Provides an overview of current hypotheses about the sources used in the creation of the gospels and the implications source-critical theories have for gospels interpretation. After a discussion of the relation of the Gospel of John to the synoptics, attention is given to relations between the synoptics, and an account is given of the ongoing scholarly debate surrounding the ‘Q hypothesis’ and its rivals.

Republican Rome saw a range of laws designed to moderate the acquisition of wealth, and this chapter focuses on two such measures, the Lex Licinia de modo agrorum (367 BCE) and Tiberius Gracchus’ agrarian law of 133 BCE. In our later sources these two historical moments tend to be conflated, and the chapter begins by confronting the ensuing methodological problems. A critical review of the previous scholarship establishes that whereas the pre-Gracchan limit applied to all landholding not just public land, Gracchus, who was interested in reclaiming public land for distribution rather than putting a limit on elite wealth, revived the earlier limit, but applied it only to public land. These findings serve as basis for a discussion of the law carried by the tribune C. Licinius Stolo in 367 BCE, including the identification of an ‘ethos of frugality’ in mid-republican Rome which was meant to prevent individuals from accumulating excessive material resources. The final part of the chapter traces the history of the tension between the pursuit of personal enrichment and the interest of the wider community to keep such pursuits in check – an endeavour rendered increasingly difficult given Rome’s foreign conquests.

If readers determine the fate of books, we might think the Annals of Quintus Ennius enjoyed but ephemeral success. Its fragments are few, its original audience and intent unclear. In this paper I ask how so vast a monument became such a ruin, and what the evidence of its survival reveals about the process of its destruction. Those who knew the poem best are among that handful of Romans – Cicero and Vergil prominent among them – whom we know best. What did “ordinary” Romans know, pretend to know, or could they be expected to know of it? Close attention to the poem’s reception suggests that it was best known through favored extracts and that the idea of the Annals was more firmly fixed in the Roman literary consciousness than the poem itself.