In the 50s b.c. the Roman republic faced serious challenges, not least among them the related problems of electoral bribery and provincial extortion. The year 54 b.c., which this article takes as a case study, witnessed both the worst electoral scandal Rome had ever seen and the high-profile extortion trial of M. Aemilius Scaurus. These events defy analysis in terms of the political allegiances and prosopographical connections usually tracked. It is more helpful to think of problems and (attempted) solutions, in which the younger M. Porcius Cato played a leading role. Scaurus’ prosecutor summed up a vicious circle: governors who had engaged in extortion would buy the consulship with the money they had stolen and go on to plunder other provinces. Cato countered from both sides: in the Senate, he proposed a new form of process to combat electoral corruption; as president of the extortion court, he allowed the prosecution to hurry through a case that was as much about ambitus as repetundae. These initiatives, while not immediately successful, helped lay the groundwork for future reforms.

The rare Latin word draucus is known almost exclusively from Martial. Older dictionaries and handbooks used to gloss the word as ‘sodomite’, until Housman showed that draucus is in fact ‘as innocent a word as comoedus, and simply means one who performs feats of strength in public’. Thus, Mart. 7.67.5–6 concerns weightlifting: gravesque draucis | halteras facili rotat lacerto (‘and with effortless arm she rotates weights that would tax a draucus’), while 14.48 describes drauci playing hand-ball (harpastum): Haec rapit Antaei velox in pulvere draucus | grandia qui vano colla labore facit (‘These the swift draucus, who makes his neck big by futile toil, snatches in Antaeus’ dust').

In consulatu sexto et septimo postquam bella civilia exstinxeram per consensum universorum [potitus rerum own]ium rem publicam ex mea potestate in senat[us populique Romani a]rbitrium transtuli.

There is very little doubt about the reading of the Latin text, except that the Greek has suggested to Schönbauer that ‘compos’ should be read for ‘potitus’. He urges that ‘compos’ has a ‘milder meaning’ than ‘potitus’ and has no connotation of the use of force. The change to ‘compos’ is worthy of consideration, but suggests that the Latin ran ‘compos factus’ if ‘compos’ was used, and the phrase ‘compos factus’, though good Augustan Latin, is perhaps too retarding in rhythm to fit this place, though to that stylistic feeling too much weight should not be assigned.

According to Diogenes Laertius (7.49–51), the concept of ‘appearance’ (φαντασία) played a central role in Stoic philosophy. As staunch corporealists, the Stoics believed that appearances are physical structures in our corporeal soul which provide the foundation for all our thoughts (Sext. Emp. Math. 7.228–41). One of the crucial features of appearance is that it is a representational mental state that has the ability to provide us with accurate awareness of the world through causal interaction between our senses and external objects, and thus supply the means for acquiring knowledge about the reality. However, the Stoics recognized that we can also be aware and think of objects that are real but are not presently affecting our senses, as well as objects that are altogether fictional and thus incapable of ever interacting with our senses. Because of this, it was important for them to distinguish between representational mental states which are and those which are not caused by external objects at the moment in which they are formed. Chrysippus was one of the Stoics who paid special attention to this distinction; in a key text, Aet. 4.12, he is reported as reserving the name ‘appearance’ (φαντασία) only for the former states, while for the latter he used a different term, ‘imagination’ (φανταστικόν).

How to inculcate virtue in the citizens of Magnesia by means of the dance component of choreia constitutes one of the principal concerns in the Laws (= Leg.), revealing Plato's evolving ideas about the expediency of music and paideia for the construction of his ideal city since the Republic. Indeed, a steady stream of monographs and articles on the Laws has enriched our understanding of how Plato theorizes the body as a site of intervention and choral dance as instrumental in solidifying social relations and in conditioning the ethical and political self. As one scholar has aptly put it: ‘a city and its sociopolitical character [are] effectively danced into existence.’ Drawing on this recent work, I focus on an enigmatic passage in Laws Book 7 that merits more attention than it has received, in which Plato curiously singles out Bacchic dances from those that are ‘without controversy’ (815b7–d4):

The Watchman's bed is not ‘supervised’ (13 ἐπισκοπουμένην) by dreams; instead, fear ‘stands in attendance’ (14 παραστατεῖ). The images are medical. He is ill; dream-filled sleep would be a good doctor, but the bad doctor fear is already on the job, preventing him from sleeping well.

Burnet's text at Pl. Ti. 55c7–d6 is at least questionable, and opting for a different reading at 55d5 (θεός instead of θεόν) would shed light on an intriguing argumentative aspect of Plato's cosmological account: God confirms the metaphysical reasons why there is just one perfect world.

Things in Homer cannot complain about a lack of attention. Nearly forty years ago, Jasper Griffin, in response to the oralist emphasis on composition and formulaic language, drew our attention to the many significant objects populating the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nestor's cup, for example, is so heavy that other men have difficulties to lift it; the cup illustrates the eminence of its owner who rubbed shoulders with the far greater heroes of the past. As Griffin demonstrated, Homer deftly uses the significance of objects to enrich many scenes of his narrative. While the sceptre, symbol of the king's power, underscores the sorry figure cut by Agamemnon in Iliad Book 2, the washing places that Hector passes when he tries to escape Achilles generate a powerful tragic contrast to the battlefield chase in which he is now involved. Following Griffin's lead, scholars have closely examined things and their role in Homeric epic, notably their commemorative function: weapons and other objects have biographies and are therefore an important means of evoking the past besides song.

Roman conflict with Parthia in the mid first century for control of Armenia and Domitius Corbulo's exploits in the East, culminating in the Parthian candidate for the throne, Tiridates, receiving his diadem from the hands of the Emperor Nero in Rome, have frequently been studied for what they reveal about military and diplomatic manoeuvres under the later Julio-Claudians. The historiographical investigation of our main source, Tacitus, particularly through comparison with the fragments of Cassius Dio, is also important for the light this sheds on the Roman senator's methods. The intention of this paper is to draw attention to the complexity of Tacitus’ account by indicating his use of multiple and sometimes contradictory viewpoints in his narration of Caesennius Paetus’ unsuccessful Armenian campaign of a.d. 62–63 (Ann. 15.1–17) and to highlight an unrecognized echoing of his predecessor Livy by the historian. The examination of a text that is as elusive as it is allusive will require a careful study of what must have been a debated incident, but, as I hope to show, will give a broader insight into the historian's methods and, perhaps, wider intentions. I begin with an outline of historical events and the sources available to the historian. Next, I present a narratological examination of the text to show how differing viewpoints are highlighted within a contested storyline. I then show how this confusion may appear to be dispelled by a strong plot-line that borrows heavily from Livy, wherein the actions of an older, experienced general are contrasted with those of his subordinate. However, aspects of this account suggest that the tensions within the narrative are not resolved and that this has wider implications for our understanding of the historian and his work.

M. Duronius, tribune of the plebs in 97 or perhaps 96 B.C., was expelled from the Senate by the censors of those years, M. Antonius and L. Crassus, for having abrogated a lex sumptuaria. No doubt Antonius was chiefly responsible, for it was him that Duronius chose to prosecute for ambitus while he was still censor. Nothing else is known about Duronius, who quite obviously played no major part in Roman politics or at the Roman bar.

Valerius Maximus tells the story of his expulsion, with the reason for it. The passage must be quoted in full (2. 9. 5):

Textual difficulties as well as problems of content are sometimes prone to being overlooked in famous passages, because their very familiarity tends to stifle reflection on their actual meaning. orandum est, ut sit mens sana in corpore sano (Juv. 10.356) escaped detection as an interpolation until 1970. In di, coeptis (nam uos mutastis et illa) | aspirate meis (Ov. Met. 1.2–3), the reading illas has held its place against the correct illa until 1976.

A treatise on rhetorical tropes is attributed in manuscripts to the first-century grammarian Trypho: this article considers for the first time a fifteenth-century manuscript of this work (Leiden, BPG 74G), which turns out to be the only complete witness of its hitherto unknown original version; this version (very fragmentarily transmitted by a fifth-century papyrus scrap) is also partly found in another fifteenth-century manuscript now kept in Olomouc (M 79). Four interesting poetic fragments are quoted in this newly discovered, fuller version of Ps.-Trypho's De Tropis: some lines from Callimachus’ fifth and fourth Iambi (23–9 and 90–2 respectively: a radically new light is shed by this new witness on the parallel papyrus fragments carrying Callimachus’ text), an epigram dubiously attributed to Simonides (FGE 44 Page, probably to be dated to the Hellenistic period: the text can be now restored to its complete form), and some enigmatic lines of “Hesiod”'s Wedding of Keyx, which the new witness finally makes fully understandable.

The commentators for the most part observe a religious silence on pars extrema; yet there is a difficulty, as the meaning required ‘the least important part’, or ‘the merest fringe’, is hardly justified by usage. The words should mean ‘the last part’ (cf. Cic. Verr. 2. 1. 36. 92 ‘in codicis extrema cera’, 2. 2. 78.