When we imagine the world of the Julio-Claudian Emperors and their Flavian and Antonine successors, it is difficult to avoid thinking of suicide as the characteristic Roman way of death. That is because of the numerous acts of suicide which are celebrated by the greatest writers of the period, Seneca, Lucan, Tacitus, and Pliny, and which even invade the pages of a minor author such as Martial. There is no reason to think in terms of an epidemic, as Y. Grisé justly remarks in her recent book on Roman suicide. But we do seem to be dealing with a fashion, one curious enough to merit investigation.

One of the more endearing of the seventy-eight treatises which make up the Moralia of Plutarch is one entitled ‘On not minding your own business'. The Greek title, Περ Πολυπραγμοσνης, reminds us momentarily of Plato's famous definition of justice in Republic 4, which is to do your own thing (μ πολυπραγμονεῖν). Plutarch was indeed an ardent Platonist, but here he is concerned not with political philosophy but with social habits. The treatise reminds me of nothing so much as of a famous Lancastrian comedian of my youth called Norman Evans, who in a sketch called Over the Garden Wall assumed the transvestite role of a nosy female neighbour, simultaneously pegging out clothes and retailing juicy items of gossip. For Plutarch, after defining this nosiness or πολυπραγμοσνη as ‘an unhealthy and harmful state of mind, a fondness for learning the misfortunes of others, a disease apparently free of neither envy nor malice’, condemns the common tendency to pry into the social origins of neighbours, their debts, and their private conversations. He likewise condemns people who read their friends' letters, and who watch sacred ceremonies which it is μ θμισ ρν (perhaps he had in mind Clodius' gate-crashing of the rite of Bona Dea). Such inquisitiveness, says Plutarch, is invariably accompanied by a wagging tongue, for what these people gladly hear, they gladly blab about: a ἃ γἔρ δως κοουσιν, δως λαλοσιν Pascal in his Pensees says much the same thing: ‘Curiosity is only vanity. Most often we only wish to know in order to talk about it.’

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.

When the quaestor C. lulius Caesar began his aunt's funerary laudatio with these words in 69 B.c., he was not claiming any unique glory appropriate only to ‘imperial Caesar’, but indulging a form of family pride shared by many aristocrats in the late Republic.

The imperium populi Romani was the power Romans exercised over other peoples, viewed in its widest sense. What we call the Roman empire, that is the empire viewed as a political entity, was usually conceived by the Romans in terms of people, the populus Romanus and its sodi et amid. The latter were differentiated into various categories according to their form of government and the terms of their association with Rome, but they were united in being regarded as contributors to Roman power and proper subjects for Roman concern.

Even more than the noise and the clouds of dust raised by men and horses, the flashing of bronze armour and weapons is characteristic of Homeric panoramas of battle. When the Greeks armed themselves with helmets, shields, corslets and spears, the brightness lit up the sky, and all around the earth beamed in the shine of bronze (19.359–63). It blinded eyes, the glare of bronze from shining helmets, newly-polished corslets and bright shields, as they advanced in their masses (14.340–3).

Not everybody shares my enthusiasm for the elder Pliny. We all have a nodding acquaintance with the Natural History, but few wish to pursue the relationship to the level of intimacy. Critics who care for the purity of Latin prose take a particularly dim view of him. Eduard Norden's verdict in Die antike Kunstprosa (i.314) is much cited: ‘His work belongs, from the stylistic point of view, to the very worst which we have’. This negative judgement was firmly endorsed by Frank Goodyear in the Cambridge History of Latin Literature:

It is a commonplace of contemporary classical scholarship that in the classical period the political and social status of Athenian women was deplorably low. Relegated to the ranks of slaves and children, scholars suggest that they were even much worse off than the women of earlier and later periods of Greek history. This paper proposes not to challenge this global judgement as a whole, but simply to focus upon one aspect of women's lives which has played an important role in such scholarly discussions.

In the speech Against Konon the speaker, a young man named Ariston, complains that one evening when he and a friend were walking in the Agora they were victims of what would now be called ‘a mugging’. They were set upon by Konon and some other men, who pulled Ariston's cloak off him, tripped him up, threw him into the mud, and jumped on him. While he was lying on the ground, they said a lot of things which Ariston does not like to repeat in front of a jury of respectable men; ‘but’ he goes on ‘the thing which shows Konon's hybris, and indicates that he was the ringleader, I will tell you: he crowed in imitation of cocks that have won fights, and the others suggested he should beat his sides with his elbows like wings’ (Dem. 54. 8–9). So Ariston has taken steps to prosecute Konon. But his prosecution is not for hybris, although hybris was an offence in Athenian law, but for assault (aikeia).

Consideration of Tetrarchic portraiture has usually focused on the extant porphyry sculptures (plates 2, 6, 7, 9, and 10). This was perhaps inevitable, since the arresting eyes of the Cairo bust or the stubby legs of the Vatican groups are certainly curious. Few scholars have resisted the temptation to pronounce their aesthetic judgement (and why not?), but none has been as caustic as Bernard Berenson who saw in them ‘the meanest symptoms of decay’, an effect into which the sculptor had ‘simply blundered and stumbled’. Berenson's book and many of the other academic works which refer to the porphyry sculptures address the wider issue of style and, in particular, stylistic change in Late Antiquity. They cite the same art, but draw a range of conclusions: L'Orange proposes parallels between style and the structure of society; Kitzinger suggests a conscious approximation to a ‘sub-antique’ style; and Bandinelli sees the porphyry work as exceptional, specialized and short-lived. Without neglecting the porphyry sculpture, the present essay aims to consider the whole range of surviving portraits and to make sense of them within the relatively narrow field of Tetrarchic ideology. This necessarily involves the question of style and, therefore, has points of contact with the above ideas. However, the present study is primarily ‘internal’, drawing together images diverse in form and location. Patterns are soon apparent, but the Tetrarchy had to establish its ideological stability and credibility if the government were to endure. It collapsed quickly (A.D. 284–311), but in this respect, Tetrarchic portraiture offers a good example of the power of art to manipulate its audience by instilling belief.

The current fashion for emphasizing ambiguities and discontinuities in literary texts should have found Sallust's writings congenial. The Catiline explores competing and contradictory claims to virtus, exemplified by Caesar, Cato, and Catiline himself, a paragon of ambiguity in contrast to the unproblematic Cicero. The Jugurthine Waris twice the length, with a more complicated structure and a wider range of material, including three formal digressions. A concern with the relationship between virtue and success, and with conflict between alternative virtues, is central to this monograph too; it concludes with a victory achieved not by years of military exertion but as the result of Jugurtha's treacherous betrayal to Sulla by Bocchus in contravention of all recognized moral principles (‘kinship, marriage, and a formal treaty’: cognationem, affinitatem, praeterea foedus intervenisse; cf. ‘deceit‘, composite dob, 111.2 and 4).

Old warriors of the New Guinea highlands used to regale the anthropologist Margaret Mead with tales of battles they once fought. Their stories ran

something like this: ‘We met on the mountainside near Wihun. A man of our side, named Maigi, threw a spear at a man of their side, named Wea. He missed. Then a man of their side threw a spear and hit my cross-cousin from Ahalaseimihi. Then I was angry and threw a spear at Wena, a big man of their side, and missed…’, and so on.

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.

The idea of a collection of letters from a Roman senator to his equestrian friend might encourage the reader familiar with the Letters of Cicero to expect a certain kind of self-revelation. Seneca, like Cicero, was one of the most prominent men in Rome in his own time. We might expect his letters to tell us his views on the emperor Nero, for instance, or what his motives were for retiring from public life (as he had done by the time he came to write the Letters). But readers of Seneca's Letters, at least in modern times, have often felt disappointed at his failure to provide information about himself and the world he lives in.

II. Just as suicide has been, and is, practised in all sorts of societies, from the most primitive to the most civilized, so there has probably never been a social code that sanctioned it absolutely without conditions. In primitive societies there are often deep-seated superstitions about βιαοɡάνατοι, victims of violent or untimely death. It is a fear of the ghost, which it is thought will be vengeful or troubled and not rest in peace. Special modes of burial with denial of ordinary burial rites, originally an expression of this fear, are attested for Greece and possibly for early Rome. But whatever regulations of a religious kind once obtained in Rome, they seem to have lapsed by the historical period. It has, however, been suggested that the persistence of such feelings may partly explain the fairly frequent cases of mutual killing recorded right into the Empire. The Emperor Claudius, celebrated as an antiquarian, proposed to remove from the senate rolls a man who was said to have stabbed himself (Suet. Cl.16).

The study of classical board games offers a most fertile field for conjecture, yet at the same time yields a distressing paucity of certain fact. Hasty conclusions of all kinds have been drawn from the sources available, both as to the nature of the games and as to methods of playing them; encouraged by the cheerful ambiguities of our authorities, investigators have not hesitated to equate Greek games with Roman, or both with those of Egypt and the Orient if occasion suited, and to lay down rules for the one deduced entirely from the other. Actually, the most sober caution is necessary. We are not justified in deriving the games of one country from those of another; but when a game obviously conforms to a definite type as played throughout the ages in various parts of the world, then we may justifiably make certain assumptions concerning it; for example, in the case of those Roman games which are of the backgammon type we may reasonably infer that they were played in a certain way. Beyond that we cannot go, and the utmost care is needed not to pervert the tradition of ancient authors, vague and obscure as it so often is. It is especially important to note that none of these games, either Greek or Roman, had any connexion with chess. There is no proof that the latter was derived either from the πέντε γραμμαί or from the ludus latrunculorum; any such claim is quite invalidated by the anachronisms and impossibilities involved. Thus ‘chess’, even as a loose translation of a term such as πεττεία, so commonly found, is inaccurate and misleading. If this paper is less inconclusive than many previous accounts, it is due to the help freely given me by Mr. H. J. R. Murray, who has put at my disposal his own notes and suggestions, backed by his expert practical understanding of board games and his unique knowledge of their comparative history.

On the last occasion when I had the misfortune to examine in Honour Moderations at Oxford I set a question on the Oedipus Rex, which was among the books prescribed for general reading. My question was ‘In what sense, if in any, does the Oedipus Rex attempt to justify the ways of God to man?’ It was an optional question; there were plenty of alternatives. But the candidates evidently considered it a gift: nearly all of them attempted it. When I came to sort out the answers I found that they fell into three groups.

The study of classical board games offers a most fertile field for conjecture, yet at the same time yields a distressing paucity of certain fact. Hasty conclusions of all kinds have been drawn from the sources available, both as to the nature of the games and as to methods of playing them; encouraged by the cheerful ambiguities of our authorities, investigators have not hesitated to equate Greek games with Roman, or both with those of Egypt and the Orient if occasion suited, and to lay down rules for the one deduced entirely from the other. Actually, the most sober caution is necessary. We are not justified in deriving the games of one country from those of another; but when a game obviously conforms to a definite type as played throughout the ages in various parts of the world, then we may justifiably make certain assumptions concerning it; for example, in the case of those Roman games which are of the backgammon type we may reasonably infer that they were played in a certain way. Beyond that we cannot go, and the utmost care is needed not to pervert the tradition of ancient authors, vague and obscure as it so often is. It is especially important to note that none of these games, either Greek or Roman, had any connexion with chess. There is no proof that the latter was derived either from the π⋯ντε γραμμα⋯ or from the ludus latrunculorum; any such claim is quite invalidated by the anachronisms and impossibilities involved.

The younger Pliny was consul suffectus from September to October, A.d. 100, and delivered in the Senate his official gratiarum actio to the Emperor Trajan for his appointment. This practice went back to the days of Augustus, according to Ovid (Ep. ex Ponto iv. 4. 35), though nothing is known of the senatorial decree which made it obligatory. Nor do we know if both consuls made speeches, or whether Pliny was following normal practice when he spoke on behalf of his colleague, Cornutus Tertullus. In Ep. ii. 1. 5 he tells us that Verginius Rufus was rehearsing a similar speech (to be addressed to Nerva) at the time of his fatal accident, and elsewhere (iii. 13) he writes of the boredom of having to listen to speeches of this kind, brief though they could be, and the distasteful duty of addressing words of insincere flattery to an emperor (Domitian) under whom freedom of speech was impossible. The custom of the official vote of thanks continued; M. Cornelius Pronto was suffect consul in July-August 143, and delivered his speech to Antoninus Pius on 13 August (Pronto, Ep. ii. 1).