The greatest works of what we normally call ‘Augustan’ literature were produced by writers who came to maturity in the Triumviral period, and were already established as major authors before January 27 B.C., when ‘Imperator Caesar Divi filius’, whom we like to call ‘Octavianus’, gained the unprecedented cognomen ‘Augustus’. By that moment the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, the Epodes and Satires of Horace, and Book 1 of the Elegies of Propertius were already written. Livy had composed his sombre Praefatio, and probably the whole first pentad, in the later Triumviral period, perhaps around the time of Actium or soon after.

The term ecphrasis in ancient doctrine denoted any poetic or rhetorical description, including descriptions of landscape (topothesia), buildings, battles, and storms. In recent critical idiom it has been narrowed to refer specifically to literary descriptions of visual works of art. This critical focus indicates the interest of the problem of comparing the two media of literature and the visual arts. The great benefit of considering ‘ecphrasis’ in the modern sense is that it forces us to confront both the nature of the visual artistic medium and that of the verbal medium describing it.

This article explores the relationship between historical truth and rhetorical education in the Antiquitates Romanae of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. These two concerns dominate Dionysius' output, and have provided fuel for a long tradition of adverse criticism. Schwartz's RE article set the standard for a series of dismissive accounts; his premise is that by choosing a period of such remote history, Dionysius can fulfil his desire to make history the servant of rhetorical display, adding, with scorn, that Dionysius' love of the Romans disqualifies him from being a real Greek. Palm, still using Schwartz over fifty years later, is so convinced that Dionysius cannot have believed what he was writing that he ascribes the meticulously executed proof that the Romans were Greeks to ‘paradoxe Effekte’, in which anyone writing a rhetorical exercise of this kind would be careful to indulge. Polemic has recently waned, although by far the most common use of Dionysius' history is as a source for antiquarian anecdote or the lost annalistic tradition, often to highlight the originality of Livy. The recently published lectures of Gabba will do much to redress the balance, and are the first concerted attempt at harmonizing the details of Dionysius' rhetorical theory with his history.

Dio devotes almost an entire chapter to the aquatic displays forming part of Titus' one hundred days of spectacles to celebrate the inauguration in A.D. 80 of the Flavian Amphitheatre (which he calls θέατϱον [ϰυνηγετιϰόν]). He is not without limitations as an historian; but when his testimony contains details which are difficult to explain, it is not to be dismissed out of hand.

The cities of the Roman Empire were, on the whole, plural societies, which had in them significant sub-groups, ethnic, religious, or, indeed, both together — for the two categories were still only sometimes distinguishable. Such an environment carries many resonances for us and it is surprising to realize its neglect as a subject for study. The classical Greek polis had been a theoretically homogeneous institution of look-alike citizens, with outsiders excluded or enslaved. The notional Roman approach was, in the early days, to deal with outsiders by assimilating them. When we look at the cities of the Hellenistic kingdoms, we observe that they often did consist of several racial elements, though how these were accommodated has been for some time an issue for debate, and this remains an open question. But beyond that, our concern seems to stop.

The Babatha archive contains documents of a Jewish woman who lived in the village of Maoza situated on the southern shore of the Dead Sea, in what had been the kingdom of Nabataea and became in 106 C.E. the Roman province of Arabia. The first dated document in the archive dates to 22 Elul (August/September) 94 and the last to 19 August 132; some of the documents therefore precede the annexation of Arabia, but the majority follow it. This offers a rare opportunity to examine the consequences of Roman annexation: by examining in detail the changes effected by the Roman presence in the newly acquired province of Arabia, we may improve our picture of Roman provincial government and the relationship between Roman law and native local law, as well as our understanding of the reaction of the provincial population to Roman rule.

In A.D. 192, the last year of his reign, Commodus threw restraint to the winds and had the senate declare him a god. He assumed such titles as Conqueror of the World, Roman Hercules, and All-Surpasser and named the twelve months of the year after himself. Founding Rome anew, he gave it the name Colonia Commodiana and ordered the legions likewise to be called Commodianae. Before the year was out, on 31 December, he was murdered, his memory cursed.

The men of the Antonine era shared with us a keen interest in divination, which they expressed in a variety of complementary or apparently contradictory ways: in polemic and dispassionate research, but more obviously in the act of reviving their ancient prophetic shrines and of establishing new oracles. If the rage that the vaticinating demons inspired in Oenomaus of Gadara and in Lucian is sufficient evidence of the rationalist's reaction to a mounting social and intellectual trend, the scholarly achievement of Artemidorus of Daldis at the instigation of Apollo himself exemplifies in more positive fashion the involvement of the age with prophetic lore. So does the incredible success of the Pythagorean Alexander's oracular establishment on the inhospitable shores of the Black Sea, and the personality of Aelius Aristides, that professional valetudinarian whose night-diaries dictated by Asclepius covered more than three hundred thousand lines. It was in precisely this world that the Delphic oracle underwent a remarkable renaissance under the auspices of a Platonist philosopher, and that an emperor commended the publication by a senator of a work about the dreams which foretold his ascent to the throne.

This survey does not aim at completeness. It is a personal selection, on the one hand, of recent epigraphic work which is of significance and interest to an ancient historian, and, on the other hand, of those epigraphic ‘tools of the trade’ which are important for anyone trying to interpret an inscription. But we start with some more narrowly epigraphic topics.

If the death of Louis Robert and concern for the future of the Bulletin épigraphique overshadowed the last review, it is fitting that this should begin with the good news of the rebirth of the Bulletin, produced since 1987 by an international, although largely French, team of specialists and edited by Ph. Gauthier. The archicubal verve may be missing, but the coverage of the new version is good and adds usefully to that of the old.

Students of the ancient world are falling for the ancient Greek and Latin novels in increasing numbers, a state of affairs of which there were few intimations a generation ago. To be sure, the Satyrica of Petronius and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius were given standing-room on the edge of the classical canon, though few scholars and fewer students made the acquaintance of the complete texts. Encounters were usually restricted to the Cena Trimalchionis and Cupid and Psyche, and linguistic oddities were the chief topics of polite conversation (nothing evil in this, so long as other topics are not barred). There were of course exceptions, like Eduard Fraenkel's Oxford seminar on Petronius in 1958/9, where study of language was but one of many techniques harnessed to the establishment and interpretation of the whole text. The Greek novels were still wallflowers: partly, no doubt, because they constituted only a small portion of a vast Greek prose literature written in a period generally judged decadent, whereas the Latin novels were welcome and substantial contributors to the comparatively exiguous remains of Latin prose written by Romans at their imperial acme. No explosion of interest had followed Rohde's Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer of 1876, and although some important work was done on establishment and interpretation of texts and on the development of the genre, scholars active in this field were isolated from each other and their results made little impact on their colleagues. Furthermore much of that work was focused, like Rohde's, on trying to elucidate the genre's origins.