This paper offers a new perspective on a well-known topic: Seneca’s quotations from the Aeneid in his Moral Epistles. It takes as a starting point the commonly held view that Seneca uses Virgil, sometimes altering the text, sometimes decontextualizing it, to support his Stoic ideas, but without implying that this was originally in Virgil’s mind. An analysis of both the content and the form of the quotations shows that Seneca uses them not only to convey Stoic ideas but also to provide a narrative. Regarding the content, Seneca avoids descriptive passages, preferring instead passages focussed on a few key concepts: virtue and fighting, god and fate, death. These are at the same time the main themes of the epic poem and those of the Moral Epistles. The distribution of the themes throughout the collection and the contextualization of the quoted Virgilian lines reveal a narrative behind Seneca’s choices, which in the beginning aims at improving one’s virtue and then proceeds, toward the end, to an acceptance of death. As the author of his Epistles, Seneca uses the quotations from the Aeneid to describe his coming to terms with death. This is further stressed by the frequency of dialogic exchanges among the quoted lines: given the overlap between the fictive dialogue of the letter (author/reader) and that of the quoted lines, there is an identification of the two epistolary characters with the epic ones, and this contributes to Seneca’s self-portrayal as a master of philosophy and as an old man facing his approaching end.

This paper argues that the unknown editor of Ad M. Caesarem et inuicem arranged the letters in their non-chronological order so as to create a work that is essentially historical fiction, providing the reader with a romanticized version of the early life of Marcus Aurelius, a Marcopaedia of sorts or even a quasi-prequel to the Meditations. The paper demonstrates that the anomalous Book 5—full of shorter, less elaborate letters—can be read not only as an appendix composed of leftover letters but also as a part of the broader narrative. Book 5 creates a sense of closure to the epistolary fiction created by the editor. In particular, this article focusses on the recurrent motif of Fronto’s health; the frequent references to Fronto’s illness work in a metaliterary fashion to signal the impending conclusion of the work, creating a sense of resolution for the health/sickness letters appearing in Books 1–4. The sickness/health topic also connects to certain philosophical topoi regarding death, illness and consolation—a connection that is appropriate in light of the young Marcus’ burgeoning interest in philosophy.

This article explores Lucian’s treatise, How to Write History, in the context of ancient rhetorical and literary theory. While situated within the domain of historiography, the treatise prioritizes issues related to literary composition, such as the linguistic register and content selection deemed fitting for the historical genre. Through comparisons with critics and theoreticians like Aristotle and Demetrius, this study re-evaluates Lucian’s instructions for preface writing and other stylistic guidelines throughout the work. The conclusions highlight Lucian’s innovative approach to historical composition, influenced by rhetorical and literary theory yet reshaped to fit his vision of history and its purpose. Additionally, the examination reveals Lucian’s strategic use of rhetorical and literary theory in critiquing not only writing style but also issues intrinsic to history.

The lion’s share of attention given to the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas has focussed—not unreasonably—on Perpetua, the eponymous heroine, and on the ways in which her voice and character have been manipulated. But she is not the only figure in this text who is made to sing a tune. This article concentrates on the two military characters mentioned in the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas—Pudens, optio carceris, and the unnamed tribunus—to suggest that we should pay more attention to the deployment and characterization of minor martyrological characters. An examination of Pudens and the tribune reveals previously understudied facets of the text, such as the anonymous Editor’s hand in attempting to stitch together Perpetua’s diary with his own concluding narrative, and the anxiety of the Carthaginian Christian community to be positively recognized by Roman authority figures. Finally, this examination contributes to previous debates over the text’s original language and date of composition, suggesting that the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas was written in Latin in the early third century—against a recent charge that the text is a late antique forgery.

Nemesianus’ eclogues are an important witness to the development of classical culture, being the last extant collection of bucolic poems before the dramatic socio-political shifts of the fourth century. Within his reuse of Virgilian and Calpurnian characters, tropes and narrative structures, however, resides a consciousness of contemporary issues political, societal and cultural. In none of the third-century poet’s four eclogues is this more apparent than in his programmatic first. This article reads Nemesianus’ inaugural eclogue as a fictionalization of such concerns, analysing its thematic structure with a view to the poet’s historical context. Amidst the preoccupation with loss, senectitude and nostalgia, it becomes clear that Nemesianus intended his eclogues—with the first as its primary expression—to be a poetic response to the crises of his era, one which finds recourse not in hoping for a new political Golden Age but in the consolatory and preservative power of a poetry oriented towards—and reverent of—the past.

Proba’s Cento Vergilianus contains a corruption at line 42, sometimes printed as two half-lines separated by a lacuna (42a–b). Previous attempts to emend the passage based upon the four classical elements have met with limited success. This article argues for a novel reconstruction of the passage based upon the six days of the biblical creation, summarized in reverse. Two possible variants of the reconstruction are presented and evaluated on textual, metrical, compositional and contextual grounds.

This article combines allegorical, symbolic and metaphorical readings with modern theoretical approaches (primarily, affect theory) to explore the representations of objects and bodies within Peristephanon 9. In Prudentius’ poem, the tortured body of Cassian overlaps with the tormented soul of the poet; the written text is both a co-actor in Cassian’s death and a vehicle for the perpetuation of his extra-textual memory. Figurative language provides words and concepts with new meanings so that a pen can transform into a sword, writing into torture. Through a process of materialization and resemantization, the physical objects become agents in the narrative construction.

Late antique laws are rhetorically crafted and often bolstered by expressions of popularized philosophy and theology. This article presents historical evidence that reveals a close link between literary culture and the drafting of laws. It then examines a constitution of Valentinian III against tomb violators (Nouella Valentiniani 23) as case-study. The rhetorical preamble of this law presents a concise argument for the immortality of the soul. At first sight, the phrase nec uana fides which features in this context seems nothing more than a learned, yet merely ornamental, allusion to Virgil (Aen. 4.12) with no further bearing on the content. This article argues that the passage of Nouella Valentiniani 23 might in fact be a reminiscence of Prudentius (Cath. 3.196), who had used the same Virgilian tag to allude to Paul (1 Cor. 15:13–17), thus expressing faith in the immortality of the soul and in the doctrine of resurrection. The author of the Virgilian cento uersus ad gratiam Domini (or Tityrus) also redeployed the same phrase nec uana fides with reference to the immortality of the soul, and the cento’s intertextual relationship with Prudentius might contribute to the evidence about its date. This complex net of intertextual references (Virgil, Paul, Prudentius) bestows authority on this legal admonition and justifies an appreciation of the late Roman constitutions as literature.

This article reassesses the contribution of the late Renaissance scholar and teacher Petrus Victorius (Pier Vettori) to the reconstruction of the text of Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, which has come down to us in what is often a highly corrupt form. It proposes an interpretation of certain abbreviations in the marginalia in one of Victorius's copies of the Aldine Eudemian Ethics which reveals them as recommending readings rather than recording them; it proposes that many more of those readings constitute his own conjectures than previously thought. The article goes on to suggest why Victorius never produced an edition of the Eudemian Ethics as he did of other Aristotelian works, despite returning repeatedly, over much of his life, to the task of improving this particular text. Victorius is revealed nonetheless as a highly creative—but also highly disciplined—textual critic, at least the equal of his nineteenth- and twentieth-century successors.

The article discusses a passage in chapter 49 of the Hippocratic treatise On Regimen. It defends the transmitted text against a conjecture proposed by R. Joly, the author of the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum edition.

This note presents a new supplement for Euripides, Heracles 767.

In Plato’s Statesman , the stranger compares the statesman to a weaver. The modern reader does not know a priori how the statesman and the weaver resemble one another and therefore could be compared, but Socrates the younger reacts as if the comparison is natural. This note suggests, with reference to the gender division of labour in ancient Greece, that the male ‘weaver’ did not do much weaving but was a supervisor, which means that the fundamental similarity between a statesman and a weaver is that both managed subordinates. This cultural knowledge explains why the comparison seems natural to Socrates the younger.

This article proposes a new emendation to a problematic passage from the pseudo-Aristotelian Problêmata, section 19. It surveys prior editors’ strategies for emending the passage and explains why the new proposal is preferable. This emendation also is supported by the Latin manuscript tradition, as a concluding discussion of Bartholomew of Messina’s Latin translation reveals.

This note argues for the restoration of the MS reading ἀέξϵι in Orph. fr. 779d v. 5 Bernabé (= 287 Kern), which transmits verses from the poem Πϵρὶ ἐπϵμβάσϵων (On Planetary Entrances) attributed to Orpheus.

In this note I argue that the generally accepted view that Diodorus preserved a tradition which limited the fourth-century anarchy in Rome to one year is groundless, and that the author’s confused chronology of the Early and Middle Republic strongly suggests that in the source he followed the solitudo magistratuum lasted several years, as in other reports.

Following Janko's suggestion that two trimeters cited at Strabo, Geography 8.6.20 form a couplet from an unknown, possibly Aristophanic comedy, this note explores the resonance and meaning of the third citation contained in the same chapter of the geographer's work. It proposes that this third citation, which relates to a Corinthian hetaira's work at the loom and is possibly from either the same or a different comedy, contains a joke hinting at the Odyssey and alternative traditions regarding Penelope's chastity. This Odyssean echo thematically connects this citation to the comic trimeters, which also contain clear allusions to the Odyssey.

This note discusses two places in Statius’ Thebaid (6.22 and 6.224), in which the transmitted text may be improved, and proposes new emendations.

Anth. Pal. 11.418 is traditionally attributed to Trajan. The distich mocks a man’s large nose and is a typical example of a scoptic epigram. Even though the attribution to Trajan looks suspicious, scholarship has been inclined to accept his authorship. However, it is possible that the poem was written about the emperor instead, which would also explain the misattribution. This hypothesis, if correct, sheds light on the surprising opening anecdote of Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata (172E), which is dedicated to Trajan.

This note argues that the second line of the oracle in Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche (Met. 4.33.1) alludes to Ovid’s Am. 1.1.2. Like its Ovidian model, Apuleius’ line marks a shift in genre, and offers a further hint of the role Cupid will play in the rest of the story.

Sardismos is the name, in several Latin works of literary criticism, for a combination of more than one language or dialect in a sentence. Quintilian (first century c.e.) uses the term disparagingly; the Christian author Cassiodorus (sixth century c.e.) uses it positively. A similar term, sardîstôn, is found in the rabbinic work Exodus Rabbah 2, created in the sixth-century Byzantine empire. This article is a short study of this term, the history of its misinterpretation and reinterpretation, its meaning in context, and its relationship to sardismos.