One feature of the ancient accounts of Achilles' early life in Thessaly is the consistently important part played by Chiron the wise and just centaur. Hesiod tells us that Chiron dwelt on Mount Pelion and taught a number of mythical figures like Achilles, Jason, Medeius, and Actaeon. Indeed Hesiod's interest in Chiron seems to have extended to his writing of a work on the subject of Chiron's teachings, of which there is some minimal fragmentary evidence (The Precepts of Chiron). There are various versions of his role in Achilles' early life, including one that Peleus entrusted his young son to the care of Chiron shortly after his separation from Thetis. This version is not entirely incompatible with what we find in Homer's Iliad(see below), and appears to be the subject of the earliest (fragmentary) iconographical evidence dating from the seventh century B.C. The general picture we get from the ancient sources is that Chiron essentially brings up the boy and gives him an education that includes music, medicine, horses, hunting, and martial arts. These skills prove to be invaluable in Achilles' heroic career including the war at Troy where he excels in virtually every aspect of his endeavours.

The Heracles as Euripides' other middle plays has not escaped censure for its faulty structure. From Swinburne's judgement of it as a ‘grotesque abortion’ one comes to Norwood who says of Gilbert Murray's view ‘A great Hellenist who is the last man to hunt for blemishes in Euripides has rightly called Heracles “broken-backed”’, and he adds himself that the play ‘at best must be called ramshackle work’ or ‘The action falls into 2 halves visibly separate though tied together. In each instance a champion of the poet if ingenious and resolute enough can devise some statement that will force unity of action upon his recalcitrant material, but the mere fact that he must so labour refutes him’.

Sir William Tarn wrote that ‘the primary reason why Alexander invaded Persia was, no doubt, that he never thought of not doing it; it was his inheritance’. The invasion had been planned and begun by Philip. It was, in name, a Panhellenic enterprise, to exact retribution for the devastation wrought by Xerxes in Greece and to liberate the Greeks of Asia Minor. These aims Alexander faithfully fulfilled. From the spoils of the Granicus he dedicated three hundred Persian panoplies to Athens' tutelary goddess; he sent back to Athens the statues of Harmo-dius and Aristogiton which Xerxes had carried off to Susa; and he excused the burning of Persepolis as a reprisal for the sack of Athens. The Panhellenic war was then over, and Alexander sent the Greek contingents home (A. iii. 19. 5). In general he freed the Greek cities of Asia from the control of satraps; they were to pay no taxes, to receive no garrisons and to live under their own laws. By expelling tyrants or oligarchs and setting up democratic governments, he not only removed the partisans of Persia from power but did homage to the growing tendency in Greece to equate freedom with democracy. The gratitude of the liberated cities was long-enduring; it was here that his cult survived into Roman times. In reality of course they were as much subject to his will as less privileged subjects. And to Greek cities that opposed him he was less accommodating. Halicarnassus and Aspendus, which certainly counted as Greek, were subjected to his satraps. They could be treated as disloyal to the Panhellenic cause, like the captive mercenaries who fought against him at the Granicus and who were sent back in chains to forced labour in Macedon. But Alexander was not always so merciless. He spared the mercenaries who were holding out against him on an island in the harbour of Miletus, and enlisted them in his own army; it would not have been easy to take the island by force. Sentiment and principle gave way to his own interests, as they always did.

The tenth poem of Propertius Book 4 is the most remarkable in a collection full of surprises for its readers, and appears to mark a significant departure from his previous work. If Propertius had never written his final book of poetry, we might characterize him on the basis of his earlier books as the quintessential Latin love elegist: he rejects not only a military career, but even the less demanding task of celebrating Augustus' victories, in favour of the love elegist's self-indulgent life of leisure: cf. e.g. Prop. 2.1.39–46. In the first poem of Book 4, however, Propertius announces what appears to be a wholly different poetic programme; in place of the erotic elegies of the previous books is a new ‘serious’ purpose: Propertius will sing about national, religious and antiquarian themes, as the ‘Roman Callimachus’ (Propertius 4.1a.63–4). However, as soon as the next poem, Propertius is commanded to return to his usual theme of obsessive elegiac love for one woman, a topic described as haec tua castra (‘this is your sphere of operations’, 4.1b.135). The poems which follow in Propertius 4 tend to strike a balance between antiquarian seriousness and elegiac frivolity. For example, in 4.4, Propertius relates the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia's betrayal of Rome, connecting several contemporary urban landmarks with the poem's heroine, but he remains true to his earlier colours by presenting Tarpeia as an elegiac lover who falls in love at first sight and betrays her city out of passion.

Of all Greek heroes, Theseus, few would deny, has the greatest claim to enshrine all the best qualities of the Athenian citizen, not least in his championship of the demos, celebrated by poets and painters alike of the classical period. It might seem at first sight contradictory to find in the same period in Athenian history an equally flourishing tradition concerning Theseus the heroic-age king. This ‘contradiction', however, as it might be perceived in abstract terms by a modern constitutional historian, would not have been felt so acutely, if at all, by a fifth-century Greek, for whom the ideas of monarchic rule and the heroic age were fundamentally connected. Our response to this type of problem owes more to the analytical method of such later works as Aristotle's Politics, with its thorough categorization of constitutions, and there is always the danger that we may impose on the Greek mythological imagination of the fifth century an unwarranted rigidity that fails to reflect the greater plasticity of the classical Greek mind. A review of the Theseus legend in fifth-century Athens reveals the extent to which such flexibility of attitude existed and throws some light on the classical attitude to one-man rule.

‘The Blinding of the Ogre’, a widespread folktale, has long fascinated and stimulated man's imagination. By far the earliest known version of the story appears in Book 9 of Homer's Odyssey, but the current scholarly consensus holds that this tale is earlier than Homer, was borrowed by the poet, and has survived independently in oral tradition down to modern times. In attempting to explore its origins, I must emphasize at the outset that I am not concerned here with the physical, geographical origin of the story–a problem which has thus far proved insoluble. Rather, my focus will be on the deeper, less tangible origin of the myth: is it possible to discover the idea, the significance, perhaps some symbolism or psychological appeal which lies at the root of the story and might help to explain its astonishing endurance and popularity in oral traditions spanning three continents and three millennia?

Introduction

The reign of Marcus Aurelius, although he was acclaimed by ancient and modern commentators as an exemplary ruler, saw many calamities. Marcus was preoccupied with wars for the better part of his reign; the pestilence brought back to Rome from the east by Verus and the Roman army remained endemic in the city for many years to come, and the German wars from the late 160s well into the next decade posed great danger to Rome and caused great anxiety. In addition, a coup was executed. The usurper, Avidius Cassius, was the ruler of the Roman East for three months, enjoying support amongst the local population. After Verus’ death, the emperor embarked on war against the German tribes, but not before summoning priests and magicians from all over the world to help him, many of whom came from provinces far and wide. This attentiveness of Marcus Aurelius to religious issues (the representation of religious themes on his coins and monuments and his religious policy as a whole) introduced some changes to the Roman imperial tradition. Moreover his adaptation of policies that reflected new beliefs and the abandonment of old ones, was indicative of the political, social, and cultural developments during his reign. The desperation of the emperor is made most visible in the pages of Lucian’s Alexander.

‘Perhaps you can draw a cypress’, says Horace (A.P. 19), a remark which many Latin poets seem to have interpreted as a challenge. Not that the poets, with the exception of Ovid, wasted many words on the cypress itself, although all are very careful to mention it. Usually it is accompanied by some gloomy epithet, feralis (Ovid, Trist. 3. 13. 21; Virg. Aen. 6. 216) or funebris, or has some remote allusion to the funeral pyre (e.g. Lucan 3. 442; Stat. Theb. 4. 464). Homer, on the contrary, preferred a more cheerful epithet ε??ώ??ης.

But the cypress is by no means the only tree in the forest, and the poets take good care to let the reader know it. The Romans thought that there were some parts of poetry, and particularly epic poetry, in which they could improve on the Greeks, and word-painting was one of these. Where the Greeks usually contented themselves with a terse epithet, the Romans loved to dip their brush in bright colours and lay them on thick. Such descriptive passages have their place in poetry, but their employment needs to be regulated carefully in accordance with the requirements of the subject. In epic particularly they should not delay the course of the action, but, as it were, provide a pleasant oasis wherein the reader can rest after perusing the account of some more strenuous activity. The forests we find in Latin verse usually contain far more trees than are generally found on an oasis, but they do provide a convenient resting-point in the action, and at the same time give the poet an opportunity of displaying his powers of word-painting.

The question of what actually happened on the Ides of March, 44 B.c. is merely incidental to most ancient historians, concerned as they are with Caesar's intentions and the assassins' motives. On the Ides more varied and abundant information survives, I believe, than on any other day in Roman or Greek history. But this evidence is full of obscurities and inconsistencies, largely unexplored; nor has it been examined specifically for the light it sheds on the public life of the late Republic. The outline of the day's events is easily discovered; in this paper I shall examine some of the details, with the aim of showing, above all, why the conspirators settled on the Ides of March and the Curia Pompei as the time and place for their deed.

Richard Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy, published in 1957, is subtitled ‘Aspects of working–class life with special reference to publications and entertainments’. He writes of industrial west Yorkshire before and after the last war. If we look for progress on similar topics elsewhere, in Italy Armando Petrucci – whose stimulus I gratefully acknowledge – has undertaken notably stimulating analyses of popular publications and low-level education, for instance in his exhibition catalogue ‘Scrittura e popolo nella Roma barocca’. For the Roman Empire – where some at least of the necessary evidence does exist – not only very little progress, but, I suspect, several steps in the wrong direction.

Of the many reasons, religious, aesthetic, and technical, generally adduced to explain the apparent reluctance of Greek tragedians to represent the moment of death on the stage, none seems to me to give sufficient weight to certain dramatic exigencies internal to the context of the plays themselves in which such deaths occur. The issue has too often been obscured by tenuous assumptions about the scarcity of professional actors (as if the total pool of professionals which the dramatist could draw upon was restricted to three), religious taboos associated with the celebration of the Great Dionysia and other festivals, the squeamishness of Greek theatre audiences, or the practical difficulties of stage management. It is not my intention to discuss these assumptions in detail. Some of them have already been effectively refuted, others may in fact have influenced consciously or unconsciously the presentation of particular death scenes. For no one denies that there are many problems connected with the presentation of death on the stage, and even the modern playwright, in spite of all the illusionist resources of the modern theatre, may well boggle at the attempt. Further, the passage from life to death must seem at a certain level a trivial activity in comparison with the tremendous impact it has on the dead person's immediate circle of friends and relations. Violent death and its gory accompaniments may well appeal to sensational melodrama but the Greek dramatist could justly have considered its representation per se as μιαρόν and ἀτεχνότατον τῆς ποιητικῆς. However, the real point at issue is whether the Greek tragedian went out of his way to get round the presentation of the moment of death for reasons external to the dramatic context. I shall try to show in this paper that whenever a character is apparently hustled out of sight for the purpose of being killed, some internal dramatic consideration was in fact uppermost in the playwright's mind.

How significant are the Attic orators as sources for Athenian history? Their intrinsic importance is certainly very great, greater perhaps than that of any other comparable category of material. On the other hand, they have received surprisingly little direct and systematic attention from ancient historians. This is something of a paradox, and like many paradoxes it is worth examining in some detail: in this case, it has significant implications for the ways in which the orators have been and ought to be studied.

During the three centuries from Homer to Hippocrates, views of human ageing and longevity evolved in a socio-cultural sense, with relationships to Greek medicine and science. I, as a biomedical scientist, examine ancient literature for roots of the idea that life-course outcomes can be influenced by tangible ‘natural’ factors, whether these are environmental or the result of lifestyle. The concept that an individual has any choice in health and ageing departs radically from ancient, persistent beliefs in the primacy of the supernatural, that the gods could predestine one's life span by birth or could alter it at any time.

At the beginning of 405 b.c., fourteen or fifteen months before the final catastrophe overtook Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes produced the Frogs. It is the last extant play of Old Comedy proper. Its plot is at times discursive, its subject-matter is passionately tied to the city in which the play was conceived, and its structure is largely controlled by such traditional and formal Old Comedy elements as the agon and parabasis. The Frogs won first prize. In 316 b.c., just eighty-nine years later, if we accept a plausible emendation in the Bodmer papyrus, Menander in his turn won the first prize at the same festival with his Dyskolos. The Dyskolos is the first extant play of the New Comedy to which we can give a firm date. Its plot is tightly knit, its subject-matter is universal, and its structure is largely governed by a new set of formal elements. Aristophanes' Frogs had a chorus of initiates, who charmed the audience by their nostalgic evocation of the old annual procession to Eleusis, suspended at the time because of the Spartan occupation of Decelea. This chorus of initiates sang and danced between the dialogue scenes a series of specially composed, memorable lyrics which were relevant to the plot, to the city, and to the period; they and their leader also delivered the parabasis. This vivid, lively, functional chorus is replaced in Menander by only a dim shadow: a κ⋯μος of tipsy young men who have no function whatever in the plot, who serve merely to entertain the audience in the intervals between the five acts with a song-and-dance routine whose words are not preserved and possibly were not even specially composed for the play by its author.

‘These teachings are, therefore, no novelties, no inventions of today, but long since stated, if not stressed; our doctrine here is the explanation of an earlier, and can show the antiquity of these opinions on the testimony of Plato himself.’ This quotation, from Enn. V 1.8, where Plotinus is actually presenting his doctrine of the three hypostases – a metaphysical elaboration never envisaged by Plato – encapsulates the interesting relationship which links this great original mind to the other great original mind whom he wished to claim as his master. There is, of course, nothing strange, in the intellectual world of late antiquity, in this desire to base one's doctrine on some time-honoured authority; what is unusual is the degree of originality of the man who is doing this.

In the brief introduction to this speech in his recent commentary, S. Usher observes: ‘Little logical order can be discerned, though the speech has a clearly-defined prooemium in which the main ingredients of the speech are already present.’ There is an element of overstatement in this assessment. The organization of the speech as a whole follows the habitual practice of Lysias, who favours a neat division between sections. Thus we have prooemium (§§1–3), prothesis (§§4–5), proofs (§§5–20; τὴν μὲν οὖν in §5 should begin a new paragraph, since there is a clear break as the speaker moves from a summary of the factual case against him to the first point in his refutation), epilogos (§§21–27). There is naturally no narrative section, since the hearing is concerned with status, not events. Within the proof section the speaker tackles each of the allegations against him separately, wealth (§§5ff.), health (§§10ff.), and bad character (§§15ff.).2 Nonetheless, Usher's description of the speech is true to the extent that the progress of thought in the proof section is. often rambling and disjointed. However, a closer examination of the speech shows that this seemingly undisciplined and unstructured movement is the product of a logical ordering principle, which has its origin in the nature of the speaker's case. To appreciate the rationale behind this structure it will be necessary to preface our discussion with an assessment of the strength of the case.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, when the Barbary corsairs were finally laid low, a great impetus was given to North African research, and numerous scholars visited and wrote about Carthage. Valiant efforts were made at that time to correlate the statements of ancient authors, chiefly Appian, Diodorus, Justin, Polybius, and Strabo, both with each other and with the existing topography of the peninsula, but the theories propounded had usually little virtue save that of originality and imagination. If excavation was undertaken at all (as it was by Davis, for instance, and Beulé), Roman buildings were often mistaken for Punic, so that elaborate plans of Carthage like Davis's2—to mention but one—are no longer of much consequence.

This paper is concerned with reassessing the importance of the destruction of the house of Cicero in the light of recent investigations into housing in the Roman world. In recent years, the quantity and quality of such investigations have intensified but Cicero's house remains somewhat unpopular – despite excavations on the Palatine slopes which have revealed more details of the houses occupied by Cicero and his Late Republican neighbours.3 The saga of Cicero and his house had not been dealt with for several decades until the presidential address of Susan Treggiari in the 1998 Transactions of the American Philological Association. Her paper, however, is not so much concerned with the actual relationship between private and public in the house of Cicero as Cicero's private and public attempts to come to terms with his grief over the death of his daughter Tullia.

The description of a seismic sea-wave has a long history, but the understanding of it a short one. Although the ancient Greeks did not have a name for it, until recently the moderns used a misnomer: tidal wave. Now that the phenomenon is correctly understood it has acquired a Japanese name: tsunami (soo-NAH-me), but misnomers often persist even among those who know better.

In the Aeneid there is a tendency to dissociate action from emotion. Action is often dictated by a strong sense of duty, while emotion, instead of being a motivating power, becomes an idle accompaniment that contradicts the meaning of the act. This is most clearly observed in the person of Aeneas, particularly in those Odyssean books when he schools himself in a ‘new heroism’ whose very basis seems to depend on such a dissociation. Thus, in the midst of Troy's destruction, his natural desire is to die fighting for his city. If he had acted out this desire (as he begins to do) he would have been conforming to the standards of the old, Homeric, heroism. But he is caught in the complicated fabric of Rome's future, and the old, simple heroism, founded on a natural and impulsive nobility, is not for him. He must go against his natural desire and, as a runaway, escape the doomed city to refound it elsewhere. And yet his heart is set on the city he has lost, not on the city he must build, as becomes clear in the succeeding books. In Book iii he envies the miniature Troy which Helenus and Andromache have built in Epirus, while in Book iv he longs to stay with Dido and share in her city. The division he so frequently evinces in these early books between what he has to do and what he wants to do can be considered as part of a training in pietas, in devotion to his highest duty, which is consummated in the underworld encounter with his father Anchises in Book vi.