In the first term of last year I had two classes with whom I was reading the Iliad. In the Classical Studies class we had to read and discuss the Iliad in Richmond Lattimore's English translation, and in the Greek IIA class we read Book I of the Iliad in Greek.

The character of Thersites, as presented by Homer in Iliad 2, has received an almost universally bad press, typical of which are the comments of F. A. Paley: ‘one of the turbulent and insolent malcontents in an army, who use their best efforts to misrepresent the authorities and to incite sedition in others’. Paley's view is typical both in the unsympathetic view it presents of Thersites and in its tendency to see him as representative of a whole genre of subversive and recalcitrant soldiery. My concern in this paper is to examine Thersites within the context of the Iliad alone, without any regard for his treatment by subsequent authors, and to attempt to explain his portrayal solely in terms of the dramatic situation at the beginning of the Iliad. My contention will be that the episode of Thersites is an important element in Homer's introductory purpose of presenting the backcloth against which the poem's theme, the menis is acted out.

In an article in CP 80 (1985), 33–34, entitled ‘Odyssey 21.411: the Swallow's Call', Luis A. Losada drew attention to the apparent oddity that the sound of Odysseus' bow-string, as he twanged it after stringing it in the presence of the suitors, is compared to the note of the swallow, since, for the most part, the swallow's twittering cry, in terms of sound quality, is traditionally associated in much of later Greek literature with either barbarian unintelligibility, loquacity, or sometimes lamentation – none of which is at all appropriate here. He suggests instead that a ‘thematic connotation’ was alluded to by Homer – the migratory cycle and vernal return of the swallow, and concludes that ‘the swallow and its call might well be called a quintessential metaphor for the idea of returning…No more appropriate bird call exists – the singing bowstring heralds the hero'sreturn.’

In the opening lines of Philoctetes, Odysseus addresses his companion Neoptolemus as his famous father's son (3f.). This is the first indication of an important theme: phusis, in the sense of inherited human qualities or capacities. Although Achilles has died before the dramatic action begins, he hovers in the background of the play, and no one challenges his claim to the highest admiration. Neoptolemus is closely associated with his father, and is repeatedly addressed or referred to as his father's son. In one particularly striking passage of his deception speech he describes to Philoctetes his own reception at Troy, where the welcoming army swore that they saw the dead Achilles alive once more (356–8). These lines conjure up a vivid physical likeness between father and son, but it remains to be seen how deep the resemblance really lies. Neoptolemus has the potential, in virtue of his inherited phusis, to be as admirable as Achilles.3 But two questions remain to be answered in the course of the play: Will he prove to be his father's son in character as well as birth? If so, how will this excellence be manifested?

My aim in this paper is to discover in what sense, if any, Aristophanes can be considered relevant to our society in the 1980s. If we call a classical author relevant to contemporary society, we may mean that he or she presents issues and problems for which we can find modern parallels and from which we may gain a deeper insight into our own current affairs. Aristophanes deals with a wide range of social and political problems of the kind which recur in all cultures, as well as with the practicalities of everyday life, so that when dealing with these problems he is ostensibly as relevant now as he was in his own day. But is there anything in the nature of Aristophanic comedy which constrains us from making the kind of modern connections which we might wish to make? L. Spatz says ‘Aristophanes speaks directly to us through such topical themes as the battle of the sexes, the scandals of power politics, and the underdog's need to strike back at his oppressors. But sometimes this relevance results in a misunderstanding of his original intention.’

In Greece & Rome 37 (1987), 169–185, J. F. Lazenby and Ian Whiteheadhave made a most helpful contribution on the problems of advanced manoeuvres by ancient triremes — the diekplous and the periplous. They are surely right to reject the view that these manoeuvres involved a whole fleet moving in line ahead formation at the time of battle, even in the milder version which postulates several squadrons abreast – each in line ahead. Given the nature of the triremes' main instrument of aggression – the ram – such formations could not achieve what Nelson's breakthrough at Trafalgar did – with benefit of cannons: nor was encirclement the aim of the periplous, as Whitehead has well demonstrated.

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.

Plutarch's account of the condemnation and punishment of Alcibiades by the Athenians (Plut. Alc. 22.5) includes the following statement: … ἔτι κα καταρσθαι προσεϕηφίσαντο πντας ἱερεĩς κα ἱείας, ὧν μóνην φασ Θεανὼ τν Μνωνος Ἀγρυλθεν ντειπεīν πρòς τò ϕφισμα, φσκουσαν εὐχν, οὐ καταρν ἱρειαν γεγονναι.

The biography of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos, covering the last eight decades of the Republic and written at the precise moment of the establishment of monarchy by Octavian, ought always to have been treated both as one of the best introductions to the period, and as an exposition, from a unique angle, of some of the values expressed in Roman society. But now, more than ever, there may be a place for a brief essay which attempts to bring out both some values exhibited in this particular text and the way in which these were taken up, distorted, and deployed in the propaganda of the Augustan regime. For, first, the larger background of late-Republican scholarship, antiquarianism, historiography, and biography has been fully explored by Elizabeth Rawson; second, Joseph Geiger has argued for the originality of Nepos as a writer of political biography; third, we have a major study of the ethical models which it is the purpose of the biography to hold up for emulation. Finally, John North, in an important review-article on recent works on Roman religion, has identified three significant characteristics of late-Republican religiosity: a scholarly or antiquarian perception of religious change, often seen as decline; the identification of religion as the subject of a particular form of discourse; and a shift in focus within the sphere of religion, from the community as a whole to great men within it. All three come together, as we will see below, in the passage of Nepos' biography in which he records how, some time in the 30s B.C., Atticus suggested to Octavian that the now roofless temple of Juppiter Feretrius on the Capitol should be repaired.

Odes 1.8 takes the form of a series of questions addressed by Horace to Lydia on the subject of her lover Sybaris. Why is she bent on destroying him through love? Why has he abandoned the manly athletic activities at which he was once pre-eminent, but of which he is apparently now frightened? Why is he hiding, as Achilles, disguised as a girl, hid before the Trojan war?

All works of art reflect the time in which they are created, but the mark of a good artist is that his work will transcend the limitations of his own era and thus construct a series of bridges over the gap of centuries.

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.’

quotiens magni alicuius <viri> mors ab historicis narrata est, totiens fere consummatio totius vitae et quasi funebris laudatio redditur. hoc, semel aut iterum a Thucydide factum, item in paucissimis personis usurpatum a Sallustio, T. Livius benignus omnibus magnis viris praestitit; sequentes historici multo id effusius fecerunt.

This is a study of how one prominent Roman responded to the role of stepfather, a role that began as an incidental and largely unregarded consequence of marrying a woman who already had children, and which for a variety of reasons assumed an unexpected importance. It develops a hint supplied from Sir Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution that this particular stepfather may not have been quite as uninvolved in his stepson's ambitions as he was at pains to suggest to his contemporaries, but goes well beyond that to the question of how influential this stepfather was as a role-model in the light of his stepson's character and personality. The stepfather was L. Marcius Philippus (cos. 56 B.C.), and the stepson was the boy who eventually became the Emperor Augustus. How Philippus responded to being a stepfather illustrates some of the features of that role as it existed in Roman society: the absence of legal authority, and the importance of the stepfather's personality and character. He is not a typical stepfather, because there were no typical stepfathers, but his career as a stepfather sheds light on a neglected dimension of Roman family life. Before going on with L. Marcius Philippus himself, however, it is necessary to say something about stepfathers in general.