As a literary genre and practice, philosophical and political epistolography seems to have been alive and well in the fourth-century Roman empire. We have fragments of twenty letters of the late third- and early fourth-century c.e. Platonist (Neoplatonist to us) philosopher Iamblichus of Chalcis (which are preserved in the early fifth-century Ioannes Stobaeus’ Anthologium [ = Flor.]) to former students and other contemporaries, some of whom appear to have been imperial officeholders (see Appendix); the Epistle to Himerius of Sopater the Younger (which is partially preserved in Stobaeus, 4.5.51–60, in sequential extracts; this Sopater is the homonymous son of the philosopher who had been Iamblichus’ student) to his brother Himerius on the latter's assumption of an unknown governorship (ἡγεμονία) in the East, probably sometime in the 340s or 350s (and so under the Emperor Constantius II); the Emperor Julian's Epistle to Themistius, which was likely written and published c.December 361/early 362; and the Epistle to Julian of the Aristotelian philosopher Themistius on proper rule (preserved in two Arabic manuscripts from the eleventh and fourteenth/fifteenth centuries), which seems to have been a response, in part, to Julian's Epistle to Themistius and perhaps was written to the emperor when both men likely resided in Constantinople at the same time. These philosophical and political letters are but a few examples from this period. All four authors mentioned above, who are representative of intellectual life in the East during the fourth century, produced epistles which reflect Greek political theory in a Roman imperial context.

Opening on Olympus and concluding with two trials involving ‘the Syrian’ (an obvious Lucianic persona), Lucian's Double Indictment (= Bis Acc.) presents a fantastical scenario that draws on Old Comic, Platonic and biographical models. In the first of the Syrian's two trials, a personified Rhetoric accuses the Syrian of abandoning her, his legitimate wife, for his lover, Dialogue. Dialogue, in turn, accuses the Syrian of hubris, asserting that the Syrian rendered him a generic freak when he forced him to accept ‘jokes, iambos, cynicism, and Eupolis and Aristophanes’ (ὁ σκῶμμα καὶ τὸν ἴαμβον καὶ κυνισμὸν καὶ τὸν Εὔπολιν καὶ τὸν Ἀριστοφάνη, Bis Acc. 33). Amidst this literary fantasy, Lucian seemingly adds an element of realism when the Syrian specifies that he was ‘almost forty’ (τετταράκοντα ἔτη σχεδὸν γεγονότι, Bis Acc. 32) at the time he left Rhetoric for Dialogue. This is notably not the only instance in which we find this age attributed to a Lucianic alter-ego: Lycinus in the Hermotimus (= Hermot.) is likewise described as being ‘almost forty’ at the time of the dialogue. This is strikingly also the same age at which the dialogue's eponymous interlocutor—he is sixty at the time of the dialogue—began his own philosophical education (αὐτὸς κατὰ σὲ γεγονὼς ἠρξάμην φιλοσοφεῖν τετταρακοντούτης σχεδόν, Hermot. 13).

This paper proposes a number of improvements to the text of Basil of Caesarea's Homiliae in hexaemeron 4 and 5. The biblical text poses particular problems for the fourth and the fifth homilies. Therefore, the text form of Genesis from these two homilies is discussed first, and then further individual instances from the fourth and the fifth homilies are examined. The passages are presented in the format of a commentary under the assumption that the reader has the GCS edition at hand.

Scholarship on Quintus Smyrnaeus has long moved past the point where he is considered nothing more than an ‘artificial imitator of a bygone age’. Rather, scholars generally recognize the dynamism of Quintus’ relation to Homer, as can be seen in the subtitles of two volumes on Quintus published in the past few years: Engaging Homer in Late Antiquity and Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic. Even in passages that are clearly modelled on passages in Homer, Quintus is no longer seen as slavishly imitating but as creatively rereading and re-imagining his works. Calum Maciver, perhaps Quintus’ most vocal champion, sums this approach up nicely, arguing that ‘Quintus imitates, manipulates, comments on, differs from, in sum reads, Homer’, and describing the epic as ‘a demanding text with intricate possibilities for interpretation’. And Maciver is hardly alone in this; various studies in recent years have shown that Quintus’ use of Homer reflects his own values and preoccupations, and those of his society.

In his play The Trojan War will not take place (1955), French novelist and diplomat Jean Giraudoux has his protagonist Hector struggle tremendously with convincing both Trojans and Greeks alike to prevent the looming war. Despite coming very close to negotiating a truce, Hector fails in the end owing to the belligerent aspirations of some other protagonists led by the Trojan poet Demokos. Cassandra's famous final line, ‘war cannot be avoided’, comes true and, in contrast to the title of the play, the Trojan War does indeed take place.

While commonly referring to us as ‘human’, ‘particular’ (μερικαί), or ‘rational’ (λογικαί) souls, in one striking passage, Proclus (In Ti. 3.259.21–7) instead describes us as

In a speech addressed to Polycles sometime after c.365, Libanius preserves the otherwise unattested claim that the Emperor Julian paid an unnamed doctor to kill his wife Helena, the sister of his cousin and Eastern rival at the time, Constantius II. However, he does so only in order to refute this charge which his former friend Polycles had made against Julian during a conversation concerning his reign. According to Libanius, Polycles had initially criticized Julian for being too generous to his favourites, and had cited his gift of certain villages to some eunuchs in proof of this allegation (Or. 37.2). He had also made some vague insinuations about the reasons for this generosity, but Libanius says that he was prepared to overlook this, knowing that they were not true and that Julian had made larger gifts to others. However, Polycles then claimed that Julian had contrived at the death of his wife Helena also (Or. 37.3)

Late Antiquity witnessed intense scholarly activity on Virgil's poems. Aelius Donatus’ commentary, the twelve-book Interpretationes Vergilianae composed by the fourth-century or fifth-century rhetorician Tiberius Claudius Donatus and other sets of scholia testify to the richness of late ‘Virgilian literature’. Servius’ full-scale commentary on Virgil's poetry (early fifth century) marked a watershed in the history of the reception of Virgil and in Latin criticism in general. Primarily ‘the instrument of a teacher’, Servius’ commentary was intended to teach students and readers to read and write good Latin through Virgil. Lauded by Macrobius for his ‘learning’ (doctrina) and ‘modesty’ (uerecundia), Servius attained supremacy as both a literary critic and an interpreter of Virgil, the master of Latin poetry. His auctoritas had a profound impact on later Virgilian erudition. As Cameron notes, Servius’ commentary ‘eclipsed all competition, even Donatus’. Significantly, it permeated non-Virgilian scholarship from the fifth century onwards. The earliest bodies of scholia on Lucan, the tenth-century or eleventh-century Commenta Bernensia and Adnotationes super Lucanum and the scholia uetustiora on Juvenal contain material that can be traced as far back as Servius’ scholarly masterpiece.

Eudemian Ethics II 6 is meant to introduce Aristotle's discussion of voluntary action in II 7–9. The majority of II 6, however, consists of a somewhat obscure discussion of the ways in which humans, alone among animals, are origins of action (ἀρχαὶ πράξεων). It is not at all clear how that topic is meant to relate to the topic of voluntary action until the following passage, towards the end of the chapter, in which Aristotle relates being the cause (αἴτιος) and origin of action to praiseworthiness and blameworthiness and to the voluntary (1223a9–16):

In the final book of his poem Lucretius spends some time discussing earthquakes and their causes (6.535–607). In accordance with the standard Epicurean practice, Lucretius considers four alternative physical mechanisms that may be responsible for the phenomenon. The first three explanations involve three different kinds of subterranean matter—rock (6.543–51), water (6.552–6) and air (6.557–76)—causing the commotion of the earth's deeper regions, which is then transmitted to the surface. The fourth type of earthquake is different, as it is produced by the seismic agent affecting the surface directly and potentially causing its deformation rather than just trembling. This happens when a gust of subterranean wind (6.583–4)

exagitata foras erumpitur et simul altam
diffindens terram magnum concinnat hiatum.

At In Platonis Timaeum Commentarii (= In Ti.) II, 1.393.31–394.5 Diehl (which is Atticus, fr. 28 in the edition of Des Places), Proclus follows Porphyry's inferences against the theory of Atticus, focussing more precisely on the fact that the latter's account of the principles does not correspond to the views expounded by Plato himself. In Diehl's text, based on a limited selection of primary manuscript-witnesses, the introductory phrase to this criticism contains a reference to the maker (ποιητής), which cannot easily be explained within the context. On the basis of a new examination of the manuscript tradition, and of the context of the passage, we will present a new conjecture that allows one to avoid the problems involved in Diehl's reading of the text.

In his poem ‘The Last Hours of Cassiodorus’, Peter Porter has the Christian sage ask: ‘After me, what further barbarisms?’. Yet, Cassiodorus himself accepted, even valorized, at least one form of barbarism that had been rejected by earlier rhetoricians: sardismos (σαρδισμός), the mixture of multiple languages in close proximity. In its earliest attestation, Quintilian classified it as a type of solecism (Inst. 8.3.59). By contrast, five centuries later Cassiodorus in his Commentary on the Psalms used the term three times to praise the mixture of Greek, Hebrew and Latin in the Latin Psalter. This reversal, from vice to virtue of speech, illustrates some significant changes in attitudes toward language and multilingualism that developed as Christianity reshaped Roman literary culture. For one, Christian preachers, modelling themselves on the plain style of the Gospels, embraced forms of speech that had been regarded as low and stigmatized. In the words of Augustine (In psalm. 36, Serm. 3.6): ‘better you understand us in our barbarism than to have been deserted in our eloquence’ (melius in barbarismo nostro uos intelligitis, quam in nostra disertudine uos deserti eritis).1 Secondly, Hebrew now entered the linguistic consciousness of the Roman literary elite as one of the three languages of Scripture. Even if in-depth knowledge remained rare, it was worthy of being mentioned alongside Greek and Latin, just as it had appeared with them in the inscription on Jesus’ cross (Luke 23:38, John 19:20). Lastly, linguistic variety itself came to be positively valued since it reflected the diversity of a church coming together out of many peoples. Commenting on the bride's appearance in Psalm 45, both Augustine and Cassiodorus saw the variegated adornment of her robe as a reference to the diversity of Christian languages.

Cicero's praise of Caesar in the Pro Marcello of September 46 b.c.e. has been much discussed for its sincerity or otherwise. Here I would like to point out some unobserved literary colour which may make some contribution to the argument, namely Cicero's subtle evocation of Hercules in describing the achievements of the victorious Caesar. Such an analogy is not unlikely in the context of Roman military image-making: Sulla in 78 b.c.e. and Crassus and Pompey in 70 b.c.e. had earlier encouraged connections with Hercules in analogous victorious contexts, and similar comparisons are later made between the foreign conquests of Augustus and those of Hercules in both Virgil (Aen. 6.801) and Horace (Carm. 3.14.1–4).

In his recent note on Hipponax in this journal, Joseph Cotter first offers ‘a revised version of LSJ's definition’ of ὄρχις. At LSJ (incl. Revised Supplement, 1996), s.v. ὄρχις I, ‘… testicle Hippon. 92.3 W. …’, he would delete the Hipponactean citation and rewrite the second definition, under ΙΙ (‘plant so called from the form of its root …’), to read: ‘from similarity of shape, 1 glans penis, Hippon. 92 (95 Degani), 2. <plant> from the form of its root …’. Cotter derives his new definition from his reading of that Hipponactean line (= fr. 95.3 Degani), καί μοι τὸν ὄρχιν τῆς φαλ[ … , which he supplements with the name of a marsh bird, φαλ[ηρίδος, also redefined. This supplementary ‘coot’ is said to mean ‘cock’, so that the narrator of the fragment's description of (probable) treatment for sexual impotence tells how a Lydian woman ‘thrashed with fig-branch (4, κ]ράδηι συνηλοίησεν) the glans of my cock’. We are presented, then, with two previously unattested meanings of two nouns, ὄρχις and φαληρίς, and an accommodating correction of LSJ. What—I have asked Cotter—might Henry Liddell have thought of these innovations, familiar as he undoubtedly was with Humpty Dumpty's semantics!

This note offers two related arguments. First, I supplement the existing scholarly consensus that the speaker of Sophocles’ Tereus fr. 588 Radt is Procne by suggesting that her addressee is a shepherd (henceforth ‘Shepherd’), whose existence was recently discovered and confirmed by a new papyrus for fr. 583. Second, I attempt to contextualize P.J. Finglass's placement of fr. 583 in the first episode of the play and to respond to the ‘internment’ problem posited by David Fitzpatrick by suggesting that the play takes place on an anniversary or some sort of commemoration of Philomela's supposed death. This proposal justifies the doleful tenor of the fragment and its generalizing subject-matter, the lonely plight of married women torn from their natal families, and resolves the question of Procne's state of knowledge about her sister's fate; and it allows for the internment of Philomela to figure into the play's plot by making Philomela's ‘death’ an established event before the play begins, as Gregory Dobrov suggests.

In January of the year a.d. 69, Marcus Salvius Otho, disappointed in his attempt to be named Galba's heir and successor, fomented revolt among the praetorian guard. Trading on the praetorians’ own discontent at not receiving the donative, he began to win over the soldiers’ favour. Tacitus relates that, when the attitude of the soldiers seemed ripe (haud dubiae iam in castris omnium mentes, Hist. 1.36.1), Otho himself came forth and began to implore them directly (nec deerat Otho protendens manus adorare uolgum, iacere oscula, et omnia seruiliter pro dominatione, Hist. 1.36.3); and after he accepted the oath of loyalty from the entire classicorum legio (Hist. 1.36.3), he felt ready to hold a speech encouraging the men to complete the deed by ousting Galba.

The most authoritative testimony for the text of Apuleius’ defence-speech known as Apologia or Pro Se De Magia is a Cassinese MS indicated with the siglum F (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 68.2), written under the abbotship of Desiderius (1058–1087) in a mature Beneventan script, which also preserves the text of the Metamorphoses and the Florida. The text that F preserves is unsurprisingly not flawless, and in this note I argue for the presence of a corruption affecting aut in Apol. 47.1. For the sake of clarity, I provide the passage from Apol. 46.6 to 47.2 below.

LSJ s.v. A defines ἀληθινός as meaning ‘truthful, trusty’ of persons and ‘true, genuine’ of objects, and offers Amphis, fr. 26 (preserved at Ath. Deipn. 2.57b and 7.277c, and identified in the latter passage as drawn from a play entitled Leukas) as an example of the second sense:

ὅστις ἀγοράζων ὄψον <- x- ˘ ->
ἐξὸν ἀπολαύειν ἰχθύων ἀληθινῶν
ῥαφανῖδας ἐπιθυμεῖ πρίασθαι, μαίνεται
Anyone who, when shopping for dainties …
wants to purchase radishes, when he has a chance
to enjoy alêthinoi fish, is crazy.