The bucolic poems of Martius Valerius, first published in 1946, used to be dated to the twelfth century, but thanks to the work of François Dolbeau and Justin Stover, they are now securely dated to the sixth. In this article, I demonstrate that Martius’ fourth eclogue draws extensively on two of the logical works of Boethius, the introduction to the second edition of the commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge and the translation of Aristotle's Peri hermeneias, both from the mid 510s. These works were well known in the twelfth century, but I corroborate the sixth-century dating first by connecting Martius Valerius with Martius Novatus Renatus, editor of a corpus of Boethius’ logical monographs in the 520s, and secondly by arguing that Martius Valerius belonged to a circle of students in Rome who attached themselves to leading senators, including Boethius. I end by considering Martius’ career as quaestor and consul.

Using evidence from the Sphakia Survey, a multiperiod archaeological project in south-west Crete, this article has two goals. The first is to contribute to a newly emerging field, the archaeology of sustainability. The investigation of sustainability in Sphakia uses five main kinds of evidence: environmental, archaeological/material, textual, oral, and patterns of activity that seem ‘difficult’ or ‘inconvenient’. Sphakia is a large area of highly dissected terrain with a wide altitudinal range – in many ways, a ‘tough’ landscape, where agropastoralism has been its main economy. The second goal is to introduce the concept of a Resource Package (RP), a combination of perceived resources in an area, as an analytical tool for landscape study. Evidence for identifying agropastoral RPs of various scales, used at a particular time, includes imports, such as pottery and obsidian, which can suggest exchange for a local resource or product; sacred sites; coins; texts and inscriptions; place-names and other toponyms; and maps. The concept of RPs can usefully be applied synchronically and diachronically to multiperiod projects like this, as well as more generally to other landscapes, ‘tough’ or not. Sustainable strategies (that is, maximising resources and RPs without exhausting them) were used in the Prehistoric, Graeco-Roman and Byzantine–Venetian–Turkish epochs in Sphakia; some may be relevant for the future.

With the reconstruction of the Prince of the Lilies (also known as Prince with the Lily Crown or Priest-King) from a group of fragments of painted stucco relief found in the palace at Knossos, Arthur Evans and the Gilliérons created not only one of the most famous icons of Crete's early Late Minoan past, but also its most controversial. Addressing a debate that has taken place over the last 45 years, this paper considers the question of the orientation and gesture of the figure, which some scholars would like to see as a right-facing boxer or deity with his left arm extended forward and his right arm bent at the side, rather than the well-known man striding to the left with his right fist on his chest. Focusing on the key relief fragment described by Evans as ‘male torso with the lily collar’, a comparison of the orientation of the eponymous piece of jewellery with contemporary depictions of necklaces conclusively confirms the leftward orientation of the figure to which the torso once belonged. The iconographic analysis of the gesture of the right fist on the chest and of the contextual associations of the waz-lily allow the ‘Man with the waz-Lily Necklace’ to regain his central place in Minoan religious imagery as well as in the monumental relief decoration of the Late Minoan I palace at Knossos.

The effectiveness of teaching strategies and resources that promote meaningful content learning is most pronounced when active methods such as project-based learning (PBL) are used to teach Ancient History (Molina, 2020, 53). Therefore, this study focuses on a comprehensive assessment of the methodological and historical competences acquired by students enrolled in the secondary education teacher training programme at the University of Cordoba (Spain). The research, which is non-experimental and quantitative, uses a Likert-type scale and involves the participation of 201 Masters students who have completed the course ‘Learning and Teaching Social Sciences’. The results of the statistical analysis show a positive evaluation of PBL in terms of historical understanding and its effectiveness in improving historical awareness. It is crucial to emphasise the advantages of active and collaborative learning inherent in PBL. However, it is also imperative to acknowledge the challenges that students face in applying their methodological knowledge to the secondary school setting. The transition from theoretical understanding to practical implementation is a significant hurdle for many students aspiring to a career in education. These findings underline the importance of promoting the seamless integration of innovative pedagogical approaches into teacher training programmes in order to effectively address the specific challenges of teaching antiquity in an educational context. Finally, this research was made possible by the Ministry of Science and Innovation's ‘Prueba de Concepto’ project, funded by the European Union under grant number PDC2022-133123-I00, and also by the CLIOGEN project (GINDO-UB/187) on Ancient History.

This essay takes as its starting point the newly discovered first state print of the large topographical plan of the Campus Martius of ancient Rome made by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the years around 1760. There are significant differences between the first and the more common second state (which was bound into the Campus Martius volume published in 1762) and they concern the form of the circuses, six of which are included by Piranesi in his plan. This essay will investigate those changes and propose a hypothesis regarding the motivations for them by looking at the antiquarian context with which Piranesi was familiar and taking into consideration his enthusiasm for on-site examination of ancient remains. Particularly relevant are the ruins of the circus of Maxentius on the via Appia just outside the city, a site which preoccupied Piranesi at various times throughout his career in Rome. The antiquarian material examined includes earlier writings on circuses, which had a marked effect on the way that Piranesi drew his circuses in the first state of the plan and on the changes he made, clearly visible in the copper plates from which the prints were made. The circus Maximus and circus of Maxentius as described by Pirro Ligorio, Onofrio Panvinio and Raffaele Fabretti are key to the genesis and development of the Campus plan.