This article takes a novel approach to fragmentary Roman comic playwright Caecilius Statius by exploring the titles attested for his comedies. Informed by Genette's theory on the title qua paratext, it argues that titles are distinct artifacts of Caecilius’ dramatic production designed to circulate without the texts they label and, consequently, it treats them as legitimate objects of interpretation in and of themselves. Analysis of ten titles in both Greek and Latin reveals that Caecilius Statius’ titles are polysemous, bilingual and profoundly meaningful in their engagement with the genre of New Comedy and with translation as a social and cultural phenomenon of middle republican Rome. But given that the titles of Roman comedy are largely uninvestigated by scholarship, this piece begins by arguing for their author-ity, setting forth the evidence for comic titles’ origins, function and transmission. In so doing, it demonstrates the palliata's textuality and challenges the communis opinio regarding comic scripts’ passage from stage to page. A Supplementary Appendix available online (10.1017/S0075435824000285) presents the evidence for the titles of Caecilius’ plays.

The history of intentional menstrual suppression is often assumed to begin in the 1960s, with the advent of effective oral contraception. This article, however, demonstrates that in the Roman Imperial period, despite widespread belief in the importance of menstruation for maintaining female reproductive health, there was already a diverse marketplace for menstrual suppression techniques. By reading sources against the grain and engaging in critical speculation, this study investigates the available methods, who may have sought them and why, and how their use might reinforce or challenge gendered norms and power dynamics. This study focuses primarily on three sets of sources: Galen's medical treatises on bloodletting, the pharmacological compendia of Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides, and body amulets to regulate vaginal blood flow. It proposes that individuals engaged with these technologies not only to normalise excessive periods, but also to delay, minimise or eliminate menstruation for convenience.

Surviving in excellent condition on papyri and wax tablets, the Commentary and other late antique shorthand manuals offer a new way to investigate the complexity and diversity of non-elite intellectual culture in the later Roman Empire. Stenographical skill and obedience were hymned by elite authors, but the methods used to inculcate that skill and extract that compliance have rarely been examined. This article, the first to subject shorthand pedagogy to social historical analysis, argues that the difficulty of the shorthand system increased the potency of the ideological lessons it delivered to its (predominantly non-elite, often enslaved) students. It finds that, in addition to technical instruction, the Commentary communicated a coherent, if troubling, vision of late ancient society and of the proper dispensation of power within it. Student-authored marginalia point to the successes and limits of the Commentary's moral pedagogy and raise fresh questions about how non-elite communities developed their own intellectual identities and traditions.

Despite the well-known weakening of the Roman guardianship of women by the early Principate, its final disappearance from Roman law has remained a mystery. In modern scholarship, the proposed dates for the abolishment of tutela have ranged from the late third century to the early fifth, or to the claim that it just fell out of use without ever being formally abrogated. This article combines legal and papyrological sources to show that we can in fact establish the time when tutela was abolished in the reign of Constantine. It further places the disappearance of the guardianship in the broader context of the historical development of Roman law and the legal independence of women in the Roman world.

The bucolic poems of Martius Valerius, first published in 1946, used to be dated to the twelfth century, but thanks to the work of François Dolbeau and Justin Stover, they are now securely dated to the sixth. In this article, I demonstrate that Martius’ fourth eclogue draws extensively on two of the logical works of Boethius, the introduction to the second edition of the commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge and the translation of Aristotle's Peri hermeneias, both from the mid 510s. These works were well known in the twelfth century, but I corroborate the sixth-century dating first by connecting Martius Valerius with Martius Novatus Renatus, editor of a corpus of Boethius’ logical monographs in the 520s, and secondly by arguing that Martius Valerius belonged to a circle of students in Rome who attached themselves to leading senators, including Boethius. I end by considering Martius’ career as quaestor and consul.

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It has been in continuous operation since 1586, making it the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press (1534). From its imposing complex in Jericho, the stylish suburb of Oxford, and its many satellite offices around the world, including Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Karachi, Hong Kong, Cape Town, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Melbourne, Toronto and New York — the overlap with former territories of the British Empire is conspicuous — it produces an unparalleled number of academic publications every year and occupies a dominant position in the authentication of knowledge and its dissemination across the globe. In 2022–23, for example, the press published no fewer than 1,777 new academic titles, available in 193 countries and translated into 45 languages (including Somali and Quechua, as the press's 2022–23 Annual Report breathlessly announces). And revenues are substantial: £825,000,000 in sales last year alone. A bastion of prestige, global in reach but with a clear centre, and sitting comfortably within the inner citadel of a hierarchical, worldwide ecosystem of knowledge-making, Oxford University Press can be seen as a quasi-imperial operation in its own right.

The study of the Western Indian Ocean in the first millennium is a dynamic and exciting field, in which scholarship, especially from within the Indian Ocean region itself, is expanding rapidly. It is experiencing a period of major, but not necessarily disruptive, change, to its core questions, terminology and periodisation. This article offers an overview of the study of Roman trade with the Western Indian Ocean (sometimes termed ‘Indo-Roman studies’) from the early 2000s to the present. It examines key developments in the field, including the changing scope of analysis in terms of period, region and evidence; the impact in the field of an increasingly global focus and efforts to decolonise a subject historically deeply rooted in colonial processes; and specifically the effort to provincialise or decentre Rome in historical narratives. It then suggests directions in which the field appears to be developing and makes tentative suggestions for future work.