To assess the influence of one author on another and the extent of one's use of another is always difficult. When the authors assessed are poets who each give a highly individual stamp to material, it is doubly difficult. When they are separated by one and a half millennia and by a language difference, the assessment is open to pitfalls almost too enormous to bear contemplation. What follows, therefore, does not attempt to be a categorical statement that Shakespeare used Virgil solely or in part in any one particular instance or in any one particular way; it rather offers a juxtaposition of lines, images, or ideas which appear to be similar in both authors, in the hope that the comparisons may prove interesting in themselves and that the sum total of them may lead at least to some guarded and cautious conclusions about the use of classical authors and in particular of Virgil's poetry and thought by Shakespeare in Henry V.

Critics have been fairly unanimous in their assessment of Menander's concerns. F. H. Sandbach asserts that ‘the authors of New Comedy shut their eyes, generally speaking, to politics as a whole’. He writes of Menander that ‘the politics of his time were far too grim and frustrated to make a suitable subject for an audience that wished to be entertained on a public holiday.… It is within domestic and private life that he found the subjects for his comedy’. T. B. L. Webster agrees that recent political events were ‘too painful to be remembered in comedy’. E. W. Handley believes that in Dyskolos Menander's ‘basic point is an ethical and not a political one’; considering the possibility that ‘the thought and moral tone are politically inspired’, he dismisses the idea that Menander was a propagandist. Michael Anderson recognizes that Dyskolos, as an ‘ethical’ comedy in Aristotelian terms, must relate the behaviour of individuals to society, but he does not go on to relate the play to the particular society for which Menander wrote.

It is commonly held that Plato died in 348/7 b.c. during the archonship of Theophilus or in the first year of the 108th Olympiad. According to a widespread and almost universally accepted tradition, which has found a place in our current books on ‘The History of Greek Philosophy’, Aristotle departed from Athens soon after Plato's death, repairing to Atarneus (or Assos) in Asia Minor, where he stayed with Hermias. Thus, it would appear that the death of Plato was the prime if not sole reason for Aristotle's journey in 348/7 b.c. It has been conjectured, however, that Plato actually died in the spring of 347 b.c., probably in May. Though this is by no means certain, it properly requestions the causality of the Stagirite's flight.

The first-century-AD philosopher Onasander (Strategikos 1.13, 15) comments that a general must be a good and effective speaker in order to encourage his men before battle, and ancient historians on occasion have commanders address large audiences of soldiers in an age when there was no artificial amplification of the human voice. In 1993, and reiterated in 1998, Mogens Hansen argued that the extensive pre-battle ‘speech’ found in our sources was, if given at all, only ‘a few apophthegms that could be shouted by the general as he traversed the line, or a speech made to the officers only who passed it on to the soldiers’. He accepts that a general often addressed his troops in camp or in parade formation; his objection solely relates to those speeches ostensibly given immediately before battle to troops already arrayed for combat. For Hansen, ‘a brief exhortation of the troops, unit by unit, while the commander walked along the front is probably all the historical reality [one] may expect to find behind the fully-fledged speeches reported by the historians’, these being a ‘literary composition and not the historian's report of a speech which had actually been made’. In Hanson's view, unless the harangues were given to troops in camp, or to individual units in battle formation, or, perhaps, to small military forces, these speeches could not have been given as reported. With respect to the last possibility, Hansen only rather reluctantly acknowledges that Thrasybulus' speech delivered to approximately 1000 Athenian insurgents in 404 BC, and reported by Xenophon (Hell. 2.4.10–12), ‘is possibly right’.

Of the twenty-nine series in the Plautine corpus, seven may legitimately be called senex amator – that is, an old man who for some reason contracts a passion for a young girl and who, in varying degrees, attempts to satisfy this passion. They are Demaenetus (Asinaria), Philoxenus and Nicobulus (Bacchides), Demipho (Cistellaria), Lysidamus (Casino), Demipho (Mercator), and Antipho (Stichus). Two others – Periplectomenos (Miles) and Daemones (Rudens) – still, perhaps, feel the sap rising, but they keep their instincts within acceptable limits, and both are regarded as senes lepidt, a description which usually denotes approval of a character.

Like ‘crossing the T’, the diekplous can sometimes seem a manoeuvre ‘more honour'd in the breach than in the observance’, for there are, perhaps, only three battles in which it is said to have been successfully used – Lade (Herodotos 6.15.2), Chios (Polybios 16.4.14), and Side (Livy 37.24.2) – and mostly what we hear about are reasons why it was not or could not be used. Nevertheless, it seems to have been regarded as at least a potentially effective tactic from at least the fifth to the second century: Thucydides has Phormio declare (2.89.8), for example, that diekploi and anastrophai ‘are the marks of bettersailing ships’ (νɛν ἄμɛινον πλɛουσν ἔργα στν), and Polybios (1.51.9) refers to the diekplous as ‘the most effective manoeuvre in sea-fighting’ (ὅφɛρ ν τῷ ναυμαχɛîν στι πρακτικᾡτατον).

The character of Thersites, as presented by Homer in Iliad 2, has received an almost universally bad press, typical of which are the comments of F. A. Paley: ‘one of the turbulent and insolent malcontents in an army, who use their best efforts to misrepresent the authorities and to incite sedition in others’. Paley's view is typical both in the unsympathetic view it presents of Thersites and in its tendency to see him as representative of a whole genre of subversive and recalcitrant soldiery. My concern in this paper is to examine Thersites within the context of the Iliad alone, without any regard for his treatment by subsequent authors, and to attempt to explain his portrayal solely in terms of the dramatic situation at the beginning of the Iliad. My contention will be that the episode of Thersites is an important element in Homer's introductory purpose of presenting the backcloth against which the poem's theme, the menis is acted out.

Seneca has long been regarded as one of the supreme—one might say notorious—examples of the way in which the human personality can be divided and compartmentalized. To live in two entirely different worlds at the same time can never be easy: to combine the contrasts present in Seneca without outward sign of strain is almost miraculous. Seneca took a leading part in Nero's education and training, both before and after he became Emperor; he lived for eleven years during his reign and then committed suicide at his behest; he played a central role as chief counsellor in his administration. At the same time he wrote treatises on the perfectibility of the human race under the flag of liberty, equality, and fraternity, not as a vision of the future, but associating its realization with Nero himself; he discussed the moral duty of the philosopher in terms which were completely inconsistent with his own mode of life, and composed ten (or is it nine?) tragedies which have as one of their main themes the rule of moral chaos in human affairs, often under a tyrant. In these plays there is a vision much less pleasant, that of the coming disintegration of the world, expressed in terms like ‘In nos ultima aetas uenit?’

Greek myths are so vivid that we think of the figures in them as real people and argue about their characters and what made them do what they did. We forget not only that the people never existed (or if some of them did, they were certainly very different from the refined and sophisticated representations of them about which we argue), but also that what we have is a number of often incompatible versions in literature and art dating over a period of a thousand years or more, whereas what we argue about is either a single late version or a very late amalgam of a number of versions made in a handbook of mythology.

During preparations for the ill-fated Sicilian expedition in 415 BC, Thucydides tells us, the Athenians woke up one morning to find that:

Of all the stone herms in the city of Athens (the square-cut type, which following local custom stand in great numbers in the doorways of private houses and shrines), most had their faces [προ´σωπα] mutilated during a single night. No one knew who the perpetrators were, but there was a search for them with large rewards out of public funds . . . They took the matter seriously; it looked like an omen for the voyage, and furthermore as though it had been done as part of a conspiracy for revolution and the overthrow of the democracy [δη´μου :kgr;αταλυ´σεωσ].

Some accused the flamboyant politician and general Alcibiades, ‘adducing as evidence the undemocratic licentiousness of his conduct in general’. Andocides emphasizes how seriously the matter was taken by the city authorities:

The boule, summoning the generals, ordered them to make an announcement that those of the Athenians who lived in the city should take their arms and go to the Agora, those within the Long Walls should go to the Theseion, those in Piraeus to the Hippodamian agora. As for the knights, a signal was to be given by trumpet before nightfall for them to go to the Anakeion; the boule was to go to the Acropolis and sleep there, the prytaneis in the Tholos.

Scholars have long recognized that the story of Dido in the Aeneidis structured like a Greek tragedy and that several of Aristotle's concepts in the Poetics can profitably be applied to it. Here I return to an old question, to which no answer yet given has commanded general assent: if Dido is a tragic heroine, what, in Aristotelian terms, is her hamartia? I shall argue that Aristotle's model of tragedy provides a useful blueprint for gauging both Dido's moral responsibility for her downfall and the moral and emotional response to it which Virgil expects from his readers. These matters have indeed been very extensively discussed by very distinguished scholars, but in many areas of classical literature – and nowhere more than in the Aeneid – modern criticism has become so sophisticated and so attuned to the detection of subtleties such as irony, ambiguity, and ambivalence that it sometimes misses the significance of what is simple and obvious. Aristotle's model of tragedy, while not a refined critical tool, helps us to isolate some basic truths about the tragedy of Dido.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has not always been greeted with applause. On the fly-leaf to Volume IV of his copy, Gibbon's contemporary, the writer, antiquarian, and bibliophile, William Beckford gave vent to near apoplectic rage:

One should perhaps apologize for reopening the question of Hannibal's route over the Alps after the publication of Sir Gavin de Beer's recent book. It is, however, a perennially fascinating problem, and some of de Beer's points are not entirely satisfactory, though I accept his main conclusion. The cruces of the argument, as I see them, are: (1) the crossing of the Rhone; (2) the position of the Island; (3) the river Isaras/Skaras; (4) the two passes, the first where Hannibal was attacked by the Allobroges from the front, and the second the main Alpine pass into Italy; (5) the attack in the gorge by local tribesmen on his approach to the main pass; (6) did Hannibal cross the Durance?

The gods appear in nearly every passage of Aristophanic dialogue; it is hard to imagine more than five minutes passing in the comic theatre before hearing the name of an Olympian deity. This remarkable density is perhaps less telling than it might seem, for the vast majority of such references occur in oaths. Formally, an oath calls on one or more gods to witness (using the particles nē or ma) an assertion, a denial, or a promise. Less formally, simple oaths with nē or ma add colour and emphasis to colloquial language, somewhat like ‘swear words’ in English, and it is this usage which predominates in Aristophanes; to give just one example, the most popular oath ‘by Zeus’ occurs over 250 times in the eleven comedies. So common are these ‘oaths’ that they hardly seem worthy of the name; at most, they might seem to offer no more than insight into colloquial language at the profane level. Numerous instances, however, take issue with the institution of the oath itself and acquire considerable importance due to the integral role the oath played in Greek religion, especially given the state of that religion precisely during the period of Aristophanes' career, when traditional values were assaulted from numerous directions, and the forces of orthodoxy lashed back with a vengeance.

Around 340 BC, Theomnestus, son of Deinias, from the deme Athmonon, prosecuted the alleged hetaira Neaira for living in marriage with Stephanus, from the deme Eroeadae, breaching the law that prohibited xenoi from feigning lawful marriage with Athenian citizens ([Dem.] 59). Under this law (59.16), foreigners who married an Athenian citizen were liable to enslavement and confiscation of property – the penalty for conviction for illegal exercise of citizen rights. Although Theomnestus is the formal prosecutor, most of the case is presented by his kinsman and supporting speaker Apollodorus, elder son of the well-known wealthy Athenian banker and former slave Pasion. It might seem incongruous that he, the son of a newly made citizen with foreign and servile origins, invoking the most sacred of Athenian laws, appeals to the Athenians to guard the purity of their citizen body. However, while Apollodorus undeniably had a hidden agenda in bringing a prosecution against Neaira, it is not surprising that false claim to and debasement of citizen status should be a source of resentment for new citizens such as he, who were anxious to protect their hard-earned privilege.

The tenth poem of Propertius Book 4 is the most remarkable in a collection full of surprises for its readers, and appears to mark a significant departure from his previous work. If Propertius had never written his final book of poetry, we might characterize him on the basis of his earlier books as the quintessential Latin love elegist: he rejects not only a military career, but even the less demanding task of celebrating Augustus' victories, in favour of the love elegist's self-indulgent life of leisure: cf. e.g. Prop. 2.1.39–46. In the first poem of Book 4, however, Propertius announces what appears to be a wholly different poetic programme; in place of the erotic elegies of the previous books is a new ‘serious’ purpose: Propertius will sing about national, religious and antiquarian themes, as the ‘Roman Callimachus’ (Propertius 4.1a.63–4). However, as soon as the next poem, Propertius is commanded to return to his usual theme of obsessive elegiac love for one woman, a topic described as haec tua castra (‘this is your sphere of operations’, 4.1b.135). The poems which follow in Propertius 4 tend to strike a balance between antiquarian seriousness and elegiac frivolity. For example, in 4.4, Propertius relates the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia's betrayal of Rome, connecting several contemporary urban landmarks with the poem's heroine, but he remains true to his earlier colours by presenting Tarpeia as an elegiac lover who falls in love at first sight and betrays her city out of passion.

One feature of the ancient accounts of Achilles' early life in Thessaly is the consistently important part played by Chiron the wise and just centaur. Hesiod tells us that Chiron dwelt on Mount Pelion and taught a number of mythical figures like Achilles, Jason, Medeius, and Actaeon. Indeed Hesiod's interest in Chiron seems to have extended to his writing of a work on the subject of Chiron's teachings, of which there is some minimal fragmentary evidence (The Precepts of Chiron). There are various versions of his role in Achilles' early life, including one that Peleus entrusted his young son to the care of Chiron shortly after his separation from Thetis. This version is not entirely incompatible with what we find in Homer's Iliad(see below), and appears to be the subject of the earliest (fragmentary) iconographical evidence dating from the seventh century B.C. The general picture we get from the ancient sources is that Chiron essentially brings up the boy and gives him an education that includes music, medicine, horses, hunting, and martial arts. These skills prove to be invaluable in Achilles' heroic career including the war at Troy where he excels in virtually every aspect of his endeavours.

Sir William Tarn wrote that ‘the primary reason why Alexander invaded Persia was, no doubt, that he never thought of not doing it; it was his inheritance’. The invasion had been planned and begun by Philip. It was, in name, a Panhellenic enterprise, to exact retribution for the devastation wrought by Xerxes in Greece and to liberate the Greeks of Asia Minor. These aims Alexander faithfully fulfilled. From the spoils of the Granicus he dedicated three hundred Persian panoplies to Athens' tutelary goddess; he sent back to Athens the statues of Harmo-dius and Aristogiton which Xerxes had carried off to Susa; and he excused the burning of Persepolis as a reprisal for the sack of Athens. The Panhellenic war was then over, and Alexander sent the Greek contingents home (A. iii. 19. 5). In general he freed the Greek cities of Asia from the control of satraps; they were to pay no taxes, to receive no garrisons and to live under their own laws. By expelling tyrants or oligarchs and setting up democratic governments, he not only removed the partisans of Persia from power but did homage to the growing tendency in Greece to equate freedom with democracy. The gratitude of the liberated cities was long-enduring; it was here that his cult survived into Roman times. In reality of course they were as much subject to his will as less privileged subjects. And to Greek cities that opposed him he was less accommodating. Halicarnassus and Aspendus, which certainly counted as Greek, were subjected to his satraps. They could be treated as disloyal to the Panhellenic cause, like the captive mercenaries who fought against him at the Granicus and who were sent back in chains to forced labour in Macedon. But Alexander was not always so merciless. He spared the mercenaries who were holding out against him on an island in the harbour of Miletus, and enlisted them in his own army; it would not have been easy to take the island by force. Sentiment and principle gave way to his own interests, as they always did.

The Heracles as Euripides' other middle plays has not escaped censure for its faulty structure. From Swinburne's judgement of it as a ‘grotesque abortion’ one comes to Norwood who says of Gilbert Murray's view ‘A great Hellenist who is the last man to hunt for blemishes in Euripides has rightly called Heracles “broken-backed”’, and he adds himself that the play ‘at best must be called ramshackle work’ or ‘The action falls into 2 halves visibly separate though tied together. In each instance a champion of the poet if ingenious and resolute enough can devise some statement that will force unity of action upon his recalcitrant material, but the mere fact that he must so labour refutes him’.

At the beginning of 405 b.c., fourteen or fifteen months before the final catastrophe overtook Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes produced the Frogs. It is the last extant play of Old Comedy proper. Its plot is at times discursive, its subject-matter is passionately tied to the city in which the play was conceived, and its structure is largely controlled by such traditional and formal Old Comedy elements as the agon and parabasis. The Frogs won first prize. In 316 b.c., just eighty-nine years later, if we accept a plausible emendation in the Bodmer papyrus, Menander in his turn won the first prize at the same festival with his Dyskolos. The Dyskolos is the first extant play of the New Comedy to which we can give a firm date. Its plot is tightly knit, its subject-matter is universal, and its structure is largely governed by a new set of formal elements. Aristophanes' Frogs had a chorus of initiates, who charmed the audience by their nostalgic evocation of the old annual procession to Eleusis, suspended at the time because of the Spartan occupation of Decelea. This chorus of initiates sang and danced between the dialogue scenes a series of specially composed, memorable lyrics which were relevant to the plot, to the city, and to the period; they and their leader also delivered the parabasis. This vivid, lively, functional chorus is replaced in Menander by only a dim shadow: a κ⋯μος of tipsy young men who have no function whatever in the plot, who serve merely to entertain the audience in the intervals between the five acts with a song-and-dance routine whose words are not preserved and possibly were not even specially composed for the play by its author.