This article presents some fresh evidence in favour of recognising in a series of late testimonia on Hipponax the vestiges of a poem in which the iambist recounted his poetic initiation. It argues that Herodas alludes to such a poem in the opening of his programmatic Mimiamb 1 and in his own account of poetic investiture in Mimiamb 8. Finally, the article attempts an interpretation of this proposed new fragment of Hipponax with the aim of teasing out some of its implications for his poetics.

This article argues that female characters are active participants in the text of the Onos. Among women who are in control of their experiences we encounter the slave girl Palaestra. She uses a forceful metaphor equating a man with the food being prepared in her kitchen, which prefigures much of the ensuing narrative and has the effect of transforming Lucius into food/text to be consumed by the reader. It becomes clear that she and various other female characters, whose abilities go further than the usual novelistic antagonistic skill of controlling their own experience and manipulating other characters, choose and choreograph Lucius' narrative.

Hugh Trevor-Roper was educated as a classicist until he transferred to history, in which he made his reputation, after two years at Oxford. His schooling engendered in him a classicism that was characterised by a love of classical literature and style, but rested on a repudiation of the philological tradition in classical studies. This reaction helps to explain his change of intellectual career. His classicism, however, endured: it influenced his mature conception of the practice of historical studies, and can be traced throughout his life. This essay explores a neglected aspect of Trevor-Roper's intellectual biography through his ‘Apologia transfugae’ (1973), which explains his rationale for abandoning classics, and published and unpublished writings attesting to his classicism, especially his first publication ‘Homer unmasked!’ (1936) and his wartime notebooks.

This paper offers a new reading of the end of Lucretius 5.1442, arguing that the line-end as we have it (much less Servius’ apparent reference to it) cannot stand, but that the original reading may yet be recovered from the transmitted text. The paper also seeks to show how the corruption may have arisen.

This paper investigates the visual recreation of Helen in the medium of cinema by using as case studies two runaway productions of the 1950s: L'amante di Paride starring Hedy Lamarr and Helen of Troy with Rosanna Podestà in the title role. Examination of features such as costumes, makeup and hairstyle shows that in the former film Helen's representation is informed by and seeks to capitalize on Lamarr's status as a queen of glamour, equating Greek royalty with Hollywood royalty. The analysis of the second film explores further the homology between ancient and modern celebrity on screen and in extra-cinematic discourses, and shows how Podestà's stardom was built on and remained anchored in Helen's iconicity.

This paper argues that the final couplet of Horace, Epode 13 alludes both to the description of Achilles playing the lyre in Iliad 9 and to ancient scholarly debate about the Homeric passage. Horace's reworking of the Iliad underlines his transfer of epic material to a sympotic setting, and the scholarly allusion reinforces Horace's presentation of himself as a symposiastic speaker by drawing on the tradition of symposia as sites of learned conversation. This dual engagement with Homer encourages readers to see their own responses to Horace's poem as part of a continuum of literary debate.

Simichidas' self-presentation as a poet at Theocritus 7.37 is modelled on Apollo's self-presentation as a musician at Homeric Hymn to Hermes 450. Through this allusion, in his own Dichterweihe as a bucolic poet Simichidas hints at the invention of the bucolic genre by Hermes. The reference is crafted so as to point self-reflexively to its status as reference; in particular, the expression καὶ γὰρ ἐγώ (‘I too’) of line 37 functions as an intertextual signpost. If Simichidas is a literary projection of Theocritus, the allusion has important implications for our understanding of his self-positioning within the poetical tradition.