In many respects, Rhesus is an unparalleled oddity. Attributed to Euripides, it was (probably) composed in the fourth century BC by a now anonymous poet, and thus (probably) constitutes our only extant fourth-century tragedy. Unlike any other surviving tragedy, it dramatizes an episode narrated in the Iliad and is set wholly at night. It features a fourth speaking actor. Other highlights include a chase scene, Athena imitating Aphrodite's voice, and the only singing goddess (the Muse) in extant tragedy. Such is Rhesus, the strangest, most maligned, least understood of tragedies. In this article, I reconsider one comparatively neglected anomaly among many: the use or otherwise of the stage building.

Declamation was an essential component of elite male rhetorical education in the Roman imperial period. In the controversia, the most advanced exercise in the standard sequence of rhetorical pedagogy, students would deliver speeches on both sides of fictional law cases. Several of the controversiae involve scenarios of torture. Masters torture their slaves and then choose to report or withhold the testimony they extract thereby; or a tyrant who has usurped control of the community tortures free persons. In a small number of cases, an abusive father or the declamatory court itself subjects a free person to torture as part of punishment for a conviction. Not long after completing their training, some of the elite male students who practised declamation would present appeals before governors, courts, and public audiences. Others would become magistrates empowered to use torture as part of judicial quaestiones (investigations). By examining several controversiae that involve scenarios of torture, this article looks at how rhetorical education in the Roman imperial period guided elite male students to think critically about both the ethical and the pragmatic considerations involved in the employment of torture.

‘He is always enthusiastic, almost invariably cheerful, and amiable, and quite correct. One can well imagine how a sunny-tempered man of elegant tastes and universal humanity must have won easily the regard of a great number of friends’; so E. T. Merrill wrote of Pliny over a century ago. Such sentiments on the ebullient style and sunny personality of Pliny have perdured for decades, even up to the present. And why not? A reputation for optimism and even naiveté should not be so easily overcome for one who admits to a weakness for praising his friends too excessively (Ep. 7.28) and writes an entire letter for the sole purpose of demonstrating his unwillingness to say anything negative about someone (8.22.4). The Panegyricus, with its periods of fulsome praise and hopefulness, presents no reason to alter Pliny's image as a cheerful optimist.

Upon seeing or hearing the name Cyrus, most readers will probably think of the famous Persian king, well known from Xenophon's Cyropaedia and the prophet Isaiah's enthusiastic message about this king as the one who set the Jewish people free from their exile in Babylon. This article, however, will deal with a Cyrus who lived some thousand years later, c.400–70 CE. Cyrus of Panopolis was well known in his day as politician, as (re)builder of Constantinople, as bishop, and as poet. I will first present a short biographical sketch of this remarkable man and thereafter dwell a bit longer upon his poetry.

On 19 December 2011, the death was announced of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. He was succeeded in power by his third son, Kim Jong-un. The BBC has called it a ‘choreographed Stalinist-style succession’ but, for students of the classical world, there is an uncanny resemblance to the death of Augustus in AD 14 and the accession of his adopted son and heir, Tiberius. A death is announced; there are allegations that it occurred earlier than is officially acknowledged, with announcement postponed so that all can be put in order for a smooth transfer of power. News of the death is received with public displays of grief, while the new autocrat is greeted with a pledge or oath of loyalty. The first necessity is to take control of the military, and military orders are issued by the successor before any formal power is conferred. There are omens. The state calls for its new leader to accept power. Money or food is distributed in the name of the head of state recently deceased. Much is made of coincidences (the date on which Augustus assumed the principate and died; the date on which Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un respectively became supreme commander). When it comes to the formal transfer of power, the written will of the dead leader is cited to legitimate his successor.

The reception of Aristophanes has gained extraordinary momentum as a topic of academic interest in the last few years. Contributions range from Gonda Van Steen's ground-breaking Venom in Verse. Aristophanes in Modern Greece to Hall and Wrigley's Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007, which contains contributions from a wide range of scholars and writers, a number of whom have had experience of staging Aristophanes' plays as live theatre. In Found in Translation, J. Michael Walton has also made strides towards marrying the theory of translation to the practice of translating Aristophanes (something I have myself also sought to do in print). And with the history of Aristophanic translation, adaptation, and staging being rapidly pieced together (in the English-speaking world at least, where Hall, Steggle, Halliwell, Sowerby, Walsh, and Walton, for example, have all made their own contributions), much of the groundwork has been laid for a study such as is attempted in this article. Here I aim to take a broad look across a range of translations in order to see how one particular text type within Aristophanic drama has been approached by translators, namely Aristophanes' lyric passages. The aim of this study will be to give both an insight into the numerous considerations that translators take into account when translating Aristophanic lyric and an impression of the range of end products that have emerged over the last two hundred years.