Arma virumque cano Virgil sang, or professed to sing, at the start of his epic, and one may reformulate the import of his programmatic words to fit a new context. Obtaining weapons he can call his own is very often a key moment near the start of the career of a folk-tale hero. And very often it is the hero's mother who equips him with them. Paradoxically, this truth may be confirmed, e contrario, by reference to the Welsh story of Lleu Llaw Gyffes from the Mabinogion, for, in that narrative, the hero's mother Aranhry seeks to thwart at its inception the career of her son – whom she had exposed, since his very existence causes her so much embarrassment – by placing a Destiny or interdiction upon him: he will never bear arms unless and until she herself bestows them. The ban is circumvented by a cunning ruse: the magician Gwydion disguises her son and himself as peripatetic bards, in which capacity they are entertained in Aranhry's castle. When Gwydion conjures up a phantom army and fleet to besiege the citadel, the alarmed Aranhry is all too ready to bestow weapon and armour on the younger of her two guests – only to find the army vanished and her own son in possession of the arms she had sworn he would not bear.

The Porticus Octaviae was built in the Campus Martius sometime between 33 and 23 BC (Figure 1). There is controversy as to whether it was built by Augustus and dedicated to his sister, or commissioned by Octavia herself. The complex, however, which included a library and senate house was closely associated with Octavia and her son. The Porticus Octaviae fell victim to the fire of ad 80 and was probably restored by Domitian. An inscription on the propylon of the complex records its restoration, also after a fire, by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in AD 203. Little consideration, however, has been given to the importance of the Severan restoration in the context of this emperor's building programme. This article will examine the messages conveyed by the restoration of the Porticus Octaviae in terms of Severus' imperial policy, and in particular his desire to connect himself to the legacy of Augustus.

In Boeotian Thebes, the simplest thirst for topographical detail will turn up a reference to Dirce. Whether depicted as a nymph, a spring, a river, or simply as flowing water, the name represents an integral, perhaps indispensable, part of the Theban landscape. But of course it is more than that. A narrative surrounds this watery place, telling of Theban kings and queens, of founding twins, and of odd and cruel tortures and torments. It is my goal in this article to understand these varying traditions surrounding Dirce by means of an examination of the interplay between mythic narratives and Theban topography. Narratives of Dirce grow and develop in relation to the physical landscape of the city, but this relationship is seldom reducible to a one-to-one correlation of story and place. The early Greek tradition has much to say about Dirce, some of it contradictory. But superficial contradiction is the norm in this realm, and some sense can be made of what we have with careful attention to the changing contexts surrounding appearances of Dirce as they are expressed and understood in early Greek literature, and to the changing ways the city of Thebes is described in the Greek mythic tradition.

It is surprising how many first impressions of the sight of Rome have been put on record. Some of these first impressions are unashamedly imaginary and come to us mediated by or through a persona. This is a common ploy in Augustan poetry, and it is worth remembering that none of the great Augustan poets was a Roman of Rome, so the impressions attributed to the persona may well reflect those of the writer on his first coming to the metropolis as a young man or boy. First impressions can be conveniently divided into two groups. Some are just that, first impressions, with no hint that the visitor might have had some expectations of what would be seen and experienced. A second group, perhaps the more interesting one, distinguishes itself by a shared anticipation: their actual impressions on visiting the city are not really ‘first’ impressions at all. Few have ever brought to Rome an innocent eye: even in antiquity many visitors always already seemed to know what they were going to see there. Considered chronologically, the very first impressions of Rome of this second group were formed in the imagination, by hearsay, by reading, or in modern times by seeing images of the city: theirs is a virtual Rome. When they finally visit the ‘real’ Rome there often occurs a disjunction or contrast; it might be of enhancement.

The numbers in the margins of Cicero's speeches are generally treated as a convenient referencing system and no more. The fact that there are two apparently independent sets of numbers, the shorter usually referred to as ‘sections’ (§§), and the longer as ‘chapters’ (cc.), can lead to confusion, and fashions have changed over the years as to which of the sets to use in references, without apparent discussion. Modern editors feel no obligation to follow them when deciding where to put their own paragraph-breaks. One scholar, Glucker, traced their origin out of curiosity, but then dismissed them as having no value other than as a referencing system, claiming that they often ‘ignore the beginning of proper new sections’. This article will test his claim by examining the placement of the numbers at various points in Cicero's Pro Murena.

The New York Daily Tribune for 20 December 1859 reported a pro-slavery meeting held the day before under the banner of ‘Justice for the South’ (the Civil War was less than eighteen months away). A lawyer named O'Connor spoke as follows:

Now, Gentlemen, to that condition of bondage the Negro is assigned by Nature…. He has strength, and he has the power to labour; but the Nature which created that power has denied him either the intellect to govern or the willingness to work. (Applause)…. And that Nature which denied him the will to labour gave him a master to coerce that will, and to make him a useful servant in the clime in which he was capable of living useful for himself and for the master who governs him…. I maintain that it is not injustice to leave the Negro in the condition in which Nature placed him, to give him a master to govern him…nor is it depriving him of any of his rights to compel him to labour in return, and afford to that master just compensation for the labour and talent employed in governing him and rendering him useful to himself and to the society.

That thoroughly Aristotelian defence of black slavery was identified as such by Karl Marx, reprinted in Kapital as a modern commentary on Aristotle's thinking on the role of the slave-owner.

The tenth poem of Propertius Book 4 is the most remarkable in a collection full of surprises for its readers, and appears to mark a significant departure from his previous work. If Propertius had never written his final book of poetry, we might characterize him on the basis of his earlier books as the quintessential Latin love elegist: he rejects not only a military career, but even the less demanding task of celebrating Augustus' victories, in favour of the love elegist's self-indulgent life of leisure: cf. e.g. Prop. 2.1.39–46. In the first poem of Book 4, however, Propertius announces what appears to be a wholly different poetic programme; in place of the erotic elegies of the previous books is a new ‘serious’ purpose: Propertius will sing about national, religious and antiquarian themes, as the ‘Roman Callimachus’ (Propertius 4.1a.63–4). However, as soon as the next poem, Propertius is commanded to return to his usual theme of obsessive elegiac love for one woman, a topic described as haec tua castra (‘this is your sphere of operations’, 4.1b.135). The poems which follow in Propertius 4 tend to strike a balance between antiquarian seriousness and elegiac frivolity. For example, in 4.4, Propertius relates the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia's betrayal of Rome, connecting several contemporary urban landmarks with the poem's heroine, but he remains true to his earlier colours by presenting Tarpeia as an elegiac lover who falls in love at first sight and betrays her city out of passion.

Introduction

The search for a more powerful entity to provide some form of order to the chaotic nature of human existence is a phenomenon that can be seen throughout much of human history. For a Roman, the gods were everywhere, as powerful forces with an interest in all aspects of daily life. Religion formed part of the broad-based homogeneity of the western provinces following the process of cultural transformation after conquest. Inscriptions, sculpture, and temple architecture all point to a similar material culture, and, although there is an apparent continuity in the names of the deities being worshipped from the pre-Roman to the Roman periods, their association with the traditional gods of Rome through syncretism negates the idea of direct continuity. However, religious changes are often overlooked in accounts of the Romanization of the western provinces, and we are left with the rather uncritical concept of ‘Romano-Celtic’ religion as a hybrid phenomenon. There is a danger of using the archaeological evidence of temples and inscriptions as diagnostic of change, rather than undertaking a more rigorous analysis in order to understand how religion and ritual formed part of this broad-based homogeneity, and the way in which the people of the provinces made sense of how to act and behave within a new social and political world.

During preparations for the ill-fated Sicilian expedition in 415 BC, Thucydides tells us, the Athenians woke up one morning to find that:

Of all the stone herms in the city of Athens (the square-cut type, which following local custom stand in great numbers in the doorways of private houses and shrines), most had their faces [προ´σωπα] mutilated during a single night. No one knew who the perpetrators were, but there was a search for them with large rewards out of public funds . . . They took the matter seriously; it looked like an omen for the voyage, and furthermore as though it had been done as part of a conspiracy for revolution and the overthrow of the democracy [δη´μου :kgr;αταλυ´σεωσ].

Some accused the flamboyant politician and general Alcibiades, ‘adducing as evidence the undemocratic licentiousness of his conduct in general’. Andocides emphasizes how seriously the matter was taken by the city authorities:

The boule, summoning the generals, ordered them to make an announcement that those of the Athenians who lived in the city should take their arms and go to the Agora, those within the Long Walls should go to the Theseion, those in Piraeus to the Hippodamian agora. As for the knights, a signal was to be given by trumpet before nightfall for them to go to the Anakeion; the boule was to go to the Acropolis and sleep there, the prytaneis in the Tholos.

Most ancient Greek vases in modern collections were found in Etruscan tombs. To state this is not a revelation: however, it is a fact of provenance often overlooked or marginalized in discussion about Greek vases. Some years ago, by way of contributing to a Festschrift assembled in honour of my postgraduate mentor, Robert Cook, I attempted an explanation as to why so many Greek-made pots had been hoarded by the Etruscans: an explanation steered predominantly by the final funerary context of those vessels. Since then, a number of further studies relating to this phenomenon have been made, most notably by Christoph Reusser; and our archaeological understanding of how Greek vases were used by the Etruscans has become markedly more refined. Traditionally, the separation of Etruria into ‘cities’ and ‘cemeteries’ has favoured the generous material evidence of the cemeteries. Investigations of the elusive cities – including the major centres of Tarquinia and Cerveteri – now offer some opportunity to review the ways in which certain artefacts frequently found buried among the ‘community of the dead’ were also in active circulation amid the society of the living. The assemblage of a corpus of Etruscan inscriptions on Greek vases attests to one highly significant local and particular value accrued by these objects. And further to all this (or because of it), there has also been a palpable softening of the tendency, on the part of Classical art historians, to depict Etruria as a place where affluent barbarians took ‘whatever they were offered’ by trans-Mediterranean traders.

Sed, ut ego quoque te aliquid admoneam de vestris cautionibus, Treveros vites censeo: audio capitales esse: mallem auro, argento, aere essent.

However, if I may give you a caveat from your own legal arsenal, I advise you to keep clear of the Treveri: I hear that they are deadly customers, like their Roman namesakes. If you want a Board of Three, better try the Masters of the Mint.

The letter, from which this passage is taken, is one of a number that passed between Cicero and a young lawyer, Gaius Trebatius Testa, who was serving with Julius Caesar's army in Gaul in the late 50s BC.

As in most of his letters to Trebatius, Cicero revels in jokes and word-play with a legal flavour which, of course, would have suited this particular recipient. This passage is far from easy to translate adequately into English because it contains a ‘developing’ pun, the full force of which is inevitably lost in translation. The actual structure of the pun, however, is obvious enough: Trebatius' proximity to the tribe of the Treveri leads to a word-play with the Latin word, Tresviri (‘Board of Three’). The fact that the Treveri had a reputation for ferocity in battle causes Cicero to call them ‘deadly’ (capitales) which, in its turn, leads to an implied reference to the Tresviri Capitales, three junior officials in Rome who were in charge of executions and prisons.