The basis of comparison between the Homeric poetry and Modern Greek folksong is that in either case we have a body of poetic texts behind which stretches a long tradition of oral composition; they both have existed, roughly, in the same geographical area, including mainland Greece, Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean and the Ionian Sea, Crete, and Cyprus; and they are cast in cognate language forms. But the two bodies of poetry are separated by a great time distance, though how great it is difficult to determine because whatever we can say about the origins of modern folksongs is hypothetical and uncertain.

Apollonius' Jason has been variously described by scholars as a ‘weak and insignificant hero’, a ‘tame and insipid’ character compared with that of Medea, ‘discreet, proper, quite weak, and somewhat colourless’, ‘never quite equal to the emergency, and can never rise above his immediate troubles’, ‘cold and selfish’, ‘uninteresting when he is not repellent’, an anti-hero, and a love-hero. But, with the exception of R. Hunter's view of Jason as a human being forced by necessity to carry out tasks which no Homeric hero was ever called upon to do, most scholars have erred in comparing the Hellenistic hero Jason with the archetypal hero of epic tradition.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that Cicero had a relatively small number of slaves in his urban household, reflecting his modest wealth compared to that of some Romans. The argument follows three lines. Firstly, there were relatively few job titles among the slaves of Cicero compared, for example, to those of the household of Augustus' wife Livia. This reflects Livia's relative prosperity, for the wealthier the household the more specialists it could support. The converse also follows: Cicero had fewer slaves with job titles, reflecting the smaller size of his household. Secondly, even those slaves in the household of Cicero who appear to be specialists because they had job titles were not really so since the tasks they were given were not as narrowly defined as their specific job titles suggest. Thirdly, other evidence from Cicero's correspondence and elsewhere suggests that Cicero's household was relatively small compared to other elite households of the Late Republic and Early Imperial period.

Over the last few years much work has been carried out on the export of olive oil from the province of Baetica to both Rome itself and the rest of the Roman Empire. The key for understanding the export traffic to Rome is the material from the Monte Testaccio in Rome, which is almost completely composed of amphorae from Baetica dating from the Imperial period, where a team of Spanish and Italian archaeologists have carried out two campaigns of excavations in 1989 an 1990 under my direction (Plate 1). This article also contains some other conlusions drawn from the work done in recent years by the team of Spanish archaeologists who work on the Monte Testaccio, investigating the topic of the Baetician oil trade.

‘These teachings are, therefore, no novelties, no inventions of today, but long since stated, if not stressed; our doctrine here is the explanation of an earlier, and can show the antiquity of these opinions on the testimony of Plato himself.’ This quotation, from Enn. V 1.8, where Plotinus is actually presenting his doctrine of the three hypostases – a metaphysical elaboration never envisaged by Plato – encapsulates the interesting relationship which links this great original mind to the other great original mind whom he wished to claim as his master. There is, of course, nothing strange, in the intellectual world of late antiquity, in this desire to base one's doctrine on some time-honoured authority; what is unusual is the degree of originality of the man who is doing this.

One day the shepherd Apollo saw a pregnant woman in the fields. A dark thought struck him: he wanted to see how the foetus was lying in her womb. He therefore killed the woman and ripped her open. Afterwards he repented and took refuge among the monks of Scetis in Egypt, where he became a hermit (133). By contrast, Hilarion came to be a hermit in a wholly honourable manner, as related by Hieronymus in his Life of Hilarion. He felt drawn by St. Anthony, gave away his inheritance, and embarked upon a life of solitude in the Gaza region. Apollo, Hilarion, and all other monks and hermits whose sayings and biographies have been I handed down by the early Church had in common that they abandoned the society they lived in and developed an alternative lifestyle. They were not, however, the first in antiquity to go against established norms and values.