Navarre, s.v. histrio); it may, in fact, be regarded as generally accepted. Yet so long ago as 1912 A. S. F. Gow (J.R.S. ii. 65–77) put forward strong arguments on the opposite side; his article, though mentioned with respect in Bursian (1936, pp. 51 ff.) and referred to by Schanz-Hosius (i. 149), has not yet been satisfactorily answered, so far as I am aware. Gow did not claim that a final solution of this problem could be attained on our present evidence, but he did show that the orthodox position is open to attack. I hope to prove that the arguments in favour of the early use of masks are even stronger than he claimed.

In REG 73 (1960) and 75 (1962) I discussed various points connected with the Peace of Philocrates, a number of which have been assailed by M. M. Markle in CQ N.S. 24 (1974) in an article entitled ‘The Strategy of Philip in 346 B.C.’. Time passes, and, although de Ste. Croix in his Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972), p.105, felt able to declare that ‘a book shortly to be published by M. M. Markle makes a valuable and original contribution to our understanding of the Peace of Philocrates’, and Markle himself confirms that a book is indeed forthcoming, some comment on his preliminary comments may be permitted.

Denys Page, discussing this poem in his classic Sappho and Alcaeus, seemed unimpressed by its aesthetic merits. In his note on line 7 he says: ‘The sequence of thought might have been clearer.... It seems then inelegant to begin this parable, the point of which is that Helen found O Krλλιστον in her lover, by stating that she herself surpassed all mortals in this very quality’ (p. 53). His interpretative essay phrases further objections. ‘In a phrase which rings dull in our doubtful ears, she proceeds to illustrate the truth of her preamble by calling Helen of Troy in evidence’ (p. 56). About the Helen exemplum itself he says: ‘the thought is simple as the style is artless’ and ‘the transition back to the principal subject was perhaps not very adroitly; managed’ (p. 56). Page's criticism centres on the function of the exemplum of Helen. A close reconsideration of this exemplum, with special attention to the way in which it is embedded in the preceding and following context, will result in a better understanding and appreciation of this poem.

In comparison to the speech of the Laws, the dialectic between Crito and Socrates at the beginning of the Crito has received little attention. In this paper I argue that it contains an important philosophical message. It illustrates that the many's failure to follow Socrates' principles, like his principle of non-retaliation, is due to the intrinsic fragility of true beliefs. Though the many can understand Socrates' values and may accept his principles if he argues with them long enough, they may fail to hold on to his principles when confronted with the difficulties of life. Crito's failure to deliberate Socratically at the beginning of the Crito exemplifies the many's predicament.

In the Peristephanon, a collection of hymns in praise of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (a.d. 347/8–c. 405) refers back to a time more than a hundred years before he was writing, when Christianity was not the predominant influence in the Roman world but the religion of a beleaguered minority. In the course of Prudentius' lifetime, the trials that were suffered by that minority under emperors such as Decius and Diocletian became an important point of reference for increasing numbers of Roman converts seeking to identify with Christianity and its sectarian past. At the time, however, those trials were recorded in only meagre written accounts. Prudentius, whose successful administrative career might have culminated in elevation to a senior position in the imperial scrinia, displays particular interest in the extent of the official archival material in the Peristephanon. In a number of passages in this work, he comments on the fragility of historical documents, which are easily destroyed by acts of malice or the effects of time. The following discussion will examine the ways in which he reflects on the permanence, or otherwise, of his own written texts. Analysis of his imitation of elegiac verse inscriptions will demonstrate how he draws attention to the inadequacy of even the most monumental types of human writing. But I will argue that, by identifying his poems with the martyrs' perishable bodies, Prudentius claims that they too can be a medium for a divine presence not confined to any perishable physical form.

The irrelevance of ideology is perhaps one of the most strongly held views shared by the historians of the Late Republic. As indicated by Matthias Gelzer in 1912, in those final years of the Roman Republic, ‘political struggles were fought out by the nobiles at the head of their dependents’. In his opinion, this was nothing more than a power struggle, in which slogans or ideas were merely propaganda, without any real value. In 1931, analysing the political proposals of Cicero, Gelzer's disciple Hermann Strasburger rejected the existence of political parties, as, in his opinion, terms such as optimates or populares were merely propagandistic mottos and pure wordplay. As a result, it became widely believed that the civil war between Caesar and Pompey was nothing more than a struggle between dignitates, that is, a confrontation for leadership between ambitious politicians who were not prepared to compromise. More recently, in 1994, Luigi Loreto considered the conflict between Caesar and Pompey to be aimed at seizing power, unlike ‘ideological’ wars, where the aim was to maintain or instate a specific type of social or political order.

It has long been known that the Egyptian pharaoh was regarded as divine in Egyptian culture. He was the son of Re and the mediator between the gods and humankind. During the royal coronation, he was transformed into a manifestation of the god Horus. He could be referred to as a ntr (‘divine being’, ‘god’), and was regularly described in inscriptions as ‘the good god’ or ‘perfect god’ (ntr nfr). By the New Kingdom period, the king's divinity was believed to be imbued by his possession of a divine manifestation of the god Amun-Re called the ‘living royal ka’, which came upon him at his coronation, and which was also renewed during the yearly opet festival held in the Luxor temple in Thebes. As late as the period of Persian domination over Egypt in the fifth century b.c., Egyptian temple texts continued to describe their foreign king Darius I as a divine being, owing to the ‘living royal ka’. This hieroglyphic formula proclaiming the king's divinity continues for Alexander the Great and even in Ptolemaic temple reliefs.

In Fam. 13.1 Cicero, visiting Athens en route to Cilicia in the summer of 51 b.c., writes to C. Memmius L.f., praetor in 58 but by the time of Cicero's communication an exile in Athens after the shambolic consular elections for 53; Memmius was (temporarily, one assumes) absent from Athens in Mytilene, hence the need for Cicero to write to him. This letter, along with Att. 5.11.6 and 19.3, is our focus in the argument that follows, but, to summarize the situation in the very broadest terms, Cicero's concern in it is with Memmius’ intentions regarding a plot of land in Athens occupied by a house of Epicurus, and with the objections to Memmius’ plans that had been raised with Cicero by the scholarch of the Epicurean community in Athens, Patro.

At Book 5.324–37, the DRN’s narrator says that the world is young, claims that the nature of the world has been understood only recently (with the advent of Epicureanism), and asserts that he is either the ‘very first’/‘most pre-eminent’ or, as I suggest here, ‘among the first’/‘among the most pre-eminent’ to turn (vertere) Greek Epicureanism into Latin. It is the last of these three claims that concerns us:

denique natura haec rerum ratioque repertast   335
nuper, et hanc primus cum primis ipse repertus
nunc ego sum in patrias qui possim vertere voces.

The last decades have shown that Nicander's Theriaca (second century b.c.e.), a didactic hexameter poem of 958 lines on snakes, scorpions, spiders, and the proper treatment of the wounds they inflict, is a markedly more playful work than most readers thought. Rather than considering the poem as a vehicle of authentic learning, literary approaches to the nature of Nicander's strange poetic world have focussed on his eye for Alexandrian aesthetics, intertextuality, linguistic innovation, and awareness of the didactic tradition that started with Hesiod's Works and Days, but also on his predilection for horror, voyeuristic sensationalism, and gory details. Although literary-minded readers have found it hard to disprove convincingly that Nicander may have had some professional knowledge of his subject matter, a glance at his arcane language is enough to convince any reader that the Theriaca cannot be concerned solely with its explicit subject. In this article I will make some additional observations on the way in which Nicander has turned the Theriaca into a work of literature, focussing on some of the choices that he has made with regard to his less than veracious depiction of snakes and animals. While Spatafora rightly points to Nicander's eye for detail when portraying floral beauty, I will argue that the poet's play with the topos of the locus amoenus has a darker side. Rather than creating an epic world of beauty, Nicander shows his talent for taking the reader along an unpleasant path of apprehension and negative feelings, portraying a choice selection of afflictions. Not only does he have many ways of giving his quasi-scientific account a markedly negative atmosphere, but his world may well be a deliberate reversal of that other well-known Hellenistic portrayal of the natural world, Theocritus' bucolics.

Cedant arma togae, ‘let arms yield to the toga’. Thus begins the famous verse from Cicero's poem on his consulship that highlights the protagonist's suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy by favourably contrasting this political achievement with success on the battlefield. But how does the line continue? Its conclusion is transmitted in two different versions, concedat laurea laudi and concedat laurea linguae, and scholars have long been divided over which one is Cicero's original text. In this paper, we revisit the issue and not only (1) propose an answer to the question of what Cicero actually wrote, but also (2) examine those attestations of the verse that date to the author's own lifetime, elucidating the contexts that account for the quotation of one variant rather than the other.