The end of Iliad 3 presents the reader with a strange spectacle. The duel between Paris and Menelaos has been summarily curtailed by the intervention of Aphrodite; Paris has been spirited away from the battlefield and deposited in his bedchamber, there to enjoy with Helen the fruits of his labours; and meanwhile Menelaos

Since I published my views on the remarkable Vaticanus Graecus, the process of examination has been developed in greater depth. There have been an article from McCargar, comments from Lehmann and an extensive treatment by Longo. The latter in particular has taken into consideration my own arguments, which are presented fairly, even if sometimes the impression is given that I wrote with more assurance than was the case. I admit to the assessment that my views were hypothetical and fragile — they could be no more — and I do not intend simply to defend them. The essential difference between our approaches is that I was not prepared to accept the evidence of Vat. Gr. as it stood and so attempted to provide an explanation to account for error, while Longo can accept the evidence and so goes about trying to explain why it is credible, where it comes from and where it fits in. Let me say that in treating her views I fully realize that she appreciates the conjectural nature of much that she says.

Because the Poetics has had such importance for the theory and practice of tragedy, the loss of Aristotle’s thought about comedy is greatly to be lamented. The student of Shakespeare laments it all the more in that our understanding of the comedies has lagged behind that of the tragedies. This paper asks, however, to what extent the Poetics as extant can be usefully applied to the comedies of Shakespeare; and to what extent we can thereby remedy some deficiencies of comedy criticism. For instance, it is a strength of Aristotle that he does not flinch from stating the obvious: he extracts from the obvious something useful,or even fundamental. Contrariwise, the interpretation of Shakespeare’s comedies often flinches from the obvious, and falls in consequence into the supersubtle or the arbitrary. A return to the Poetics may therefore be of benefit when it recalls us to fundamentals.

In the 270’s and 260’s B.C. Syracuse found an energetic new leader, Hiero son of Hierocles, fought her last victorious war under his leadership and rewarded him with the title of king. How this came about has a more than Sicilian importance, for the same war indirectly and unexpectedly brought the Romans onto the scene and launched them on the First Punic War. But understanding Hiero’s first ten years is not easy. The sources are scrappy where they are not terse, and modern reconstructions vary widely, above all on the chronology — with crucial implications for his policies and position (not to mention for the run-up to the First Punic War) and for the reliability or the opposite of the main source, Polybius. The solutions in this paper will, I hope, help clarify a difficult period in Sicilian history, as well as throwing some light on the compositional method of Polybius.

While the exact meaning of Res Gestae 34, the powers of Augustus at various moments in his principate, and the significance of his auctoritas have been extensively argued, more practical questions about how his political arrangements might have been set into action have not generally excited much interest. In 1974 I put forward a suggestion about how the so-called first settlement of 27 B.C. came about. It was, in brief, that Octavian, as he then was, used the traditional consular mechanisms, and proposed for debate in the Senate a motion, de provinciis consularibus, and this explains why, on the one hand, the result of the debate was that he had provinces allocated to him, and, on the other, claims could be made that the res publica was restored, because one of the things which characterized res publica (as distinct from dictatorship or triumviral rule) was that the determination of who should command which army stationed in the provinces now lay, ostensibly at least, with the publicum consilium, the Senate.

Commentators have agreed that this poem is among the finest, if not the finest of Horace’s Satires. Naturally, therefore, it has been accorded much critical attention. One of the most penetrating analyses is that of Brink, who quite properly places considerable emphasis on the complex nature of the relationship between Horace and Maecenas. Rudd too adopts this line, relating Satires 2.6 to the sixth satire of Book 1, which describes the beginning of Horace’s association with Maecenas.

Debate continues as to whether the Didascalicus (or Isagoge, or Epitome) ascribed to Alcinous in the MSS. is a work of Albinus, the Platonist of the mid-second century A.D., pupil of Gaius and teacher of Galen. While there are similarities between the work and the paltry remains of Albinus, these are not sufficient to prove any more than that Alcinous was influenced by roughly the same kind of Platonism as Albinus was, and that he wrote in a style comparable at times.

Psychoanalysis is born of the fact that the notion of the self appears unable to take account of the whole of psychological life. Rejecting the limits of the self is recognizing the fact that it is invaded by forces which are completely other than it; it also involves both an analysis of why these are not understood, and a recognition that it is possible for the self to be obliterated. Plotinus asks: “But we . . . who are we?” (6.4.[22].14, 16). Does it involve flagrant anachronism to establish a link between the contemporary philosophy of the limits of the self and the Plotinian opening up to what is activity beyond the self? That this is not merely an arbitrary comparison may be demonstrated firstly on negative grounds, in that psychoanalysis rejects the cogito, exactly in the manner of Plotinus; the subject is born neither of itself nor of thought. However psychoanalysis, while accepting the partial state of the self, affirms the constitutive value of narcissism. The child’s identification with his image, called the mirror stage by Lacan(Écrto 1.89ff.: 1966 edn.), is the crucial stage in the building of the self. If this identification fails, or the image of the self is rejected, serious personality destructuring results. We are not here in the business of confusing philosophy with psychology, or child personality development with the progress of the spirit, but Plotinus’ reticence about images throughout the Enneads does bear a connection with Porphyry’s anecdotes in theLtfe of Plotinus: “Plotinus was ashamed of being in a body”; Plotinus refused to divulge any details of his family, or his place of birth; Plotinus was opposed to a portrait being made of him (Vita Plotini 1). This concurrence of life and writing cannot be neglected: Plotinus refused to allow Porphyry to write his biography, as if to assert the paradox of such an undertaking: an effort to paint the portrait of one who rejected all portraits.