Homer's epics have been compared with many other epic traditions in the world, such as Sumerian, Indian, Serbo-Croatian, Medieval German, and Old French epics, from various points of view, such as narrative techniques, genesis of traditions, oral or writtern nature of texts, and motifs. If comparative studies of the existing sort have any significance, it is rather surprising that there has been no serious attempt to compare Homer's epics and Heike monogatari(translated as The Tale of the Heike, Heikefor short), the best of the medieval Japanese epics, for there are many reasons to believe that the comparison could be worthwhile.1 While many of the oral epic traditions in Europe, including Homer, have been long dead, the Heikehas kept a lively tradition of performance (chanting accompanied by a type of lute) by travelling bards until recently, and still today there are a few performers. One can therefore still obtain first-hand knowledge of the performance which might throw light on some unknown features of oral epics.2 Rather like Homer's influence over Greek literature and culture, the Heikehas influenced the way of life and thinking of the Japanese profoundly thanks to its popularity and wide circulation. The way in which the Heikeinfluenced other arts, such as no plays, is comparable to Homer's influence on later Greek literature such as tragedy,3 and the way the Heike'swarriors set models for later warrior ethics4 is comparable to the Homeric influence on the later Greek senses of virtue (arete), honour time), shame (aidoōs), and so on.

The political significance of Ephialtes’ reforms as a constitutional watershed in Athenian history is a theme stressed in much of the later source material. He is presented as a man who significantly changed the nature of the existing, Cleisthenic, constitution in the direction of a more radical form of democracy.

Demosthenes is a curiously shadowy figure in Thucydides. Few of his speeches are recorded, and although Thucydides gives abundant information about his actions – possibly obtained from the general himself, who may have been a relation by marriage – few personal details are included, and Demosthenes never comes to life as Brasidas does. We know little of his origins, his friends, or his associates; nor of what he did between 424 and 415, while he was out of favour. Despite the putative relationship, Thucydides' attitude towards him is unsympathetic, even disapproving, and does not suggest personal intimacy between the two. Though a better general than Brasidas, in my view – more innovative, less reckless – he was never specially honoured, as Brasidas was, by his own or any other city.

A great deal has been written recently on Aristophanes, and the Achamians in particular; inevitably, this has not produced agreement on how to interpret the plays. Among the questions to which different answers are still being given, and probably always will be, are the following: How far did Aristophanes seek to persuade the Athenians of his own political views, whatever they may have been? If there was a conflict between the presentation of his political views and the development of comic inventions or the desire to win the prize, which took precedence? Did the Athenians expect serious political persuasion in their comedies, and was Aristophanes innovative or traditional in these respects? More particularly, what were Aristophanes' attitudes to the Peloponnesian War? Did they change? How far did he seek to push a particular view in favour of making peace in any of the surviving three so-called peace plays?

The current fashion for emphasizing ambiguities and discontinuities in literary texts should have found Sallust's writings congenial. The Catiline explores competing and contradictory claims to virtus, exemplified by Caesar, Cato, and Catiline himself, a paragon of ambiguity in contrast to the unproblematic Cicero. The Jugurthine Waris twice the length, with a more complicated structure and a wider range of material, including three formal digressions. A concern with the relationship between virtue and success, and with conflict between alternative virtues, is central to this monograph too; it concludes with a victory achieved not by years of military exertion but as the result of Jugurtha's treacherous betrayal to Sulla by Bocchus in contravention of all recognized moral principles (‘kinship, marriage, and a formal treaty’: cognationem, affinitatem, praeterea foedus intervenisse; cf. ‘deceit‘, composite dob, 111.2 and 4).

The way we study Augustus’ Rome has been changing dramatically: I do not mean so much new discoveries of monuments or inscriptions, exciting though they have been, as the new-found disposition of archaeologists, art-historians, epigraphists, and Latinists to talk to each other and to admit cross-fertilization into their work; this spirit of co-operation has engendered a large bibliography, and one only regrets that the sort of multidisciplinary approach that was self-evident to the best Hellenists in Germany 150 years ago has been so painfully slow in reaching Latin studies!

In a recent article and a subsequent book Charles Segal finds a paradox in the writing of Lucretius, a paradox which, it might appear, was not to be evaded if the author wished to be both an Epicurean and a poet. On the one hand, his creed makes death as certain for the world as for its denizens and the hope of immortal glory an ignis fatuus; on the other hand, the poet has all the mortal frailties and as much desire as any Roman author for the survival of his name. These longings are both ‘vehement’ and ‘intense’, and, though the reader is to be made aware of their futility, they are latent in the first half of his opening book, until they are brought to light in his ‘second proem’.