The fragmentary state in which Cicero's treatise De Republica has come down to us has given rise to considerable speculation as to the exact nature of the political ideal contained in it. Very varying conjectures have been advanced as to the significance and status of the rector or moderator rei publicae, and very different answers given to the question: Is the ideal a revised and improved form of the πάτριος πολιτεία or is it some kind of enlightened monarchy? The assumption on which this paper rests is, however, that the issue has not yet grown so academic but that a further examination of it may serve either to reveal some new, or to stress some neglected, feature of the traditional problem.

It is first necessary to say something about the use of the word ‘ideal’ in reference to the Republic. It is customary to talk of the ‘ideal’ which Cicero propounds in that work, yet there is patently something unsatisfactory in the term, since historians are unable to agree as to what that ideal is. It may be suggested that the reason for this is in part an ambiguity of the word ‘ideal’ corresponding to a distinction in Cicero's intention in writing the Republic. What this might be is most easily seen from comparison with Aristotle's Politics, which similarly is said to contain its author's political ideal, and similarly has given rise to dispute as to what exactly that ideal is. In this case, however, there need be no doubt as to what is intended, since Aristotle explicitly distinguishes two senses of ‘ideal’ as applied to constitutions, namely that which is best a priori (ή κατ εὺχήν) and that which is the best that can be expected relative to circumstances (ή ἐκ τν ύποκειμένων).

I have been invited by the editors of Greece and Rome to contribute to its pages a series of notes on recently discovered Greek inscriptions, indicating briefly their significance for classical studies but avoiding technicalities. I gladly accept the invitation, alike because of the fascination which inscriptions exercise for myself, in common with many teachers and students of the classics, and also because of the value of the epigraphical evidence for every aspect of the thought, the speech, and the activities of the ancient world. I shall select for this purpose inscriptions short enough to be transcribed in full and shall prefer those which are published in periodicals or books not everywhere accessible in this country. For the sake of those, and I hope they may be not a few, who wish to pursue the study further, I shall add to each note a select bibliography.

In discussing popular verse we may note, first, that speaking generally it is originally rhythmical rather than metrical, usually only becoming metrical under literary influence—as was probably the case in Greek and Latin; secondly, that it tends to be strongly accentual, being very often (and perhaps by origin) connected with dancing or rhythmical movement (spinning, grinding, &c.); and thirdly, that therefore the number of accents is more important than the number of syllables. These considerations are of almost universal application, many languages, indeed, never developing any precise metrical rules at all—as Old English and Hebrew.

Throughout history, little has been known about the land of Illyria. ‘As ”savages” or “barbarians” on the northern periphery of the classical world’, the historian John Wilkes writes, ‘even today the Illyrians barely make footnotes in most versions of ancient history, and more often than not they are simply ignored.’ Shut in by mountains, north of the betterknown Greece and covering roughly the area of modern-day Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia, Illyria has remained a closed world to outsiders, dismissed as barbarian in ancient times and remembered in more recent centuries only as an unexplored outpost of the Ottoman or Hapsburg Empires. As a result, Illyria has become a place of mystery, the site of myth and legend as much as of historical civilization-building or battles, a by-word for the realm of the imagination. Oscar Wilde summed up the popular association of Illyria with fiction when, in a review of an amateur production of Twelfth Night, he wrote with characteristic succinctness: ‘Where there is no illusion there is no Illyria.’

The information available to us of events in Greece during the fifteen years which followed the battle of Plataea is limited enough. Any analysis of the relations between Athens and Sparta during this period must of necessity be a hazardous business. To explain the breakdown in the relations of the two states there is one cause so clear to us that it tends to fill the horizon, making us less sensitive to the circumstances which preceded and accompanied the rupture. The aggrandizement of Athens by her mastery of the Delian league was a factor which profoundly influenced the balance of power on the Greek mainland; but it did not, at first, bedevil Athenian–Spartan relations. There are signs of co-operation, if not of cordiality, in these relations for fifteen years; from then on there are the clearest signs of planned hostility. There is no doubt that relations deteriorated sharply at the time of the Thasian revolt, the Spartan earthquake, and the Helot revolt, and that hostility came into the open with the dismissal of the Athenian contingent at Ithome by the Spartan authorities. This action was the beginning of many misfortunes to both states: it drew aside abruptly the veil, which diplomacy had industriously maintained, from dark suspicions and sinister designs. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the probable reasons why the break came just when it did.

‘In the study of history’, says Livy in the preface to his work, ‘the most salutary and profitable advantage to the reader is that he sees before him examples of every kind set out in their true light. From them he may choose for his own benefit and that of his country what to imitate and what to avoid.’ Whether Livy's moralistic attitude to history is legitimate or not, the fact that he always has a moral purpose clearly in mind lends a unity to his work which bears a compelling appearance of truth. All events, all actions are recounted, interpreted, and judged according to a single norm: how far they reflect and illustrate the glory of ancient Rome or the decline of his countrymen from the Golden Age of times past. It is the purpose of this article to examine the part accorded to women in this scheme, and the history will be judged not as a factual record but, as Livy would have expected, as a work of art and moral instruction.

An apology is needed for taking up this well-worn theme. My reason is that in discussions and in reading works on Greek literature I have often felt that Aristophanes' antipathy to Euripides is still as a rule too strongly stated, and his sympathy wholly or partly ignored. It is said that Aristophanes attacked Euripides mercilessly in the Frogs, or even throughout his career; that he condemns Euripides entirely, or counts him with Cleon and the sophists amongst his worst enemies. Others agree that he thought Euripides a great poet, and even felt a curious fascination in his poetry, but insist that from a moral standpoint he condemned Euripides' work uncompromisingly. I feel increasingly convinced that Aristophanes had a finer and more complete appreciation of Euripides' greatness. Professor Gilbert Murray gives a juster estimate of his feelings: Aristophanes, he says, loved Euripides with all his faults, and was inevitably drawn towards him. I should like to go a little further in the same direction, and try to show that in some important things Aristophanes must have been actively and strongly in sympathy with Euripides.

Let me say at once that I am still prepared to believe that Aristophanes preferred Aeschylus (I am not sure about Sophocles; Aristophanes no doubt loved and admired the man and his work, but perhaps his feelings were not so strongly aroused in either direction by Sophocles); and of course Aristophanes found many things great and small in the art of Euripides, in his morality and above all in his influence, which exasperated him beyond endurance and which he whole-heartedly condemned; he recognized the symptoms of great changes which he deplored, though he was by no means out of touch with the new spirit and perhaps not so completely out of sympathy.

A generation brought up with bicycles and cars takes for granted the necessity of lubrication. Yet consultation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica reveals that the earliest book devoted to a theoretical examination of the subject appeared in 1883; before that date, lubrication was based solely on rule of thumb and traditional experience. It is natural to enquire how far the Greeks and Romans advanced in acquiring this empirical knowledge.

It is not long since it was commonly thought that the art of blowing glass was known for several thousand years before Christ. Certain Egyptian tomb-paintings of the twelfth dynasty (c. 2OOO b.c.) and later, which really depict metal-workers blowing the flames of their furnace, were thought to represent glass-blowers. As a corollary, it has been said that not a few of the vessels of blown glass found on ancient sites in Greece and other Mediterranean countries belong to the Greek period. Such beliefs are quite incorrect. There is no evidence that the process of blowing glass was invented until about the time of Christ. Scientific excavation in Greece has proved beyond question that any fragments of glass vessels found there belong to Roman or later times; the tombs in Cyprus that contain Hellenistic or earlier pottery contain no blown glass, whereas in tombs of Roman date blown glass tends to displace pottery as funerary furniture; and similar observations have been made during scientific excavations in the other Mediterranean countries.

The evidence of the Marmor Parium confirms that Sophokles ‘died under Kallias’, who was archon from the summer of 406 to the summer of 405. The Frogs was produced during the archonship of the same Kallias, at the Lenaia: that is, in January/February 405. The Frogs refers to the dead poet in the prologue, in the second prologue, and in the exodos (76–82, 786–94, 1515–19): in the prologue and in the exodos Sophokles is mentioned in connexion with the return of Dionysos from Hades with a good tragic poet (cf. 71–85 and 1414–1533), and in the second prologue in connexion with the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides for the tragic throne in Hades (cf. 757–1410).

Aristotle's theory of poetry is based upon two main propositions: the first, that poetry is imitation (μίμησις), and the second, that it aims at universality. The first of these propositions has seemed so shocking to modern aestheticians that they have endeavoured to modify it by translating μίμησις as ‘representation’, or, like Mr. Carritt, suggesting that what Aristotle was trying to say was that poetry is expression, as in Croce's theory of art as the expression of feeling. Yet Aristotle himself makes it quite clear that he did mean imitation by μίμησις, for in explanation he speaks of ‘making likenesses’ (ἀπεικάʒοντες) of objects. He also describes how painters and poets make likenesses which are better or worse than, or exactly like the real people, and discusses the enjoyment which we derive from looking at likenesses (εἰκόνας) even of things which are most unpleasant in real life. This shows that Aristotle was not thinking of ‘expression’ in the modern aesthetic sense.

The emperor displayed his role as commander-in-chief through his actions as the soldiers' supreme benefactor, martial portraits on the coinage and imperial art, and speeches to particular army units. The fortunate survival of the text of Hadrian's speech at Lambaesis provides us with an exceptional record of how the emperor showed both an awareness of military techniques and empathy for the rigours of army life. In times of crisis, the emperor could address the soldiers directly, in order to ensure their continuing support for his rule. As a study on imperial witticisms has shown, what the emperor said was as important as what he did for the purpose of defining his role within the Principate.

The amount of Ovid's surviving poetry is almost exactly equal to the sum total of poetry which has come down to us from Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius. Ovid wrote because he was a compulsive writer, ‘a poet utterly in love with poetry’ as Gilbert Murray aptly put it. He was the only classical poet to leave an autobiography, and in it he records that as a boy ‘I tried to write words freed from rhythm, yet all unbidden song would come upon befitting numbers and whatever I tried to write was verse.’ The quantity of Ovid's poetry, of course, cannot be made an excuse for lack of quality, but no indulgence need be begged and no allowances made for his masterpiece, the Metamorphoses. When the blow of exile fell on Ovid in a.d. 8 the Metamorphoses was substantially complete, much more so than the Aeneid had been when Virgil died in 19 b.c.

‘An anonymous product of an impersonal craft’: that is how Rhys Carpenter characterized Greek sculpture in 1960, and it's an assessment that has long dominated the field. Carpenter was challenging the traditional workings of classical archaeology, not least its infatuation with individual ‘masters’. While responding to past precedent, however, his comments also looked forward in time, heralding a decidedly postmodern turn. From our perspective in 2020, six decades after his book was first published, Carpenter can be seen to anticipate what Roland Barthes would dub the ‘death of the author’: ‘the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author’, as Barthes put it.

‘Ancient Rome!’ The door of the iconic police box squeaks open. The camera pans, following a dark-haired man as he emerges, pushes through a curtained doorway, and, with a glint in his eye, glee in his smile, and a touch of London in his voice, announces their destination to his redhead companion. So begins ‘The Fires of Pompeii’, the second episode in the fourth season of the current BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) science-fiction drama Doctor Who. And so, no doubt, began the scribbling of pens on notebooks, as classicists who examine popular receptions of ancient Greece and Rome recognized a fresh opportunity to explore the dynamics of modern engagements with the classical world. At the time of broadcast, I was ensconced in my Liverpool office, writing the final lecture of a new undergraduate module devoted to Roman society. The topic was ‘Receptions of Roman Life’. My plan was to contrast depictions of Roman life in different media from distinct periods to encourage our students to recognize how modern reconstructions of Roman society are variously informed by questions of authority, genre, and cultural contexts. Serendipitously, ‘The Fires of Pompeii’ provided an engaging contemporary reception of the Roman world on television.

It is now generally acknowledged that in the concluding chapters of the Agricola Tacitus is on several occasions guilty of distortion of the truth. The story told in 40. 2, for example, of the secret mission of one of Domitian's confidential freedmen with an offer of the governorship of Syria as a bribe to Agricola in case he should appear reluctant to obey the orders for his recall is obviously sheer fabrication, designed solely to intensify the picture of suspicion and distrust on the part of the Emperor that Tacitus is endeavouring to create. Again, though in 43. 2 Tacitus records the rumour that Agricola had been poisoned by Domitian (the rumour is repeated by Dio Cassius, lxvi. 20, as sober truth), he does so in such a way as to indicate that he himself did not believe this charge, though he hoped his readers would. There are, however, three points that have never been satisfactorily explained: the relations between Agricola and Domitian between A.d. 85 and 93, Agricola's refusal of the proconsulship of Asia, and the reason for his non-employment in the Danubian wars.

Clothing has both a material and a non-material dimension. Far from merely covering one's body, clothes reveal and reflect something about the wearer's identity: his or her character, gender, social status, ideas, and emotions. The opposite is also true, insofar as clothes can be used in order to ‘disguise’ and conceal one's real values and beliefs, thus transforming existing identities and creating new ones. In other words, clothing has the power both to reveal and to conceal levels of reality. According to Gilman, symbolism is one of the strongest of the primary motives in dress: we dress not only in order to cover the body but also, and most importantly, because clothing is a kind of costume and, as such, it enables us to communicate and at the same time to confirm our identity. As she remarks, ‘The element of symbolism is interwoven with even such a practical garment as the trousers. The small boy's mad desire to get into his first trousers is not based on added comfort or freedom, but on the proud exhibition of the fact that he is a boy.’