The story of Gyges has come down to us in several versions. These include a summary of a version recorded by Nicholas of Damascus, which may descend ultimately from the Lydian historian Xanthos; a fragment of a dramatic version by an unknown Greek author; a brief description by Plutarch; Justin's summary of a version by Pompeius Trogus; and a version by Ptolemy Hephaestion of Alexandria, summarized by Photius. But the most famous and oldest fully extant versions of the story are those told by Herodotus and Plato.

Plato wrote two Utopian works, the Republic and the Laws. The second, written in the 350s and early 340s bc, describes a mythical city-state named Magnesia. It is often ignored as secondary, not only in terms of chronology, but also in quality – the work of the philosopher's declining years. Such a characterization is misplaced. The Laws may lack the optimism and brilliance of the Republic but it nonetheless reveals a still-powerful mind at work, sketching a more realistic societal project. Nor have its philosophic underpinnings changed: they are precisely those of the Republic. Instead of philosopher-kings, Plato now puts his trust in a code of virtually unchanging laws that cover every aspect of life in Magnesia – society, economy, politics, and family. It is this elaborate rule of law, in which the laws are the masters of those who rule and the latter in turn are the slaves of the laws (715d), which alone can produce a successful state and citizens that correspond to it.

This paper attempts to set out what is known about the places in the city of Rome used for detention and execution. It is not based on personal inspection of the sites, but only on the ancient evidence and modern discussion, and simply aims to meet the absence of a full up-to-date account in English of the history, location, character and function of these places, viz. the carcer, lautumiae, Saxum Tarpeium, Scalae Gemoniae, and the elusive robur. It does not deal with the wider question of what crimes merited the death penalty or called for its infliction in this or that manner, nor, apart from a few items, is it carried beyond the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Beginning in the reign of Augustus or Tiberius, corpses of criminals condemned and executed by the state were exposed on the Scalae Gemoniae, a flight of stairs located in the northern corner of the Forum Romanum. As one modern commentator has observed, the ritual of execution in which these stairs played a critical role reflected more generally the suppression of popular participation in the judicial processes that accompanied the last century of the Republic and the emergence of the Principate. As has long been noted, however, the Stairs were also the site of well-attested instances of collective violence, in particular protests during Cn. Calpurnius Piso's trial in the senate in AD 20, violence surrounding the fall of Sejanus in AD 31, and the popular violence and warfare of AD 69.

Although born in India, like others of his class and generation Rudyard Kipling was sent back to England for his schooling. From 1878 he attended the United Services College (USC) at Westward Ho! in North Devon, a school that had been recently established under the headmastership of a family friend, Cormell Price, to accommodate the children of Indian Army officers unable to afford the fees of institutions such as Wellington College, originally established to prepare boys for the military academies at Sandhurst and Woolwich. The school was later to provide the inspiration for Kipling's Stalky & Co., a collection of stories first assembled for publication in book form in 1899 and re-issued, with five further tales, in 1929. The reception of this work and the characters within it was not universally favourable, the school upon which it was based was in many ways atypical of the standard English public school (if ever such a thing existed), and, although unquestionably a ‘school story', it is not in line with the tradition fathered by Tom Brown.

Scholars so far have commented only briefly on Tacitus' depiction, at Annals 14.60–4, of the execution (in ad 62) of Nero's young wife Octavia, passing lightly over the pathos and criticism of Nero there as straightforward and self-evident. In fact, there is a subtle and skilful build-up of sympathy for Octavia and an extensive and powerful attack on the emperor and his court (and the servile senate), all the stronger for the pity aroused for her. This combination of emotional impact and damning indictment merits and repays deeper analysis.