The Hollywood movie Stranger than Fiction (2006) centres on a tax inspector, Harold Crick, who begins to hear a voice inside his head. This voice, he gradually realizes, belongs to the narrator of a book in which he is the central character. As the plot unfurls, the narrator begins to drop hints that Harold will die at the end of the story. Understandably disturbed by these intimations, Harold decides to confront a university professor, and between the two of them they identify the author as one Kay Eiffel. Harold then tracks down the author and begs her not to kill him off.

Street fights seem to have been as common in classical Athens as they are in modern cities. One incident, which probably took place a few years after 394 bc, involved two rivals for the attentions of a young Plataian, Theodotos, apparently a slave and a rent boy. There was a history of violent disagreement between the opponents, one of whom was a wealthy, middle-aged Athenian citizen whose name we do not know. The other, a (probably) younger man named Simon, claimed to have had a contract with Theodotos for sexual services, which was breached when the older man enticed him away. For the sake of a quiet life, the older man left Athens for a time, taking Theodotos with him, and did not come back until he thought Simon would have forgotten about the boy. But not long after their return there was another fight, accounts of which conflicted sharply. According to Simon, the older man went to his house threatening to kill him, and attacked him with some broken pottery, causing a serious head wound. The older man's story was that Simon and his friends got drunk over lunch, then lay in wait near the house where he and Theodotos were inside, and jumped on them as they came out. After a chase through the streets, the incident developed into a general mêlée in which everyone ended up with a broken head. The older man claimed that he had considered prosecuting Simon for assault, but had been too embarrassed and fearful of damaging his reputation. Four years later, though, Simon prosecuted him for trauma ek pronoias, which we may tentatively translate as ‘intentional wounding’.

We know so much more about Cicero than we do about anyone else from antiquity, and because of the nature of our knowledge, especially the ‘personal’ viewpoint which his letters offer, it is easy to think we know more about him than we actually do, or to consider him unique, attributing to him alone as personality characteristics things which may in fact be features common to others of his class and time. So, for instance, he is regularly accused of inconsistency in public life by both ancients and moderns, but I believe here we are led astray by the evidence, and that he was only marginally more changeable than his contemporaries. This is a position impossible to argue, because it would require information that we do not have about the vagaries of political alliances in the 60s, 50s, and 40s bc, and about how many times various people changed their minds about different things. Even the limited material we do have, however, suggests that the successful late Republican politician held very few alliances to be unbreakable. This article explores the possibility that Cicero was particularly susceptible to the charge of inconsistency precisely because he was not one of the nobiles, and so could not lay claim to this aristocratic virtue without being challenged. It also suggests that he may in reality have had to change his mind more regularly than his contemporaries, again owing to the vulnerabilities inherent in his status. Finally, it raises the possibility that inconstantia and levitas in Latin may mean something different from what inconsistency usually means in English, at least to some speakers of the language. After brief discussion of the nuances of constantia and its opposite, I explore the charge of levitas as wielded by Cicero's enemies against him in the trials of 54 bc, his own defences against the charge, and then his use of it against others in the 50s and 40s. I should perhaps make clear that this is not an attempt to rehabilitate Cicero, except insofar as the ancient evidence misleads us into misjudging him; I hope merely to suggest that inconstantia is in the eye of the beholder, and that most of the leading figures of the Senate were more prone to see it in men like Cicero than in men like themselves.

The tradition of classical studies in Poland goes back to the Middle Ages. The first historical chronicle, written in Latin, appeared in this country in the twelfth century. At present Latin is taught in about 30 per cent, of our grammar schools. The course covers four years of instruction, and the texts studied are those of Nepos, Caesar, Sallust, Livy, Lucretius, Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, and Horace. Greek is studied at the universities, mainly by students of classical philology, although its knowledge is also required in some other fields of the humanities.

A phrase of Mr. Middleton Murry in his chapter on the imagery of Shakespeare suggests some interesting possibilities of literary speculation. Noting the odd association of dogs and sweetmeats in four widely separated tragedies Murry remarks: ‘What is to be noted is that the image, having its roots in some vital experience, grows steadily more complex.…’ He goes on to suggest that the origin of a notion so obsessive lay in some unpleasant memory of Sir Thomas Lucy's hall.

In his Sather Lectures on Roman Satire, J. Wight Duff writes (pp. 160–1): ‘Indignatio facit versum, says Juvenal: “Wrath is the maker of my verse”. The author ought to know whence his main inspiration comes; and the thunder of explosive anger is abundantly audible in the earlier books. Yet there is a sense in which this familiar quotation tells only part of the truth. People can be immeasurably angry without achieving the satiric; for anger, to rise above mere invective into satire, must be artistically directed; and this is where Juvenal's own talents are necessary for the complete recipe.’

When it was first proposed that an Association of Classical Teachers should be formed, there were some who feared that it might, if successful, become either a rival to the Classical Association or, at least, a force to divide and weaken it. The activities of J.A.C.T. and the appearance of its excellent journal, Didaskalos, have now made it quite clear that these fears were groundless. Both organizations can and should exist together and their co-operation has already produced considerable mutual benefits. Indeed, now that so many of our schools are suddenly subject to Protean transformation, it seems almost providential that there should be a responsible and representative association able to speak with an expert voice for classical teachers.

I Have been invited to write an article on the subject of the pronunciation of Latin. I put this fact in the forefront, for I do not wish it to be supposed that I am a fanatic who seeks every opportunity of bombarding an unwilling audience with his one fixed idea. As a matter of fact, my main feeling in the matter is that a completely undue importance has been attached to the question, and that it is the so-called reformers and not their opponents who are responsible for this tedious discussion. Having made this apology I will state my case with what brevity I can.

Vergil has an accurate eye for visual detail, and describes much as an artist might each cameo of his narrative. It is for this reason that we are shocked by images that cannot be easily translated visually. Perhaps the most arresting of such passages is the description of the monstrum Fama at A. 4. 173ff., which defies any reasonable attempt to convert it into a visual or narrative image.

Athene is mentioned in the Iliad nearly 200 times and almost as often in the Odyssey. On ninety-two occasions Homer calls her γλαυκ⋯πις. How should we translate this constantly recurring epithet? Neither Chapman nor Pope claims to provide a literal translation. Often they are content with ‘Athenian Maid’ or ‘Minerva’: but when they do attempt to render γλαυκ⋯πις they offer ‘Blue-eyed Goddess’, ‘Blue-eyed Maid’, &c. Cowper prefers ‘Pallas cerulean-eyed’, and Lord Derby ‘blue-eyed Pallas’.

Claudius's stay of sixteen days in Britain preceded one of the most famous triumphal celebrations in the history of the early Roman Empire. The emperor's own personal involvement in the conquest of Britain in A.d. 43 was negligible, but that he took the trouble to visit the new province and to receive the submission of eleven kings of Britannia is much to his credit. Claudius is known to have brought with him a great retinue of Roman senators, the Praetorian Guard, and perhaps also a detachment of Legio VIII, to overawe the defeated Britons. Four legions had been enough to crush them, yet here was the emperor with further reinforcements, including his crack Praetorians.

To one nurtured on the pure and sustaining milk of Cicero and the Augustans, with an occasional dash of Tacitus and Juvenal for medicinal purposes, the writings of Apuleius come with something of the force of a knock-me-down. The very words are unfamiliar. Barrio is onomatopoeic enough to be guessed, but what does vispellio mean to anyone outside the legal profession? What of cambio? His is a strange language, highly artificial, with its borrowings from the Greek—myoparo, schedium, and naulum, which Juvenal took before him, for instance; with its echoes of Plautus—tuburdnor, scitulus, atticisso, capero, ientaculum, agaso, lurco, pollinctor, cincinnus, and examussim are all Plautine; with its diminutives, always a sign of artifice, as it was the sign of the Graecis-santes of Cicero's day—mellitula, tenella, centunculus, sdtulus spring to the mind; with comparatively unfamiliar literary words—tesca and blatero are both Horatian, but are very rare; and with his own occasional extensions of usage, as when he describes his horse as vector meus, or speaks of a kiss being given pressule, or seemingly coins subterlabere for ‘to slight’. But with this mannered artificiality goes the easy conversational idiom of the professional popular writer, evinced by his repeated use of commodum in the Metamorphoses to carry on the flow of ideas. Fuscis avibus or sinistro pede for ‘without luck’ are as artificial as the rest, but minimo minus for ‘almost’, or dicam an with the indicative for immo vero are surely conversational.

The Pliny who is known to us from his letters has too often been dismissed as a conscientious but timid administrator, a pedant aspiring to literary fame, and a generous patron whose uncritical support of promising young men ends by becoming a bore. The answer would be that the Roman conception of friendship was one of mutual aid and reciprocal obligations on the part of cliens and patronus; that desire for gloria is marked in almost every Roman we know about and is closely associated with the hope non omnis moriar; and that when Pliny was sent out as an administrator with special powers as legatus Augusti propraetore consulari potestate to inquire into the financial and administrative confusion in the affairs of Bithynia and Pontus, he had considerable legal experience from his work in the Chancery court of Rome as well as expert knowledge of Bithynia from his handling of the defence in the cases brought by the province against the senatorial governors Iulius Bassus and Rufus Varenus.

It is hard for biographers, ancient and modern alike, to resist the story of the young Julius Caesar's kidnapping by a band of pirates. Suetonius and Plutarch both include full versions of the tale, with specific details (Suet. Iul. 4; Plut. Vit. Caes. 1.4–2). Suetonius, for instance, writes that the kidnapping took place near the island of Pharmacusa (just off the coast of Asia Minor), while Plutarch, noting that too, also specifies that the ransom that freed Caesar came from the (nearby) city of Miletus. And while Suetonius writes that Caesar, after his release, launched a fleet, pursued the pirates, and punished them, Plutarch includes another phase in the story: having taken command of a fleet and set sail (again, from Miletus), Plutarch's Caesar captured nearly all the pirates but, instead of killing them right away, ‘he himself went to Iuncus, the governor of Asia, on the grounds that it belonged to him, as governor of the province, to punish the captives’. When Iuncus postponed a decision on the matter (evidently hoping to make a profit out of the situation), Caesar returned to Pergamum, took the robbers out of prison, and only then crucified them himself.

Sophocles' Philoctetes contains many moments of high drama and of tension between conflicting protagonists. The prologue scene between Odysseus and Neoptolemus lays the foundations for the development of the dramatic crisis by portraying their fundamental disagreement as to the best means of bringing Philoctetes back to Troy, while the long first episode (219–675) depicts the evolution of the intense relationship between Philoctetes and the youthful Neoptolemus, who has in the prologue reluctantly agreed to implement Odysseus' plan to deceive Philoctetes. The first stage of this interaction is the mutual communication of past histories: Philoctetes describes his abandonment and life on Lemnos, and in return Neoptolemus tells how Odysseus fetched him to Troy from Scyros with the story that, since Achilles was now dead, his son was required to take the city.

The names and natures of the three parties which struggled for power in early-sixth-century Athens have puzzled scholars both ancient and modern. The paucity and murkiness of the evidence have made progress difficult and the decisive contribution to the solution of the problem most probably lies in the hands of the archaeologists and the epigraphists. In the meantime some scholars have retreated into agnosticism. ‘The reasons for Athens' rejection of the Solonian solution are, except in broadest outline, lost.’ Scepticism is clearly an important tool in the handling of inadequate evidence, but the present article is written in the belief that some clarification of the problem is still possible with the existing evidence.