‘But tell us, Tityrus, who is that god?’ (sed tamen, iste deus qui sit, da, Tityre, nobis). This is what the herdsman Meliboeus asks in Virgil's first Eclogue (Ecl. 1.18) in response to Tityrus' assertion that a certain deity granted him the leisure to sing and to pasture his herd (o Meliboee, deus nobis haec otia fecit. | namque erit ille mihi semper deus, Ecl. 1.6–7). In posing this question, the herdsman raises the issue of this god's identity also for us, Virgil's readers. We are invited to ponder ‘Who is that deus?’ The question lingers, hanging over the text for the next twenty-three verses, without answer. For despite Meliboeus' blunt and plainspoken query (qui sit, da … nobis), which demands a concrete response, Tityrus—on finally returning to the question qui sit—pointedly names no names. Rather, he leaves his divinity anonymous. We learn only that the god is a iuuenis, whom Tityrus saw at Rome, and who answered the herdsman's entreaty (hic illum uidi iuuenem … | hic mihi responsum primus dedit ille petenti, Ecl. 1.42, 44). In honour of this deity, Tityrus' altars smoke with sacrifice every month of the year (quotannis | bis senos cui nostra dies altaria fumant, Ecl. 1.42–3). As the poem takes the form of a dramatic dialogue without narrative frame, no authoritative voice intervenes to offer further guidance as to the god's identity. Thus we continue to wonder as to the identity of this divine iuuenis. The question remains open, an incitement to readerly conjecture.

Few interpreters of Aristotle have denied that both empirical, inductive methods and some kind of systematic deduction played a role in the philosophy of the biologist who expounded the West's first formal logic. But it has usually been the fashion to focus on one side of this polarity. In recent decades the focus has been on the empirical Aristotle. But some of the latest studies emphasize that Aristotle varied his methods according to context. G. E. L. Owen, for example, although he feels that Aristotle took little care to separate inductive and deductive methods in the treatises, does allow that he uses deduction at times, and mentions book 6 of the Physics among them.

By the mid fourth century c.e., violently divergent Christian communities had developed across the Roman empire: Nicene or Homoousian (God and Jesus ‘are of the same substance’), Homoiousian (‘are of similar substance’), Homoian (Jesus is ‘like’ God), Anomoean or Heterousian (God and Jesus ‘are of different substance’) and others. The first emperor to be a strong supporter of traditional cult in more than a generation, Julian ruled over an empire of numerous religious groups that were often at variance with one another, both extra- and intra-communally, and how all of these should be treated was one of the chief problems pressing the emperor upon his accession in late 361. Julian's religious thought and action during his short sole reign (3 November 361 to 26 June 363) has long exercised scholars, its impact on Christians and Christianity in particular. To be sure, Julian tended to be hostile to Christians and Christianity, but he was by no means hostile to all, and he even favoured some Christians, some of whom he counted among his friends and officials. The emperor's Christian policy thus was complicated. One of the best examples of this complexity is Julian's epistle to the Heterousian Christian leader Aetius (Ep. 15 Wright = 46 Bidez). In a shorter note published in this journal, Pierre-Louis Malosse focussed his attention on Julian's letter to Aetius, which dates to early 362 and which is the only such epistle to this future bishop that is extant. As transmitted, Julian's missive to Aetius is critical for the light it helps to shed on the emperor's views and treatments of Christians at the outset of his sole reign, and my conclusions on this missive differ from those of Malosse.

Arcturus is a very suitable person to tell us the ὑποκεíμενα of the play. During the night preceding the action he has produced the storm which is to bring about the dénouement of the plot (11. 66 ff.):

illorum navis longe in altum abscesserat.

ego quoniam video virginem asportarier,

tetuli ei auxilium et lenoni exitium simul:

increpui hibernum et fluctus movi maritimos.

nam Arcturus signum sum omnium acerrimum:

vehemens sum exoriens, cum occido vehementior.

On inquiring into the nature of the Charites one may be astonished at the disagreement of their compounding elements. On the one hand, they appear as the very representatives and even personification of gracefulness and charm, brightness, and joy; their name itself seems to testify this, closely allied as it is with the verb χαρειν besides the particular names of the most renowned Hesiodic trinity—Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia—that is to say, brilliancy, mirth, and florescence. Hence arose the Roman conception of the Gratiae decentes; hence also the widespread neo-humanistic idea, clothed by Goethe in the well-known verse of the Classical Walpurgis Night: ‘Grace we are bringing into life ….’ But, on the other hand, we discover the incontestable kinship of Charis with Charon, the ugly and sullen ferryman of the lower world, the still more amazing relation between Eurynome, the mother of the Hesiodic trinity, and Eurynomos, the horrid demon of decay, the vulture-skinned devourer of putrefying corpses in the Delphic Nekyia of Polygnotos.

In the Eighth Olympian, for Alcimedon of Aegina, Pindar recounts a story (31–46) that, according to a notice in the scholia, is not found in earlier Greek literature. Aeacus was summoned from Aegina to Troy by Apollo and Poseidon to help in the construction of the city's fortifications. Smoke, says the poet, would one day rise from the very battlements Aeacus built. The wall newly completed, a portent appeared: three snakes tried to scale the ramparts but two fell to earth while one succeeded in entering the city. Apollo immediately interpreted this sign: Troy would be taken ‘owing to the work of Aeacus’ hand' and would, moreover, be taken ‘by the first and the fourth generations’.

If there is literary invention here, it would seem that Pindar has drawn inspiration from three passages of our Iliad: (i) 7.452–3, Apollo and Poseidon toiled to build a wall for Laomedon; (ii) 6.433–4, there was one spot in the wall of Troy that was especially vulnerable; (iii) 2.308–29, the seer Calchas declares an omen involving a snake to signify the eventual destruction of Ilium.

The general import of the passage is clear enough — descendants of Aeacus play a prominent part in the Trojan war and in the capture of the city. But the details of the portent and of the prophecy have caused much perplexity, for they cannot easily be made to correspond to the history they prefigure. It is the numbers in Pindar's account that are the chief source of confusion.

On the model of the omen interpreted by Calchas (where a snake eating nine birds represents a lapse of nine years before the sack of the city) the three snakes in the Pindaric story might reasonably be expected to represent the lapse of three generations before Aeacus' great-grandson Neoptolemus played his conspicuous part in the final agony of Troy. But this interpretation of the portent forces us to explain away the fact that Troy was also destroyed by Aeacus' son, Telamon, as Pindar repeatedly insists in his Aeginetan odes (Nem. 3.37, 4.25; Isth. 6.26–31): if the snakes are taken to represent generations, one of the unsuccessful snakes in fact represents a successful conqueror. This is a disturbing inconcinnity.

This article presents an interpretation of Cyrus’ psychology in Xenophon's Cyropaedia. Its point is that Cyrus’ psychological structure is composed by a set of three desires (philotimía, philanthrōpía, philomátheia) given by nature and a set of virtues (sōphrosúnē and enkráteia) acquired by education. The paper will argue that Cyrus, as an enkratic ruler, does not long for any kind of honours, but is guided by true philotimía, that is, the desire for true honours—honours freely given by gratitude or admiration. philanthrōpía is the key to achieve these honours, since it naturally prompts a benevolent and generous behaviour. At the same time, philomátheia provides the desire of knowledge necessary to acquire the techniques in order to accomplish ambitious and philanthropic deeds. Therefore, confronting those who have posed negative interpretations of Cyrus, the article will argue that the uncommon combination of these psychological predispositions makes Cyrus a virtuous and effective ruler.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evidence commonly claimed to show the presence of slaves in the audience of Plautus’ comedies (above all the evidence of his prologue to Poenulus) and to argue that it more probably shows the opposite, that slaves were not present, or at least were expected not to be. The question is given some urgency by the appearance of Amy Richlin's new book, which takes the presence of slaves in the audience for granted and builds on it to develop a view of Plautine comedy as addressing the experiences, hopes and fears of those slaves. Richlin cites the Poenulus prologue at pages 89–90, accepting it without detailed discussion as indicating the presence of slaves in the audience; and it has been cited similarly in standard handbooks from which I quote a representative sample of remarks below. Some scholars have said things in passing which suggest a different conclusion, but they too have not discussed the question in detail or examined the other evidence that has been thought relevant to the issue. I think that the time is ripe for closer scrutiny of all this evidence.

This article reconsiders the similarities between Aphrodite's ascent to Olympus and Ishtar's ascent to heaven in Iliad Book 5 and the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Tablet VI respectively. The widely accepted hypothesis of an Iliadic reception of the Mesopotamian poem is questioned, and the consonance explained as part of a vast stream of tradition encompassing ancient Near Eastern and early Greek narrative poetry. Compositional and conceptual patterns common to the two scenes are first analyzed in a broader early Greek context, and then across further Sumerian, Akkadian, Ugaritic and Hurro-Hittite sources. The shared compositional techniques at work in Mesopotamia and the Eastern Mediterranean can be seen as a function of the largely performative nature of narrative poetry. This contributes to explaining literary transmission within the Near East and onto Greece.

There is a major problem in connection with the wrath of Poseidon in Homer's Odyssey. We are told by Homer and Zeus (Od. 1.20-1, 1.68-75) that Poseidon raged continually against the hero from the time that the Cyclops was blinded until Odysseus reached Ithaca; and, when back on Ithaca the man complains to Athena about her absence and lack of help during the whole period of his wanderings after the fall of Troy, she says at 13.341-3 that she was avoiding confrontation with her angry uncle during all that time. But the only specified manifestation of that anger is the storm roused by the sea-god after Odysseus leaves Calypso in Book 5, in the tenth year after Polyphemus’ prayer to his father for revenge. It seems extraordinary that Poseidon should have waited so long before acting against him, and then have attacked him only once, merely causing him difficulty before he reached Scheria, and not (since it was fated for him to get home, and troubles there are already assured thanks to the suitors) ensuring his late return in a miserable plight on another's ship after losing all his companions, as his blinded son had requested (at 9.532-5).

The people of classical Athens did not regard suicide as a crime committed by the victim. Instead, the Athenians regarded suicide as a crime committed by the instrument that the victim used, or by the victim's hand as opposed to the victim himself. This non-human agent was culpable, just like non-human agents were blamed for accidental deaths. Although suicide victims were innocent, inanimate agents were guilty. In Sophocles' Ajax, for example, the sword that the hero turned upon himself was blamed for his death. The Athenian response to suicide was more about objects than it was about people.

I would refer to the introductory paragraphs of J. Diggle's ‘Notes on Ovid's Tristia, Books I-II’ (CQ n.s. 30 (1980), 401–19). His list of modern editions does not include F. Della Corte, I Tristia (Genoa, 1973), which I too have not seen. For Book IV we have an edition (not without merit) by T. J. de Jonge (Groningen, 1961).

ὓβριс φυτε⋯ει τ⋯ραννον ὕβριс κτλ. Thus the MSS, Schol. (= Suda u 15) and Stobaeus 4.8. 11 (p. 298 H.). ὕβριν φυτε⋯ει τυραννον ὕβριс κτλ. Thus Blaydes, followed recently by R. P. Winnington-Ingram, JHS 91 (1971), 126 = Sophocles. An interpretation (Cambridge, 1980), p. 192 (‘What is positively gained by making this correction? Three things’); R. D. Dawe, Sophoclis Tragoediae (Teubner, 1975), i. 156 and Sophocles. Oedipus Rex (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 18, 61,182 f. (‘We may be sure of this for two reasons’); R. W. B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies (Oxford, 1980), p. 164 (‘The resulting sense is admirable’); J. Diggle, CRn.s. 32(1982), 14(‘My heart warms… What is drastic about altering three letters?’).

The wine referred to in the second line of the epigram was produced near Verona, at the foot of the Rhaetian Alps. It was well regarded by most and was a favourite of the Emperor Augustus: for references see Mynors at Verg. G. 2.96 and my note at Mart. 14.100.2. It appears, however, to have undue prominence in this poem, supposedly about the earthenware drinking vessels which, presumably, were manufactured in the same area.

There is also the question of why Martial refers to Verona in such a circumlocutory way. Is he merely following a well established elegiac/epigrammatic convention in associating Verona with Catullus (cf. e.g. Ovid, Am. 3.15.7 and Mart. 1.7.2), or does his circumlocution here have any particular point?

The lack of a separate commentary on the fourth book of Statius' Thebaid has meant that many significant details in this description of Capaneus in the catalogue of the Seven have gone unremarked. This article aims to fill the deficiency, pointing out the rich literary allusions, artful symbolism and the careful use of language in this well written passage.