The proliferation of white and coloured marbles in Rome and the provinces has received detailed attention from archaeologists, and the symbolism underlying the use and distribution of these marbles has been discussed at length by art historians. In addition, there are now several important catalogues of ancient Roman marbles. Their stones are presented attractively in full glory, using state-of-the-art printing technology, page after page of dazzling colour. In case the full extent of the polychromy is lost on the reader, descriptions and labels (particulary those coined in nineteenth-century Italy) reinforce this vivid connection between stone and colour - ‘giallo antico’, ‘rosso antico’, ‘porfido’, ‘scisto verde’, ‘nero antico’, ‘marmo bianco’, ‘greyish-blues’, ‘black limestone’, ‘dazzling white’, ‘rot’, ‘gelb’, ‘violett’. It is a very simple exercise for us to align colour and stone.

This article develops a suggestion which I made tentatively elsewhere: that Euripides' Cyclops was first produced in 412 BC, as part of a tetralogy which also included Helen, Andromeda, and Iphigenia among the Taurians. Given the paucity of the available evidence, it may be thought that there is little to be gained from further discussion of Euripidean production dates, or from yet more unprovable guesswork. Nevertheless, I think that it is worth raising the question of dating again, in order to explore a couple of related, and somewhat more interesting, subjects. First of all, there is the matter of the relationship between satyr-plays and the tragic trilogies with which they were produced. Secondly, this discussion may cast some new light on another old problem: the nature of Helen and other Euripidean plays whose generic status as ‘tragedies’ has often been doubted.

Sophocles' Philoctetes, first performed in 409 BCE, is a complex play, engaging with a number of issues that have guaranteed it a great deal of attention through the ages. Among other things, from what we know about the Aeschylean and Euripidean versions, Sophocles offers a far more dynamic work than either of the other two playwrights, involving many plot twists, false resolutions, and, all-but uniquely, a character who seems to grow up in the course of the play. Although Philoctetes is generally considered the key figure of the play, as it revolves around his willingness to use his bow in the service of his enemies, Neoptolemus too is of great interest to many (modern) readers, as it is in him that we see the clearest case in extant tragedy of a decision rethought on moral grounds; Neoptolemus' struggle may well render him one of the most compelling characters in Greek tragedy (Reinhardt (1979) 166; cf. Gill (1996) 1–18).

In his Panathenaicus, which was issued in 339 BC, Isocrates condemns Athenians for their rampant bribery:

[Formerly] those who had been elected to office were expected to neglect their own property, and also to abstain no less from those perquisites (λημμάτων) which nowadays the officials have become accustomed to gain than from the sacred treasures; who under the current circumstances would have such sense of self-restraint? (Isoc. 12.145)

There are many references suggesting that the Athenians not only deplored but also had strict attitudes towards bribery, which they considered to be a distinct crime. What should not be overlooked, however, is that the Greeks had their traditional values concerning gifts and reciprocity, according to which they were expected to give in return when given something. In so-called Homeric society gift-giving was one of the most fundamental principles of social relationships, as is notably pointed out by M. I. Finley. That the Greek word dôra, which is most commonly used to mean bribery, originally refers to gifts in general epitomises the ambivalence of Greek values concerning bribery.

§1. Common Greek inherited from proto-Indo-European a simple five vowel system as shown in (1), with one mid vowel on each of the front and back axes. Only the long vowel system is shown here; the short vowel system had the same structure.

The inherited system was inherently stable: there was balance between the short and long vowel systems and between the front and back axes, and with only one mid vowel on each axis, there was no problem of overcrowding. The individual phonemes were, so far as we can tell, optimally distributed in the available phonological space. (The diagram shows the back axis as being shorter than the front, since anatomical constraints mean there is less articulatory space at the back of the mouth; see Laver (1994)272–3).

The introductory chapters of the Plutarchan Lives of Demosthenes and Cicero are much relied on for personal information about the author. It is here that Plutarch tells us that he wrote the Parallel Lives while residing in his home town of Chaeronea, and that he had been to Italy; his knowledge of Latin was, however, limited. As a matter of course, numerous scholars have paid attention to these statements, often with far-reaching interpretive implications. If the passage is accepted at face value, Plutarch comes across as a placid yet honourable man of letters, not a social climber but a morally upstanding gent who was loyal to his clan as well as one who disliked, could not afford, or was apprehensive about living in a big city. Alternatively, one might mistrust Plutarch and unscramble his voice as plea by a wily loser in the literary and political competition of his day. Donald Russell sensed that Plutarch was left on the fringe because his career somehow did not take off. Russell's intuition is filled out by Glen Bowersock's robust conjecture that Plutarch's (relative) seclusion in Chaeronea during Trajan's reign was not quite voluntary: having compromised himself in the 90s with his pro-Flavian biographies of the Caesars, Plutarch laboured to clinch a comeback by means of the Parallel Lives and essays.

Aeneas begins his narrative with the story of the Trojan Horse. The Greeks, after constructing a huge wooden horse, within which they hide a great many armed soldiers, flee the land. The Trojans rejoice, thinking that they have driven off their opponents. Lines 27–8 express the joy of the Trojans as they visit the Greek camp:

iuuat ire et Dorica castra

desertosque uidere locos litusque relictum

It is disputed whether desertos and relictum are used with an attributive or predicative function. The repeated desertus (24 huc se prouecti deserto in litore condunt, i.e. the Greeks) directs the reader's attention to its earlier use in an attributive function (‘they hid on the vacant shore of Tenedos’). The image of the deserted shore of Tenedos is clearly meant to suggest the potential destructiveness of the Doric camp and shore deserted now. Such an interpretation seems to be further supported by the predicative use of desertos and relictum, since we see the Greek camp through the eyes both of Aeneas and of his countrymen.

In piscibus (sc. nascuntur) obsonatores et rhetores: thus Trimalchio concludes the sign-by-sign interpretation he gives in Petr. 39 of the astrological repositorium that has been served some chapters before (35.1–5). While the obsonatores – ‘buyers of fish’ (TLL 9.234.49–70), from ὀΨωνέω, ‘buy fish and other dainties’ (LSJ s.v.) – pose no problem, the rhetores have mystified interpreters since Peter Burman, who frankly confessed: ‘Causam non video, cum pisces vulgo muti habeantur, rhetores vero loquaces. Fortasse corrupta vox. An vectores aut veteratores? Haereo.’

The credit for inventing the scientific study of Greco-Roman sculpture still belongs to the German scholar, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The reason for this, the Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums or History of the Art of Antiquity, was first published in Dresden in 1764 and supplemented in 1767 by the Anmerkungen über die Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums or Further Remarks. So important was the project that Winckelmann was revising it when he was murdered a year later. This evolving version was published in Vienna in 1776. It is this amended Geschichte that formed the basis of influential French and Italian editions. These followed quickly, propelled perhaps by the interest generated by his murder. Though it was another hundred years before the text was translated into English, its impact has been extraordinary. Vestiges of the book are everywhere. Citations from the ‘final’ version permeate the literature. Even without opening it, we sense its influence on the field we call ‘Classical Art’.