In 1968 E.K. Borthwick, with a brilliant conjecture, cleared up a passage from Aristophanes’ Peace that had been considered ‘nonsense’ since antiquity. ‘Bell goldfinch’ (κώδων ἀκαλανθίς) the line seemed to be saying: a jumbled idea at best, gibberish at worst (1078). The scholium reads ad loc.: ταῦτα δὲ πάντα ἐπίτηδες ἀδιανοήτως ἔφρασεν, ‘all this is said as deliberate nonsense’, and later scholars generally follow suit (W.W. Merry, for example, in his 1900 edition of Peace refers to the line as ‘magnificent nonsense’). But Borthwick showed that this was not the case: ‘even nonsense expressions in Aristophanes’, he writes, ‘are not haphazard collocations of incongruous words signifying nothing’. What, then, to do with the ancient scholar (and those later ones) who failed to understand the passage, claiming it instead to be ‘nonsense’?

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Polybius’ work is the frequency with which the historian pauses his historical narrative and embarks upon digressions, including entire books devoted to the topics of geography (Book 34), historiography (Book 12) and, most famously, the discussion of the Roman constitution in Book 6. Such digressions have naturally drawn the attention of modern scholars, but in the past the tendency in Polybian scholarship had been to read such digressions in isolation, and even to deny their relevance outside of their immediate context. While it is true that these digressions cannot be regarded as strict blue-prints upon which Polybius’ historical narrative is to be precisely mapped, more recent scholarship has suggested that such passages are not as irrelevant to this narrative as they had for a long time appeared. Moreover, a parallel trend in Polybian scholarship is currently calling for a renewed focus into the composition of his historical narrative in order to apply the level of scrutiny to the text of Polybius previously reserved, for example, for his more famous predecessors, Herodotus and Thucydides. An appropriate recognition of the relationship between the more famous passages of Polybius’ work found in his digressions and the broader narrative of historical events will help to alleviate this deficiency. Careful study of the text of Polybius in this manner will reveal that his historical narrative does not simply represent a bare record of historical facts but is rather composed by the historian in a way that demonstrates and reinforces the principles presented in the more abstract digressions, which have attracted more attention.

Epicurus denies that human beings have natural parental love for their children, and his account of the development of justice and human political community does not involve any natural affinity between human beings in general but rather a form of social contract. The Stoics to the contrary assert that parental love is natural; and, moreover, they maintain that natural parental love is the first principle of social οἰκείωσις, which provides the basis for the naturalness of justice and human political community. The Stoics are, therefore, obliged to refute Epicurus’ denial of the naturalness of parental love in order to support their own theory of social οἰκείωσις; and we have good evidence for the arguments that they employed against the Epicureans on this account. Likewise, the Epicureans are obliged not only to defend their own position but also to undermine the competing Stoic theory of social οἰκείωσις; and the foundational premise of a natural bond between parent and child is an obvious target. However, beyond dogmatically restating Epicurus’ denial of natural parental love, the evidence for the Epicurean line of attack against the Stoics is currently unclear. In this paper I argue that we can go some way towards uncovering it via an analysis of some fragmentary passages from an unidentified work of the Epicurean Demetrius of Laconia (c.150–75 b.c.) that contain a puzzling discussion of Epicurus’ stance on parental love.

The subject of this article was suggested by the question of whether the present tense form uĕnit in Catull. 64.85 should be considered anomalous. My analysis will result in a positive answer, and I shall conclude by proposing a way to eliminate this anomaly. However, a study of Catullus' use of the historical present may also be of some relevance for the interpretation of poem 64 as a whole.

In Fam. 13.1 Cicero, visiting Athens en route to Cilicia in the summer of 51 b.c., writes to C. Memmius L.f., praetor in 58 but by the time of Cicero's communication an exile in Athens after the shambolic consular elections for 53; Memmius was (temporarily, one assumes) absent from Athens in Mytilene, hence the need for Cicero to write to him. This letter, along with Att. 5.11.6 and 19.3, is our focus in the argument that follows, but, to summarize the situation in the very broadest terms, Cicero's concern in it is with Memmius’ intentions regarding a plot of land in Athens occupied by a house of Epicurus, and with the objections to Memmius’ plans that had been raised with Cicero by the scholarch of the Epicurean community in Athens, Patro.

This paper is as much about a particular depiction of the tribune P. Sulpicius Rufus as it is about Cicero's De Oratore, a dialogue regularly called upon by historians to give evidence on the 90s b.c. and the characters who take part in the conversation it depicts. My main focus is literary: I will argue that, given what we know about the historical Sulpicius, Cicero's choice of Sulpicius for a prominent minor role in De Oratore drives the tragic historical framework that undercuts the optimism expressed within the dialogue by the main protagonist L. Licinius Crassus for the civic value of oratory. The Rhetorica ad Herennium illustrates a certain type of allegory with the statement ‘as if one should call Drusus a “faded reflection of the Gracchi”’. In De Oratore, Drusus’ friend and successor Sulpicius functions as a reflection of the Gracchi and his eloquence reinforces the problem posed by such orators as the notoriously eloquent Gaius Gracchus for any such grand claims about the civic value of oratory. By examining Cicero's use of relatively recent history, we therefore discover that De Oratore is significantly more pessimistic than it may at first seem. This pessimism, however, has important implications for historians, since expanding our understanding of De Oratore as a literary construct should encourage historians to be significantly more cautious about using the text as a historical source. As Görler points out with regard to Crassus’ swansong at De or. 3.4–5, although ‘a naive reader of Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta could be left with the impression that some sentences are quite well attested’, most of the fragments of Crassus’ speech can actually be traced back to De Oratore. Likewise, a significant proportion of the standard elements in Sulpicius’ backstory go back to De Oratore and become a great deal less convincing once we accept De Oratore as a sustained fictional account featuring people who were neither as politically ‘safe’ nor as intellectually united as Cicero would have them be. My secondary focus in this paper is therefore on the broader lessons to be drawn from Sulpicius’ role in De Oratore. I will begin by outlining the historical context of the dialogue, which was written in the mid 50s but is set in 91, a few weeks before the natural death of Crassus, one of its two protagonists. Next, I will discuss the dialogue's literary context, specifically the Platonic allusions Cicero embeds within the text. These allusions encourage us to treat De Oratore’s historical framework carefully, if not sceptically, and I will outline the ‘off notes’ struck by references to the Gracchi and by the presentation of Crassus and Antonius before examining the problem Sulpicius poses for a straightforwardly optimistic reading of De Oratore. I will conclude by considering first the literary implications for De Oratore of accepting that Sulpicius is a deliberately problematic character and then the historical implications of taking a sceptical approach towards De Oratore as an historical source for our picture of Sulpicius.

In the famous and widely cited opening of his Satires (henceforth, Sat.) 1.4, Horace states (1–5):

Discussing different types of metaphor, Isidore of Seville quotes an anonymous fragment that uses agricultural vocabulary to describe the sailing of a ship in order to illustrate metaphorae ab inanimali ad inanimale ‘metaphors taken from inanimate objects and applied to inanimate objects’ (Etym. 1.37.3 = inc. fr. 63 Blänsdorf):1

Critics generally agree that Statius’ Silvae 2.4, a poem about a dead parrot dedicated to Statius’ patron Atedius Melior, is modelled closely on Ovid's Amores 2.6, a poem about Corinna's dead parrot. In particular, many read Statius’ poem as picking up on the metapoetic strand in the Ovidian model, in which the parrot may be interpreted as a poet-figure, though they also note that Statius’ poem shows more of a concern for the tensions involved in a poet's relationship to his patron (and the emperor). I agree with this general interpretation of the poem and its metapoetic aspect; however, there are some oddities about the dead parrot and its relationship to its dominus that have not been fully explained by theories that equate the parrot with either Statius or a non-specific Flavian poet-figure and the dominus with Atedius Melior or a similar patron-figure. For instance, why is the parrot dead, and why does Statius write an epicedium for it that is similar in tone to the epicedia for dead people in Silvae 2? Why is the parrot's relationship to its master an ambiguous one such that his cage can be described as a prison (carcer, 2.4.15), and the master's grief over the parrot's death is never specifically mentioned? Finally, why does the parrot speak the name of Caesar instead of Atedius Melior, the friend of Statius to whom the poem is dedicated?

Delia, the name given to Tibullus’ mistress in five of the poems in the first book of his elegies (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6), has long inspired curiosity. Two approaches have dominated discussion. The biographical approach takes its cue from the Apology of Apuleius (10), which regards Delia as a pseudonym:

In Carm. 4.1 Horace asks Venus to stop waging war against him, who is now over fifty (1–7), and suggests that she should set her aim instead on Paulus Maximus, a young and passionate nobleman who will be happy to obey Venus' orders (9–20).

In his essay on Seneca, T.S. Eliot used the Hercules Furens (= HF) as his example to illustrate ‘this curious freak of non-theatrical drama’. Even though Senecan scholarship has by and large moved away from his indictment, the sense that the attention seems to be directed away from the stage points to the play's unique dramaturgy. The surest indicator of this reverse orientation is the conspicuous absence of Hercules himself for much of the play. Hercules is (or wishes to be) permanently ‘elsewhere’. His entrance is delayed for a long time; once home, he rushes offstage after a few lines to kill Lycus. He returns onstage only to be attacked by madness, and is drawn inside the palace again to kill his wife and sons. When his madness abates, he falls asleep onstage; on waking, he longs for a place beyond the known world (and underworld) and finally exits into exile. This article proposes a closer examination of the semiotics of space, especially the symbolic value of the offstage. Seneca is constantly drawing attention to the pull towards the stage perimeter and the unseen offstage, characterizing the cosmic nature of Hercules’ conflict with Juno and questioning the hero's place in the world as the son of an immortal father.

Roman conflict with Parthia in the mid first century for control of Armenia and Domitius Corbulo's exploits in the East, culminating in the Parthian candidate for the throne, Tiridates, receiving his diadem from the hands of the Emperor Nero in Rome, have frequently been studied for what they reveal about military and diplomatic manoeuvres under the later Julio-Claudians. The historiographical investigation of our main source, Tacitus, particularly through comparison with the fragments of Cassius Dio, is also important for the light this sheds on the Roman senator's methods. The intention of this paper is to draw attention to the complexity of Tacitus’ account by indicating his use of multiple and sometimes contradictory viewpoints in his narration of Caesennius Paetus’ unsuccessful Armenian campaign of a.d. 62–63 (Ann. 15.1–17) and to highlight an unrecognized echoing of his predecessor Livy by the historian. The examination of a text that is as elusive as it is allusive will require a careful study of what must have been a debated incident, but, as I hope to show, will give a broader insight into the historian's methods and, perhaps, wider intentions. I begin with an outline of historical events and the sources available to the historian. Next, I present a narratological examination of the text to show how differing viewpoints are highlighted within a contested storyline. I then show how this confusion may appear to be dispelled by a strong plot-line that borrows heavily from Livy, wherein the actions of an older, experienced general are contrasted with those of his subordinate. However, aspects of this account suggest that the tensions within the narrative are not resolved and that this has wider implications for our understanding of the historian and his work.

Hellenistic and Roman acrostich inscriptions are usually full of verbal and visual clues, which point the reader in the direction of the ‘hidden message’ contained in the vertical lines of the text. The authors of such inscriptions want their audiences to appreciate the skill that has gone into their composition. There are several complementary ways in which the presence of an acrostich might be signalled to the reader or viewer and their attention directed towards it. These include direct verbal statements, or more subtle allusions, within the text of the inscription. But, even without having read its text, the viewer of an inscription containing a ‘hidden message’ is often immediately aware that some kind of wordplay is at work. Acrostichs, palindromes and various kinds of word square are all graphically striking, or their appearance may be enhanced to make them more so. Regular spacing, the repetition of the acrostich in a separate column and the use of painted or incised grids are all ways in which the layout of the text on the stone can invite the viewer to play a word game. In some cases, as I will argue in this paper, acrostich makers envisaged—even intended—the participants in this game to include the illiterate as well as the literate.

The structure and organization of the Roman army is a complex subject for ancient historians. Of its multiple aspects, the schedule of the daily routine is one of the most interesting but, at the same time, is scarcely known. Of course, huge progress has been made with the publication of the daily rosters of one particular auxiliary unit in the East (cohors XX Palmyrenorum, at Dura, Syria), but the detail of the chronological organization of the unit's schedule is still to be revealed.

The rhetorical career of Libanius of Antioch (a.d. 314–c.393) spanned the reigns of a number of fourth-century emperors. Like many orators, he used the trope of the emperor as a pilot, steering the ship of state. He did this for his imperial exemplar Julian and in fact for his predecessor Constantius II as well. Julian sought to craft an identity for himself as a theocratic king. He and his supporters cast him as an earthly parallel to the Christ-like versions of Heracles and Asclepius he constructed, which was arguably a co-opting of Christian and particularly Constantinian themes. In a public oration, Julian even placed himself in the role of Christ in the Temptation in the Wilderness. This kind of overtly Christian metaphor was not Libanius’ preferred idiom, however, and he wrote of Julian as another kind of chosen and divine saviour-figure, one with its roots in the golden age of Greek philosophy. The figure of the κυβερνήτης, the ‘pilot’ or ‘helmsman’, is a philosophical concept with roots in the thought of the pre-Socratics but most familiar from Plato. The uses of this metaphor by Julian and Libanius highlight the rhetorical strategy and self-presentation the emperor employed during his reign.

In 1967 Alan Cameron published a landmark article in this journal, ‘The fate of Pliny's Letters in the late Empire’. Opposing the traditional thesis that the letters of Pliny the Younger were only rediscovered in the mid to late fifth century by Sidonius Apollinaris, Cameron proposed that closer attention be paid to the faint but clear traces of the letters in the third and fourth centuries. On the basis of well-observed intertextual correspondences, Cameron proposed that Pliny's letters were being read by the end of the fourth century at the latest. That article now seems the vanguard of a rise in scholarly interest in Pliny's late-antique reception. But Cameron also noted the explicit attention given to the letters by two earlier commentators—Tertullian of Carthage, in the late second to early third century, and Eusebius of Caesarea, in the early fourth. The use of Pliny in these two earliest commentators, in stark contrast to their later successors, has received almost no subsequent attention.

In the first act of Terence's Andria, we find a dialogue between the old man Simo and Sosia, the freedman, with the former explaining why he has decided to arrange a false wedding for his young son Pamphilus. He has, in fact, learned that his son, despite being betrothed, has had a relationship with another girl and that—quite a serious matter—the fiancée's father, Chremes, has heard about the clandestine affair. In verses 144–9 Simo reports on the not-altogether friendly meeting he has had with Chremes, who is furious about the complete disrespect that has been shown to his daughter; Simo's only defence is to attempt to deny the truth (146: ego illud sedulo negare factum).