The Iliad proceeds from an idea of hero which is pure and simple: a hero is one who prizes honour and glory above life itself and dies on the battlefield in the prime of life. Indeed, in spite of what Achilles says at a bitter moment of the choice between a short and glorious life and a long and obscure one, his actual choice is made when, warned by Thetis that Hector's death is only a prelude to his own, he prefers to kill Hector and die himself rather than leave Patroclus unavenged. Hector behaves in a similar way: having chosen honour over life, he remains outside the walls of Troy to meet his death at Achilles' hands. Hundreds of minor Iliadic warriors make the same choice in a less spectacular way, by the very fact that they volunteered to come to Troy in order to win glory in war. This is true both of young Simoeisios, who came to Troy even before he had time to take a wife, and fell ‘like a black poplar' at Ajax’ hands, and of Lycaon son of Priamus who, having slipped away from nearby Arisbe where he was kept in safety as a hostage, returned to the battlefield only to be taught in his last moments the bitter lesson that death is after all the inevitable conclusion to life.

These two men – the statesman ruling Athens in her glory, and the philosopher of the man-measure dictum, the ‘first humanist’ as he has been called – are on anyone's reckoning two of the greatest of European history. They not only knew each other, but appear to have been friends. Ehrenberg managed to spin a whole book out of what he imagined was the friendly relationship between Pericles and Sophocles, even though there is no evidence that they liked each other, and indeed positive evidence that they did not. For the only two anecdotes relating any communication between them (both to do with Sophocles' fondness for young boys) suggest that Pericles rather resented having the playwright as a fellow general on the military expedition they made against Samos in 440.

In book 5 of the Politics Aristotle discusses the causes for change in constitutions. He argues that, since people have opposing and often mistaken views about their just share in government, the main condition of political stability – that is, justice according to proportionate equality – is impaired. Aristotle then gives eleven particular reasons for civil strife (stasis) of which the last one may serve as a starting point for this paper:

Sometimes poleis enter into the civil strife because of the regional conditions (dia tous topous), because the land is not well suited for a polis to become a single unit. As for example, the people at Chytus in Clazomenai, or those from Colophon and Notion. And also at Athens they are not all in harmony (ouk homoiôs eisin) but those living in Piraeus are more democratic (mallon demotikoi) than in the city (13O3b7).

Within the palace complex in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander in Egypt, a community of scholars was established in what was known as the Museum (or Mouseion); linked to this was a library, the Great Library of Alexandria. These two institutions are often celebrated for their role in the history of scholarship, but they were also the products of the Hellenistic age and of the competition which arose between the successors of Alexander. In many ways these two institutions encapsulate the ideology and policy of the early Ptolemies. It is the purpose of this paper to explore this aspect and set them in a wider context.

This is not a paper about Christianity and the decline of theatre and amphitheatre: perhaps, like another transported Englishman, W. V. Harris, I should have learned to say ‘eye-glasses’, but, as it is, I would like to examine some of the problems that surround reading and writing at Rome. In a recent paper, R. J. Starr offers a useful survey of the material on lectores, 2 a term that can mean both one who reads a text (Hor. Ep. 1.19.35), and, like anagnostes, one who reads aloud to others as his principal activity. Starr's paper suggests, passim, an author aware that his topic could well have wider implications, as it most certainly does. The history of books, reading, writing, and research in antiquity is a fascinating topic, endlessly rich and complex in its ramifications, as witness the debate on W. V. Harris's Literacy and the work of Guglielmo Cavallo.

Recently there has been an upsurge in the discussion of the extent of literacy in the ancient world. An important area within this debate is the examination of the attitude of state authorities to the promotion of literacy. In today's world it is taken for granted that any given government will seek to promote the highest level of literacy possible amongst its subjects. The reward for doing so is prestige, and the penalty for failure considerable opprobrium.

Since Herodotus, historians have found anecdotes indispensable and notoriously unreliable. Although the historicity of an anecdote may be elusive, its use by posterity can be illuminating. Whether or not Canute commanded the incoming tide to halt cannot be proven, because the episode was not reported until a century later by a moralistic chronicler, Henry of Huntingdoa According to Henry, the king staged the scene to demonstrate to sycophantic courtiers his impotence before the forces of nature and their creator. However, later generations forgot his pious motive, and Canute survives in the popular imagination as an examplar of executive folly, like Xerxes who had the Hellspont scourged. Whatever the facts, posterity has its own uses for anecdotes.