The concept of intermediality arose in the theoretical discourse about the relations between different systems or products of meaning, such as the relations between music and art, or image and text. The word gained currency in the 1980s in German- and French-language studies of theatre performance, and in scholarship on opera, film, and music, in order to capture the notion of the interconnections between different art forms. For reasons of utility, the concept has been divided into three kinds: intermediality may refer to the combination of media (as in opera, in which music, dance, and song are conjoined into one aesthetic experience); the transformation or transposition of media (as in a film version of a book); and intermedial references or connections, whereby attention is drawn to another system of meaning, as in the references in literature to a work of art. The term has entered the field of classics especially via the study of the relations between the narrative and inscriptional modes in literary epigram.

The identification of the quarrel between Cupid and Apollo at Met. 1. 452–73 as a Callimachean recusatio has become a noted feature of scholarly discussion on this passage. Cupid and Apollo's encounter stands as a favoured starting point for the ongoing analysis of generic interplay within Ovid's sprawling work; this is hardly surprising, given its consideration as a programmatic, exemplary triumph of elegy over epic. Although genre studies on the Metamorphoses have represented an enduring presence in Ovidian discourse since Heinze's pioneering work, genre's evolution into what some deem a pet scholarly obsession within studies of the poet has garnered both admiration and revilement. Given the multiplicity of discussions prominently featuring this very episode, it would not seem unfair to deem any addition superfluous. However, adding to the surfeit of analyses is exactly my intention here, with the view that there are yet a few elements that have gone unremarked or underexplored, and that such elements can illuminate further the complex interplay between epic and elegy here on display. Namely, I will suggest that the dynamic created by the difference in accounts of the Python's slaying (Ov. Met. 1.441–4 versus 1.456–60) has not been appreciated fully for its role in the debasement of epic poetry that leads into and consequently informs the programmatic myth sequence of Apollo and Daphne, and that this dynamic finds an overarching explanation by supplying reference to a passage from Nicander's Theriaca. Using Nicander as a literary source, coupled with recognition of both the fictive touches and the weighted literary critical language that Apollo retrospectively applies to his deed, allows us to reinterpret this passage and provides a further example of Ovid's careful strategies of narrative and tone.

Although recent and ongoing excavations of the sanctuary of Apollo Delphinios in Miletus have prompted archaeologists to discuss anew the aetiological references to the same god and his altar at the end of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, these discussions have yet to make any impact on literary scholars working on the poem itself. Indeed, we now know that in archaic Miletus an altar of Apollo Delphinios was erected, as in the hymn, directly upon a sandy beach beside a harbour and was probably the focus, as in the hymn, of some kind of sacrificial ritual, before the annual procession to another famous Panhellenic oracle of Apollo at Didyma. These new revelations provide an incentive for returning to the somewhat puzzling details in the scene on the beach at Crisa in the Homeric Hymn, with its agrarian offering and meal (both of roasted barley) followed by a paeanic procession of musician and singers. I will argue that the Milesian parallels allow us to see more clearly that, like the Delian episode at the start of the Homeric Hymn, the events at Crisa seem to reflect a shorter hexametrical hymn originally composed for a seaside sanctuary at Crisa and then later adapted, again like the Delian section, by a poet intent on praising Apollo as a Panhellenic deity, whose most important place of worship was Delphi. Such an argument leads, finally, to a positive assessment of the recent suggestion that the Homeric Hymn to Apollo does not have a bipartite structure (Delian–Delphic), as is usually assumed or argued, but rather a tripartite one (Delian–Delphic–Crisaean) that organizes the poem into three hymnic movements: birth, oracle, priesthood.

In 59 bc, in the second half of Caesar's tumultuous year as consul, a certain Decimus Laelius brought a charge of extortion against the former praetor and ally of Cicero – L. Valerius Flaccus. Flaccus had proven instrumental in the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy four years earlier. From the beginning of his speech pro Flacco, the orator frames the case in terms of contemporary politics. Though ostensibly about the defendant's alleged misconduct as Governor of Asia, Cicero makes the contest a ‘trial of character’ and argues that the impetus for the prosecution was actually Flaccus’ role in foiling the Catilinarian plot. In contrast with his own heroism as consul and that of his client in preserving the Republic, Cicero portrays the prosecution and its backers as in league with the remnants of Catiline's ill-fated putsch.

The question of the exact nature of the Pythia's expertise has been the subject of academic debate for a very long time. It would indeed not be an exaggeration to say that this has been, and continues to be, one of the most controversial questions in the study of ancient Greek religion. Modern scholars are sharply divided over whether any inspired female oracles, and especially the Pythia at Delphi, had the ability to prophesy in hexameter verse without male assistance. During the classical period the two most famous oracles were those of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus in north-western Greece and of Apollo at Delphi, which was located on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus. According to Plato (Phaedrus 244), the Delphic priestess, as well as the priestesses at Dodona, prophesied in a state of altered consciousness (which he calls mania), and were practitioners of ‘inspired prophecy’ (mantikē entheos).

The fourth Eclogue presents itself explicitly as a political poem, a loftier intervention in the humble world of pastoral poetry (4.1–3). This grander type of pastoral, moreover, is singled out as possessing a specifically Roman political significance: these ‘woods’ are to be ‘worthy of a consul’ (silvae sint consule dignae, 3), and the coming Golden Age is set within a precisely identifiable political context, the consulship of C. Asinius Pollio in 40 bc (te consule, 4.11). Beyond that, however, the details of the relationship between the miraculous child, whose growth to maturity will be accompanied by the fabulous portents of the new era, and the contemporary political setting at Rome are left tantalizingly, perhaps prudently, vague. It was no doubt with a view to promoting his own political interests that Pollio's son, ‘the rash and ambitious Asinius Gallus’, claimed to have been the original puer of Virgil's poem. If so, he was very far from being the last public figure to appropriate the resounding cadences of the fourth Eclogue to endorse his own position: it was not long before (in Harry Levin's words) ‘The Pollio eclogue had virtually created a minor genre, a means for the court poet to flatter his sovereign, as well as a device for balancing the moderns against the ancients.’ But even before the opportunistic assertions of Pollio's son, the poem's prophecies of a new age had already been re-appropriated to tie down the oracular generalities of the eclogue to a particular individual and a definite set of political circumstances, in a move that was to have significant repercussions for the later fortunes of Virgil's essay in pastoral panegyric.

You are about to be amazed by a collection of tales on ‘the transformation of people's fortunes and figurae into different shapes, and their restoration again into themselves in a mutual nexus (mutuo nexu)’ (Met. 1.1) – this is Apuleius’ opening statement and promise to his listeners in the very first lines of the Metamorphoses. In this article I read the first inserted tale (Met. 1.5–19) from a corporeal point of view. Modern researchers consider this tale programmatic for the whole novel, which in itself has a strong corporeal orientation as it tells the story of a human figura that becomes bestial; of changing bodies, tortured limbs, and beaten organs; and of lascivious and uncontrollable desires. My focus is particularly on the nocturnal scene at the inn (Met. 1.11–17), where I analyse the nature of the body and its representations’ literary and philosophical implications. I investigate the tension between rationality and sensuality; explore spatial and temporal dimensions; and discuss sexuality and birth. My main argument is that in the first tale the body has a crucial function in the perception of the characters’ world and self alike. Furtheremore, I suggest that the body and the ‘corporeal subjects’ (a term explored later in the article) are this tale's protagonists: the body produces its own narrative, whose plot advances in a chaotic and perplexed way through intensities, uncontrollable lust, flowing secretions, and sensual experience. I shall therefore suggest reading the scene through the body, and by asking what the the body does rather than merely what it means. I thus propose reading the mututo nexu which appears in the prologue in the context of the nexus of body and mind, of physical shapes and mental consciousness.

Elite, Athenian, male – all three adjectives usually apply to our sources on the ancient world, and the study of ancient ethics (including even so-called ‘popular morality’) is no different in this respect. There are, however, a few exceptional sources that provide a window into a more diverse population and their hopes, desires, values, and insecurities. In the following, I wish to highlight one of these – the corpus of oracular lamellae from Dodona – and demonstrate how this body of evidence can shed new light on an old question. Specifically, I will consider what we can learn about techne (art, craft, profession) from these tablets; but in addition I hope readers with an interest in ancient ethics will see how promising this source is for further study on other topics. As I will show, alongside the better known peri technes literature – a group of texts from the fifth and fourth centuries bce that discuss medicine and other crafts from a theoretical standpoint – there is a small corpus of texts from Dodona that uses this same phrase and discusses the crafts from a far more practical perspective. The object of this article will be to show how these two corpora are mutually enlightening.

A commonly attested episode in ancient art and literature is the brutal death of Troilus at the hands of Achilles. Priam's son is mostly depicted as a defenceless pais (‘young man’ or ‘boy’), slain in a cruel ambush outside Troy while on horseback on some non-military business. The Iliad makes no reference to the slaying of Troilus. The only mention of him is in Book 24, where Priam, after a visit from Iris, the divine messenger, becomes determined to go and visit Achilles in order to ransom the body of Hector. It is at this moment that in an emotional outburst the Trojan king berates his surviving sons for the mere fact that they still live, while Mestor, Troilus, and Hector, his three ‘most excellent sons’, have lost their lives as a result of the war (Il. 24.255–60):

In the second poem of Propertius’ fourth book, the form-shifting deity Vertumnus claims that he is suited to any role that he is associated with because he can appear convincingly as a girl or a man: indue me Cois: fiam non dura puella; / meque uirum sumpta quis neget esse toga? (‘dress me in Coan silk, I shall be a gentle maiden: and who would say that I am not a man when I don the toga?’, 4.2.23–4). Later in Propertius 4.9, another gender ambiguous character, Hercules, while trying to gain entry into the shrine of the Bona Dea, boasts that he had woven and performed a handmaiden's service (4.9.47–50):

idem ego Sidonia feci seruilia palla
officia et Lydo pensa diurna colo;
mollis et hirsutum cinxit mihi fascia pectus,
et manibus duris apta puella fui.

I have also done the tasks of a slave-girl in a Sidonian gown
and worked at the daily burden of the Lydian distaff.
A soft breastband has surrounded my shaggy chest,
and with my hard hands I was a fitting girl.

The armed forces that Athens took into the Peloponnesian War had four distinct corps. The two that have been studied the most are the cavalry corps and the navy. The same level of focus is now paid to the hoplite corps. In contrast to these three branches, the archers continue to be largely unstudied. Indeed, the last dedicated study of this corps was published in 1913. This neglect of the archers by military historians is unjustified. The creation of the archer corps in the late 480s bc was a significant military innovation. For the rest of the fifth century, Athens constantly deployed archers in a wide range of important combat roles. In the late 430s the state spent as much on them as it did on the cavalry.

ἄνδρά μοι ἔννεπε…: Are you shocked to find a misprint at the very beginning of Martin West's Teubner Odyssey? Then you've not been reading the poem in the editions of La Roche (1867–8) or Ludwich (1889–91), and you have not been reading the Iliad in West's edition (1998). You will need to consult the latter if you want to gain enlightenment on this and other orthographic niceties: the introduction to West's Odyssey is, inconveniently, not a stand-alone resource. Sampling his text alongside Allen's routinely derided OCT rarely revealed differences more substantive than, for example, ἐνὶ vs ἐπὶ in 1.211. But confidence in my collation may be undermined when I confess that I almost missed μηδὲ vs μέγα δέ in 13.158: West's decision to set aside the entire ancient textual tradition in favour of Aristophanes of Byzantium's conjecture strikes me as reckless. Strongly attested lines have no immunity to West's suspicions (e.g. 1.171–3). Suspect lines are variously queried in the apparatus, or bracketed in the text, or moved from text to apparatus. The last of these options is disruptive to the reading experience, and such a sharply polarized layout can hardly avoid being arbitrary: doubtfulness is a continuum. I, at any rate, was unable to extract a consistent set of criteria underlying West's choices among the three options. But his handling of these difficult decisions is more restrained than I had expected. The apparatus, once its conventions have become familiar, is clear and informative; an unprecedented range of papyri is cited; the testimonia, too, are given in unprecedented abundance. Allen, of course, but also von der Mühll (1946) and Thiel (1991) are put in the shade by West's final scholarly tour de force.

‘Statius’ Thebaid’, someone donnishly quipped, ‘has no sufficient reason to exist.’ Kyle Gervais might beg to differ. Like the Thebaid itself, his commentary on Book 2 has grown over many years, and deserves to be taken very seriously. The crisp introduction sets the tone and clearly signals priorities in its four sections, a rising tetracolon for author, problems of editing, intratexts, and intertexts; not a word on style and prosody, and reception is excluded on the ground that Statius’ own imitatio is quite enough to be getting on with. The text is newly constituted, with ample apparatus and text-critical discussion: Gervais joins Barrie Hall's rebellion against the bifid stemma, but fairly questions his view that the Thebaid should be easy reading; he accordingly diverges from his edition nearly a hundred times, and offers a translation which, if less old-falutin’ than Shack's Loeb, does an equally good job of disabusing anyone who thought it would be quicker to read Statius in English. The notes are full and rich: words aren't wasted, but both philological graft and literary interpretation amply attest to fine scholarship, good sense, and long thought.

Asya Sigelman can write spectacularly well. Recently I've been spending a lot of time with Longinus (a.k.a. almost anyone but Longinus), and there were points in Pindar's Poetics of Immortality which made me think: Longinus would have appreciated that! It helped that Sigelman's theme is immortality – which she rightly insists does not, for Pindar, mean indefinite temporal extension: it is realized in a perhaps momentary achievement of godlike excellence (2–3). And prophecy is ‘not simply accurate prediction’ but the ‘god-like vision’ with which poets, as well as prophets, are endowed (5), along with the ability to share that vision: ‘it is just such sharing that we encounter in Pindar's epinicians’ (6). Longinus, too, speaks of the vision of godlike authors (35.2). But the line of argument which reading Longinus had primed me to expect is not the one the one that Sigelman actually takes. She sets her face firmly against ‘extrapoetic’ circumstances and objectives (9), and insists on reading ‘intrapoetically’ (11). She is concerned with how all that is extrapoetic ‘becomes the stuff and substance of immortality within and by means of the ode, right before the eyes of the song's audience, regardless of which epoch this audience belongs to’ (10). (Note, in parenthesis, ‘eyes’: Sigelman only once remembers that audiences have ears [136]: a very un-Longinian oversight.) One might ask: can the conditions of reception really be disregarded? The question turns out to be otiose (or, rather, the prompt to the question turns out to be misleading), since Sigelman's poet, victor and audience are ‘exclusively…intrapoetic characters’ (11). From this we can infer that when she says that ‘Pindar structures his adjectives and myths in such a way as to keep constant focus on the song's ongoing work of crafting itself from within’ (14), she is not referring to Pindar, but to an intrapoetic homonym. Yet if the song is crafting itself from within, what structuring is left for the intrapoetic poet (a product, presumably, of the song's self-crafting) to do? ‘The epinician is always…structured as an address of the intrapoetic “I” of the poet to the intrapoetic “you” of the concentric, progressively widening circles of victor, family, clan, polis, and Hellas’ (56). The intrapoetic poet has a structuring function only as one of the structuring devices that the poem uses to compose itself. And the poem is strikingly self-obsessed: ‘the core underlying structure of Pindar's song is preoccupied with revealing and displaying the creative poetic effort whereby the song comes to be’ (83): that is (since this Pindar is ex hypothesi intrapoetic), whereby the song brings itself into being by means of its own ‘perpetual self-construction’ (84). When ‘Pindar lays bare and demands appreciation of his arduous poetic labor’ (85), it is not easy to believe that Sigelman is keeping her exclusively intrapoetic promise. But acquitting her of inconsistency entails convicting her of the ontological extravagance of a poem that is ‘a living creature engrossed in the ongoing process of creating itself’ (120), which, as Aristotle impishly said of Plato's Forms, is ‘empty verbiage and poetic metaphors’ (Met. 1.9, 991a20–2) or meaningless ‘tum-ti-tums’ (An. post. 1.22, 83a32–4). Nor, I confess, could I make much sense of her account of the semantics of attributive and predicative adjectives (22–3), which leads to the claim that

This is a particularly rich crop of books on Greek history. I commence with two important volumes on citizenship in archaic and classical Greece. Traditional narratives of Greek citizenship are based on three assumptions: that citizenship is a legal status primarily linked to political rights; that there was a trajectory from the primitive forms of archaic citizenship to the developed and institutionalized classical citizenship; and that the history of citizenship is closely linked to a wider Whig narrative of movement from the aristocratic politics of archaic Greece to classical Athenian democracy.

The dullest book of the Aeneid? Certainly not, insist Stephen Heyworth and James Morwood in their commentary on Aeneid 3. There can't be many students at school or university level who cut their teeth on epic Virgil with his third book, but Wadham College, Oxford, where H&M were colleagues, has been the glorious exception for a quarter of a century, and the rest of us now have good reason to follow suit. I don't just mean the ‘thrilling traveller's tale’ (so the dust-jacket) that carries us from Polydorus to Polyphemus by way of such episodes as the Cretan plague, the Harpy attack, and a pointed stop-off at Actium, nor the ktistic and prophetic themes that give this book such weight in Virgil's grand narrative. There's also the simple matter of accessibility. Doctissimi lectores of Aeneid 3 can consult Nicholas Horsfall's densely erudite and wickedly overpriced Brill commentary, but others have had to make do with one of R. D. Williams’ more apologetic efforts. (True, there is an efficient student edition by C. Perkell, but that seems to have made little headway in the UK, at least.) Now Aeneas’ odyssey takes a place among the few books of the Aeneid for which undergraduates and others can draw on commentaries which are at once accessible, sophisticated, and affordable.

Political and military history used to be the main staple of ancient Greek history. This review includes a number of volumes devoted to the subject. Matteo Zaccarini's book focuses on Cimon and the period between 478 and 450 bce. Sandwiched between Herodotus’ Persian Wars and Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, the Pentekontaetia (478–431) is the most problematic period of classical Greek history, primarily because of the lack of a continuous narrative and our reliance on much later and fragmentary sources. Zaccarini has divided his work into two sections: the first studies the development of narrative traditions concerning Cimon and his age, from the fifth century to the Second Sophistic, and presents a context for interpreting the shaping of the information provided in these traditions. This is undoubtedly the most profitable part of the work, and a good model that others could imitate. The second part attempts to present a historical reconstruction of the period 478–450 on the basis of the conclusions of the first part. Many of Zaccarini's arguments are, in my view, correct: he shows the need to emancipate our narratives from models based on competition between aristocratic/popular or pro- and anti-Spartan leaders and programmes; he argues that the late 460s–450s is the crucial period of change in the balance of internal and external forces; and he minimizes the actual significance of Cimon's role. These sensible conclusions could have been strengthened by engaging with the rethinking of the nature of early Athenian imperialism by scholars such as Lisa Kallet and John Davies. But the volume is still a worthy contribution towards reassessing this crucial period.

Identity studies live. This latest batch of publications explores what made not just the Romans but the Italians, Christians, and Etruscans who they were. We begin with both age and beauty, the fruits of a special exhibition at the Badischen Landesmuseum Karlsruhe in the first half of 2018 into the most famous of Roman predecessors, the Etruscans. Most of the exhibits on display come from Italian museums, but the interpretative essays that break up the catalogue – which are also richly illustrated – are by both Italian and German scholars. These are split between five overarching sections covering introductory affairs, the ages of the princes and of the city-states, the Etruscans’ relationship with Rome, and modern reception. The first contains essays treating Etruscan origins, history, identity, and settlement area. The second begins with the early Iron Age Villanova site, before turning to early Etruscan aristocratic culture, including banqueting, burials, language, writing, and seafaring. The third and longest section considers the heyday of Etruscan civilization and covers engineering and infrastructure, crafts and production, munitions, women's roles, daily life, dance, sport, funerary culture, wall painting, religious culture, and art. The fourth section treats both the confrontation between Etruscan and Roman culture and the persistence of the former after ‘conquest’ by the latter. The fifth section contains one essay on the modern inheritance of the Etruscan ‘myth’ and one on the history of scholarship on the Etruscans. Three aspects to this volume deserve particular praise. First, it includes not only a huge range of material artefacts but also individual essays on Etruscan production in gold, ceramic, ivory, terracotta, and bronze. Second, there is a recurring interest in the interconnections between the Etruscans and other cultures, not just Romans but Greeks, Iberians, Celts, Carthaginians, and other Italian peoples. Third, it includes the history of the reception of Etruscan culture. Amid the just-shy-of-200 objects included (almost every one with description and high-quality colour image), the reader can find everything from a mid-seventh-century pitcher made from an Egyptian ostrich egg painted with birds, flowers, and dancers (147), through the well-known third- or second-century bcTabula Cortonensis – a lengthy and only partially deciphered Etruscan inscription that documents either a legal transaction or a funerary ceremony (311) – to the 2017 kit of the Etruschi Livorno American Football team (364). Since we have no extant Etruscan literature, a volume such as this is all the more valuable in trying to get a sense of these people and their culture, and the exceptionally high production value provides quality exposure to material otherwise scattered throughout Italy.

Passion. Nowadays everything must be done with passion. No ‘personal statement’ for university admission is complete without some sentiment of passionate motivation; you purchase a sandwich and learn that it has been ‘made lovingly’. So is there anything wrong with studying classical archaeology passionately – with the engagement of emotions, or ‘intensity of feeling’ (OED)? The question arises from the very title of a festal volume devoted to a (some would say, the) historical pioneer of the discipline, J. J. Winckelmann: Die Kunst der Griechen mit der Seele suchend. Since it is conventional to translate die Seele as ‘the soul’, immediately we encounter the problem of mind–body dualism, and the question of where passions are to be located in human biology. But let us accept the sense of the phrase as it is being used here. It is, as Goethe recognized in Winckelmann's work, and celebrated accordingly, an ‘awareness’ (Gewahrwerden) of Greek art that was at once intuitive and reasoned; spontaneous, yet developed by patient study (conducted with ‘true German seriousness’ – so deutsch Ernst). Pious remembrance of Winckelmann has been maintained in his homeland virtually ever since his premature death (a ‘thunderbolt’ of awful news, as Goethe described it) in 1768. This year is the 250th since that loss, and will be widely marked. Meanwhile the recent anniversary of Winckelmann's birth – 1717, as a cobbler's son, in Brandenburg – occasions fresh hagiography, and attendant exhibitions, perhaps most notably a show at the Capitoline Museums, documenting an important part of Winckelmann's intense and eventually glorious activity in Rome.

This crop of books is Republic-heavy, with a strong showing for political history. No fewer than three demonstrate a notable trend in current Roman history writing: the focus on a particular term as a means to examine a key ideological concept. John Richardson's 2009 study of the words imperium and provincia was clearly a landmark (and is explicitly cited as a model by one of this year's crop). In 2013 Myles Lavan examined Roman conceptions of imperialism through looking at a slightly broader range of terms, focusing on the formation of different paradigms of power. Two years later Clifford Ando explored the same subject with a more distinctively cognitive and linguistic approach. In the crop of books for review here, we have one focusing on the word foedus (most broadly: ‘alliance’), one on pax (‘peace’), and one on the term res publica. Roman history, it seems, is finally fully and perhaps belatedly embracing the ‘linguistic turn’.