An anonymous biography of Lucan known as the Life of Vacca attributes to the poet the composition of a work called Siluae. This information has been accepted by scholars with regard to both Lucan and Statius, thus transforming Lucan into a predecessor of Statius’ Siluae. This article seeks to demonstrate that neither the manuscript tradition of Lucan's biography nor alleged references to Lucan's Siluae in Statius’ collection substantiate the affirmation that Lucan composed a work called Siluae. It is argued that the Life of Vacca is most probably late and its very long catalogue of works (mostly problematic or otherwise unknown) aggrandizes Lucan in response to the need for a commendatory biography of the poet when he became a school author. Pomponio Leto is responsible for perpetuating the mention of Lucan's Siluae by including it in his influential biography of Lucan (the first to reach the printed press). It is further argued that the circumstances of the tradition of Statius’ Siluae explain Leto's acceptance of Lucan's work of the same title. Leto was working on a commentary on the recently rediscovered Siluae, which explains his inclusion of a work called Siluae in his biography of Lucan, a great poet who had preceded Statius. Finally, this article deconstructs the theories that find references to Lucan's Siluae in Statius’ Siluae or that justify Statius’ silence about Lucan's Siluae with its political motifs.

This article proposes that Horace's Epodes and Ovid's Metamorphoses open with significant acrostics that comprise the first two letters, in some cases forming syllables, of successive lines: IB-AM/IAMB (Epod. 1.1–2) and IN-CO-(H)AS (Met. 1.1–3). Each acrostic, it will be argued, tees up programmatic concerns vital to the work it opens: generic identity and the interrelation of form and content (Epodes), etymology and monumentality (Metamorphoses). Moreover, as befits their placement at the head of collections, both acrostics negotiate the challenge of literary commencement. The introduction reviews recent developments in acrostic studies and discusses important predecessors and parallels for Horace's and Ovid's ‘two-letter’ and syllabic acrostics. Two subsequent sections examine the acrostics singly, and a conclusion compares the dialogues that these acrostics open between author and reader, underscoring the welcome challenge which Ovid's acrostic offers to the prevailing scholarly view that this form of wordplay is a strictly visual affair.

This paper presents two proposals to improve the text of an important passage in Manilius’ Astronomica, 1.456–68, in which the poet explains natura's rationale for arranging the stars in such a way as to create only a partial, rather than a full, representation of the constellation figures. The text of line 464 is repunctuated in order to give proper emphasis to natura's parsimonious disposition of the stars. Scholars have noted that the sentence atque ignibus ignes | respondent in 466–7 is not consistent with the poet's account of how the constellation figures were delineated nor with what an observer sees in the heavens. The conjecture insignibus (neuter plural), for the transmitted atque ignibus in line 466, is offered to indicate that it is the distinctive features (insignia) of the figures to which specific stars correspond and by means of which the figures are described. Attention is also drawn to a striking paronomasia in 466–7, designat … insignibus ignes, which creates a meaningful phonetic constellation of celestial fire (ignis), sign (signum) and insigne (distinctive feature) and thus provides evidence, on the linguistic level, of natura's providentia.

Plato's Republic VII suggests that if we ask someone to philosophize when they are too young, they can become corrupted (537e–539d). Republic VII also suggests that to avoid this corruption, we must not expose youth to argument (539a–b). This is not a reasonable option outside of Kallipolis, so a question arises: does Plato describe how to correct corruption if we do not manage to prevent it? This paper shows that a parallel between this passage from Republic VII and a passage from Laws X suggests that he does. Laws X describes an impious man who is corrupted in the same way as the youth exposed to philosophy prematurely in Republic VII. While we leave the youth to his corruption in Republic, the impious man is helped to overcome his corruption in Laws with a refutation followed by a myth (also called a charm). This paper analyses these steps in terms of Plato's psychology, showing that both corruption and correction require a destabilization of the soul, which in these passages is brought about through refutation. This destabilization allows for a reconfiguration, which, with something that can restabilize the soul (for example with myth), can be a reconfiguration for the better.

This article explores Herodian's History of the Roman Empire alongside Chariton's novel Callirhoe with an eye to how the minds of collective entities are represented and function in the two narratives. It argues that Chariton, unlike Herodian, elaborates on the diversity of emotions that characterizes a specific collective experience and has groups use direct speech throughout. These choices add vividness to the narrative and intensify the fictional sensationalism and dramatic character of the novel. It also shows that, whereas collectives in Chariton's narrative are primarily designed to highlight a specific characteristic of a hero, dramatize an event and enhance suspense, in Herodian's historiography they are an integral part of the plot and central to his historical analysis of contemporary political and social world. This article offers a new analytical tool geared towards the development of a poetics of the collective in ancient narrative as well as a poetics of fictional and factual narration in antiquity, and advances our understanding of the complex relationship between ancient historiography and novelistic writing.

The electoral scene in the period from 133 to 129 b.c.e. was doubtless unpredictable, even in the centuriate assembly, and any prosopographical modelling based on the available data would be adventurous. The report that Appius Claudius Pulcher (cos. 143 and bitter opponent to Scipio Aemilianus) ran in 133 for a second consulship is not implausible, and the possibility of a thwarted candidature, whatever its duration and the reason for its termination, should be registered. The successful candidates were P. Popillius Laenas and P. Rupilius, the latter a close associate of Scipio. The unsuccessful consular candidacy of Rupilius’ brother Lucius should be dated to 132, 131 or 130. The elimination of the first of those options by F.X. Ryan (CQ 45 [1995], 263–5) is challenged.

This paper argues that despite recent tendencies to minimize the differences between Posidonius and the Early Stoics, there are some important aspects of Stoic ethics in which Posidonius deviated from the orthodox doctrine. According to two passages in Diogenes Laertius, Posidonius counted health and wealth among the goods and held that virtue alone is insufficient for happiness. While Kidd in his commentary dismissed this report as spurious, there are good reasons to take Diogenes’ remarks seriously. Through a careful analysis of the sources, in particular of Galen's De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, this article offers a new interpretation of Posidonius’ ethics. It sheds light on Posidonius’ theory of virtues and shows that Posidonius must have granted a special status to things like health and wealth even if he did not regard them as genuine goods.

A scholium in codex Vaticanus graecus 156 provides evidence that Cassius Dio's Roman History once contained an explicit reference to the ludi saeculares of a.d. 204, something that has been denied in recent scholarship.

This paper seeks to respond to two questions posed by previous commentators concerning the arrangement of Trimalchio's porticus as described in Petronius’ Satyrica (Sat. 29): first, whether the freedman's house lacked an atrium; second, whether the cursores (runners) who are described as unconventionally exercising in the portico were pictorial representations or real-life athletes who would symbolize the social incompetence of the dominus. This paper argues that nothing in the text supports the interpretation of Trimalchio's house as having an unconventional architectural layout. Instead, as the narrative requires that Encolpius move quickly towards the triclinium, in his description the loca communia appear conflated, while he only sparsely notices a few relevant elements of the decor. The presentation of Trimalchio's porticus appears to have a functional rather than a simply descriptive purpose: it symbolizes both Roman contemporary practices (the loca communia as a distinctive unit within the domus) and the influence of Greek cultural habits (the characteristic association of colonnaded courtyards and athletics). The excerpt that describes the guests’ arrival at Trimalchio's house, therefore, serves an important narrative function, providing essential information about the character's origins, self-image and social life.

This paper deals with a case of Virgilian ambiguity, namely the famous hemistich at Aen. 4.298 omnia tuta timens. By highlighting a plausible reading with a causal force (‘fearing everything too calm’, ‘because of the excessive calmness’), it seeks to demonstrate that this hemistich is an ambiguous passage. This view is confirmed through the imitation by Valerius Flaccus, who, in alluding to the Virgilian passage (Argonautica 8.408–12), highlights its ambiguity by including both of the most plausible readings.

This article suggests a new reading for Oribasius’ Libri ad Eunapium 3.13.4. Based on evidence from both Greek and Syriac sources, it argues that the variant contained in Oribasius’ Synopsis ad Eustathium should be adopted as the correct reading of the original.

This article explores the allusive strategy of the late second-century cento-tragedy Medea attributed to Hosidius Geta, which recounts Medea's revenge against Jason using verses from the works of Virgil. It argues that the text's author recognized a consistent strand of characterization in earlier treatments of the Medea myth, whereby the heroine's filicide is presented as a corrupted sacrifice. Geta selectively uses verses from thematically significant episodes in the Aeneid—the lying tale of Sinon and the death of Laocoön; the murder of Priam; the suicide of Dido—at key points to foreground the theme of pseudo-sacrificial violence. Geta's use of Virgil evinces a keen appreciation both of the symbolism of the broader mythic tradition in which his text is situated and of the original narrative contexts of the verses he recycles. The article's findings contribute to a growing recognition of the creative potential afforded by the cento technique.

This article re-examines the scholium on Euripides, Andromache 445, which several scholars have used to support the claim that Andromache premiered outside Athens, and concludes that both the scholium itself and a remark in the play's hypothesis rather suggest that the play was produced in Athens as part of a dramatic competition.

This article proposes a new acrostic (SAPI) and telestic (SOIS) at Laus Pisonis 227–30. Their position opposite one another is an indication that they are to be read as a single sentence and an admonition to both dedicatee and reader that poet and patron need each other to gain eternal fame. The telestic allows us to reconstruct the poet's usus scribendi of the reflexive possessive pronoun suus.

This note examines the significance of Gylippus at Aen. 12.271–83 and argues that Virgil's narrative is an epitaphic gesture alluding to Nicander of Colophon, Anth. Pal. 7.435 and other epigrams from Anth. Pal. 7. Virgil's bilingual reader would participate in the Hellenistic Ergänzungsspiel and supplement further meaning to this otherwise generic scene.

This article examines how the historian deals with ‘information’ broadly conceived, especially its acquisition, retention and loss. Ammianus details a complex interplay between those who control information and those who must work with an information deficit. Just as this dialogue plays out within the text, however, so too does it with respect to the author's methodology, which dances between the poles of incomplete and complete information depending on circumstance. Ammianus thus becomes an author as hard to pin down as many of his characters, by turns the omniscient narrator and the dumbfounded participant.

This note suggests a new emendation for the spurious verb bibunt in Nemesianus, Cynegetica 68. The passage should read Nilique latentem in origine fontem.

This paper concerns the translation and interpretation of a succinct quip of Sextus Clodius, a rhetorician in Antony's entourage, on the subject of Fulvia's swollen cheek. The jest is often interpreted as having suggested that she tempted Clodius’ pen, and various double meanings have been proposed. Contextualization may supply a key. The remark could mean that Fulvia seemed to be testing the point of her stylus, and the dark allusion might then be to reports of the manner in which Fulvia had allegedly mistreated the severed head of Cicero.

Plato's closing reference to the Iliad in the Sophist has been largely overlooked in contemporary scholarship. The reference, a quotation from the confrontation between Glaucus and Diomedes in Book 6, forms part of a broader frame to the dialogue. The frame, with its recurring themes of identification and misidentification, helps us make better sense of the dialogue's final description of the sophist and its central concerns about the relationship between philosophy and sophistry. It also provides a revealing case study of Plato's use of Homer as part of a broader strategy for undermining simple appeals to authority.