For Roman politicians, marriage could be a tool of advancement, a way of forging alliances among the influential and the wealthy. The major figures of the late Republic used marriage to realize their political hopes and to increase their political power. Such marriages and their consequences have been discussed often and much scholarly energy has been expended in exploring the ramifications of these alliances.

The anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus (25.1) introduces the emperor C. Julius Verus Maximinus (235–8 CE) for the first time as ‘Maximinus Thrax’. This is now a generally acceptable name for the emperor, despite the fact that it appears only once, here in the fourth century. So iconic is this geographical label, however, that the curious treatment of his origins by the most detailed sources, Herodian and the Historia Augusta, can be obscured. While both state that his birthplace was Thrace, they also point out that his origins were racially mixed. Herodian, a contemporary historian, calls Maximinus the son of mixobarbaroi, ‘mixed-barbarians’; a century and a half later, the Historia Augusta, in a long, largely fanciful biography, calls him a semibarbarus, a ‘half-barbarian’. His brief rule was therefore remembered as inaugurating a precedent that would come to plague the empire for decades: an emperor of dubious, even mongrel origins, elected by the troops, would bring cruelty and chaos to the state. This article considers how the Historia Augusta in particular used racial terms to highlight the difference between the legitimate rule of the senate and the illegitimate subversion of its authority by a half-barbarian from the periphery of the empire. This racial profile was fully formed only in the fourth century and is reflected in a range of other sources, demonstrating that contemporary political concerns brought to the fore debates on the dangers of racial mixing.

On a day without precise date some time in Judaea in the first century of the common era, an interview of exceptional historical importance took place between a representative of Roman power and a Jewish prophet. What passed between them has left an indelible imprint on history, although religious believers, historians, and theologians have struggled for almost two thousand years to comprehend the legacy. The Roman was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, general of a vast army on its way to Jerusalem, and the Jewish prophet, priest and pharisee was Yosef ben Matthityahu.

The year was AD 67. In the summer of the previous year, the priests of the great temple of the Jewish God in Jerusalem had suspended the sacrifices which had been held twice a day for more than two generations in honour of the emperors of Rome. The suspension marked the formal beginning of a disastrous revolt mounted by the Jews against the empire of Rome in the East. Josephus had been appointed as a commander as soon as the revolt broke out and he had been sent to Galilee, some 50 miles north of Jerusalem, to organize resistance there. After initial success, he had been besieged by Roman forces at Jotapata, 10 miles from Nazareth. And when it became clear to the rebels that they were likely to fall into Roman hands he alleges that they carried out an elaborate mass-suicide, killing their comrades, starting at the lowest levels in the command and working up.

If Herodotus borrowed from Homer the way the later tradition of historical battle description described fighting, adapted the array of the armies from the Homeric catalogue, and himself invented the ‘weighing’, the historian's declaration about why one side defeated the other, Thucydides was the creator of the battle speech – the paraklēsis or parainesis, cohortatio in Latin – that so frequently became a part of the depiction of ancient battles. There is, of course, a great deal of incidental talking and encouragement during fighting in Homer, and many of the sentiments that later authors were to use can be found in Homer as well. Herodotus borrowed from him the habit of including incidental snippets of encouragement before or during battles by the way (6.11, 8.83, 9.17–18, 9.42), and the habit was adopted here and there in later authors, and especially by Livy. So similarly the epipōleēsis, the general's going along the ranks of his army and addressing a few appropriate remarks to each different contingent: this imitated Agamemnon's tour of his forces in Book IV of the Iliad, and was to have a long life in historical authors.

The aim of this article is to briefly discuss the ingenious interpretations of Od. 13.104 and 11.122–3 that were put forward by Numenius of Apamea. As our understanding of this fascinating second-century forerunner of Neoplatonism has significantly improved over the last years, Numenius’ importance is now generally recognized to be twofold. First, he was instrumental in establishing a framework within which numerous philosophers from Plotinus onwards would operate. Second, he skilfully employed allegoresis for pedagogical purposes, which not only helped to promote his exposition of philosophy, but also stimulated critical investigations into the nature of myth and poetry. In that, however, Numenius’ hermeneutics marks a serious departure from Plato: when embracing allegoresis, Numenius combined Platonism with traditions sympathetic to the practice that Plato himself vehemently repudiated.

The riddle is probably the oldest form of humour and originated in the desire of primitive man to show off his cleverness. Having noticed some analogy in nature, he threw his discovery into the form of a question, hoping to score off a fellow-man who failed to produce the correct answer. The Riddle of the Sphinx is merely an interrogative form of the observation made by some early Boeotian that infants crawled, men walked upright, and old men employed a stick. It is a sign of the antiquity of riddles that among the Greeks they were usually expressed in poetry, showing that they go back to a time before writing was in common use and a verse form was a useful aid to memory.

The tradition of the riddle goes back to very early times. According to one account Homer is said to have died of vexation because he could not answer a riddle asked him by the boys of Cos: ‘What we caught we left; what we did not catch we have brought.’ Another early riddle is that propounded by Samson: ‘Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness.’ (It may be noticed that these two riddles are not actually put in the form of a question.) Dius, the historian of Phoenicia, tells us that King Solomon and Hiram, King of Syria, sent each other riddles for solution and an agreement was made that the unsuccessful competitor should pay a large sum of money to his successful rival, with the result that Hiram had to pay a large amount to Solomon until finally he gained the upper hand by calling in the help of Abdemun, one of his subjects.

In iv. i. 64 Propertius calls himself a Roman Callimachus, and it is part of the Callimachean method to echo and mock epic style. There seems to be a good example of this in Book Four, which the commentators appear to have overlooked.

‘Crete, for religion, as for civilization generally, was the stepping-stone from Egypt to Greece.’ This statement of Miss Jane Harrison is far from being the belief of the orthodox classical scholar, and it is not the aim of this paper to claim its truth except in relation to one aspect of religion.

The Haghia Triada sarcophagus shows that the Minoans were probably familiar with the Egyptian conception of the Isles of the Blest, and that this figured in their cult of the dead in the model of a ship which is being carried to the dead man, to facilitate his journey to that blessed region. It seems that it was this conception that survived in Greek religion.

Pindar in his Second Olympian Ode (lines 76–84) describes such a region. Virtue, he says, brings its reward, and the good are allowed after death to live a life free from toil of any kind, in the company of the Gods. But a still greater reward awaits those who have undergone the threefold probation without taint of evil. ‘Whosoever have dared in either world to live three times a life pure from all evil, pass on the road of Zeus by the tower of Cronus, where the breezes of Ocean breathe around the Islands of the Blest, and flowers are radiant with gold, some on the shore from the shining trees, while the water fosters others. With wreaths of these and with crowns they entwine their hands, living the while by the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthus.’

Most people to-day are familiar with the elephant at the Zoo, and it is curious to recall that this vast, flabby-looking creature was first seen by Western men as a terrible and well-nigh irresistible weapon of war. When Alexander's men refused to follow him beyond the river Hyphasis in 326 b.c., one of the chief causes of their fear was a rumour that the people on the other side owned a squadron of ‘particularly large and courageous elephants’—six thousand of them, says Plutarch: and the Macedonians had recently seen all they wanted of elephants in their battle against Porus on the river Hydaspes. They had done their best against them, and indeed had won the day; but it had been a grim business. ‘The elephants’, we are told, ‘employed their massive bulk and their great strength in terrifying fashion; some men perished when they were trampled under foot, weapons and all, and their bones crushed to pieces; others were caught up in the elephants' trunks, lifted high in the air and dashed back to earth—and came to a shocking death. And many men were instantly killed on being gored by the beasts' tusks, and pierced clean through the body.’

We read in the fourth book of the Aeneid that unhappy Dido, when Anna came to her as she lay dying,

ter sese attollens cubitoque adnixa leuauit,

ter reuoluta toro est … (Aen. 4. 690–1).

PART 1

Collecting of weather-signs must have been a practice of considerable antiquity, for man has always drawn his sustenance from the land or from beasts that convert vegetable into animal protein. A hunter must know the best times for hunting; and for the agriculturist it is essential not only to know when the average seasonal changes of weather occur but to have some means of forecasting variations from the normal. We know two Greek collections of weather-signs, and there may have been a third which was older than either of these. Eudoxus of Cnidus, a pupil of Plato and a distinguished mathematician who lived about 390–337 b.c., had written a prose work on astronomy, entitled Phaenomena. This, at the request of Antigonus of Macedon, was put into verse, under the same title, by Aratus of Soli somewhere between 276 and 274 b.c. The Phaenomena of Aratus is a dull, pretentious piece of versification, of interest to us only because it contains a number of seasonal signs which Virgil has scattered about the Georgics. But the astronomical piece is followed by a passage of 422 lines, which has been given the independent title of Diosemiai or Diosemeiai, on the signs of less normal weather. This is undoubtedly the principal source of Virgil's main collection; and from it, therefore, I shall chiefly be quoting. But there does exist another work, Concerning the Signs of Rain, Wind, Storm, and Fair Weather, a prose work in the form of some twenty pages of notes.

Juvenal's Fourth Satire has not attracted the critical attention to which its interest and literary merits entitle it. It has a further claim to extended discussion inasmuch as it is precisely those features that make it an untypical specimen of Juvenal's work as a whole which throw light on his technical resources and, paradoxically perhaps, on some of the distinctive qualities of his own particular brand of satire.

The varied erudition of Catullus and of later Roman poets is wellknown. Among themselves doctus became a term of praise. So the modern reader has to spend some time acquiring the knack of appreciating this showy learning, and a student consults commentaries for instruction in myth and metre, star-lore, and place-names. My concern is with place-names, because they are not, speaking generally, given adequate treatment in the commentaries on Catullus, the Eclogues, or the Odes, which are designed for sixth-form and undergraduate use. An aspect of the learning of the poets goes largely unremarked, or if noticed, too often receives inadequate comment. The main purpose of this article is to restore to proper prominence the innovations made in the use of local names and adjectives by the Latin poets. Complete originality is not claimed; much of this knowledge, it will become clear, is to be found in the professional commentaries, for example, Pfeiffer on Callimachus, Nisbet-Hubbard on Horace, Gow-Page on the epigrammatists, Kroll on Catullus. But the information is scattered or patchy and needs to be brought together and fleshed out so that it impresses by its concentration. Only then will serious attention be paid to the poets' practice.

‘The Blinding of the Ogre’, a widespread folktale, has long fascinated and stimulated man's imagination. By far the earliest known version of the story appears in Book 9 of Homer's Odyssey, but the current scholarly consensus holds that this tale is earlier than Homer, was borrowed by the poet, and has survived independently in oral tradition down to modern times. In attempting to explore its origins, I must emphasize at the outset that I am not concerned here with the physical, geographical origin of the story–a problem which has thus far proved insoluble. Rather, my focus will be on the deeper, less tangible origin of the myth: is it possible to discover the idea, the significance, perhaps some symbolism or psychological appeal which lies at the root of the story and might help to explain its astonishing endurance and popularity in oral traditions spanning three continents and three millennia?

In November or December 1528 a citizen of Lyon was digging the foundations for a house on the northern outskirts of the town. In so doing he turned up the bronze tablet known to us as the Claudian Tablet. This document, copied from the Acta Senatus and displayed in the federal district at Lugudunum, is a verbatim report of the speech pronounced by Claudius in the Senate in a.d. 48 in favour of the admission to that body of certain Gallic chieftains. Forty-one years after its discovery a historian first placed it alongside the literary version of this same speech which we find in the Annals of Tacitus (xi. 24), and we have not yet exhausted the lessons which this vital juxtaposition can offer us. It is not very often that we are able to look over the shoulder of an ancient writer and see how he wields paste and scissors and box of paints. It is therefore with anticipation and relief that we turn to an undeniably authentic document known, in its original version, to Tacitus, and try to measure the historian's fidelity in using it.

Absent from Thebes at the first outbreak of Bacchic excitement, King Pentheus returns in haste, deeply troubled by reports of revelry on Mount Cithaeron and accounts of the captivating stranger who has led the Theban women astray (Ba. 212–38). When he meets the stranger he asks him about the appearance of the god (469,477) and the features of the rites (471) and complains that he cannot see the divinity who, the stranger assures him, is right at hand (500,502). Pentheus manifests great eagerness to see the Bacchantes with his own eyes, and it is by playing on this desire that the stranger lures him to Cithaeron and his death (810ff.)

In an article in CP 80 (1985), 33–34, entitled ‘Odyssey 21.411: the Swallow's Call', Luis A. Losada drew attention to the apparent oddity that the sound of Odysseus' bow-string, as he twanged it after stringing it in the presence of the suitors, is compared to the note of the swallow, since, for the most part, the swallow's twittering cry, in terms of sound quality, is traditionally associated in much of later Greek literature with either barbarian unintelligibility, loquacity, or sometimes lamentation – none of which is at all appropriate here. He suggests instead that a ‘thematic connotation’ was alluded to by Homer – the migratory cycle and vernal return of the swallow, and concludes that ‘the swallow and its call might well be called a quintessential metaphor for the idea of returning…No more appropriate bird call exists – the singing bowstring heralds the hero'sreturn.’

Alexander the Great was one of the central figures of ancient history as it was understood throughout the Middle Ages and into modern times. This article focuses on a significant change in the way in which he was represented after the arrival of humanist learning in England. While the medieval tradition, based on the Alexander Romance, generally made Alexander an unblemished knightly hero and a minister of God, in the fifteenth century a new way of thinking about him emerged that was influenced by the negative philosophical tradition represented by Seneca and Quintus Curtius. A central feature of such treatments was his cruelty: in earlier authors this was exemplified by the killings of the philosopher Callisthenes and of his childhood friend Cleitus. But in the Renaissance the judgement attached itself instead to the execution of Philotas, reflecting both a new critical approach to history and a new understanding of the legitimacy of kingly power.

Introduction

The reign of Marcus Aurelius, although he was acclaimed by ancient and modern commentators as an exemplary ruler, saw many calamities. Marcus was preoccupied with wars for the better part of his reign; the pestilence brought back to Rome from the east by Verus and the Roman army remained endemic in the city for many years to come, and the German wars from the late 160s well into the next decade posed great danger to Rome and caused great anxiety. In addition, a coup was executed. The usurper, Avidius Cassius, was the ruler of the Roman East for three months, enjoying support amongst the local population. After Verus’ death, the emperor embarked on war against the German tribes, but not before summoning priests and magicians from all over the world to help him, many of whom came from provinces far and wide. This attentiveness of Marcus Aurelius to religious issues (the representation of religious themes on his coins and monuments and his religious policy as a whole) introduced some changes to the Roman imperial tradition. Moreover his adaptation of policies that reflected new beliefs and the abandonment of old ones, was indicative of the political, social, and cultural developments during his reign. The desperation of the emperor is made most visible in the pages of Lucian’s Alexander.

It was never a foregone conclusion that the Roman Empire should have made any significant use of steam power. The basic principles of the steam engine were certainly known by the mid-first century A.D., as seen in the ‘wind-ball’ (aiölipile) described by Hero of Alexandria in his treatise on Pneumatica. Hero's device, in which a copper sphere was made to rotate by jets of stream when the reservoir of water underneath was heated to boiling point, clearly demonstrated that steam could serve as a source of propulsion. It was, admittedly, a very inefficient design: in modern reconstructions, either too much steam escaped through the joints or the joints had to be made so tight that friction became a serious problem. Such deficiencies were by no means insurmountable, and all the other elements necessary for the construction of a working steam engine – pistons, cylinders, an effective valve mechanism – can be found in Hero's writings or in those of his contemporaries.