Heracles' image in antiquity is notoriously kaleidoscopic. Comedy represented him as a gluttonous buffoon, and myth made no secret of the brutal violence of many of his exploits. On the other hand, Pindar exalts him as a superlative figure who enforced the nomos of the gods, while Prodicus in a famous myth makes Heracles a supreme example of commendable conduct, a youth who chooses the path of Virtue over the path of Vice out of his own free will. This image of a moralized Heracles soon took root in the Greek imagination, and a whole host of Greek thinkers (Isocrates, Antisthenes, Diogenes the Cynic, and Plutarch, to name but a few) found in him a perfectly malleable exemplum for their various courses in moral edification. After undergoing a large number of transformations in Roman literature and the Church Fathers, Heracles resurfaces unscathed in the early Renaissance, when we find him again as an already established exemplum virtutis, now a man of letters, now a Christian. It would appear that, despite his multifarious metamorphoses, Heracles remained throughout the centuries essentially what he had been since Prodicus' day: an exemplary figure who undertook extreme toils and gained supreme recompense.

Where the dusty village of Smirat now sits hunched against the winds of the Tunisian desert, there once stood the country villa of a wealthy Roman named Magerius. Prominently displayed in Magerius’ villa was a (now well-known) mosaic depicting a beast hunt in the arena. But the presumed stars of the show, four pairs of hunters and leopards, are placed at the corners of the mosaic, while centre-stage is dominated by a figure bearing a plate of money, and a block of text explaining that these are the funds with which Magerius has generously offered to pay for the show. Contrary to the ancient donor's expectations, however, the modern observer is not struck by Magerius’ munificence, but rather by the meanness of his show compared to those put on in Rome. The emperor Titus (r. 79–81), for example, had 9,000 animals killed during the hundred-day-long inauguration of the Flavian Amphitheatre (Cass. Dio 66[66 Cary].25.1). Magerius’ leopards, worthy of a mosaic in the provinces, would have provided about ten minutes’ worth of entertainment in the capital.

The Trojan cycle has been retold and re-envisioned many times from antiquity to modern times. The themes covered by these myths, especially the Homeric poems, have captivated the minds and hearts of poets, historians, authors, and others. Homer's Iliad extoled the grandeur as well as exposed the ugliness and folly of war. These humanistic virtues resonated with various cultures around the world. In this article we examine the reception of the Trojan cycle, especially the Iliad, on the noted manga artist Tezuka Osamu (1928–89). Recent reception theories focus on the creation of a new composition or artefact as part of the reception process; we shall thus discuss the Phoenix: Early Works manga as an example of such reception.

If there was an ‘aristocracy’ in the archaic and classical polis, how was it differentiated from the rest of the polis? There are various possible criteria for differentiating a socio-political elite, notably birth, legal status, education, virtue, power, access to deity, wealth, and performance (or display). European history has left us with a strong association between ‘aristocracy’ and the criterion of birth, which produces a relatively closed elite. As for the ancient Greek polis, however, an excellent recent collection of essays entitled ‘Aristocracy’ in Antiquity edited by Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees generally rejects earlier assumptions that a hereditary aristocracy is clearly identifiable, and gives some prominence instead to the criterion of display or performance (such as competing in Panhellenic games or erecting an image of an ancestor). My concern is not directly with this interesting controversy, but rather with a historical process that is almost entirely omitted by ‘Aristocracy’ in Antiquity (and by most other discussions of Greek aristocracy), namely the monetization of the polis that was made pervasive by the invention of coinage and its rapid spread in Greek culture from the early sixth century bce.

The Porticus Octaviae was built in the Campus Martius sometime between 33 and 23 BC (Figure 1). There is controversy as to whether it was built by Augustus and dedicated to his sister, or commissioned by Octavia herself. The complex, however, which included a library and senate house was closely associated with Octavia and her son. The Porticus Octaviae fell victim to the fire of ad 80 and was probably restored by Domitian. An inscription on the propylon of the complex records its restoration, also after a fire, by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in AD 203. Little consideration, however, has been given to the importance of the Severan restoration in the context of this emperor's building programme. This article will examine the messages conveyed by the restoration of the Porticus Octaviae in terms of Severus' imperial policy, and in particular his desire to connect himself to the legacy of Augustus.

Few cities, perhaps, have enjoyed two periods of prosperous existence, each lasting some seven hundred years but separated by the gulf of a century when the city lay in utter ruin and desolation. Yet such was the history of Carthage: Punic Carthage which had dominated the western Mediterranean for centuries was wiped off the map by Rome in 146 B.c., only to be revived a century later as a Roman creation and to become one of the most flourishing cities of the Empire, surviving until its destruction by the Arabs at the end of the seventh century A.d. A centenary of the end of Punic Carthage, as of independent Corinth, falls this year and thus calls for a brief remembrance. This the Romans would doubtless have welcomed, not only as recalling their elimination of a secular, though weakened, enemy, but also because they liked celebrating anniversaries. It has indeed recently been suggested (by M. Grant, Roman Anniversary Issues, pp. 4, 120) that Julius Caesar deliberately planned the colonization of Carthage in 46 B.c., just one hundred years after its destruction, while Septimius Severus, himself an African, records on his coinage his favour to the city (INDVLGENTIA AVGG. IN CARTH.) in the quarter-millennary of the foundation plan. Whether or not such precise dating can be established, it is certain that the Romans enjoyed celebrating anniversaries and that the anniversary of the fall of Carthage marks an event of far-reaching significance: if Carthage had in fact succeeded in conquering Rome, the history of Western Europe would certainly have taken a very different turn.