There appeared in Greece & Rome during the 1960's three articles devoted to aspects of the Athenian Silver mines in the Laurion district of southern Attica: a visitor's brief observations in C. Macdonald's ‘The Ancient Mine-workings of Laurion’ (vol. 8 (1961), 19–21, pis II–IV) and a scholar's description of the area and the history and organization of the mines in R. J. Hopper's ‘The Mines and Miners of Ancient Attica (ibid., 138–51), and then again an account of the geology of the area and the ancient methods of mining and ore-processing in C. J. K. Cunningham's, ‘The Silver of Laurion’, published six years later, but founded on visits made in 1962 (vol. 14 (1967), 145–56).

The problem which in recent years has generally been regarded as the main problem about Akharnians is: has the play a political purpose? Fifty years ago, I suppose, no one doubted that the play did have two purposes. One was to entertain the audience and make them laugh. The other was a purpose of extreme seriousness, to persuade the audience that the Peloponnesian War, now in its sixth year, was a terrible mistake, and peace ought to be made as soon as possible. This view is associated especially with the name of Gilbert Murray, who in 1897 wrote, simply as a statement of fact, ‘It is political in its main purpose, and is directed against Cleon and Lamachus, as representing the war party’. In his later monograph on Aristophanes, he still holds this view; Akharnians is, he says, ‘a definite plea for peace’. But in 1938 A. W. Gomme published an important article on Aristophanes and politics, in which he maintains that the question ‘What were Aristophanes' political views?’ is not relevant to the interpretation and criticism of his plays, and that we cannot tell from Akharnians whether he was in favour of peace or not. That is a non-committal position, almost a defeatist one. But more recently two scholars have gone much further in opposing the old view that the play is a plea for peace. W. G. Forrest considers that no one could have made a plea for peace in Athens in 425 B.C.; at that date the Athenians, he thinks, were so fully engaged in the war that making peace was completely out of the question.

When Xerxes' fleet encountered a violent storm and was shattered against the seaward flank of Mount Pelion, much of the treasure that had been lost in the wreckage was recovered by Scyllias of Scione, the best diver of his day. He and many of his fellow citizens had been impressed into service as the Persian armada came by the Chalcidic peninsula, but he later escaped to the Greeks waiting at Artemisium. By the time of Herodotus, a half-century or so later, it was being claimed that he had dived into the sea at Aphetae and not come up until he had reached Artemisium eight miles away. ‘Many other tales are told of this man, some lies, some true,’ said Herodotus (viii. 8), ‘but in my opinion, he came by boat.’

The flute players who in 404 B.C. celebrated the demolition of the Athenian walls with a hymn of joy for the liberation of Greece were thought to be hailing the dawn of a new era. It was an era in which Athens herself could participate, for even in defeat she had been spared the worst fate: her citizen population had not been butchered or enslaved; her land was not divided among alien colonists. Nevertheless the future which she faced was expected to be hard, in accordance with her humbled status. Her treasure was spent, her empire at an end; her losses in manpower had been terrible; the farming land which had traditionally been the economic basis of her existence, had been deliberately and extensively damaged. Thucydides in retrospect described the war as the most destructive in history: and Athens had ended as the loser. No wonder that historians have regarded the Peloponnesian War as a turning point of European history; and many have terminated their studies at this point, as if to divert their eyes from the tragic sight of Athens' decline into a new era of poverty and humiliation.

From Cluverius and Holstenius, through Nissen and Hülsen to the distinguished contributors to the Quaderni dell' Istituto di Topografia antica, the study of Italian topography has achieved solid progress, sometimes with important consequences for military and economic history. New concords between battles and battlefields, between nameless sites and siteless names, continue to be proposed and the steady popularity of a subject involving archaeology, epigraphy, literary texts, and country walks is readily understandable: we must all be grateful for the very real improvements which continue to be made to our map of central Italy.

This paper began as a lecture to an extramural weekend course on the Greek Dark Age, organized in Oxford by the Department of External Studies in December 1983. It was intended to suggest that the world of the Homeric poems, insofar as it had any relationship with reality, was more likely to reflect the conditions of the Dark Age than those of Mycenaean Greece, and it was born of increasing frustration at the dominance of what I will call the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation of Homer, particularly at the popular level. The recent BBC series In Search of the Trojan War has done nothing to lessen this dominance – indeed, it barely suggested that such an interpretation had been seriously challenged – and the theme of the lecture has therefore lost none of its relevance. In presenting a considerably revised version here, I have not attempted to offer an exhaustively argued and documented discussion, which would require a book, and must refer the reader to more extensive treatments of the topic for fuller details. Rather, I have decided to leave it as a rather provocative exposition of a case which deserves to be made. I have made some attempt to step outside the framework in which the discussion has often been conducted, which to my mind unduly favours the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation, but readily acknowledge that many of my arguments have been presented in similar form by others, and that some have been admitted to have force by those who in general support the ‘Mycenaean’ interpretation. Given the quantity of writing on the topic, it is only too likely that I have neglected some discussions, and I have given references mainly to Homeric sources and to recent archaeological finds of relevance. Finally, I should make it clear that it is not my primary purpose to discuss the historicity of the Trojan War or of the Greek heroic legends generally, though this has often been made to depend on the supposedly Mycenaean content of the Homeric poems, at least in part.

The supernatural forces at work in Vergil's epic narrative are succinctly presented in the opening lines – ‘Italiam fato profugus Lauiniaque uenit | litora … iactatus et alto | ui superum saeuae memorem Iunonis ob iram’: far more prominently too than in Homer. If the Stoic overtones that fatum carried in Augustan Latin were remote from the notion of a divine autocrat's arbitrary will, the wrath of Juno takes us back uncompromisingly to the Homeric world in which the seafaring Odysseus is perpetually harassed by Poseidon (Od. 1.20 etc.) and Hera is implacably opposed to Trojans (Il. 1.536 etc.), on account of the judgement of Paris and the abduction of Ganymede, which are explicitly mentioned in Aen, 1.26–8.

Thus Khaireas, on being deprived of the girl he loves by a legal obstacle. Menander is renowned as an author, perhaps even the inventor, of romantic comedy; and love triumphing over obstacles is a common feature of his plays. Usually the obstacle is a personal one, such as a father who refuses to permit a marriage (as in Dyskolos), and in Aspis too the difficulties are made by an unpleasant old man, Smikrines. But he has the law on his side, as Khaireas says. This speech, and the play as a whole, presents a sharper conflict between love and the law than we find elsewhere, and I believe that Menander's purpose here is a more serious one than has generally been realized.

When Alexander invaded Asia, he almost certainly had no idea V V how far he would go or what the end would be. For the moment, Antipater was left in complete charge of Macedon and (with ill-defined powers) of the ‘free’ Greek allies and other European dependants; it was only towards the end of his life that the King began to worry about the excessive power that Antipater had fashioned for himself; and by then, as it turned out, it was too late to deal with him and Alexander died without doing so. As far as Asia was concerned, there were no blueprints on how to organize it. This is not mere conjecture, but can be proved. One point of policy was inherited from Philip and inescapable: the ‘Hellenic crusade’, to liberate the Greeks of Asia and to punish the barbarian for the events of 480. It might be thought that on this point Alexander had little freedom of action. Yet it is precisely here that we see him proceeding—within the elastic framework of ‘liberation’—slowly and pragmatically. Bypassing Greek cities that he knew were unfriendly, he did not take one (Zelea) until after the battle of the Granicus: the Zeleans were ‘forgiven’ for having helped the enemy under compulsion, but got no special concessions (A. i. 12. 6; 17. 2). After his stay at Sardis—which will occupy us soon—he entered Ephesus. This city had been occupied by Parmenio in his invasion of Asia before Philip's death. He had established democracy (since the Persians had ruled through a narrow oligarchy), and the grateful citizens had set up Philip's statue in the great temple of Artemis (‘Diana of the Ephesians’). But a counter-revolution had brought the city under Persian control and undone Parmenio's work. Alexander could do no less than restore the democracy that welcomed the son of Philip. As for the tribute paid to Persia (and presumably, for a time, to Philip), he ordered it to be paid henceforth to Artemis (A. i. 17. 9 ff.)—a gesture befitting both his religious feeling and his love of display. He offered to do more: to finish the restoration of the temple (which had been burnt down the night he was born) and dedicate it in his name, and he was prepared to pay for this honour; but the Ephesians politely declined (Strabo xiv. i. 22).

‘The toga was a garment worthy of the masters of the world, flowing, solemn, eloquent but with over-complication in its arrangement and a little too much emphatic affectation in the self-conscious tumult of its folds.’

The Roman Empire received goods from eastern lands through a variety of overland routes crossing the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia, and through seaborne trade via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. In particular, the sea routes that utilized the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean enabled a significant volume of goods to be imported from the East on ships that may often have been of several hundred tons' capacity. The scale of the trade was significant enough for Pliny to claim that 100 million sesterces were being sent annually to India, China, and Arabia. The veracity of these figures has come in for some debate, especially with the publication of a document known as the Muziris Papyrus, which reveals that a shipment of nard, ivory, and textiles received at one of the Egyptian Red Sea ports in the second century ad was valued at the equivalent of roughly 7 million sesterces. It is nevertheless clear, particularly from the archaeological and numismatic evidence, that Roman trade with the East peaked in the first and second centuries ad, followed by subsequent decline and a limited revival in the Late Roman period.

Fausta, or Flavia Maxima Fausta to call her by her full name, was the daughter of one western emperor, Maximianus Herculius (286–305), the sister of another, Maxentius (306–12), and the wife of a third, Constantine I (306–37). She was married to Constantine in 307, and bore him at least five children from 316 onwards, three sons (Constantine, Constantius, and Constans), and two daughters (Constantina and Helena).2 Following his defeat of his rival Licinius at the battle of Chrysopolis in 324, and the unification of the empire under his rule as the sole Augustus once more, Constantine honoured with the title of Augusta both his wife Fausta and his mother Helena, as is revealed by the issue of coins in their names each with this title.3 However, tragedy struck in 326 when Constantine appears to have executed first his eldest son Crispus, then Fausta herself. The reason for these executions, and the extent to which these deaths were related, has attracted a great deal of debate. Yet more remains to be said about the manner in which Fausta died, which may well provide an important clue as to the full circumstances of her death, whether she was executed, died by accident, or committed suicide even. Thus, it is my intention here, firstly, to offer a new explanation for the manner of her death, and secondly, to draw attention to an overlooked allusion to her death in a late Latin source, the Historia Augusta.

This article may be open to the charge of deviating unashamedly from its main subject, but any research into the sources of the fourth Georgic, or into Virgil's practical knowledge of apiculture—and it should be stated at once that there is no sure answer to the inquest— must eventually range over the whole of classical bee-literature. And it was curiosity over the sources of this Georgic which led me some years ago to set out on what proved to be a lengthy and meandering tour— starting with a short and disappointing excursion into Varro, and proceeding thence on a long road with numerous by-lanes until finally the course had been covered from Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Aelian, through Pliny and Columella, to the end of the journey in Palladius and the Geoponica.

Everyone who reads Aeschylus sympathetically does so, I should guess, with at least an implicit understanding of the point I shall be attempting to make in this paper; my reason for elaborating it at such length is that it is barely acknowledged in some of the recent scholarly literature, and the new orthodoxy on characterization is in danger of becoming no more helpful than the old.

Among the general questions that arise in analysing a culture's outlook on its fauna are the following: Where do animals belong in the world-view of that culture, in their cosmogony or historical mythology, and how do these aetiological beliefs reflect upon the economic position of animals? What is the range of emotional attitudes towards man's enigmatic and uncanny half-brothers, especially domesticated species? Are animals used in entertainment? Questions such as these may be further refined by determining which species are domesticated, which hunted; which are eaten by man, which taboo; which animals does man sacrifice or worship? Are animals kept as pets, and if so, what kinds of names does a culture give them–human names or abstract names embodying a spiritual quality or force in nature? To what extent are these non-verbal creatures a substitute for affection or sadistic punishment, or a target for aggressive or hostile feelings? In other words, what qualities does man project onto animals? Or put slightly differently, which powers does he attribute to the animal? Is an animal thought capable of curing illness, for example? And finally, what are some of the recurrent symbols that emerge for a given animal in legend or myth?

This paper attempts to set out what is known about the places in the city of Rome used for detention and execution. It is not based on personal inspection of the sites, but only on the ancient evidence and modern discussion, and simply aims to meet the absence of a full up-to-date account in English of the history, location, character and function of these places, viz. the carcer, lautumiae, Saxum Tarpeium, Scalae Gemoniae, and the elusive robur. It does not deal with the wider question of what crimes merited the death penalty or called for its infliction in this or that manner, nor, apart from a few items, is it carried beyond the Julio-Claudian dynasty.