Herodotus' reputation as a critical historian has been increased by such a wealth of articles and papers recently that it might seem superfluous to add to the bulk of material already available. There are, however, some radical notions embodied in Herodotus' treatment of the Trojan War to which further attention should be drawn.

The basic principles of successful narrative presentation are simple to state, if difficult to achieve. Selection and organization of material to make the desired point; sufficient variety of tone and pace to hold the audience's interest and to emphasize the point; and a proper appreciation of the context in which the point has to be made: these requirements seem to be valid, whether the narrative being presented is a literary history, an imaginative novel, or an archetypal story which starts with ‘An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman …’ For each of these narrative forms implies intellectual judgement by the narrator on his material, artistic judgement about its presentation, and assumptions about the audience for whom it is intended. I should like to consider some aspects of Tacitus' art of narrative presentation, and the connection of that art with his historical judgement.

In the Republic (519 E ff.), having finished his account of the education of the philosopher king, and having described the ideal life of pure contemplation in the Simile of the Cave, Plato makes Socrates say:

Then it will be our function as founders, I said, to compel the best natures to undertake the study which we previously declared to be the highest, to observe the good, and to make that ascent we mentioned, and when they have done so and looked their fill, then we must not allow them that freedom which they now possess.

The height of the building in which the fire has broken out, the location of the poor man's dwelling in it, and the relevance of both to Juvenal's sketch, have often been misunderstood. This misunderstanding, handed down from the early commentators, still lingers in such commonly consulted works as those of Mayor, Duff, Ramsay (Loeb), and, more recently, Peter Green (Penguin). These assume that verse 199 indicates a house that has three storeys and that the poor man lives in the third: e.g. ‘smoke is pouring out of your third-floor attic’ (Ramsay). The poor man's inexplicable ignorance (tu nescis) of the alarming events about him, of the inevitable din and commotion, even of the very smoke in his own home, has been astonishingly ascribed by some (so Mayor and Green) to his being asleep. Of this the poet gives no hint; that the fire may be nocturnal has scant relevance.

Where ought we to begin the story of the Trojan War? If we follow Homer, we shall begin with Paris and his mad folly or ate in abducting Helen (Iliad 24.28; cf. 3.100 and 6.356, and contrast 5.62–64 and 22.115–16). But the rape of Helen was a direct consequence of Paris awarding the prize for outstanding beauty to Aphrodite, when, while tending animals on Mount Ida, the prince was approached by Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite and required to adjudicate between their conflicting claims to be thought the fairest.

The names and natures of the three parties which struggled for power in early-sixth-century Athens have puzzled scholars both ancient and modern. The paucity and murkiness of the evidence have made progress difficult and the decisive contribution to the solution of the problem most probably lies in the hands of the archaeologists and the epigraphists. In the meantime some scholars have retreated into agnosticism. ‘The reasons for Athens' rejection of the Solonian solution are, except in broadest outline, lost.’ Scepticism is clearly an important tool in the handling of inadequate evidence, but the present article is written in the belief that some clarification of the problem is still possible with the existing evidence.

The amount of Ovid's surviving poetry is almost exactly equal to the sum total of poetry which has come down to us from Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and Propertius. Ovid wrote because he was a compulsive writer, ‘a poet utterly in love with poetry’ as Gilbert Murray aptly put it. He was the only classical poet to leave an autobiography, and in it he records that as a boy ‘I tried to write words freed from rhythm, yet all unbidden song would come upon befitting numbers and whatever I tried to write was verse.’ The quantity of Ovid's poetry, of course, cannot be made an excuse for lack of quality, but no indulgence need be begged and no allowances made for his masterpiece, the Metamorphoses. When the blow of exile fell on Ovid in a.d. 8 the Metamorphoses was substantially complete, much more so than the Aeneid had been when Virgil died in 19 b.c.

Modern Aristophanic scholarship is based on the belief that Aristophanes' plays are funny. Such a belief has not been universal; in antiquity, his characters and their language were regarded, at times, with strong distaste. Aristotle, for one, was not amused: indeed, he would have thought Aristophanophiles scarce gentlemen, since only an ⋯παίδευτος (an uneducated man) could relish the Old Comedy's γέλοια (E.N 1128 17 ff.). The pleasures appropriate to ignorance and learning could be seen (he contended) by comparing the old comedies (whose laughter was raised by α⋯σχρολογία, ‘obscenity’) and the new (which, achieving this same goal by ὑπόνοια, was fitter for gentlemen and scholars). Old Comedy's adherents, in fact, countenance buffoonery, and that is vastly different from wit (E.N. 1128a 15; Rh. 1419b 8).