With PLLs and ILOs introduced in Chapter 14, this chapter introduces and presents the systems that synchronize clocks to incoming data, known as clock and data recovery (CDR) systems. The chapter starts with an introduction and discussion of the metrics of CDRs. Phase detection is done differently in CDRs compared to PLLs. This is explained before the most common approaches are described. Several options are available to the designer for how phase comparisons should be acted on. These are presented and compared next. The chapter continues with an introduction to baud-rate phase detection schemes built on Mueller–Muller phase detection.

Nobody knows the identity or background of the Roman author Q. Curtius Rufus, or when he wrote his History of Alexander the Great. This text along with Arrian’s Anabasis, Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, Diodorus Siculus Book 17 and Justin’s Epitome of Trogus Books 11–12 and the Metz Epitome is one of the main ancient sources on the reign and campaigns of the Macedonian conqueror. This chapter surveys current thinking on Curtius’ history, including issues like the historian’s probable sources, his literary structure, intertexuality and his characterization of Alexander. In particular the chapter explores the historian’s excursuses – in which he appears to be speaking in propria persona on Alexander’s personality as well as his portrayal of Alexander’s relationships with women, including the Athenian courtesan, Thais ,and the Amazon queen, Thalestris, and especially, the Persian queen, Sisygambis, the mother of Darius III.

Plutarch devotes two speeches and a biography specifically to Alexander. Current scholarship prioritizes the author over his subject. The erudite Plutarch employs numerous Alexander sources for his own writerly purposes. In the speeches he argues that Alexander’s successes are due to his own efforts rather than gifted by fortune. It is to be doubted that Plutarch had a serious polemical or philosophical point to prove; his epideictic oratory aims at rhetorical display and furnishing evidence from ready knowledge. The Life is similarly moulded by generic requirements. Plutarch provides an episodic birth-to-death account of Alexander, in which he presents himself as a competent interpreter and adviser. He quotes early sources, in particular from a collection of letters by Alexander, to render his depiction more authentic. Focusing on the ‘signs of the soul’, Plutarch is most interested in court politics and personal morals. His Alexander is determined by his physical make-up and greatness of soul on the one hand, and how effectively education and philosophy direct his ambition on the other. His biography is not apologetic; rather he wishes to educate his readership on how personal morality impacts on governance. References to his own context, if at all present, are oblique.

The chapter discusses ancient and modern treatments of Alexander’s death. It describes the omens said to foretell his death and their cultural and historical background, treating ancient versions of what led to Alexander’s death and attempts by historians and scientists to detect the working of poison, conspiracy, or less-violent and sinister causes. The rest of the chapter focuses on Alexander’s so-called last plans, their authenticity, the reasons for their rejection, and the contentious history of his body and burial.

This chapter discusses Arrian’s characterization of Alexander the Great. Beginning from a brief history of scholarship on Arrian and his unusually large role in shaping modern understandings of Alexander, it approaches Arrian as an active creator of historical knowledge. Using examples from the Anabasis, it demonstrates that Arrian observed a shift in Alexander’s behaviour arising from the increasingly complex political and personal circumstances of his life. He described this change overtly at times, but more often by setting Alexander into a literary framework based on Herodotus’ portraits of despotic Persian kings and tweaked to reflect philosophical and moral concerns contemporary in Arrian’s own lifetime. The Anabasis forms the core of the discussion but the Discourses of Epictetus and the Indica provide complementary readings and show consistency in Arrian’s approach to his favourite subject.

This chapter explores the depictions of the barbarians, and indeed the very concept barbaros, in Plutarch’s works. It reviews Plutarch’s rhetoric dealing with non-Greeks, which was circumscribed on the one hand by the Roman imperial political reality and on the other by memories of the old Hellenic valor, which was filtered only through texts and oratory. The chapter examines Plutarch’s play with the established stereotypes in a way that shows ethnic labeling to be elusive. It studies Plutarch’s ethnic taxonomic schemes (i.e. a twofold arrangement of barbarians vs. Greeks/Romans and a threefold scheme of Greeks vs. Romans vs. barbarians), and the subtle moral and political implications thereof. It also looks into the literary significance of the use of barbarians in the narrative and of the mismatch between Greek and barbarian practices as presented mostly in the Lives.

This paper reexamines the intertextual connection between Lucretius and Ennius from a multi-medial angle. Ennius’ tragedies were regularly revived in the late Republic, and selections from his epic Annals appear to have been recited in public contexts as well. These performances seem to have stood in a relationship of reciprocal influence with wall paintings, as stagings inspired painters, and their artwork influenced actors in turn. Accordingly, Lucretius treats Ennius’ works as particularly influential expressions of a harmful philosophy that threatens Epicurean ataraxia in a variety of contexts. Analyzing familiar points of contact between the two authors in Book One of On the Nature of Things and highlighting a number of as-yet undiscussed allusions, I argue that Lucretius equips his readers with the tools to challenge Ennius in all three of the relevant media, be it on the page, on the stage, or in images.

The chapter is divided into three sections. In the first section I discuss Plutarch’s life and work in the general context of the first century CE. Following this, I provide a short analysis of six of Plutarch’s Lives, Lycurgus, Numa, Alexander, Caesar, Antony and Phocion, to demonstrate the key themes highlighted by scholars of his thought, and to introduce readers to accounts which figure among the most prominent as references in Western intellectual traditions. In the concluding section I offer a comparison and contrast between Cicero’s On Duties and the themes of Plutarch’s Lives and his moral essays devoted to questions of public life. This comparison highlights what distinguishes Plutarch’s contribution and signals his unique contribution to traditions of political reflection on public life and public service.

This paper reexamines the intertextual connection between Lucretius and Ennius from a multi-medial angle. Ennius’ tragedies were regularly revived in the late Republic, and selections from his epic Annals appear to have been recited in public contexts as well. These performances seem to have stood in a relationship of reciprocal influence with wall paintings, as stagings inspired painters, and their artwork influenced actors in turn. Accordingly, Lucretius treats Ennius’ works as particularly influential expressions of a harmful philosophy that threatens Epicurean ataraxia in a variety of contexts. Analyzing familiar points of contact between the two authors in Book One of On the Nature of Things and highlighting a number of as-yet undiscussed allusions, I argue that Lucretius equips his readers with the tools to challenge Ennius in all three of the relevant media, be it on the page, on the stage, or in images.

In this chapter the reader is introduced to the background to Roman Egypt, starting with Egypt’s experience of foreign rule under the Kushites, Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks. The impact of the three centuries of rule by the dynasty of the Ptolemies, who took over after the death of Alexander the Great, is explored; many traditional Egyptian institutions remained in place, most importantly the great temples. Many Persian administrative innovations were also kept, but the Greeks brought in their own financial practices. Substantial immigration from the Greek world and the Levant changed the population, and Greek largely displaced Egyptian as a language of power, even though Egyptian society was substantially multilingual. Periodic revolts show that foreign rule was not universally accepted, but many Egyptians became part of the Ptolemaic administration and served its economic goals, which depended heavily on exporting wheat. Romans began to settle in Alexandria in the last decades before the Roman conquest.

Darius I overcame rebellions and seized the throne of Babylon, but cuneiform scholarship continued and developed; religious practices did not change, nor did the great buildings on the citadel. The zodiac scheme came into use. The Achaemenid king took Babylonian royal titles and promoted the worship of Marduk for local purposes. Xerxes broke the continuity. Following an uprising, a purge led to the ending of many archives. The province of Babylon was divided in two. Subsequent Achaemenid kings continued to treat Babylon with reverence. Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, entered Babylon, retained the Persian satrap, and moved treasure from Susa and Ecbatana to Babylon. He was recognized as a god. Lack of sons at his premature death precipitated a civil war from which Alexander’s commander Seleucus emerged to take the throne jointly with his son Antiochus. The derelict ziggurat was demolished, but temples and rituals, chronicles and astronomical diaries, continued as before. Aramaic was widely used, and fewer texts were inscribed in cuneiform. Interest in the fall of Assyria and of the Babylonian empire is apparent in Greek literature. Famous scholars include Berossus and named astronomers. Parthians invaded and eventually ended the dynasty.

At different places in his writings Alexander expands on Aristotle’s criticism of Pythagorean and Academic doctrines making numbers principles of beings. On these accounts, harmoniai and symphōniai are singled out as paradigmatic cases illustrating a more general explanatory strategy. This chapter analyzes Alexander’s understanding of this strategy and explores the extent to which he may or may not have found room for its use within his account of Aristotle’s philosophy. The chapter is divided into four sections. Section 1 outlines the Aristotelian background of the discussion; sections 2 and 3 focus on the textual evidence from Alexander’s writings (in particular: from the commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and De sensu, and from Alexander’s De anima). Finally, section 4 sets Alexander’s analysis within the broader context of Aristotelian metaphysics and sketches out a possible account of the interplay between the shaping of Alexander’s views and the development of different stances about the nature and role of forms, quantities and quantitative determinations both in opposition to the Pythagorean and the Platonic traditions and within the Peripatetic tradition as such.