That the De Rerum Natura has a message is not clear from a cursory survey of its subject-matter. Book I (we read in the Penguin table of contents), Matter and Space; Book II, Movements and Shapes of Atoms; Book III, Life and Mind; Book IV, Sensation and Sex; Book V, Cosmology and Sociology; Book VI, Meteorology and Geology. Is this nothing more than a science textbook—and a potted one at that? One may be forgiven for thinking so. Even Bailey accepted that emphasis when he wrote that Lucretius' aim was ‘to set forth the physical theories of Epicurus’ and that other aspects of Epicureanism such as the moral theory ‘crop up from time to time in the poem, but only incidentally and in a partial treatment, which is subordinated to the main purpose and structure’. As a description this is misleading to the point of distortion. The work is indeed structured upon an exposition of physical theory, but its main purpose is to win converts to Epicureanism—and the ‘incidental’ non-technical passages do not ‘crop up’ by some chance intrusion but form a series of deliberate reminders of the overriding evangelical aim. We may guess at the tactical considerations which led Lucretius to adopt this form. His call to the Epicurean way of life would consist of two elements—impassioned appeals (appropriate to the central moral theory) and systematic exposition (needed for the supporting technical arguments): since the former had the greater potential impact but much less bulk, he chose to deploy them as a series of interjections in the latter. Thus what are in structural terms ‘digressions’ lie closest of all to the heart of the work.

I began the oral version of this paper by remarking that it was a great honour and pleasure to have been invited to visit the place in which it was delivered and to address my audience – and asking my audience to remember that I had said that.

At the beginning of the fifth book of his Saturnalia Macrobius makes his characters all agree that Virgil is to be considered an orator no less than a poet; such is his mastery of eloquence and his careful observance of the rules of rhetoric. Are we to dismiss this as an example of a type of criticism now fortunately outmoded, or is there something in it? Was Virgil to any important extent influenced by rhetorical precept, and, if so, how did this influence work? These are the questions which I propose to discuss in this paper.

Let us begin with a comparison. Let us first imagine ourselves sitting in a village schoolroom eighty years or so ago. The occasion is a ‘penny reading’, and the rector has chosen for this evening's reading the poet laureate's recently published Enoch Arden. The tale draws to its close, and we reach the last three lines:

So past the strong heroic soul away.

And when they buried him the little port

Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.

Now we transfer ourselves to the year 23 B.C. and the palace of Augustus. Virgil himself is reciting, and the company includes Augustus and Octavia. The poet is reciting from his yet unfinished Aeneid, and he comes to the passage in the sixth book where Anchises shows Aeneas the young Marcellus among the souls yet to be born.

quantos ille virum magnam Mavortis ad urbem

campus aget gemitus! vel quae, Tiberine, videbis

funera, cum tumulum praeterlabere recentem.

The course of Athenian history during the fifteen or twenty years after the battle at Chaeronea was strongly influenced by the dominating spirits of two men, one of whom was ever present and the other far away. The latter, of course, is Alexander, whose departure from Europe with the major portion of Macedon's fighting strength afforded the opportunity for the Greek states to develop resistance and opposition to Macedonian control which the fiery young king, had he been present, would hardly have tolerated. The former is Lycurgus son of Lycophron, the only Athenian after Pericles who so successfully dominated his city's policies and left such an indelible mark upon the city, its institutions and buildings, that his twelve-year period of influence rightly bears his name. Furthermore, so many of the things that were accomplished or attempted during this period seem to have been initiated in conscious imitation of the Golden Age, that we are justified in calling it the Silver Age of Lycurgus. His is the comprehensive programme of reconstruction, reform, and revitalization that the present paper proposes to describe.

The Bellum Civile is a poem great enough to appeal to readers in different periods for different reasons. Thus Dante hugely admired Lucan (quello grande poeta) while not sharing his political views, since he himself favoured a universal monarchy in which the Emperor in possessing all would be free from all appetite, and, therefore, just. Lucan's portrait of Cato so impressed him that in the Convivio, in an allegorical exposition of B.C. 2.326ff., Cato is taken as a figure for God, and in the Divine Comedy he is the guardian at the foot of Purgatory, although he had been a pagan, a suicide, and an opponent of Julius Caesar whom Dante favoured (Brutus and Cassius are with Judas in the mouths of Satan). Nevertheless it is likely that many of Lucan's admirers have been attracted above all by the poet's espousal of libertas and hatred for autocracy. This must account for Shelley describing the Bellum Civile as ‘a poem as it appears to me of wonderful genius, and transcending Virgil’, a judgement that he conceded would be ‘no less unpopular than some of the others I entertain’, and may also help to explain Milton's interest in Lucan. However, in this century the idea has been widespread that the Bellum Civile is not in any real sense a ‘Republican’ poem. There are signs that this view may be hardening into something like an orthodoxy, according to which the poem, if properly understood, and at least as originally conceived, is in no sense a poem of political protest or opposition, and contains no serious criticism of the Principate as such, even if parts of the later books are coloured by Lucan's personal resentment of Nero (it is sometimes even argued that Lucan intended to finish his epic with praise of the imperial peace and of the Principate as a restored Republic). Lucan's political views are thus taken to be (behind the rhetorical fireworks) approximately the same as those of his uncle Seneca. I shall here consider the principal arguments adduced in the debate, and shall indicate briefly why the question is an important one, even for readers primarily interested in the Bellum Civile as poetry.

The trial of Clutorius Priscus, as Walker says, ‘gives the first instance of a condemnation based only on trivial charges’. Even so, it is clear that the charges against Clutorius had been made possible by Augustus' extension of the law to cover famosi libelli, although Tacitus' words on that occasion (‘cognitionem de famosis libellis specie legis eius tractavit’) may indicate that no formal change in the law was made. Similarly, then, at the beginning of his reign, Tiberius was instructing Pompeius Macer to observe the spirit rather than the letter of Augustus' law. Support may be lent to this view by the fact that both Augustus and Tiberius were prompted in their actions by particular incidents which annoyed them. In the case of Clutorius, the delator may well, in view of Tiberius' absence from Rome, have been encouraged to attempt a similar rather loose interpretation of the law. But is there a ‘false emphasis’ in Tacitus' presentation of the case?

The private life of one of the great figures of history, indeed, as a discerning judge has recently put it, ‘perhaps the most civilized man who ever lived, attracts and deserves attention. A considerable, though subordinate, part in the life of a Roman of the upper classes was played by his servants, who ministered to his comfort, supported his dignitas, and were essential agents in his political work. In the case of Cicero these servants are known to us from his letters, while the staffs of other republican magistrates are much less completely revealed. An investigation of his more trusted and important servants, that is his freedmen, should cast light both on Cicero's private character and on the extent to which he relied, in his political and private life, on his subordinates.

The consultation of fixed oracles was a central and well-documented feature of ancient Greek life; Greece ought therefore to be able to contribute important evidence to anyone interested in the function of divination in different cultures. But, although no oracle is more famous than that of Apollo at Delphi, so many central questions about its operations are unanswerable that it provides a very shaky basis for comparison. A few points are secure: not only individuals but also states put enquiries to the oracle; and public enquiries related to matters of religious practice and cult, but also on occasion to colonizing projects, alliances, or declarations of war. Beyond these generalities, however, almost everything is contestable. Even the statement just made about public enquiries requires some hedging. On matters of cult they certainly never ceased: in a religion without revelation and specialized religious institutions, the direct access to divine will supposedly provided by the oracle was indispensable to authorize change, or to suggest ritual remedies in a time of crisis such as plague. But the extent to which public enquiries on military and political matters continued to be made after the fifth century is very uncertain.

Theocritus sings of eighty-seven different trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, and ferns. Practically all the references are in the Pastoral Idylls: that is to say, that in the small compass of about 1,200 lines he mentions nearly twice as many plants as Homer does in the whole Iliad and Odyssey. Many of these plants are mentioned several times, and some many times, so the number is impressively great, and implies a great interest: an interest not shown by any other Greek poet. The selection, too, is unprecedented. The Comic Poets may write of things to eat (kitchen-garden produce); the Tragic and Lyric poets, of ceremonial adjuncts; garlands for gods, athletes, feasters (nursery-garden produce). Theocritus' plants are none of these: they are the plants of the mountains, foot-hills, meadows, and shores of the place in which he lived:

αίγίπυρος καί κνύЗα καί εύώλης μελίτεια.

He Writes of plants for their own sakes, and it is this that makes his attitude modern and interesting. Fourteen hundred years before him Minoan painters looked at plants with his eyes: except for them he is unique in Greek history.

One day the shepherd Apollo saw a pregnant woman in the fields. A dark thought struck him: he wanted to see how the foetus was lying in her womb. He therefore killed the woman and ripped her open. Afterwards he repented and took refuge among the monks of Scetis in Egypt, where he became a hermit (133). By contrast, Hilarion came to be a hermit in a wholly honourable manner, as related by Hieronymus in his Life of Hilarion. He felt drawn by St. Anthony, gave away his inheritance, and embarked upon a life of solitude in the Gaza region. Apollo, Hilarion, and all other monks and hermits whose sayings and biographies have been I handed down by the early Church had in common that they abandoned the society they lived in and developed an alternative lifestyle. They were not, however, the first in antiquity to go against established norms and values.

In view of the attention now being paid to translation machines, it is of interest to recall a composition machine which was made over a hundred years ago and is still functioning. When wound up and set in motion this remarkable machine is capable of producing over 26,000,000 different Latin hexameters. With rare exceptions each line scans and makes sense. Typical lines are:

MARTIA CASTRA FORIS PRÆNARRANT PROELIA MULTA

PESSIMA REGNA DOMI PRODUCUNT VULNERA MIRA

TURPIA TEMPLA FERE PROMITTUNT JURGIA DENSA

The inventor (Fig. 1) was an eccentric genius named John Clark, who was born at Greinton in Somerset in 1785. After leaving school he lived for a time with his uncle at Glastonbury until about 1809, when he settled in Bridgwater. At first he was a grocer, and then about 1817 he became a printer. In his spare time he invented a pneumatic mattress and also patented a water-proof cloth. To his great financial loss he later sold this patent to a certain Mr. Mackintosh, who developed the Mackintosh raincoat and made a fortune. His own fortune (such as it was) came from his Hexameter Machine.

When did the Athenians march out to meet the Persians?

In an attempt to sort out the confused chronology of events before the battle of Marathon, J. A. R. Munro, in the Cambridge Ancient History, vol. iv, maintains that the march must have taken place whilst Eretria was still in a state of siege, and was designed to save that city.

His supposition is based on a statement in Aristotle's Rhetoric, iii. 10, 1411 a 10, where Cephisodotus παρακαλν ποτε τούς 'Aϑηναíους εìς Eὒβοιαν ἐπισιτισαμένους ἒϕη εīν ἐξιἑναι τò Mιλτιἁλου Ψἡϕιαμα. Munro points out that the only possible context for this decree of Miltiades is the Persian investment of Eretria; he then goes on to presume that the decree was implemented, and that the Athenians set out from Athens some time before the date given by Herodotus for their march. To account for their non-arrival at Oropus he suggests that the Persian forces divided, and by an early invasion of Attica diverted the Greek army from its original intention.

A ψἡϕιαμα was a most binding enactment, and could only be can-celled by another ψἡϕιαμα. Because there is no record of such a cancellation, Munro seems to think that the decree must have been carried out. But both Herodotus (vi. 102 seq.) and Plato (Menexenus, 240 b) expressly declare that only after the subjugation of Eretria and the landing at Marathon did the Athenians move from the city.

Munro's difficulty about the ψἡϕιαμα could surely be better dealt with if we suppose that the force of the decree was completely invalidated by the fall of Eretria.

At the very beginning of Annals 16, Tacitus recounts the story of Caesellius Bassus. He says that Bassus, a man of Punic stock and disturbed mind, was inspired by a dream to journey to Nero at Rome: there he told the emperor that he had found on his estate a vast cave, which contained a very great quantity of ancient gold bullion. This was the treasure of Dido, he said, who, upon her flight from Tyre and foundation of Carthage, had hidden the hoard so as not to encourage luxury among her subjects nor an attack by the hostile Numidian kings.

Animals on the stage are usually more trouble than they are worth, and producers are notoriously chary of using them. There are several instances in ancient drama, however, where they seem to be essential to the plot; and it may be worth while to consider the Greek approach to the problem, and see their stage technique for overcoming the difficulties involved.

In a well-known passage in the Apology, Socrates says that if the court release him on condition that he give up questioning the views of his fellow citizens, he will refuse to obey:

… If you say to me, ‘Socrates, this time we will not follow Anytus but will let you go on condition that you no longer spend your time on this inquiry and stop philosophizing; if you are caught doing this again, you shall die’—if you were to acquit me on this condition, I would reply: ‘Men of Athens, I honour and love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you and as long as I breathe and have the capacity I shall never cease philosophizing …’ (29 c 6–d 5.)

The first-century-AD philosopher Onasander (Strategikos 1.13, 15) comments that a general must be a good and effective speaker in order to encourage his men before battle, and ancient historians on occasion have commanders address large audiences of soldiers in an age when there was no artificial amplification of the human voice. In 1993, and reiterated in 1998, Mogens Hansen argued that the extensive pre-battle ‘speech’ found in our sources was, if given at all, only ‘a few apophthegms that could be shouted by the general as he traversed the line, or a speech made to the officers only who passed it on to the soldiers’. He accepts that a general often addressed his troops in camp or in parade formation; his objection solely relates to those speeches ostensibly given immediately before battle to troops already arrayed for combat. For Hansen, ‘a brief exhortation of the troops, unit by unit, while the commander walked along the front is probably all the historical reality [one] may expect to find behind the fully-fledged speeches reported by the historians’, these being a ‘literary composition and not the historian's report of a speech which had actually been made’. In Hanson's view, unless the harangues were given to troops in camp, or to individual units in battle formation, or, perhaps, to small military forces, these speeches could not have been given as reported. With respect to the last possibility, Hansen only rather reluctantly acknowledges that Thrasybulus' speech delivered to approximately 1000 Athenian insurgents in 404 BC, and reported by Xenophon (Hell. 2.4.10–12), ‘is possibly right’.

Thucydides wrote his history after his return from exile in 404 b.c. (i. 22). It is not easy therefore to be sure to what extent his account of the great Sickness depends on notes made at the time, some twenty-five years before, and how much on memory—especially of his personal sufferings, from which it seems he recovered without any of the ‘signs’ which he implies ‘marked’ all survivors. He tells us that he has described only the general features of the Sickness (ii. 51), since the symptoms varied much from case to case; perhaps he realized how difficult it is for anyone, even an experienced physician, who has suffered from some severe and unusual illness (ii. 50) not to consider his own symptoms characteristic.

In a recent number of Greece and Rome Dr. T. A. Dorey has criticized those scholars who call the concluding scenes of the Adelphoe ‘a masterpiece of dramatic construction’. Arguing that at the end of the play the treatment of Micio is unsatisfactory or at least unsatisfying, the change in attitude of Aeschinus and Demea insufficiently motivated, and the transition from comedy to satire unnatural and excessively abrupt, Dorey seeks to explain these alleged flaws by reference to two passages of Donatus' commentary on the play: the note on v. 938, ‘apud Menandrum senex de nuptiis non gravatur: ergo Terentius ερετικ⋯ς’, and part of the praefatio (iii. 5), where Donatus observes that Demea is the means whereby ‘multa in comoedia nova’ are introduced into the final scenes of the play. Dorey's interpretation of these passages leads him to suggest that ‘the last scenes of the play were not in the original comedy of Menander, but were invented by Terence himself.’

To assess the influence of one author on another and the extent of one's use of another is always difficult. When the authors assessed are poets who each give a highly individual stamp to material, it is doubly difficult. When they are separated by one and a half millennia and by a language difference, the assessment is open to pitfalls almost too enormous to bear contemplation. What follows, therefore, does not attempt to be a categorical statement that Shakespeare used Virgil solely or in part in any one particular instance or in any one particular way; it rather offers a juxtaposition of lines, images, or ideas which appear to be similar in both authors, in the hope that the comparisons may prove interesting in themselves and that the sum total of them may lead at least to some guarded and cautious conclusions about the use of classical authors and in particular of Virgil's poetry and thought by Shakespeare in Henry V.

In the opening lines of Philoctetes, Odysseus addresses his companion Neoptolemus as his famous father's son (3f.). This is the first indication of an important theme: phusis, in the sense of inherited human qualities or capacities. Although Achilles has died before the dramatic action begins, he hovers in the background of the play, and no one challenges his claim to the highest admiration. Neoptolemus is closely associated with his father, and is repeatedly addressed or referred to as his father's son. In one particularly striking passage of his deception speech he describes to Philoctetes his own reception at Troy, where the welcoming army swore that they saw the dead Achilles alive once more (356–8). These lines conjure up a vivid physical likeness between father and son, but it remains to be seen how deep the resemblance really lies. Neoptolemus has the potential, in virtue of his inherited phusis, to be as admirable as Achilles.3 But two questions remain to be answered in the course of the play: Will he prove to be his father's son in character as well as birth? If so, how will this excellence be manifested?