Callimachus was the Housman of antiquity. He had formidable learning, combative pugnacity, and a rare capacity to put both aside and write with exquisite simplicity. His learning is seen in the traditions about his pupils, who were reputed to include Eratosthenes, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Apollonius of Rhodes, with whom he was later on terms of enmity. It is seen in his association with the library at Alexandria. A scholiast to Plautus says that he held the post of librarian. That he was not chief librarian is proved by the list preserved in a papyrus at Oxyrhynchus, but there is no reason to doubt that he served on the library staff, especially as his published works included a library catalogue. It is to be seen in his later reputation: thus to Philippus Callimachus is the main weapon of the dry-as-dust army of commentators (AP 11. 321) and to study him is an investigation in the dark (AP 11. 347). It is seen in the volume of his works which numbered over eight hundred, and their general character. They show a taste for curious learning; one may instance a series on Local Nomenclature which included a book on Local Month-Names, or another on The Rivers of the World with separate volumes for Europe and Asia, or a volume on Foundations and Name-Changes of Islands and States, or Geographical Wonders of the World.

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.

In the eighth book of Statius' Thebaid the Argives meet to appoint a successor to the dead seer Amphiaraus (275 ff.). Their choice falls on Thiodamas son of Melampus (277–9); he, however, is overwhelmed by the prospect, which he regards with a mixture of joy and apprehension (281–5). There follows an eight-line simile which David Vessey rightly describes as ‘unique in the Thebaid’ Thiodamas is compared to a young Parthian king who succeeds to the throne following his father's death (286–93):

sicut Achaemenius solium gentisque paternas

excepit si forte puer, cui vivere patrem

tutius, incerta formidine gaudia librat,

an fidi proceres, ne pugnet vulgus habenis,

cui latus Euphratae, cui Caspia limina mandet.

sumere tune arcus ipsumque onerare veretur

patris equum, visusque sibi nee sceptra capaci

sustentare manu nee adhuc implere tiaram.

In his description of Cicero's eloquence Quintilian says that he had the power of carrying a jury with him against its better judgement without the jury's realizing what was happening. This magical power of Cicero's is exercised not only on Roman jurors, but also on most modern readers and even on some editors. This process is particularly apparent in many interpretations of the Pro Caelio. For example, Professor R. G. Austin, in his great edition of that speech, says, ‘Whatever the secret history, it is clear that the actual indictment was formal, and that Clodia was the real driving force behind it; society reasons prompted the case, and the issue was the social disappearance of either Clodia or Caelius.’ Yet an impartial weighing of the evidence with a mind unclouded by Cicero's brilliant oratory will point to the conclusion that the part played by Clodia in the case, though an important part, was only a subsidiary one.

TheAdelphi is Terence's best-known, though not necessarily his best, play. It tells how a timid young man, Ctesiphon, son of a strict and parsimonious father, Demea, falls in love with a slave-girl, Bacchis. His brother, Aeschinus, who has been adopted and brought up by his easygoing uncle Micio, abducts the girl on Ctesiphon's behalf, thereby causing much distress both to Pamphila, to whom Aeschinus is secretly betrothed, and to Micio himself, who is afraid that his indulgent attitude towards his adopted son's youthful escapades has encouraged him to go too far. However, the whole misunderstanding is sorted out: Micio gives his consent to the marriage of Aeschinus and Pamphila, and Aeschinus swears to Micio eternal gratitude, while Demea is persuaded to put aside his anger at the behaviour of the two young men and come in to the marriage feast. In the next scene Demea comes out and declares that he is going to change his attitude to life and do his best to win popularity by affability and generosity. He proceeds to put this idea into practice by a display of friendliness towards Syrus, Micio's steward, who had taken a leading part in the intrigue, to Geta, the loyal slave of Pamphila, and to Aeschinus himself, whom he encourages to break down the wall between Micio's house and Pamphila's to enable him to bring home his bride more easily; he then persuades the staunch bachelor, Micio, to marry Sostrata, Pamphila's mother, and to give a farm to Sostrata's old family friend, Hegio, in these two instances being stoutly supported by Aeschinus.

There are features in both the logical and the dramatic structure of the Crito the interest of which has not, I think, been sufficiently appreciated. They are worth discussion; and this will lead further to a consideration of the dialogue as μίμησις in the sense in which Aristotle uses the word in the Poetics.

‘Attica has a plentiful supply of stone,’ says Xenophon (Poroi i. 4),‘from which are made the fairest temples and altars, and the most beautiful statues for the gods.’ Athens was indeed blessed in its building stones, as in its fine clay. The immensely complicated geophysical processes which created the exquisite landscape of Attica produced a variety of useful and often beautiful materials, nicely distributed about the land. The stones are mostly limestones of different sorts. Marble itself is a limestone miraculously metamorphosed by titanic heat and pressure into its characteristic crystalline structure, thus forming in the body of the earth what M. Aurelius (ix. 36) aptly calls poroi, calluses or nodules. This has happened in many places, but in most the result consists of comparatively small lumps or thin veins; much rarer are the massive beds from which can be extracted the great blocks needed for the major architectural members of temples and other large buildings. In this too Attica is exceptionally favoured. More than one huge layer runs through the fabric of both Pentelikon and Hymettos; and other extensive beds lie near the southern tip of Attica.

The reception of Aristophanes has gained extraordinary momentum as a topic of academic interest in the last few years. Contributions range from Gonda Van Steen's ground-breaking Venom in Verse. Aristophanes in Modern Greece to Hall and Wrigley's Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007, which contains contributions from a wide range of scholars and writers, a number of whom have had experience of staging Aristophanes' plays as live theatre. In Found in Translation, J. Michael Walton has also made strides towards marrying the theory of translation to the practice of translating Aristophanes (something I have myself also sought to do in print). And with the history of Aristophanic translation, adaptation, and staging being rapidly pieced together (in the English-speaking world at least, where Hall, Steggle, Halliwell, Sowerby, Walsh, and Walton, for example, have all made their own contributions), much of the groundwork has been laid for a study such as is attempted in this article. Here I aim to take a broad look across a range of translations in order to see how one particular text type within Aristophanic drama has been approached by translators, namely Aristophanes' lyric passages. The aim of this study will be to give both an insight into the numerous considerations that translators take into account when translating Aristophanic lyric and an impression of the range of end products that have emerged over the last two hundred years.

One day in 79 b.c., when he was studying at Athens, Cicero and a group of friends took a walk along the same road as Lucian's Philosophia, but in the opposite direction. They had listened, as usual, to a lecture by Antiochos, who was then head of the Academy, delivered in the gymnasium called Ptolemaion, which was in the middle of the city; and they resolved to take an ambulatio postmeridiana (Latin for Περίπατος δειλινός) in the Academy, which at that time of day would be quiet (and comparatively cool). Forgathering at Piso's, they traversed the six stadia from the Dipylon, and reached the justly famous walks (non sine causa nobilitata spatia) of the Academy. There Piso remarks, ‘Whether by a sound instinct or by an illusion (natura an errore) when we set eyes on the very places frequented by great men, we are more deeply moved than when we merely hear of their deeds or read their writings. Plato used to hold discussions here; I can almost see him walking in those little gardens near by (illi propinqui hortuli). Here taught Speusippos and Xenokrates and Polemon, who used to sit on the very seat which we can see over there. The power of suggestion which places possess is indeed great (tanta uis admonitionis inest in locis).’ Quintus Cicero is more attracted to the Kolonos near by, with its Sophoklean associations.

In the Choephoroi and the Eumenides Aeschylus has described curious and repellent characters, composite beings who partake of the nature and appearance of old women, dogs, Gorgons, Harpies, and aged children, creatures of a compound well able to fright and amaze the original audience. But if a modern theatrical director were to ask, ‘What did they look like? How shall I dress them and have them masked?’, it might be too easy to allow his wardrobe mistress a gallop into phantasy, whereas it is almost as easy to give a simple, if less exhilaratingly imaginative, answer. Aeschylus describes the Erinyes as follows:

Choephoroi

like Gorgons, 1048; φαιοχ⋯τωνες, 1049; wreathed about with snakes, 1049–50; with blood dripping from their eyes, 1058.

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):

Pliny lived in the heyday of the Roman empire, being born in A.d. 62 in the middle of the reign of Nero, at Comum by Lake Como in north Italy, and he lived until about A.d. 112. His family were not of the old Roman nobility but belonged to the second grade of the Roman upper classes, the so-called Knights or equites Ramani. Pliny trained to become an advocate in the courts of civil law, and partly by his talents and partly through the influence of family friends in the senatorial class he gained promotion to the senior grade of the Roman administration. He became a Roman senator when he was about twenty-eight years old, and eventually climbed to the top rung of the Roman public service. So he was in Roman terms a self-made man, the first senator of his family. But he was also a highly educated man; as a young man he attended the schools of the most famous professors of literature at Rome, and especially that of the great Quintilian, whose book on the art of rhetoric survives to show the sort of education that Pliny received.

The Seleucid Empire was the largest and most ethnically diverse of all the successor kingdoms formed after the death of Alexander the Great. The relationship between the Macedonian dynasty and various subject peoples is therefore a central question of Seleucid historiography. This article focuses on the relations between king and native temples, arguing that temple despoliation was standard procedure for Seleucid rulers facing fiscal problems. I explore various instances in which Seleucid kings removed treasures from native temples under coercive auspices, suggesting that this pattern problematizes recent scholarship emphasizing positive relations between Seleucid kings and native priestly elites.

Poem 2 of the Liber Catullianus – the first of the passer poems – was probably the poet's most famous piece. The poem presents a charming and fascinating picture of a Roman matron who is said by the poet to divert her mind from her passion by playing with her pet bird. Of this seemingly innocent picture a peculiar esoteric interpretation was offered in the time of the Italian Renaissance. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Florentine scholar Angelo Poliziano suggested that Catullus had woven an obscene allegory into his poem, and he supported his argument by reference to the sixth epigram of Martial's eleventh book. This epigram is a vulgar poem that ends with the words ‘passerem Catulli’. It will figure prominently in our discussion below. Poliziano only hinted at an indecent meaning. The Dutch scholar, Isaac Voss, in his Observations on Catullus published in 1684, makes the matter explicit. The Greeks, he alleges, often used the names of birds to refer to a man's penis, and similarly passer in poem is ambiguous and at one level represents the poet's penis. By this obscene interpretation, the basic allegory of the poem would be something like this. Lesbia has great familiarity with the poet's male member. She delights in playing with it and in this way seems to satisfy her erotic impulses. The poet by means of similar play would like to take similar satisfaction for himself. He cannot because masturbation gives him no pleasure. According to Voss, this allegory continues in poem 3, the famous dirge for the dead passer. Here, he declares, we should suppose that the poet wishes to represent himself as ‘confectum et exhaustum lucta Venerea et funerata… ea parte quae virum facit’ (‘worn out and exhausted by a physical exertion erotic and deadly in regard to that part which makes a person a man’).

The fourth-century painted ceiling at Trier, Germany was destroyed less than two decades after it was decorated, yet today it is one of the best-known monuments of Late Antique Gaul (figure 1). In excavations begun by Theodor Kempf in 1945, archaeologists collected the ceiling's fragments from the ruins of a Roman house beneath the city's Romanesque cathedral. Painstaking assembly of the plaster fragments into their original form was completed in 1980. Now displayed in the Trier Episcopal Museum, the ceiling is a rare example of Late Antique domestic painting. It comprises fifteen trompe l'oeil coffers which are outlined by red and green borders and a yellow guilloche. Each coffer contains an image of a different subject; bust-length female and male single figures alternate with pairs of putti in various active poses.

The ceiling's rarity, its mysterious, unidentified figures, and the possibility proposed by Kempf that it belonged to a palace built by the emperor Constantine have made it the subject of extensive scholarship. Because conservators assembled the ceiling over a thirty-five year span and individual scenes were published as they were completed, the first scholars of the ceiling studied sections in isolation from the whole monument. Attention first focused on the depictions of the woman with the mirror and the woman with the jewel box, because they were the first single figures to be restored and published. Many archaeologists and art historians concentrated on identifying the women as portraits of Constantine's family. Irving Lavin took a different approach and carefully addressed the painting's classicizing style. Scholars in the 1980s, with the advantage of the ceiling's completed restoration, have considered the ceiling as a thematic whole.

Roman charioteers had a reputation, and not just for living fast and dying young. Nor was their reputation solely based on the glamour of their occupation, although it is clear that some charioteers could achieve something approaching celebrity status. Roman charioteers (by which I mean charioteers throughout the ancient Roman world) had a reputation of a rather darker stripe. The violence of their occupation, reflected and enhanced by the riotous violence of their supporters, contributed to the perception of charioteers in general as rough, uncouth characters. The gulf between some charioteers' celebrity and their slave status did much to encourage this brutal reputation in the Roman mind.

A number of ancient sources suggests that Roman women in the archaic period were not allowed to drink wine. Various theories have so far been proposed to explain this taboo, most of them assuming that it meant a complete alcohol ban, and relating it to the special role of women in the Roman family. However, a reconsideration of these theories, which takes into account the results of recent studies on the origins of wine consumption in Italy, shows that the archaic wine taboo had more to do with the nature of wine than with the nature of women.