This chapter challenges the supposed transformation “from Baal Hammon to Saturn” in North Africa one of the chief grounds upon which narratives of cultural continuity are predicated. It argues that instead of simple syncretism or the persistence of a god, the material signs used to construct and identify the deity to whom stelae were dedicated underwent important transformations in the second and third centuries CE, changes closely tied to the experiences and practices of empire. Stelae of the third and second centuries BCE made a god present indexically; stelae of the imperial period embraced iconicity in ways that were entangled with empire, including new divine epithets tied to imperial authority and new road systems in the province. And by the end of the second century CE, this iconic system could even work to perpetuate clear social hierarchies.

The opening lines of Ajax are spoken by the goddess Athena, who addresses her favourite, Odysseus, as an adherent of Harm Enemies: he is tracking down an enemy as usual, in a manner worthy of his traditionally tricky persona. She is the dearest of gods to him, and they enjoy a solidarity inherited from the Odyssey. He places himself in her hands, as he has always done in the past. But despite the bond between them, a conflict of values emerges. When Odysseus is reluctant to view the mad Ajax Athena scolds him as a coward. She implies that any kind of fear or ’reluctance’ constitutes cowardice.

Aristotle here considers the effect of diction, or word choice, on rhetorical argument. Metaphors, epithets, special dialects, the use of the voice to convey passion or emotion, and the necessary parts of any speech are all considered here.

Assesses how Quintus’ interval poetics is revealed in the compositional components of the poem. Analyses the formal aspects of the Posthomerica: vocabulary, formulae, similes and gnomai. Argues that rather than constituting imitatio cum uariatione, these features offer the reader a series of lenses through which to view the poet’s conception of the Homeric text and his understanding of his role in creating more of it.

Jary and Kissine examine the meaning of imperative sentences, taking the existing relevance-theoretic semantic analysis, in terms of the desirability and potentiality of the described state of affairs, as their point of departure. In their view, a complete account of the interpretation of imperatives has to explain how they can result in the addressee forming an intention to perform an action, and this requires the theory to make room for ‘action representations’ (in addition to factual representations, such as assumptions). They claim that the imperative form is uniquely specified to interface with such action representations.

In this chapter, Diane Blakemore focuses on two kinds of linguistic phrase which seem to be inherently expressive, nominal epithets such as 'the idiot' and small clauses such as 'you angel'. Blakemore argues against accounts that treat these structures as linguistically encoding the property of expressiveness and in favour of a relevance-theoretic account according to which they communicate a particular conceptual content that guides the addressee in identifying the attitude the speaker holds towards the target individual. Expressiveness arises when the main relevance of the utterance comes from this information about speaker attitude.