This article discusses some social and psychological aspects involved in two of Odysseus’ lying tales (Od. 14.192–359 and 19.165–248). If one understands remembering as reconstructing the past, this reconstructive element leaves room for forgery and deception. Telling credible lies involves many of the same cognitive structures used in the sharing of authentic personal memories. Odysseus’ fake autobiographical stories in the guise of a Cretan beggar offer an interesting case study of this overlap between reconstructed memories and credible lies. Drawing on recent studies on autobiographical memory and on parallel examples in our contemporary world, the aim of this paper is to analyse some narrative and psychological features of Odysseus’ fake memories, as well as the social functions that they fulfil in the fiction of the poem. It will be shown that, speaking with Eumaios, Odysseus builds his story using a conventional structure common to ‘truthful’ autobiographies in the fictional world of the epics, while with Penelope his autobiographical memories are co-narrated during the dialogue, guided by the emotions mutually aroused between narrator and narratee.

This article examines the historical creation of the legacy of Kyniska, the Spartan royal who was the first woman to win at the ancient Olympics in the early fourth century BCE, from her own lifetime to the modern era. By investigating the reception of her victory rather than her agency as historical actor, I demonstrate that the continuing relevance of her victory has depended on others’ literary, historical, or political goals. I examine the creation and contestation of Kyniska's victory at five key moments of reception: 1) in the narratives of Xenophon, Plutarch, and Pausanias; 2) in her own victory monument; 3) in poetry commemorating Hellenistic rulers; 4) in feminist didactic biography of the nineteenth century; and 5) in the debates surrounding the modern Olympics. These moments reveal how her victory's reception has contributed to ancient and modern discourses on womanhood and gender. By contextualising Kyniska in each of these distinct eras and environments, I suggest that the perception of her victory has never been monolithic, not even in the ancient world.

In the second half of the second century BC, a single personality became ascendant in the Roman Republic. Scipio Aemilianus assumed the mantle of the first man in Rome from 146 BC until his death in 129 BC. Modern biographers of this leading statesman have drawn different conclusions about the influence of Greek ethics on the life of Scipio, either that he possessed a Hellenistic way of thinking or that he was a traditional Roman aristocrat. Much debate turns on historiography and the question of the usability of sources like Cicero for the history of the second century BC. This article focusses on de Officiis Books 1–2 and the issue of Cicero's debt to the writing of the Stoic philosopher Panaetius of Rhodes, Scipio's friend and tutor. I argue that sufficient evidence exists in the references to Scipio in Off. 1–2 to demonstrate that Panaetius had characterised Scipio as influenced by the Stoic way of living and explicitly as a Roman example of the virtue of greatness of soul. This argument is supported by corroborating evidence from Polybius, Scipio's friend and confidant, who also wrote about him in his Histories.

A number of coins issued during the years 49–44 had on them an additional legend, a trend which had been developing in the preceding fifty years, but which was used much more extensively by Caesar's moneyers. The legends (with two exceptions) all refer to recognised ‘qualities’, which had temples and cults established in the Roman community. The coin types, particularly in the opening years of the civil war between Caesar and Pompeius, were issued in very large numbers, suggesting that they were not only used to pay the troops whom Caesar had already and those he was recruiting, but also that they were put into general circulation. The qualities emphasised on the coins indicate Caesar's programmatic ideology, and the number issued shows that he wished to circulate this ideology widely. The additional legends can be taken therefore to be ‘slogans’, a form of propaganda for Caesar's aims. The two exceptions were Pax and Clementia, but there is evidence to suggest that a cult and temple were planned for each of these.

Within the rhetorical frameworks of exhortation and illustrative exemplum, Horace's second and sixth Roman Odes offer compressed, contrasting images of a young person's education and transformation, presenting these as stories about a puer and a virgo, respectively, in a lyric mode that does not narrate. In the first of these stories (Carm. 3.2.1–12), Horace slyly usurps characters from Vergil's unfinished Aeneid, alluding to some of its distinctive narrative techniques, but also draws on the similes and plot structure of its Iliadic model. The second of Horace's stories (Carm. 3.6.21–32) plays off his first, as he converts the adulta virgo who figures in Carm. 3.2 into her antitype. This story has as its intertext an obscene Hellenistic epigram by Automedon. Horace makes both intertextual and metatextual use of his models, while his indirect references, through Homer, to Vergil's intended design for his emerging Aeneid may be considered under the new heading of extratextual.

In the poetic epistles addressed to his unnamed wife, Ovid makes a number of recognisably consolatory exhortations that poignantly reframe her perception of grief. By depicting exile as a form of living death and his departure from Rome in Tristia 1.3 as a funeral, Ovid is able to cast his wife in the role of a mourning widow whom he consoles from his exilic grave. The moment of their separation becomes a traumatic event that gives the wife the emotional endurance to handle any future adversity. Such appeals to earlier resilience, frequently found in consolation, are employed in Tristia 3.3 and 5.11. In these poems, Ovid also draws upon the consolatory argument that death is not a malum and reframes this same notion about exile to assert his status as a relegatus to his wife and a broader audience. This paper connects Ovid's use of these ideas with the broader tradition of Graeco-Roman consolation, expanding our understanding of the genre and the Tristia's place therein.

This paper explores the career and fall of Gaius Asinius Gallus. It argues that Gallus supported Tiberius and worked to increase the Senate's dignity, and that he mediated between the Senate and emperor. It explains Gallus’ downfall in light of his career: he resented Sejanus as a threat to the Senate, and he envied his role as Tiberius’ adiutor. His efforts to honour the prefect in 30 CE were not enough to save him.

This article explores the interconnection between Caligula's rehabilitation of his family and the performance of imperial power through processions as presented on three of his coin types. It argues that Caligula used the depictions of processions in connection with coin types celebrating his father, mother, and brothers to create a ‘parade of ancestors’. These coins served as portable visual reminders (monumenta) of Germanicus’ pompa triumphalis of 17 CE, the inclusion of Agrippina's image into the pompa circensis as part of the honours granted to Caligula's family members upon his accession, and the likely inclusion of Nero and Drusus’ images at the head of the transvectio equitum during the early years of Caligula's reign. By parading his family members on his coins in this way, Caligula was able to propel himself forward by looking to and commemorating the past, thereby creating permanent monumenta of these public performances of power.

This article shows how, from the time of its construction up until late antiquity and beyond, written sources reflected and perpetuated the fama of Pompey's theatre. Such was its reputation as the Roman theatre par excellence that, even after its absorption into the fabric of medieval Rome, in the earlier fifteenth century Italian proto-antiquarians were prompted by what they had read to attempt to locate it. A key figure in the process of sifting and applying the ancient sources was Biondo Flavio (1392–1463). Roughly contemporary with the early stages of Alberti's De re aedificatoria, but probably preceding the blueprint of the Roman theatre in that work, Biondo's pioneering ‘theatre-made-of-words’ in his Roma instaurata presented a newly accurate understanding of its structure and use (clearly distinguishing it from the amphitheatre) which proved influential in inspiring further topographical and antiquarian interest and research in the early sixteenth century.