This Note is a supplement to J. C. Davies's discussion of the Republic's declaration that when the philosophers of the kallipolis have been trained in dialectic, they must be compelled to forsake pure contemplation of the forms and return to the Cave to rule (519 c–520d).

Studies of Horace's imitation of Greek lyric in his Odes have tended to concentrate on particular supposed echoes. Given that the surviving Greek texts are few and fragmentary, this method is bound often to lead to dubious and unsatisfactory results. A broader approach directed at the syntax, structure, and myths of the Odes produces, in my view, a clearer understanding of how Horace hoped to enter the canon of lyric poets (Odes i. 1. 35 f.). This paper expounds Odes iii. 11 exempli gratia as a serious Horatian attempt to write the Latin equivalent of an early Greek lyric. It shows some of the ways in which Horace has concentrated the characteristics he observed in his predecessors and composed an ode which is a close-knit complex of Greek lyric linguistic and conceptual mannerisms.

The natural desire to know how the performance of Greek athletes compared with those of today has caused a great deal of attention to be paid to one of the very few pieces of evidence we possess, the anonymous epigram which speaks of a long jump of 55 feet and a discus throw of 95 feet:

Readers of Martial may be struck by the frequency with which one-eyed people make their appearance in the epigrams. Sometimes the deformity is satirized in conjunction with a moral failing, as for instance in the case of the one-eyed drunkard (6.78) who prefers his wine to his eyesight (and so, by continuing to imbibe against medical advice, loses the vision of his remaining eye). On other occasions, the physical defect itself gives rise to a witticism which forms the focal point of the poem. A striking example is the neat couplet 3.8: ‘“Thaida Quintusamat.” “Quam Thaida?” “Thaida luscam.” /Unum oculum Thais non habet, ille duos’, where the erotic commonplace of the lover who is ‘blind’ to his beloved's faults is given a novel twist by the suggestion that Quintus must be literally blind to love the repulsive Thais.

This article sets out to reconsider the history of curse tablets in the ancient Mediterranean world as the history of a technology, one marked by episodes of innovation and appropriation. Attempts to write a history in terms of diffusion or of the spread of classical ideas or of magic have failed to convince, and most recent studies focus on the particularities of specific tablets or groups of tablets. This article argues that, if human and object agency are taken into account, it is possible to explain both the discontinuities in the history of curse tablets and also the shape of their thousand-year history. Curse tablets emerge as a technology the affordances of which allowed it to be put to many uses in many different social locations formed by the complex and shifting cultural contours of antiquity.

The past thirty years have brought us much closer to the meaning of many puzzling terms employed by Aristotle in the Poetics. But there are still many whose meaning may never be established with any certainty, partly because of inconsistencies or deficiencies in the argument and partly because of our own ignorance of the dramatic and critical terminology of the fourth century. For example, it is reasonable to assume that the terms used by Aristotle to describe his three μ⋯ρη of tragedy—пεριп⋯τεια, ⋯ναγνώρισις, and п⋯θος—were all part of the technical vocabulary of the contemporary theatre, and that if only we were familiar with that vocabulary, we should not find Aristotle's vagueness and carelessness in explanation such a hindrance to understanding.

There are seventy-four catalogued examples of figured art painted on Pompeian façades, almost all of a religious or talismanic nature. This street art appeared near compital altars and entrances to shops and houses, and contributed to a vibrant street aesthetic. Exterior figured paintings have not received a great deal of scholarly attention, however, with studies tending to focus on iconography rather than considering how street art may have functioned in its original setting. The potential value of painted façades as evidence for religious, commercial, and civic values, for which there are scant literary sources, has consequently been overlooked.

One day in 79 b.c., when he was studying at Athens, Cicero and a group of friends took a walk along the same road as Lucian's Philosophia, but in the opposite direction. They had listened, as usual, to a lecture by Antiochos, who was then head of the Academy, delivered in the gymnasium called Ptolemaion, which was in the middle of the city; and they resolved to take an ambulatio postmeridiana (Latin for Περίπατος δειλινός) in the Academy, which at that time of day would be quiet (and comparatively cool). Forgathering at Piso's, they traversed the six stadia from the Dipylon, and reached the justly famous walks (non sine causa nobilitata spatia) of the Academy. There Piso remarks, ‘Whether by a sound instinct or by an illusion (natura an errore) when we set eyes on the very places frequented by great men, we are more deeply moved than when we merely hear of their deeds or read their writings. Plato used to hold discussions here; I can almost see him walking in those little gardens near by (illi propinqui hortuli). Here taught Speusippos and Xenokrates and Polemon, who used to sit on the very seat which we can see over there. The power of suggestion which places possess is indeed great (tanta uis admonitionis inest in locis).’ Quintus Cicero is more attracted to the Kolonos near by, with its Sophoklean associations.

In spite of the high reputation which Solon enjoyed in ancient times as a conciliator, the record shows the collapse of his plans for social stability in his own lifetime. This collapse was perhaps caused by events beyond his control or influence, and if it was social and economic change in Attica subsequent to his reforms that brought about a new revolutionary situation, and opened the way for the tyranny, the question is, What changes of such a nature took place in this period? In this connexion it would be well to review very briefly what evidence we have about Peisistratos' following in Attica.

‘Attica has a plentiful supply of stone,’ says Xenophon (Poroi i. 4),‘from which are made the fairest temples and altars, and the most beautiful statues for the gods.’ Athens was indeed blessed in its building stones, as in its fine clay. The immensely complicated geophysical processes which created the exquisite landscape of Attica produced a variety of useful and often beautiful materials, nicely distributed about the land. The stones are mostly limestones of different sorts. Marble itself is a limestone miraculously metamorphosed by titanic heat and pressure into its characteristic crystalline structure, thus forming in the body of the earth what M. Aurelius (ix. 36) aptly calls poroi, calluses or nodules. This has happened in many places, but in most the result consists of comparatively small lumps or thin veins; much rarer are the massive beds from which can be extracted the great blocks needed for the major architectural members of temples and other large buildings. In this too Attica is exceptionally favoured. More than one huge layer runs through the fabric of both Pentelikon and Hymettos; and other extensive beds lie near the southern tip of Attica.

Pliny lived in the heyday of the Roman empire, being born in A.d. 62 in the middle of the reign of Nero, at Comum by Lake Como in north Italy, and he lived until about A.d. 112. His family were not of the old Roman nobility but belonged to the second grade of the Roman upper classes, the so-called Knights or equites Ramani. Pliny trained to become an advocate in the courts of civil law, and partly by his talents and partly through the influence of family friends in the senatorial class he gained promotion to the senior grade of the Roman administration. He became a Roman senator when he was about twenty-eight years old, and eventually climbed to the top rung of the Roman public service. So he was in Roman terms a self-made man, the first senator of his family. But he was also a highly educated man; as a young man he attended the schools of the most famous professors of literature at Rome, and especially that of the great Quintilian, whose book on the art of rhetoric survives to show the sort of education that Pliny received.

It is a commonplace that Roman religion was less concerned with the spiritual well-being than with the political success of the nobiles. The gods were the symbols and guarantors of varying, aspects of Roman power; keeping them content was of paramount importance, and it was the nobiles who were in general credited with the ability to ensure the continuation of this state of affairs.

On the coast of southern Italy, just before the coastline changes its direction from south-west to south-east, there was in ancient times a place where the high mountain range stood back a little, and in front of these mountains a series of semicircular terraces formed a kind of giant's amphitheatre looking out to sea on to the Gulf of Tarentum. At this spot two rivers flowed close together into the sea; their alluvial deposit had built up a small fertile plain, and the route taken by the larger of them down from the mountains pointed to a short cut to the sea on the other side, the Etruscan Sea. Here, in the latter half of the eighth century b.c., a band of settlers from Achaea built a town between the two rivers, which they named, as colonists tend to do, after a river and a spring in their home-land: the larger river they called Krathis, ‘the Mixer’, and the smaller Sybaris, ‘the Gusher’. The newly-built town took its name from the Sybaris. Both these rivers are there to-day; the Krathis is still called the Crati, and the Sybaris, which now flows into the Krathis, is called Coscile.

Callimachus was the Housman of antiquity. He had formidable learning, combative pugnacity, and a rare capacity to put both aside and write with exquisite simplicity. His learning is seen in the traditions about his pupils, who were reputed to include Eratosthenes, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Apollonius of Rhodes, with whom he was later on terms of enmity. It is seen in his association with the library at Alexandria. A scholiast to Plautus says that he held the post of librarian. That he was not chief librarian is proved by the list preserved in a papyrus at Oxyrhynchus, but there is no reason to doubt that he served on the library staff, especially as his published works included a library catalogue. It is to be seen in his later reputation: thus to Philippus Callimachus is the main weapon of the dry-as-dust army of commentators (AP 11. 321) and to study him is an investigation in the dark (AP 11. 347). It is seen in the volume of his works which numbered over eight hundred, and their general character. They show a taste for curious learning; one may instance a series on Local Nomenclature which included a book on Local Month-Names, or another on The Rivers of the World with separate volumes for Europe and Asia, or a volume on Foundations and Name-Changes of Islands and States, or Geographical Wonders of the World.