Around 340 BC, Theomnestus, son of Deinias, from the deme Athmonon, prosecuted the alleged hetaira Neaira for living in marriage with Stephanus, from the deme Eroeadae, breaching the law that prohibited xenoi from feigning lawful marriage with Athenian citizens ([Dem.] 59). Under this law (59.16), foreigners who married an Athenian citizen were liable to enslavement and confiscation of property – the penalty for conviction for illegal exercise of citizen rights. Although Theomnestus is the formal prosecutor, most of the case is presented by his kinsman and supporting speaker Apollodorus, elder son of the well-known wealthy Athenian banker and former slave Pasion. It might seem incongruous that he, the son of a newly made citizen with foreign and servile origins, invoking the most sacred of Athenian laws, appeals to the Athenians to guard the purity of their citizen body. However, while Apollodorus undeniably had a hidden agenda in bringing a prosecution against Neaira, it is not surprising that false claim to and debasement of citizen status should be a source of resentment for new citizens such as he, who were anxious to protect their hard-earned privilege.

In the course of its history of the Athenian constitution, the Aristotelian Athēnaiōn Politeia describes Aristeides' leading role in organizing the Delian League, including his initial assessment of the contributions (phoros) paid by the League's members (Ath. Pol. 23.4–5). It then recounts his subsequent advice to the Athenians (24.1):

In recent decades, archaeological and historical research on the Iron Age in the north-western Iberian Peninsula, as in many other areas and archaeological contexts, has developed a ‘pacifist’ interpretation. This is based, among other aspects, upon the rejection of the functional nature of the weapons documented in the archaeological record and on the development of a hypothesis on the non-defensive nature of walls, interpreting these structures as a symbol of the community or as an indication of the cohesion of the group living in the settlement. Such an interpretation can be integrated with the idea of a pre- and proto-historic ‘pacified past’ developed after the Second World War, which considered that ‘before civilization, war was rare, ritualised, abnormal and foreign to human psychology’ and with the belief that there has been a evolutionary progression from a primitive to a civilized way of war.

Over the past two decades, the study of deformity and disability in the ancient world has stimulated intense scholarly debate. Recognizing a relatively unexplored body of ancient evidence, scholars have sought to reintegrate the anomalous human body (placed rather unceremoniously under the broad category of ‘Other’) into the (art-) historical record, classical scholarly consciousness, and our understanding of ancient representation more broadly. This article works towards that end, considering the representation of deformity as documented in extant literary sources of the Roman world. It will employ the hunchback as linchpin, since the figure of the hunchback has remained essentially outside this (albeit still developing) field of research.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) made its first appearance in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, partly as a result of the ongoing treatment of veterans from the Vietnam War. Although PTSD is not only or even primarily a disorder caused by combat, combat is a regular trigger and my chief concern in what follows. Therefore I will not be examining such evidence as exists for the psychological traumas of civilians in the ancient world who were exposed to violence, rape, enslavement, or the execution of family members in the context of conquest. My focus is on the soldier.

This article discusses an engagement between the worlds of classical poetry and contemporary empirical psychology. What starts with a return to a classical text through the lens of psychology turns into a review of psychology through the lens of the Classics, inspiring some fresh ideas about subjectivity and how to handle it in psychological research. The question of subjectivity is, of course, a key one for the humanities, because the personhood of the reader, the interpreter, or the researcher exerts a vital influence on the way in which any text is read and its meaning extracted.