The careful definition and in some cases active re-definition of power and freedom is at the heart of the ethical and social program of Horace's first book of Epistles, as several critics and commentators have discerned. It is not the only thing happening in Epistles Book 1, but it is one of the more prominent, and one which has elicited a variety of scholarly responses. Some, taking their cue from Epistle 1.1, have interpreted the poet's concern with independence as a heartfelt expression of his desire for poetic freedom inspired by the changing circumstances of his life and social environment. Others have sought to identify the philosophical sources of Horace's ethical views, including his views on freedom and power.

Travel was an inescapable fact of life for the citizens of early second-century CE Rome. People constantly travelled from Rome to Italy, from Rome to the provinces, and from the provinces to Rome; on business, public or private, as immigrants, or for personal reasons, including health and tourism. News of travel was also ever present. In a rigidly hierarchical society which paid continual homage to the princeps, but which also maintained the fiction that his actions were accountable to the Roman people, his extensive travels throughout Italy and the provinces were constantly documented and available for all citizens to see – through inscriptions, through panegyric, and through coins.

The epigram is an amusing attack on a meretrix (‘prostitute’), with the ironic sobriquet Chione (‘Snow White’) who, though technically a virgin, in fact specialises in fellatio. To make the point that it is Chione's mouth, rather than her cunnus (‘cunt’), which is impure, Martial suggests that when bathing she should modestly cover that part which in her case is put to sexual use, that is, her mouth, by transferring her subligar (lit. ‘loin-cloth’) from her bottom half to her face. Although the meaning is clear and the piece looks uncomplicated enough, a discussion of the precise way in which the humour works, and second, of the underlying social customs, offers unexpected rewards.

The insertion of the story of Io into Book 4 of Valerius' narrative of the Argonauts' voyage to Colchis follows a familiar pattern, for here we have an apparently irrelevant digression, delivered by a figure of authority, which experienced readers of Roman epic will expect to encapsulate some of the poem's key issues. Some will think of Evander's tale of Hercules and Cacus in Aeneid 8 or of Adrastus' account of Apollo and Coroebus in Thebaid 1. And then there is Lucan's version of the struggle between Hercules and Antaeus in Pharsalia 4. Theoreticians will invoke the concept of ‘mise-en-abîme’, because Valerius' inclusion of this standard epic device creates semiotic expectations.

Some recent treatments of the Augustan Principate have discussed the title Pater Patriae (= PP) as the expression of a relatively detached and uncontroversial idea. In earlier papers on the significance of this title, however, I have tried to describe its political volatility for both Cicero and Caesar. Cicero's title was applied to him in the wake of his execution of the Catilinarian conspirators; it was meant to characterise him as Rome's saviour, rather than as a murderous tyrant and oppressor. Caesar's title was equally a counter to accusations of murderous tyranny; he did not take Roman lives through civil war, he saved them through the exercise of dementia. Caesar's honour, furthermore, was clearly decreed to him in the form Parens Patriae – parens being a widely used, positive term for a benefactor; Cicero is referred to as both pater and parens in the fractious discourse which followed his consulship. Given the ever-present dichotomy between the father and the tyrant, and the general environment of élite competition, it appears that the form of Caesar's honour implies a deliberate contrast with the claims of Cicero, viz. Caesar's paternal role was certainly about giving or enhancing life, rather than taking it.

Louis XIV may have made the image of the ‘sun-king’ his own, but the equation of monarch and sun has a long pedigree that stretches back into antiquity. For the Roman emperors, an association with Sol became commonplace, and both Caligula and Nero were explicitly saluted as νέος Ἥλιος. One of the earliest rulers to have adopted sun-related iconography within the western tradition is Demetrius Poliorcetes. His self-identification with Helius is not, to be sure, the most pronounced of his divine relationships. This was a king whose elevation to divine status in the Greek world of the late fourth and early third centuries was accompanied by a great number of religious and semi-religious associations: honoured by Athens as a Saviour, Demetrius himself seems to have cultivated above all an identification with Dionysus, whose combination of ferocity with a delight in wine and revels seems to have appealed to the character of the young king. Nonetheless, it is clear that imagery of the sun and of the heavenly bodies was employed of Demetrius in the representations of his status and power. The most explicit instance belongs to an ithyphallic hymn performed in Athens in 291/90 BC, in which Poliorcetes was hailed as the sun.

The arrival of Aristeides, Miltiades, Solon and Perikles in Eupolis' Demes was arguably one of the most celebrated scenes of Attic Old Comedy. Platonios (diff. char. 13-4) praises Eupolis for ‘being capable of resurrecting (ἀνάγειν) from Hades the characters of lawgivers and through them to discuss the establishment or the repeal of laws.’ Aelius Aristides (3.365) observes that ‘a certain comic poet depicted four of the Athenian leaders as coming back to life (ἀνεστῶτας).’ Platonios uses the verb ἀνάγω to refer to the ascent of the four statesmen to the upper world, whereas Aelius Aristides chooses ἀνίστημι. Both ἀνάγω and ἀνίστημι describe an upwards movement, and suggest a return to the world of the living. Neither of them, however, specifies the nature of this journey.

In early 58, the tribune Clodius proposed a lex de capite civis Romani reaffirming the essence of an earlier lex Sempronia, that no Roman citizen should be put to death without a trial. Since Cicero, as consul in 63, had overseen the summary execution of five men, he was, without doubt, the target of Clodius’ rogation. On the day before the bill de capite civis Romani was voted upon, however, and at the insistence of friend and foe alike, Cicero departed from the city, but his ‘timely’ exit did not put an end to this episode. Very soon after his departure, chattels were removed from his estates under the aegis of the consuls, and his wife was subjected to financial harassment.

Herodotus has a lot to say about slavery and about particular slaves and groups of slaves. The broad theme was, of course, central to his historical conception and presentation of the Persian Wars and of warfare in general, as well as being key to the contrasting nomoi whose range and significance he is concerned to explore. Against that large background, I wish to examine Herodotus' understanding of slavery and slave-trading on the north coast of the Black Sea, with a view to a fuller appreciation of his Histories and of exchange in the region. Three broad observations will assist.

Although F.M. Cornford’s name was already known to me from his commentary on Plato’s Theaitetos, my first acquaintance with his Thucydides Mythistoricus came in my earliest years of teaching Ancient History in the mid-1970s under the tutelage of the one to whom this essay is dedicated. I have drawn on Cornford’s book regularly when teaching Greek History, and found it useful as a provocation to students reading Thucydides. With the centenary since its publication looming, two years ago I felt it was high time to learn more about the context in which the book arose. Already a generation ago, W.M. Calder III identified Cornford as ‘an outstanding scholar, a personality, and a man involved in the issues of his time’ who merits a biography.

Many scholars have commented on Menander's facility in alternating between tragic and comic forms of the iambic trimeter, and the subtle effects he creates thereby in manipulating the mood of a scene. But characteristically these effects are interpreted solely in dramatic terms, and the statements made are rather vague, at the most detailed (and rarely then) merely noting that in a given line a particular tone is created by the overall form of metre used. What I aim to show is that deliberate metrical manipulation of a quite different kind is also involved, and in order to appreciate better Menander's art we need to attend to the metrical form of individual words.

This paper does not aim to establish the ‘dramatic date’ of Plato's Gorgias, nor does it seek to establish with any precision the date at which Euripides’ fragmentary Antiope was written. Nor does it aim to show that Athenian anti-intellectualism had some fixed beginning and conclusion rather than persisting, in some fashion, as long as intellectuals frequented its public places. It does, however, have aims that may easily be mistaken for these. First, while Plato was not too particular about fidelity to a dramatic date, he frequently shows a strong desire to supply an intellectual background for the views that his characters will propound and the debates that follow from them. In the case of dialogues that employ a single interlocutor that certainly tends to produce a reasonably coherent dramatic date, but what matters to Plato is not so much fidelity to history as the appropriate intellectual context.

Basil of Caesarea (AD 329–378), his brother, Gregory of Nyssa (335–394), and their friend, Gregory Nazianzen (328–389), are a group of three great Christian thinkers of the late 4th century AD known as the ‘Cappadocian Fathers’. All were steeped in the culture of traditional Hellenism, and at the same time were great theologians and leaders who steered the Christian church of the eastern Roman empire in the turbulent years of the late 4th century. Theologically they are best known for bringing to a close the Arian controversy that had wracked the Christian church for most of the 4th century. Basil, called ‘the Great’ in the Christian tradition for his leading role in steering the Arian controversy to a conclusion, is also known for his reforms of the unruly ascetic movement in Asia Minor, documented in such works as his Asketikon. As a result of his labours he effectively established Greek cenobitic (common-life) monasticism. But his influence as a preceptor of Christian monasticism was destined to spread far, both east in Syria and in the Latin West. A Latin translation was an important source of the Rule of St Benedict, which set the tone of western monasticism for many centuries to come.

I begin with a quote from W.R. Johnson on Propertius 4.11: ‘When we have finally gotten to Cornelia, whose central message is that the game of recusatio has ended, overwhelmed by her chilly sublimities and conquered by the powers of her Roman Truths and Virtues – when the performance ends and the silence begins, we may be shocked to hear Cynthia laughing loudly at the lachrymose deity and the metonymic skid that has now enfolded him.