The character of Thersites, as presented by Homer in Iliad 2, has received an almost universally bad press, typical of which are the comments of F. A. Paley: ‘one of the turbulent and insolent malcontents in an army, who use their best efforts to misrepresent the authorities and to incite sedition in others’. Paley's view is typical both in the unsympathetic view it presents of Thersites and in its tendency to see him as representative of a whole genre of subversive and recalcitrant soldiery. My concern in this paper is to examine Thersites within the context of the Iliad alone, without any regard for his treatment by subsequent authors, and to attempt to explain his portrayal solely in terms of the dramatic situation at the beginning of the Iliad. My contention will be that the episode of Thersites is an important element in Homer's introductory purpose of presenting the backcloth against which the poem's theme, the menis is acted out.

In the opening lines of Philoctetes, Odysseus addresses his companion Neoptolemus as his famous father's son (3f.). This is the first indication of an important theme: phusis, in the sense of inherited human qualities or capacities. Although Achilles has died before the dramatic action begins, he hovers in the background of the play, and no one challenges his claim to the highest admiration. Neoptolemus is closely associated with his father, and is repeatedly addressed or referred to as his father's son. In one particularly striking passage of his deception speech he describes to Philoctetes his own reception at Troy, where the welcoming army swore that they saw the dead Achilles alive once more (356–8). These lines conjure up a vivid physical likeness between father and son, but it remains to be seen how deep the resemblance really lies. Neoptolemus has the potential, in virtue of his inherited phusis, to be as admirable as Achilles.3 But two questions remain to be answered in the course of the play: Will he prove to be his father's son in character as well as birth? If so, how will this excellence be manifested?

In Greece & Rome 37 (1987), 169–185, J. F. Lazenby and Ian Whiteheadhave made a most helpful contribution on the problems of advanced manoeuvres by ancient triremes — the diekplous and the periplous. They are surely right to reject the view that these manoeuvres involved a whole fleet moving in line ahead formation at the time of battle, even in the milder version which postulates several squadrons abreast – each in line ahead. Given the nature of the triremes' main instrument of aggression – the ram – such formations could not achieve what Nelson's breakthrough at Trafalgar did – with benefit of cannons: nor was encirclement the aim of the periplous, as Whitehead has well demonstrated.

Did the ancients care when their children died? The question is blunt, but not straightforward. How are we to define ‘care’? Whose children – anyone's, family members', one's own? Any thorough answer must be correspondingly complex, taking into account variables of many different kinds. So, for example, it has been argued that mothers cared for their children more than fathers, that very young children were missed less than older ones, that urban and servile populations tended to commemorate young children with gravestones more than others, that variations in burial practices among Greek communities may ‘suggest varying degrees of affection on the part of the parents’, that care for children increased in the later fifth century in Athens or in the Hellenistic period in Greece or in the later Republic or the Imperial period at Rome. In this paper, I make no claim to the nuanced and sophisticated presentation these difficulties demand; I will present evidence from various genres, referring to diverse places and times, concerning children from a range of ages. My aim is modest: to consider two arguments that have been applied to this subject. My question has been raised several times within the last few years, each time by first-rate scholars, and these have given what I think is clearly the correct answer. Yet that answer has not been expressed as firmly as it might be; and in giving it some have raised an issue which needs clarification. Let these be my excuses for opening the question again.

Odes 1.8 takes the form of a series of questions addressed by Horace to Lydia on the subject of her lover Sybaris. Why is she bent on destroying him through love? Why has he abandoned the manly athletic activities at which he was once pre-eminent, but of which he is apparently now frightened? Why is he hiding, as Achilles, disguised as a girl, hid before the Trojan war?

quotiens magni alicuius <viri> mors ab historicis narrata est, totiens fere consummatio totius vitae et quasi funebris laudatio redditur. hoc, semel aut iterum a Thucydide factum, item in paucissimis personis usurpatum a Sallustio, T. Livius benignus omnibus magnis viris praestitit; sequentes historici multo id effusius fecerunt.

This is a study of how one prominent Roman responded to the role of stepfather, a role that began as an incidental and largely unregarded consequence of marrying a woman who already had children, and which for a variety of reasons assumed an unexpected importance. It develops a hint supplied from Sir Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution that this particular stepfather may not have been quite as uninvolved in his stepson's ambitions as he was at pains to suggest to his contemporaries, but goes well beyond that to the question of how influential this stepfather was as a role-model in the light of his stepson's character and personality. The stepfather was L. Marcius Philippus (cos. 56 B.C.), and the stepson was the boy who eventually became the Emperor Augustus. How Philippus responded to being a stepfather illustrates some of the features of that role as it existed in Roman society: the absence of legal authority, and the importance of the stepfather's personality and character. He is not a typical stepfather, because there were no typical stepfathers, but his career as a stepfather sheds light on a neglected dimension of Roman family life. Before going on with L. Marcius Philippus himself, however, it is necessary to say something about stepfathers in general.