When Andromache emerges from the inner chamber in Book 22, ascends the walls of Troy and looks out over the plain, she beholds a spectacle of ruthless brutality. She who has not been aware of the final combat, nor of the slaying of her husband, is suddenly confronted by the receding trail of utter defeat. Swift horses drag her husband's corpse into the distance, the cherished head disfigured as it is dragged, raking the dust of what was once their homeland. The violence of the scene is forcefully conveyed by one word in particular. The swift horses drag Hektor ⋯κηδ⋯στως (22.465)—without κ⋯δος without care, ‘sans soucier de, brutalement’. In itself the word ⋯κηδ⋯στως provides a definition of violence, one captured in Shakespeare's phrase ‘careless force’. Violence is, in its harsh brutality, specifically heedlessness, an absence of any form of care. When Achilles hurls the slain suppliant Lykaon into the river he utters the taunt, ‘the fish, ⋯κηδ⋯ες, will lick clean your wound's blood’ (21.122–3). The discarded corpse is denied funeral rites: in place of the care that the relations of the dead traditionally bestow in tending, washing, enshrouding, lamenting, and burying the dead, here the heedless creatures of nature, fleeting visitors, will attend to the corpse, ‘clean’ it, but utterly without care, completely oblivious to the oblivion they create by destroying. In Book 24 Achilles will describe the gods themselves as ⋯κηδ⋯ες (526).

‘Hoplites are troops who take their name from their shields’. ‘The individual infantryman took his name, hoplites, from the hoplon or shield’. Such is the orthodox view. This paper will endeavour to show that its basis is inadequate. Rather, we shall argue, hoplites took their name from their arms and armour as a whole, their hopla in that all-encompassing sense; so that the original and essential meaning of the word hoplite was nothing more than ‘(heavily-)armed (infantry-)man’.

This article has been prompted by two recent interesting papers on the reading off Heraclitus' fragment B 125 as quoted by Theophrastus, De uertig. 9. Here are, with; full apparatus (such as they will appear in the Theophrastean chapter of my Traditio Heraclitea) the three main texts I shall be dealing with.

‘The issues surrounding Orestes’ purification are some of the most difficult in all of Aeschylus’ wrote A. L. Brown in 1982. Despite the appearance since then of an overall treatment of pollution and three editions of the play, there continue to be disagreements about the matter. In this paper I suggest that we may be better able to understand the treatment of purification if we focus on the importance of Orestes’ pollution to the particular version of the story constructed in Eumenides.

Aeschylus' imagery has for some time now been discussed as a feature of his dramatic technique which does more than merely adorn his work. Lebeck, for example, has described how images articulate the Oresteia:

The images of the Oresteia are not isolated units which can be examined separately. Each one is part of a larger whole: a system of kindred imagery. They are connected to one another by verbal similarity rather than verbal duplication. Formulaic (verbatim) repetition is rare, except in the cases of single ‘key’ words; it is replaced by associative or reminiscent repetition. Such repetition may evoke several different passages, yet correspond exactly to none. Each occurrence adds a new element to those with which it is associated. Often this expansion will be a blend of two images previously separate, preserving features reminiscent of both. In this way the different systems of imagery are intricately interwoven. The significance of a recurrent image unfolds in successive stages, keeping time with the action of the drama.

Astyages, son of Cyaxares, now inherited the throne. A daughter was born to him, whom he called Mandane; and Astyages dreamed that she urinated so much that the urine filled his city, then went on to flood all of Asia. He consulted the dream-experts among the magi, and was alarmed by the details which he heard from them. Later, when this Mandane was already old enough for marriage, he did not give her as wife to any of the Medes who were worthy of him, because he was fearful of the dream; instead he gave her to a Persian named Cambyses, who, he discovered, belonged to a good house and was mild in nature, but was still—he thought—far inferior to a Mede of even middling status.

Confronted with the suggestion that he contrived to see Candaules’ wife naked, Gyges immediately expresses his horror (Herodotus 1.8.3–4):

Rather than apologize for taking up this battered subject once again, let me compare scholarly treatment of the passage to such ancient rites as singing the skolion, where every member of the symposium was supposed to give his variant of a given theme. First we must have the passage before us. Phaidra, after first appearing on stage in a delirium where her speech is by no means coherent, addresses the chorus of women of Troizen from line 373 on in rational terms, explaining her predicament and behaviour. Peoples' lives, she says, are not ruined by lack of intelligence, but by failure to live up to their recognition of right and wrong. Some fail to realize (381 ⋯κπονεῖν) their high ideals through laziness or inertia (381 ⋯ργ⋯ας ὓπο), others by putting some dubious pleasure before the good (382–3 οἱ δ' ⋯δον⋯ν προθέντες ⋯ντ⋯ το⋯ καλο⋯ / ἂλλην τιν').

Athenian officials in the fifth century maintained careful records of treasure owned by their gods, and of the expenditures and receipts of sacred moneys and dedications. These records are conventionally divided into two main types: (i) ‘inventories’ or annual lists of the treasure located in a particular repository, and (ii) ‘accounts’ or documents recording the receipts and expenditures (or loans) of sacred treasuries over a given period. A few documents seem to combine both these elements, and have been called ‘accounts-inventories’ In a well-known example, Athena's treasurers maintained records of valuable items located in three cellae of the building moderns call the Parthenon. Moreover, they published their records of these items in three separate series of inscriptions, one each dedicated to the pronaos, the hekatompedos and the parthenon; these records are conventionally referred to as the ‘inventories’ of Athena's treasure and are extant from 434/3.

This article is concerned with reminiscences of Homer in Thucydides' History. The principal aim is to raise questions as to what extent Thucydides' account of the Sicilian venture is a conscious response to some Homeric journey narratives. Such questions are worth asking because Thucydides refers to the (mythical/Odyssean) Cyclopes and Laestrygonians at the beginning of his story (6.2). It will be argued that this reference is intended not solely for the sake of mythical history, but to broaden the context in which Athenian actions can be seen. As well as this direct mythical allusion there are other Homeric reminiscences, including topographical features, that help to convey the notion that the expedition to Sicily is a kind of heroic quest into the unknown that goes disastrously wrong. It is a venture of epic proportions with heroic aspirations, but one whose consequences have a grim and immediate reality. In the light of these Homeric associations, it is argued that the expedition to Sicily is to be seen both in its recent historical context (the Persians) and in its mythological (Homeric) context. The Athenians not only fail to learn the lessons of their most glorious military moments, but they also make the mistake of treading on the same disastrous path as Homer's Odysseus.

Presocratic philosophy, for all its diverse features, is united by the quest to understand the origin and nature of the world. The approach of the Pythagoreans to this quest is governed by their belief, probably based on studies of the numerical relations in musical harmony, that number or numerical structure plays a key role for explaining the world-order, the cosmos. It remains questionable to what extent the Pythagoreans, by positing number as an all-powerful explanatory concept, broke free from Presocratic ideas that certain stuffs or material elements sufficed to account for the source (⋯ρχ⋯) and constitution of the world, but apparently number found such a universal application with them that Aristotle could summarize the Pythagorean position as ‘numbers…are the whole universe’ (Met. 986a21). Historians of Greek philosophy have generally accepted Aristotle's assessment. Of late, however, certain scholars have argued that the Pythagorean number doctrine is Aristotelian (mis-) interpretation, unjustly foisted upon the Pythagoreans. Enlisted in support of their arguments are the fragments of Philolaus of Croton. Here we have the foremost representative of fifth-century Pythagoreanism, who states as his basic principles, not numbers exactly, but ‘limiters’ and ‘unlimiteds’, and who, it is argued, regards number solely as an epistemological aid for understanding the structure of reality. So Philolaus is called upon as a witness against Aristotle. The rationale goes something like this: Aristotle most likely had written sources for his knowledge of Pythagorean teachings; the only texts we know of with any certainty are Philolaus' book and the writings of Archytas; since Aristotle treats Archytas separately, he is mainly relying on Philolaus; because Philolaus does not expressly state that things are numbers, Aristotle's interpretation is wrong.

At a point not long after Anytus has been introduced in Plato's dialogue, Meno, we learn two things in particular: (i) that good and virtuous men often have despicable sons, despite their efforts to give them the finest educations (91a–95a), and (ii) that public affairs are not governed by knowledge; Athenian statesmen and those who elect them are ignorant even though they sometimes might get lucky and rule by true opinion (96d–99d).

Aristotle's treatment of trade in the Politics book one is usually regarded as especially hostile, and this is put down to snobbery and political prejudice on his part. The Greeks often regarded trade as a degrading thing for a free man to engage in, and it would be surprising if Aristotle's view of trade were entirely unconnected with this Greek sensibility. But there should be something more definite than a loose general affinity if a charge of prejudice is to be taken seriously. A balance of hostile judgements over argued cases to back them up would be some sort of evidence for prejudice, and prima facie evidence against would be anything like a theory from which the hostile judgements followed as conclusions. Theories can be concocted to give the required conclusions, of course, and then we must try to decide how serious the theory is. It comes to this: is there so little in the reasons Aristotle gives for his condemnation of trade that they may be convincingly explained away and belittled as no more than expressions of attitudes?

Reading is delusion. In order to read, we have to suspend certain standards of reality and accept others; we have to offer ourselves to deceit, even if it is an act of deception of which we are acutely aware. One way of considering this paradoxical duality in the act of reading (being deceived while being aware of the deception) is more or less consciously to posit multiple levels of reading, whereby the deceived reader is watched by an aware reader, who is in turn watched by a super-reader; and so it continues. The ancient art critics, obsessed as they were with deceptive realism, provide in anecdotal form a good example of such multiplicity of perception when they tell stories of birds trying to peck at painted grapes, horses trying to mate with painted horses, even humans deceived by the lifelikeness of works of art. Such stories act as easy but potent signifiers of ‘realism’ in ancient art criticism, by showing the reactions of a ‘naive reader’ (the animals) whose deception the aware reader can enter into but also see exposed. In verbal or visual art parading itself as realistic, the artistic pretence of a pose of reality is, at some level, intended to be seen as deceptive; when it is non-realistic, or anti-realistic, or even stubbornly abstract (which it rarely is), art still demands that the reader suspend ordinary perception. But deception alone is not enough: ‘deceit’ only becomes artistic when a viewer sees through it, for a work of art which is so lifelike that no-one realizes it is not real has not entered the realm of art. The appreciation of deception happens at the moment when the deception is undone, or by the imaginative creation of a less sophisticated reader who has not seen through the deceit. That is what happens in comedy, more overtly than in other artforms, but in the same way.

An inscription from Priene, first published at the beginning of this century, honours a local citizen who had among other accomplishments conducted a series of embassies to Roman officials in Asia. The text was originally published by Hiller von Gaertringen, though (as we shall see) his interpretation of it was unsatisfactory in at least one respect.

The manuscripts of Cicero's De oratore divide into two families: mutili and integri. The oldest representatives of the mutilated family are Avranches 238 (A; c. 830–50), Erlangen 380 (olim 848; E; c. 985), and London, Harley 2736 (H; written by Lupus of Ferrierès, c. 830–40). A and H are independent of each other, and the best witnesses to the text of the lost archetype (M). E too is considered to be an independent witness. Since the work of E. Ströbel, dating from the early eighties of the last century, the view has been generally held that E, though closely related to A, is not a descendant of it but a copy of a ‘gemellus’ of A. The stemma devised by Ströbel has remained essentially the same to the present day.

Horace begins his second book of satires by picturing himself caught between the extremes of two sets of critics, one group claiming that his poetry is too aggressive (nimis acer, 1), the other that it is insipid and lacklustre (sine nervis, 2). The charges are extreme and contradictory, so there is no way he can adjust his work to please one group without further antagonizing the other: the more straightforward he becomes in his criticisms, the more bitter and ‘lawless ’ he will seem to group A. Further subtlety and indirectness will only draw further criticism from group B. He takes his problem to Trebatius, Rome's leading legal expert, expecting an easy solution, only to be told what his question made clear from the start: that the safest way to write satire in Rome is ‘not at all’: quiescas (‘keep quiet’, line 5). His question, as far as Trebatius is concerned, is irresolvable and best left unexplored.

Of all the works attributed to Ovid but of disputed authenticity, the epistle of Sappho to Phaon is notoriously the one which has most perplexed scholars. Most philologists at the end of the 19th century asserted the Ovidian paternity of the epistle; but in recent years the discussion has flared up once again, especially following an important contribution, tending in the opposite direction, by R. J. Tarrant, and today, above all in Anglo-American studies, the pendulum seems to be swinging more in the direction of inauthenticity, according to the movement typical in debates of this kind. The present article obviously does not intend to discuss the whole question once again nor to reaffirm tout court the attribution to Ovid, but brings to the attention of scholars certain arguments which should not be neglected in the discussion (and which point in the direction of authenticity). I do not mean to underestimate the linguistic, stylistic, and metrical anomalies which scholars up to Tarrant and beyond have imputed to the epistula Sapphus, but rather to indicate some characteristics, above all of compositional technique, which have not been considered but which I think have a not insignificant weight in the debate on authenticity.

In an important recent article, A. Rodger expounded a cogent analysis of ch. 84 of the Lex Irnitana and especially of the logic of its account of the limits of the jurisdiction of the duumviri (lines 1–25). He sums up (p. 150) his analysis of the jurisdiction of the duumviri as follows: ‘the picture which emerges is coherent, as we should expect. The duumvir has jurisdiction in cases up to 1,000 sesterces. In such cases the plaintiff may insist on his case being heard locally unless it falls into one of the exempted categories. In that event, unless both parties agree, the duumvir will have jurisdiction only for vadimonium to be made to the governor who will in turn deal with vadimonium for a hearing before the praetor in Rome. If on the other hand both parties concur, the duumvir will have jurisdiction in exempted actions of up to 1,000 sesterces, the only exception being cases where an issue of free status arises. If such an issue does arise, the jurisdiction of the duumvir is restricted to dealing with vadimonium to the governor. In cases over 1,000 sesterces the duumvir has no jurisdiction unless both parties agree. If the parties do not agree, again the duumvir has jurisdiction only for vadimonium to the governor. If, however, the parties do agree, the duumvir has jurisdiction in all matters except again where an issue of free status arises. If that issue arises, he has jurisdiction only for the vadimonium to the governor.’

Whether out of an understandable reluctance to neglect any of the scarce available sources or simply for want of more trustworthy evidence, classical scholars nolentes volentes tend to rely to a large extent on references to amounts of money in the ancient literary sources whenever they aim at quantifying, however roughly and shielded by appropriate disclaimers, some fundamental features of Roman economy and society. In view of this, the almost complete lack of systematic enquiries into the very nature of these particular data is almost as inexplicable as it seems inexcusable. While several studies have been devoted to the use of rounded numbers in Greek and Roman literature in general, none of these has specifically addressed the stylization of monetary valuations. The only notable exception is provided by the work of Richard Duncan-Jones who in a pioneering survey of prices in the Latin novel above all showed beyond reasonable doubt that in this genre, prices expressed in multiples of thirty (up to thirty million) should best be understood as purely conventional valuations. In his latest book, he has subjected the ancient numerical evidence for two areas of major concern—the public treasury and state expenditure during the Principate—to an analogous examination that has highlighted the stylized character of many relevant references and has thus largely confirmed his previous findings. Even so, owing to the limitation of these studies to a small number of authors and subject matters, a vast pool of similar data from ancient literature has hitherto been left virtually untapped. What is more, Duncan-Jones did not attempt to complement his re-evaluation of multiples of thirty with a systematic exposition of complementary patterns of stylization. In this paper, I hope to demonstrate the need for a more extensive and much more radical reassessment of much of the available evidence.