The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which Aeschylus may have altered the forms or emphases of the traditional plots which he used in the Oresteia and the Supplices and to decide whether we are justified in interpreting any such adjustments as a commentary on recent or contemporary politics. Much of what follows is not, of course, new; but a fresh analysis of the old evidence will, I hope, show that rather than take sides strongly in political disputes, Aeschylus chose to suggest how men ought to approach problems of public life and solve them in the best interests of all.

In Oedipus Tyrannus the other characters regularly call Oedipus ‘tyrannos’. My question is what we should call him. Etymologically the obvious translation is tyrant. But the word tyrant suggests a wickedness of heart, or at any rate a total disregard for the wishes of others, that is far from characteristic of the Oedipus that Sophocles portrays. Moreover Oedipus was elected ‘tyrannos’ and refers to his post as ‘tyrannis’. These are two further obstacles since no-one purposely chooses a tyrant to rule over them and in English tyrantship is not a plausible name for a government office. For these reasons – or so one imagines – translators and commentators avoid the etymological derivative. But they do not pursue the logic of usage to the point of adopting any of the standard modern terms for an elected head of state such as president. Instead the title they confer on Oedipus, virtually without exception, is king.

Scholars so far have commented only briefly on Tacitus' depiction, at Annals 14.60–4, of the execution (in ad 62) of Nero's young wife Octavia, passing lightly over the pathos and criticism of Nero there as straightforward and self-evident. In fact, there is a subtle and skilful build-up of sympathy for Octavia and an extensive and powerful attack on the emperor and his court (and the servile senate), all the stronger for the pity aroused for her. This combination of emotional impact and damning indictment merits and repays deeper analysis.

Since so many Roman cognomina are derived from physical peculiarities and personal idiosyncrasies, it is not surprising that the unfortunate bearers were often the butt of laughter. As Cicero says (de Or. ii. 236), ‘Locus autem, et regio quasi ridiculi (nam id proxime quaeritur) turpitudine et deformitate quadam continetur: haec enim ridentur vel sola, vel maxime, quae notant et designant turpitudinem aliquam non turpiter.’ Cicero remarks that there is need for restraint and good taste in such jokes, and he adds (247) that it is not enough just to get a laugh, a man must also derive some benefit from the remark. Cicero's qualifying comments are in reference to an occasion when a man called Vargula was embraced by A. Sempronius, a candidate for office, and the latter's brother Marcus, whereupon he shouted to his slave ‘Puer, abige muscas’ (‘Boy, chase away the flies’), Musca being a cognomen of the Sempronii.

It is difficult to define exactly the difference between the early work of a poet (or of a dramatist in verse) and his later work. In fact any general definition is impossible, for poets vary. Some merely dry up and go on writing from habit; others change their style consciously and deliberately, others unconsciously—but all change. Anyone who has thought about and read poetry will agree that if a poet lives long enough, his work is bound to change. Any Shakespeare scholar can distinguish by style alone, not to mention other evidence, Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona from his Tempest. Similarly, any competent critic will admit that Milton could not have written Lycidas or his Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity after he wrote Paradise Lost. Again Dante could not have written the poems in his Vita Nuova after he finished the Divine Comedy. In both cases some people prefer the earlier poems. A poet does not always improve with years, but his mind changes gradually and his work reflects that.

Poets differ so much that we are usually content to enjoy their works without noticing their order. But it is not always possible to ignore it. A fragmentary papyrus has lately been discovered which appears to be the remains of an extract from the Didascaliae prefixed to a play of Aeschylus. It states that Aeschylus was victorious with a group of plays which contained the Danaides and Amymone, and that Sophocles was second. As it is generally agreed that the Supplices belonged to the same group as the plays mentioned it can be assumed with confidence that this name was to be found on the part of the papyrus now missing.

There is a school of thought which attributes the more refined discourse of New Comedy (compared with that of the Old) at least in part to a change in the composition of Athenian theatre audiences. This way of thinking assumes that payment for attending theatre performances (the so-called theōrikon) was discontinued along with other payments for i public service under the oligarchic regimes Macedonia imposed upon Athens in the late fourth century B.C.; and it further assumes that with the elimination of this subsidy many of the poor could no longer afford to attend the theatre. The first of these assumptions, that the audiences for New Comedy did not receive theōrikon payments, is reasonable enough, but the second assumption, that the poor therefore stopped coming to the theatre, is more problematic.

Plutarch's account of the condemnation and punishment of Alcibiades by the Athenians (Plut. Alc. 22.5) includes the following statement: … ἔτι κα καταρσθαι προσεϕηφίσαντο πντας ἱερεĩς κα ἱείας, ὧν μóνην φασ Θεανὼ τν Μνωνος Ἀγρυλθεν ντειπεīν πρòς τò ϕφισμα, φσκουσαν εὐχν, οὐ καταρν ἱρειαν γεγονναι.

When I first began to study Greek art, back in the mid 1950s, a book on Greek sculpture had recently been published in Germany and in England that did much to encourage my interest. It was Reinhard Lullies and Max Hirmer's big picture book, Greek Sculpture, since enlarged and running into three German and two English editions. Its basic idea was not totally novel but was rare for its time and never previously done so well. It presented large, clear photographs of original Greek works (by Hirmer) with a scholarly commentary to each piece (by Lullies); it omitted anything that was known, or considered, not to be original. In doing so, it provided a strong contrast to the sort of book with which I had already come into contact, the sort best characterized perhaps by Ernest Gardner's Six Greek Sculptors of 19252which contains not one single original piece by the six chosen sculptors and in which all the photographs are seen through a glass darkly. Gardner's title and approach, with heavy emphasis on literary evidence and Roman copies, accompanied by a sprinkling of original, unattributed pieces for ballast, was typical of a traditional line of study-that of Kopienkritik, an approach not dead yet by any means and in fact one which must continue to be pursued, though nowadays it is tackled with more caution than earlier. But until one incontrovertible example of a named sculptor's work is found, all attributions must be arguable approximations.

The Porticus Octaviae was built in the Campus Martius sometime between 33 and 23 BC (Figure 1). There is controversy as to whether it was built by Augustus and dedicated to his sister, or commissioned by Octavia herself. The complex, however, which included a library and senate house was closely associated with Octavia and her son. The Porticus Octaviae fell victim to the fire of ad 80 and was probably restored by Domitian. An inscription on the propylon of the complex records its restoration, also after a fire, by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in AD 203. Little consideration, however, has been given to the importance of the Severan restoration in the context of this emperor's building programme. This article will examine the messages conveyed by the restoration of the Porticus Octaviae in terms of Severus' imperial policy, and in particular his desire to connect himself to the legacy of Augustus.

Lucan's Bellum Ciuile dates from the Neronian period and is strongly rooted in that historical context, but, as is well known, it offers plenty of food for thought to the student of late Republican religion and intellectual culture. The reading of the Civil War that it puts forward has major implications for our understanding of the ancient interpretations of that period. This is fully in keeping with the ambitions of Lucan himself, who set out to impose his work as a pervasive master-narrative of the late Republican age. The aim of this article is to pursue a narrow but important and often under-explored angle, and to assess the role of divination, especially of the prophetic kind, in the poem.

Book iv is Virgil's masterpiece. It can stand comparison with the other great books in the qualities where they excel. It has the narrative power of Book ii, the imaginative power of vi, the tragic intensity and truth of the finest scenes in x and xii. But it overshadows these by its perfectly contrived synthesis of tragedy and epic. The book is the shortest of the twelve and the most dramatic in form: a tripartite structure is more clearly marked than in the other books and for once seems consciously present in the poet's mind, for each of the three sections has its own clearly marked internal unity and each begins with the entry of the queen and the same key phrase at regina: lines 1–295, the beginning of the affair; lines 296–503, the alienation; lines 504–705, the end of the affair—Aeneas' departure and Dido's suicide. But Virgil's narrative technique also reaches in this book its highest level of perfection and variety—the passage 74–89, for example, in which a close-packed succession of images suggests the compulsive, irresistible impetus of Dido's wild infatuation; or the serene, colourful, carefully organized narrative of the hunting episode (129–72), with its happy, relaxed realism and the terrifying, penetrating, ironic symbolism with which that episode concludes; or the awful simplicity and sublimity of the death scene (630–92).

It is hard to conceive and define the general characteristics of Alexandrian poetry (c. 323–146 B.C.), a poetry which we know mostly in fragments and of which the greatest representatives show so wide a divergence.

Between the poetry, for instance, of Callimachus, with its austere and scholarly character intended for an educated and courtly audience, and the mimes of Herodas, with their sensual and humorous character designed to appeal to the broad masses of the cities, there is an abyss which cannot be bridged. Yet we can discern common elements and qualities which differ both from classical Greek poetry and the poetry which followed.

The Alexandrian poets are all in some way or other, directly or indirectly, hampered and fettered by the weight of classical Greek poetry. They looked at the Greek poetic tradition with awe mingled with despair; they were spellbound by the rich and beautiful language, the perfection of form and the grandeur of the classical creative imagination from Homer to Menander, but the more they studied those works the more deeply were they convinced of the utter impossibility of creating anything of equal originality; they realized that they were incapable of freeing themselves completely from the classical tradition or of breaking it and creating new types of great poetry, as the Ionians had created the epic, or the Athenians drama. The furthest they dared venture was to mix and to mingle the old pure and clearly defined types of poetry. The result, neither the same nor completely new, flattered their vanity by persuading them that they were creating, without breaking way from the spell of tradition.

In September 46 bc, Cicero delivered a speech in the Senate, praising the dictator Caesar for the clemency and wisdom he had shown in pardoning M. Marcellus. The forgiveness of a man who had been, in Caesar's own words, characterized by particular acerbitas seemed all the more magnanimous, and Cicero recalls the occasion in a letter sent to his friend, S. Sulpicius Rufus. He was so overwhelmed by Caesar's generosity, he adds, that he broke a period of self-imposed silence and spoke at length when he was asked to give his opinion. The words he delivered apparently extempore were later written down and published, probably quite soon after the event of their delivery. It has come down to us as the Pro Marcello, and in this speech Cicero does not just praise the dictator but also attempts to influence Caesar, and steer him towards a more republican attitude.

In the ten years between 1929 and 1939 three remarkable books were produced in a tiny Irish-speaking community of less than one hundred and fifty people living on the Great Blasket, an island off the south-west coast of Kerry. The authors, two men and a woman, were peasants, eking out a scanty living by farming and fishing. They were technically literate in that they had acquired the rudiments of reading and writing at the island school, but for all practical purposes their culture was oral. They certainly had neither opportunity nor inclination for book-reading. Yet out of the resources of their oral culture they produced works of a high literary standard, one of which has (in translation) achieved the status of a ‘World's Classic’.

A study of the personality of Cato Censorius is both interesting and instructive because of the times in which he lived, a period which began with the Hannibalic War and included those fateful fifty years of the second century which ordered the destiny of Rome herself and indirectly of the whole world. In the shaping of that destiny Cato played a not unimportant part, and the interest of the man lies both in what he did and in his reactions to the events which confronted him. Such a study also throws light on ancient biographical methods. To the ancient mind the personal element was by far the most important for the understanding of history; the individual acquired a correspondingly higher value and importance in the interpretation of movements and events; and in a time when the State was confronted with many problems, the men who strove to deal with them in different ways assumed importance in men's minds as provoking those very problems which they were only trying to solve.

The inculcation of techniques of persuasion by Greeks and Romans, i. e. rhetoric, in those days a highly necessary form of vocational training for top people, led eventually to the British classical education. But it is probable that few topics are more disliked by classical students of today than rhetoric; and examinees blench at the mere sight of questions in which the word ‘rhetoric’ appears. As E. R. Dodds remarks, ‘To the average modern Englishman “rhetoric” means a distastefully emotional or showy way of talking;… to the contemporaries of Socrates it meant the practical art of influencing men's will through the spoken word.’ Such an art is presumably still of some importance, and it is still worth considering what Plato/Socrates had to say about it. The enquiry is made the more piquant by the fact that Plato himself has been called e.g. ‘an orator himself in mocking other orators’ (Cic. De Or. 1.47), a ‘propagandist’,2 and most recently ‘[a man who] writes not as a scholar or scientist but from first to last as an advocate, an heir to the tradition of didactic poetry, a nursling of Attic drama and a product, no less than the politicians and litigants whom he criticized so articulately, of a culture which admired the art of the persuader’.

More that thirty years ago W. Arend decisively showed that in Homer routine operations such as sacrificing and arming conform to a regular pattern. When a warrior arms himself, first are mentioned his greaves, then his cuirass, sword, shield, helmet, and spear(s), invariably in this order; at a sacrifice, first comes prayer and barley sprinkling, then the slaughter of the victim and its flaying, the cutting of the meat, its preparation, roasting, and serving. The embellishing varies a good deal, I suppose in accordance with the pace of the narrative or other aesthetic considerations; thus the Opfermahl scene has 21 possible operations: in the Iliad A 447 ff. has 18, B 402 ff. 17, H 314 ff. 6, Ω. 621 ff. 4, and ψ 166 a mere ἔδερόν τε κα⋯ ἄμεπον.