I reckon myself to be a sufficiently competent map-reader to find routes that are interesting and scenic rather than merely obvious. Today I have mapped out a lecture with a track that is far from direct or main-road: I am going to wander and diverge to various look-out points and hidden spots along the way. I hope that, nonetheless, it will become clear that it has an itinerary and a destination.

‘Life is a journey from the cradle to the grave.’ When we want to piece together some theme in the story of our life, we try to establish some time-markers, and we tend to string these along a kind of path or route. And we often pinpoint places in counterpoint with the time. This modelling of life as a road is a ‘metaphor we live by’, to borrow an apt phrase from cognitive studies; and the ancient Greeks often used this metaphor as well. The prime itinerary of our social and inner life would probably be constructed from our rites de passage, our close relationships, our inspirations; and very often we trace these through places as well. I was asked recently to write a very brief intellectual autobiography (so far), and I found that I was plotting it through locations: Epidauros, Oxford, the South Bank in London, Delphi, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles … And the same would be no less applicable to the story of my personal life, with some key places in common - Delphi, for instance.

The Capitoline Aphrodite (fig. 1) counts among the most copied statues of antiquity. In 1951, Bianca Felletti Maj collected 101 replicas of the type compared with 33 for the Medici Aphrodite (fig. 2) and a mere five for the so-called Aphrodite of the Troad; and many more examples have surfaced since.’ Yet despite the Capitoline type's popularity, the date, location and authorship of its original remain clouded, as does its relation to these other ‘pudica’-type Aphrodites, especially the Medici. Leaving aside the Aphrodite of the Troad, this article presents new evidence that may resolve one of these problems and sheds some new light upon some of the others.

Masks having a bad hair day? Two terracotta masks now in the Museum of Ancient Cultures, Macquarie University (figs 1-5), and the Classics Museum, Victoria University of Wellington (figs 9-12), seem to be in this embarrassing situation. Both of these tonsorially-challenged characters display highly unusual features (indeed the entire forehead of the male mask seems somewhat deformed) but a closer look suggests that in both cases their bad hair is the result of ‘tampering’ with classic mask representations or their moulds. That is to say, existing moulds have been modified and then brought back into use, or examples of each mask-type have been used as the basis for new moulds. Furthermore, the changes can be shown to have occurred at a much later date than that of the original masks or moulds. These changes confuse the identity of the mask, suggesting that those responsible for their later production did not fully understand the original iconography. They are thus of interest as evidence for the later reuse of artefacts relating to theatre, though we suggest in our conclusion that, in spite of their theatrical derivation, their purchaser was not primarily interested in them as souvenirs of Greek drama.

Gaius Marius (157-86 BC) is widely known as one of the most innovative commanders of the Roman military. In 101 BC Marius implemented an alteration to the design of the heavy legionary javelin (pilum). However, unlike Marius' previous reforms, this modification of an elemental aspect of the Roman legions was not adopted as a standard military practice. An examination of the evidence relating to the reform and of the events surrounding the time of its implementation demonstrates that the benefit of the modification was different from that currently accepted by scholars. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that the reason why this reform failed to be adopted by the legions was not that it provided no clear tactical advantage on the battlefield, but was due to the course of Roman political and military history immediately after it had first been implemented.

For a century and a half, since at least the appearance of probably the first general monograph on Livy, Hippolyte Taine's Tite-Live, in 1856, scholars have argued over one of the most fundamental questions which can be raised about the character of the historian: was he a ‘Republican’ or an ‘Augustan’ writer? The answers have been much more varied than might be expected, but have mostly relied on an endless discussion of the same few pieces of ‘evidence’: Livy's few mentions of Augustus and the usually quite misquoted reference in Tacitus (Ann. 4.34).

C. Ravonius Celer was a sailor of the Misene fleet from Dalmatia.

C. Ravonius Celer qui et Bato Scenobarbi (f.) from Naples (CIL 10.3618 = Dessau 2901):

D(IS) M(ANIBUS) / C(AIUS) RAVONIUS CELER QUI ET BATO SCE / NOBARBI NATION(E) DAL[M(ATA)] / MANIP(U)L(ARIS) EX (TRIREME) ISID[E MIL(ITAVIT) ANN(IS)] XI VIXIT [ANN(IS) …] / P(UBLIUS) AELIUS V[…] I VENER[(E)…]

This inscription from his tombstone provides important evidence about the process of construction of individual identities in the period of the early principate, for it reveals the parallel existence of Roman and indigenous identity in a funerary context, commemorating C. Ravonius Celer, who is also at the same time Bato, a son of Scenobarbus of the Dalmatian ‘nation’. This inscription records the two identities of C. Ravonius Celer/Bato, which were incorporated into his personality as an essential part of who he was, revealing both his private and public self.

Between 1955 and 1967 the undergraduate Classical Society of the University of Sydney staged a Greek or Latin play in the original language every year, an enterprise strongly supported by the academic departments concerned. The publication of the recently discovered Dyskolos of Menander was an opportunity not to be missed for a veritable coup de théâtre by staging in Sydney the first modern-world performance of this play. It is the sole surviving complete example of the work of an author whose enormous popularity in antiquity was only matched by his highly fragmentary representation in the written tradition. The comedy was given two performances in the Wallace Theatre at Sydney University on 4th July 1959.