According to Plutarch (Sert. 7.1–2) and Sallust (Hist. 1.83–4), a certain P. Calpurnius Lanarius killed L. Livius Salinator, a member of Sertorius’ staff in charge of military operations in the Pyrenees, in the early stages of the Sertorian War (82–72 b.c.). Through the analysis of the verb δολοφονέω in Plutarch's and St. Jerome's use of Sallust's Histories, this article seeks to demonstrate that Lanarius was an exile of the Sullan regime who treacherously assassinated his superior Salinator. The article puts forward the suggestion—not hitherto considered—that Lanarius was one of those proscribed.

Scholars have generally underestimated the level of Roman involvement in Africa in the period between the annexation of Carthage in 146 b.c. and Caesar's victory at Thapsus in 46 b.c., and the land in Africa which the Romans annexed has been conventionally called public land (ager publicus). This paper analyses the surviving text of the African provisions of the epigraphic lex agraria of 111 b.c. and notes that the term ager publicus is not attested in the provincial section of the law. The land in Africa appears simply as ager in Africa and the term ager publicus is confined exclusively to Italy in the law of 111. However, Cicero's references to Rullus’ agrarian proposal in 64/3 b.c. in the De lege agraria suggest that the term ager publicus was used to qualify land existing outside Italy in Rullus’ proposal. This paper argues that the concept of ager publicus as opposed to private land developed in Africa between 111 and 63 b.c., and that this was linked to privatization of ager in Africa in this period. The results of this study suggest a high degree of Roman exploitation of African land prior to the Caesarean and Augustan colonies in the 40s b.c.

P.Bon. 5 preserves the only known collection of ancient Latin model letters, accompanied by a Greek translation. This article argues that the Latin is the primary version and dates the composition to before the early third century. Comparisons with other model letter collections, principally ps.-Demetrius’ Epistolary Types and ps.-Libanius’ Epistolary Styles, locate the text within a wider literary genre. A new reconstructed text is provided in the Appendix at the end of this article.

In Aëtius 1.7.8 Mansfeld–Runia, Diogenes, Cleanthes and Oenopides are said to have maintained that the deity is the world-soul. However, the identity of the Diogenes whom the doxographer mentions here has long been a matter of scholarly dispute. In response to attempts to ascribe the doxa to Diogenes of Apollonia, this paper reassesses old arguments and proposes new considerations to argue that a fundamental aspect of Diogenes of Babylon's theology is at stake here.

The fragments of a hexameter poem about Dionysus recently discovered in a palimpsest (Sin. Ar. NF 66) reveal some different faces of Dionysus, including an Adonis-figure at the heart of a dispute between two goddesses (Persephone and Aphrodite), and a personified wine-god, Oinos, threatened by the machinations of his enemies in the court of Zeus. These palimpsest texts help to illuminate some of the allusions to the early life of the god that have long puzzled scholars, especially in some of the early Christian apologists and the collection of Orphic Hymns.