Anth. Pal. 11.418 is traditionally attributed to Trajan. The distich mocks a man’s large nose and is a typical example of a scoptic epigram. Even though the attribution to Trajan looks suspicious, scholarship has been inclined to accept his authorship. However, it is possible that the poem was written about the emperor instead, which would also explain the misattribution. This hypothesis, if correct, sheds light on the surprising opening anecdote of Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata (172E), which is dedicated to Trajan.

Ancient writers, including philosophers such as Aristotle, often depict friendship as a source of pleasure; by contrast, in his Laelius de amicitia, Cicero describes such relationships as sweet and delightful, but never connects them with uoluptas, which for him is a largely negative term reserved for Epicurean doctrine. This paper argues that there is more to this pointed use of language than Cicero’s well-known dislike of Epicureanism. Considering first the Latin philosophical vocabulary of pleasure and then the vexed question of what exactly qualifies as pleasure according to the Epicurean system, the paper makes the case that Cicero believed (probably correctly) that the pleasures of friendship as conceived of by himself and many ordinary language-users would not in fact qualify as instances of Epicurean uoluptas. If, as Epicurus appears to have held, all pleasures are either bodily or mental, and all mental pleasures are derived from bodily ones, then many activities experienced as pleasurable in and of themselves—including many traditional elements of friendship—are not in fact Epicurean pleasures.

This article reconstructs the system of storage, organization and presentation of written evidence in Athenian courts of the Classical period, with wider implications for the discussion about oral and written culture in Classical Greece and legal professionalism in Athenian democracy. It explores court speakers’ references to an assumed order of documents, their storage in containers called echinoi, and verbal presentation by the court secretary. It is the first systematic analysis of all remarks on storing, organizing and reading documents in the corpus of Athenian oratory, supplemented by other literary and epigraphic sources. Based on the surviving evidence, this article argues for the existence of a developed legal culture that made attempts to facilitate the handling of documents in courtrooms through practical organizational measures, including the speakers’ interactions with court aids, notably the grammateis and hypogrammateis.

This article explores Lucian’s treatise, How to Write History, in the context of ancient rhetorical and literary theory. While situated within the domain of historiography, the treatise prioritizes issues related to literary composition, such as the linguistic register and content selection deemed fitting for the historical genre. Through comparisons with critics and theoreticians like Aristotle and Demetrius, this study re-evaluates Lucian’s instructions for preface writing and other stylistic guidelines throughout the work. The conclusions highlight Lucian’s innovative approach to historical composition, influenced by rhetorical and literary theory yet reshaped to fit his vision of history and its purpose. Additionally, the examination reveals Lucian’s strategic use of rhetorical and literary theory in critiquing not only writing style but also issues intrinsic to history.

This note offers the solution to a puzzle in the manuscript tradition of Polybius that has baffled eminent modern authorities.

This article reassesses the contribution of the late Renaissance scholar and teacher Petrus Victorius (Pier Vettori) to the reconstruction of the text of Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, which has come down to us in what is often a highly corrupt form. It proposes an interpretation of certain abbreviations in the marginalia in one of Victorius's copies of the Aldine Eudemian Ethics which reveals them as recommending readings rather than recording them; it proposes that many more of those readings constitute his own conjectures than previously thought. The article goes on to suggest why Victorius never produced an edition of the Eudemian Ethics as he did of other Aristotelian works, despite returning repeatedly, over much of his life, to the task of improving this particular text. Victorius is revealed nonetheless as a highly creative—but also highly disciplined—textual critic, at least the equal of his nineteenth- and twentieth-century successors.

Following Janko's suggestion that two trimeters cited at Strabo, Geography 8.6.20 form a couplet from an unknown, possibly Aristophanic comedy, this note explores the resonance and meaning of the third citation contained in the same chapter of the geographer's work. It proposes that this third citation, which relates to a Corinthian hetaira's work at the loom and is possibly from either the same or a different comedy, contains a joke hinting at the Odyssey and alternative traditions regarding Penelope's chastity. This Odyssean echo thematically connects this citation to the comic trimeters, which also contain clear allusions to the Odyssey.

This article deals with the fight between the river Trebia and Scipio the Elder in Silius Italicus’ Punica (4.525–703), notoriously based on the Homeric battle between Achilles and Scamander (Il. 21.1–382). By means of a close reading of the geographical details of Silius’ account, this article aims at highlighting the peculiar role given to the landscape in this episode. By intertwining well-established epic topoi and historiographical reflections, the poet imbues Italy's landscape with a profound ideological meaning. His depiction of the natural environment thematizes key issues relating to the Second Punic War, such as the disruptive effects of Hannibal's invasion on the bond between Italian communities, the problematic nature of shared Italian identity, and the contagious nature of rebellion.

This paper examines a neglected fifteenth-century manuscript of the opusculum of Julius Exuperantius. It argues that that manuscript (Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, 748) is a sibling of Vatican City, BAV, Vat. lat. 3334, and situates the new manuscript in the stemma established by the last editor. It then proposes a modification to that editor's stemma, arguing that those two fifteenth-century manuscripts in fact descend from Milan, BA, H 37 sup., once owned by Francesco Pizolpasso. Finally, it considers the implications of those arguments for the editing and the history of the text.

Notes on the text and interpretation of passages in Plutarch's Life of Alexander.

This article analyses Anth. Pal. 8 as a Hellenistic book of poems, i.e. as a collection artfully arranged by an author-editor and not as a mere gathering of sepulchral epigrams devoid of any reflection or literary aspiration. In common with modern poetry books, Anth. Pal. 8 was conceived for linear sequential reading. A close study of its tripartite structure, of the thoughtful collocation of each piece and of their organizing principles in well-thought-out sequences reveals the ultimate eschatological meaning of the book. Finally, a comparative contextualization with other late antique poets indicates a late antique dating for the elaboration of this collection as such, whereas the strong numerological element and the religious transcendence sought by the distribution of the poems point to Gregory of Nazianzus himself as the author-editor of Anth. Pal. 8.

Virgil has Evander trace the origins of the name of the river Tiber back to the death of a giant, called ‘Thybris’ (Aen. 8.330–2). This article argues that the reference to the violent (asper) giant can be understood as etymological wordplay on the Greek word hubris and as a potential allusion to the grammatical debate on the nature of aspiration. Varro's De gente populi Romani is identified as an important source for the characterization of the Tiber as a giant in primeval times. The political implications of the word hubris are also briefly explored with reference to various identities to which Evander alludes. The final part of the article argues that Theocritus’ Idyll 1 and the scholiast to Theocritus may have also inspired Virgil's description of the Tiber in this passage.

A passage in Eunapius (476–7, pp. 440–2 Loeb) draws an interesting contrast between the attitudes to divination of the two sophists Maximus and Chrysanthius: Maximus, who manipulates the omens until they say what he wants, and Chrysanthius, who scrupulously obeys their apparent meaning. But a passage a little later (500–1, pp. 542–4 Loeb) apparently ascribes to Chrysanthius the opposite attitude. This article suggests a transposition to restore coherence to the text. Even if the transposition is wrong, the contrast drawn in the first passage between two attitudes to divination, one rigorous and literalist, one manipulative, is important.

The article makes a case for a thorough reappraisal of the text of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica by discussing a number of textual problems in Book 8. It proposes some twenty new conjectures, as well as reviving six old ones that seem to have been undeservedly forgotten.

This article examines a complex passage of Aristotle's Physics in which a Pythagorean doctrine is explained by means of a mathematical example involving gnomons. The traditional interpretation of this passage (proposed by Milhaud and Burnet) has recently been challenged by Ugaglia and Acerbi, who have proposed a new one. The aim of this article is to analyse difficulties in their account and to advance a new interpretation. All attempts at interpreting the passage so far have assumed that ‘gnomons’ should indicate ‘odd numbers’. In this article it is argued that the usage of ‘gnomon’ related to polygonal numbers, which is normally considered late, could be backdated to at least the fifth/fourth centuries b.c.; in particular, it explains the link between the philosophical explanandum and the mathematical explanans in Aristotle's passage.

This article reconsiders a graffitied riddle from Pompeii (CIL 4.1877). It argues that slavery is one possible dimension of the puzzle, and that acknowledging the existence of slavery in this text testifies to the potential of Pompeian graffiti as a source for overlooked social histories.

This article argues for an as-yet-undiscovered double allusion to Aratus’ Phaenomena (1–5 and 100–7) embedded in Cicero's De diuinatione (1.79). This intertextual link sheds light on a now-lost passage of Cicero's Aratea and raises some questions about the relationship between Cicero's dialogue and Catullus 64.

This paper discusses Aristotle's references to a ζῷον in his Poetics (1450b34–51a4 and 1459a20) and evaluates their implications. The usual interpretation, ‘living creature’ or ‘animal’, is one-sided, because the word ζῷον is Aristotle's paradigm of homonymy, applying as it does to both the human being and the drawing (Cat. 1a1–6). After an examination of the two passages containing such references and their contexts, other passages by Aristotle and earlier writers (Plato, Alcidamas and Gorgias) that may shed light on the issue are analysed. The conclusion reflects on the relevance of the interpretation as ‘figure’ for the premises and purpose of the Poetics.