This article critically examines the frequent claim that Pherecydes of Syros deliberately composed his treatise to be read figuratively. More specifically, it is argued that mythopoeic images from the sixth century BCE ought to be distinguished from Classical and Hellenistic allegories lest later categories and distinctions be anachronistically projected onto an archaic thinker. Since this study shows how mythopoeic images are used to fill conceptual gaps in abstract discourse, and how philosophical vocabulary arises in the process of metaphorization, its findings might have implications beyond the context of Pherecydes’ contribution to the development of the allegorical tradition.

Scholarship on Roman political thought and its legacy, especially anglophone, has rapidly expanded over the last decade. The main drivers of this renewed attention to Roman political ideas and institutions are an historical interest in the collapse of the Roman republic; a philosophical interest in republicanism; and a growing sensitivity to the originality of Roman thinkers, especially Cicero, in contrast to the older view that they were simply derivative of the Greeks. In this essay I will discuss recent publications on Cicero and Roman political ideas. After offering an overview of key themes in this new scholarship, I seek to suggest promising directions for future research and encourage the growing interest in Roman political thought and Cicero in particular. Cicero provides a fascinating link between ideas, institutions and action on the ground and he is therefore with good reason at the centre of much of the rapidly expanding literature on Roman political thought. In addition, given his interest in developing a theory of justice as the foundation of the state (res publica), a focus on Cicero will help explore the legacy of republicanism from the angle of his ideas about justice while paying attention to scholarship placing these ideas into their historical and institutional context.

The opening of Book 4 of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica finds its protagonists confounded by the loss of Hercules, their hero-of-heroes whom Juno has caused to run off. As the Argonauts deliberate, loyalty to the man contends with the desire to carry on his heroic labor, presented in terms of Vergilian arma uirumque. This paper uses the debate over Hercules’ abandonment as a case study for Valerius’ engagement with Vergil’s celebration of the fides, pietas and magnanimitas of his hero as the foundation of Roman political legitimacy. By setting Valerius’ Vergilian framing in dialogue with his engagement with Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and Horace’s Epodes, I argue that the Argonautica rereads Aeneas’ exemplary model as a guide to internecine conflict, exploring how the essential Augustan concepts of duty and familial fidelity may be encoded and reproduced to a very different effect.

This article re-examines archaic and classical treatment of beer drinking to argue, contra Nelson, that beer in archaic and classical Greek texts is not primarily feminine nor does it necessarily feminize its drinkers. Rather, a review of sympotic lyric, historiography, ethnography and Athenian drama demonstrates that beer is primarily an ethnic marker with no inherent gendered connotations. At the same time, in contexts where definitions of Greek masculinity are being constructed, beer can gain gendered connotations which enhance the ethnic otherness of the beverage and contribute to the definition of the Greek man. Any gendered implications of beer, furthermore, come not from the beverage itself but from the method of consumption, of sucking through a tube of sorts rather than sipping from a cup. This article thus argues that beer in the Archaic and Classical periods marks non-Greek status first and foremost and only secondarily effeminizes drinkers through associations with oral sex in contexts where ideas of masculinity are in play.

The Underworld is a ‘shared space’ for poets and their poems, but one that exists on different timelines to Upperworld spaces, such that it is built on cyclicality rather than linearity. In this article, I explore the cycles within and between the homoerotic Underworld poetry of Tibullus, Domitius Marsus, Ovid and Statius. Using a combination of traditional philology and queer temporal approaches, I show how characters ‘recycle’ through these texts, so that Tibullus’ Marathus cycles into Statius’ Philetus through metapoetic metempsychosis. I begin with the role of the Underworld in Latin poetry, before turning to Tibullus’ death, as commemorated by Ovid and Marsus. Next, I explore how Tibullus ‘kills’ Marathus, so that Ovid can hint at his being in the Underworld. Finally, I turn to Statius’ poem on Philetus to show how it continues the cycles of earlier poetry, before concluding with a discussion of the consequences of Elysium’s queerness.

In this paper I argue that the accepted reconstruction of Suetonius’ De viris illustribus has been shaped by unexamined assumptions that have been allowed to take on the appearance of fact. I begin by surveying the scholarly reconstruction of this work from the fifteenth century until today. I then examine two key underlying assumptions: that Suetonius planned and published his series of literary lives as a single compendious work and that it excluded men who were not writers or wrote in Greek; in both cases I propose alternative hypotheses. I lastly test these alternatives by sketching a new approach to a possible Suetonian book De philosophis. I conclude that the more we rid ourselves of a priori assumptions about De viris illustribus, the more clearly we can see that Suetonius’ interests and approach were remarkably consistent throughout all his lives.

In this article we offer an editio princeps of a new inscription from the Cycladic island of Paros and discuss its implications for understanding Parian co-operation with Dionysiοs I of Syracuse in the Adriatic in the early fourth century BCE. We argue that the text throws light on the Parian colonization of Pharos, and is related to activities of the Parians in the Adriatic in what seems to be the result of local Parian strife and strong anti-Athenian affiliations on Paros. We explore possible interpretations of the inscribed decree and their implications for the relationship between the Parians and Dionysios.