When it was first proposed that an Association of Classical Teachers should be formed, there were some who feared that it might, if successful, become either a rival to the Classical Association or, at least, a force to divide and weaken it. The activities of J.A.C.T. and the appearance of its excellent journal, Didaskalos, have now made it quite clear that these fears were groundless. Both organizations can and should exist together and their co-operation has already produced considerable mutual benefits. Indeed, now that so many of our schools are suddenly subject to Protean transformation, it seems almost providential that there should be a responsible and representative association able to speak with an expert voice for classical teachers.

Of the many reasons, religious, aesthetic, and technical, generally adduced to explain the apparent reluctance of Greek tragedians to represent the moment of death on the stage, none seems to me to give sufficient weight to certain dramatic exigencies internal to the context of the plays themselves in which such deaths occur. The issue has too often been obscured by tenuous assumptions about the scarcity of professional actors (as if the total pool of professionals which the dramatist could draw upon was restricted to three), religious taboos associated with the celebration of the Great Dionysia and other festivals, the squeamishness of Greek theatre audiences, or the practical difficulties of stage management. It is not my intention to discuss these assumptions in detail. Some of them have already been effectively refuted, others may in fact have influenced consciously or unconsciously the presentation of particular death scenes. For no one denies that there are many problems connected with the presentation of death on the stage, and even the modern playwright, in spite of all the illusionist resources of the modern theatre, may well boggle at the attempt. Further, the passage from life to death must seem at a certain level a trivial activity in comparison with the tremendous impact it has on the dead person's immediate circle of friends and relations. Violent death and its gory accompaniments may well appeal to sensational melodrama but the Greek dramatist could justly have considered its representation per se as μιαρόν and ἀτεχνότατον τῆς ποιητικῆς. However, the real point at issue is whether the Greek tragedian went out of his way to get round the presentation of the moment of death for reasons external to the dramatic context. I shall try to show in this paper that whenever a character is apparently hustled out of sight for the purpose of being killed, some internal dramatic consideration was in fact uppermost in the playwright's mind.

Alexander's parents were both striking personalities. Olympias, a native of Epirus, whose family traced their ancestry back to Achilles, was jealous and possessive—and terribly passionate. Her emotions found an outlet in the wild orgiastic rites of Dionysus, and at Alexander's accession and again after his death her desire for vengeance erupted in acts of unbridled savagery. This streak of cruelty reappears in Alexander, especially when in his later years he was under increasing strain. Philip, too, was capable of great passion although he nearly always managed to control himself. It is scarcely surprising therefore that their son should occasionally be subject to volcanic outbursts. To call him, as Mithridates VI of Pontus has been called, a ‘barbarian varnished’ would be absurd; it is scarcely less so to expect from him the conduct of a Greek gentleman or the product of one of our public schools. He also reproduced some of Philip's most notable qualities. We see in him the same reckless, even foolhardy, bravery, the same dogged persistence, the same open-handed generosity. From his father he inherited too his capacity for managing men and affairs.

Macedonia was the springboard of the movement which led to the conquest of the Persian Empire. Though Philip and Alexander ostensibly embarked on war with Persia as Leaders (Hegemones) of the Greeks, and though the Greek cities did make their military and naval contribution—not to mention the comfort and support furnished by certain Greek publicists, intellectuals, and politicians—nevertheless the essential power which had harnessed Greece and now was to harness Persia came from Macedonia and the Macedonians, officially unmentioned, and in many Greek circles unmentionable.

Book iv is Virgil's masterpiece. It can stand comparison with the other great books in the qualities where they excel. It has the narrative power of Book ii, the imaginative power of vi, the tragic intensity and truth of the finest scenes in x and xii. But it overshadows these by its perfectly contrived synthesis of tragedy and epic. The book is the shortest of the twelve and the most dramatic in form: a tripartite structure is more clearly marked than in the other books and for once seems consciously present in the poet's mind, for each of the three sections has its own clearly marked internal unity and each begins with the entry of the queen and the same key phrase at regina: lines 1–295, the beginning of the affair; lines 296–503, the alienation; lines 504–705, the end of the affair—Aeneas' departure and Dido's suicide. But Virgil's narrative technique also reaches in this book its highest level of perfection and variety—the passage 74–89, for example, in which a close-packed succession of images suggests the compulsive, irresistible impetus of Dido's wild infatuation; or the serene, colourful, carefully organized narrative of the hunting episode (129–72), with its happy, relaxed realism and the terrifying, penetrating, ironic symbolism with which that episode concludes; or the awful simplicity and sublimity of the death scene (630–92).

Napoleon said that in war ‘the moral is to the physical as three to one’. Alexander would have agreed. He was not only a great strategist and tactician; he was a personal leader of heroic mould, heading every major assault, probably more often wounded than any other man in his army. First up the ladder when the troops hung back at the city of the Malloi in India, leader of the last five in the search for water, when his desert column nearly foundered in Gedrosia, pouring out for a libation, David-like, the water brought to him in a helmet, earlier in that same march, he kept the love of his soldiers even through times of exasperation. Thus, from the very first, he built up in his army a tremendous feeling of moral superiority, a certainty that under his leadership no one could stand against them and no obstacle was impossible, in the strength of which his thirty to forty thousand marched from the Dardanelles to the Nile, the Oxus, and the Indus, with never a check, save at Tyre for a time, when he was present. Any special defiance, or any reputedly impossible problem, he took as a personal challenge, and fell upon it with especial ardour. The Gordian Knot yielded when he slid the yoke sideways out of it—and revealed many rope-ends, not only two. The defenders of the ferocious defile of the Cilician Gates fled at the mere terror of his approach; no doubt he would have scaled the Taurus to outflank them, but they could have gained time. Of Gaza on its high tell he said ‘the more “impossible” it is, the more it must be taken’, because of the moral effect: ‘for the achievement would amaze and dismay the enemy, and failure would be a disgrace when told to the Greeks and to Darius’. It was at Gaza that he is said to have disgraced himself by the atrocious killing of the captured Batis (Berve, ii. 104 f., no. 209—an atrocity unmentioned by Arrian, and disbelieved by Tarn—but Tarn had convinced himself that Alexander was a saint). More often, anyone who gave Alexander a stern fight gained his respect. Porus the Indian was among those who survived to enjoy it. Batis, a eunuch, perhaps aroused Alexander's disgust.

Although most authorities now agree in identifying Priam's Troy with level VIIa at Hissarlik, arguments are still advanced from time to time for reverting to the earlier identification with VI [h?]. Since it is accepted that VI was destroyed by an earthquake and not (or not primarily) by armed force, this means proposing theories to account for the discrepancy with Greek tradition. Either the Greeks never took Troy at all, and simply invented the legend that they did—in which case there seems little point in trying to identify Priam's Troy; or else the earthquake is symbolized by the Wooden Horse, under cover of which the Greeks finally entered Troy.

No army leader has become more famous in history than Alexander. He has been praised and admired as well as blamed and cursed. But even if blemishes can be found in his career and character, no one can deny his ‘daemonic’ strength of will and leadership, which alone are sufficient to mark him out as one of the greatest generals history has seen. Opinions may, however, differ as to whether he was more than that.

TheCopa in the Virgilian Appendix is a fascinating but baffling piece. It has verbal connexions with the Eclogues, notably the second, and with Propertius' last book of elegies, notably iv. 2 (Vertumnus). Wilamowitz took it to be an expansion of an epigram, composed by some follower of Propertius. He thought the speaker to be the poet throughout. Büchner interprets the poem quite differently. He considers lines 18–19 and 21–22 to be interpolations. To begin with, they mix autumn fruits with summer (though by the same token the lines in Lycidas ordering various flowers for the ‘laureate hearse’ would be an interpolation: botanical purists have protested that they do not bloom simultaneously). They also contain the connexions with Propertius. Remove them and the poem is certainly a little more consistent; and Büchner is then able to argue that the poem was composed between Catullus and the Eclogues and known to Virgil. But who would want to interpolate in such a poem? At any rate, more evidence would be needed if the lines are to be discredited.

When Alexander invaded Asia, he almost certainly had no idea V V how far he would go or what the end would be. For the moment, Antipater was left in complete charge of Macedon and (with ill-defined powers) of the ‘free’ Greek allies and other European dependants; it was only towards the end of his life that the King began to worry about the excessive power that Antipater had fashioned for himself; and by then, as it turned out, it was too late to deal with him and Alexander died without doing so. As far as Asia was concerned, there were no blueprints on how to organize it. This is not mere conjecture, but can be proved. One point of policy was inherited from Philip and inescapable: the ‘Hellenic crusade’, to liberate the Greeks of Asia and to punish the barbarian for the events of 480. It might be thought that on this point Alexander had little freedom of action. Yet it is precisely here that we see him proceeding—within the elastic framework of ‘liberation’—slowly and pragmatically. Bypassing Greek cities that he knew were unfriendly, he did not take one (Zelea) until after the battle of the Granicus: the Zeleans were ‘forgiven’ for having helped the enemy under compulsion, but got no special concessions (A. i. 12. 6; 17. 2). After his stay at Sardis—which will occupy us soon—he entered Ephesus. This city had been occupied by Parmenio in his invasion of Asia before Philip's death. He had established democracy (since the Persians had ruled through a narrow oligarchy), and the grateful citizens had set up Philip's statue in the great temple of Artemis (‘Diana of the Ephesians’). But a counter-revolution had brought the city under Persian control and undone Parmenio's work. Alexander could do no less than restore the democracy that welcomed the son of Philip. As for the tribute paid to Persia (and presumably, for a time, to Philip), he ordered it to be paid henceforth to Artemis (A. i. 17. 9 ff.)—a gesture befitting both his religious feeling and his love of display. He offered to do more: to finish the restoration of the temple (which had been burnt down the night he was born) and dedicate it in his name, and he was prepared to pay for this honour; but the Ephesians politely declined (Strabo xiv. i. 22).

The unusual personality of Alexander the Great is reflected in an extraordinary number of portraits. They begin in his early youth, and do not end with his death. They continue during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and all subsequent periods down to modern times. The portraits of Alexander not only reflect the different phases of his short life but become an artistic motif for all following periods.

Ennius was brought to Rome in the first place by Cato. How soon he came under the influence of Scipio we do not know, but it is clear that to a poet acquainted with Greek thought the austerely Italian doctrines of his first patron cannot have had much appeal. The partiality which he displays for Euripides, that most sophisticated and troubled of poets, does not harmonize well with the utilitarian views which find their place in the De Agricultura and elsewhere in Cato. (It is interesting to compare the spirit of μὴ ῴην μετ' ἀμουσίας from the well-known chorus of the Hercules Furens with that of ‘poeticae artis honos non erat…’.) Eventually Ennius was to eulogize Scipio in a separate volume of that name, and to shock the Censor with his gourmet's handbook, the Hedyphagetica. But the work with which he most commended himself to fame was of course the Annales, for which he introduced the hexameter.

The course of Athenian history during the fifteen or twenty years after the battle at Chaeronea was strongly influenced by the dominating spirits of two men, one of whom was ever present and the other far away. The latter, of course, is Alexander, whose departure from Europe with the major portion of Macedon's fighting strength afforded the opportunity for the Greek states to develop resistance and opposition to Macedonian control which the fiery young king, had he been present, would hardly have tolerated. The former is Lycurgus son of Lycophron, the only Athenian after Pericles who so successfully dominated his city's policies and left such an indelible mark upon the city, its institutions and buildings, that his twelve-year period of influence rightly bears his name. Furthermore, so many of the things that were accomplished or attempted during this period seem to have been initiated in conscious imitation of the Golden Age, that we are justified in calling it the Silver Age of Lycurgus. His is the comprehensive programme of reconstruction, reform, and revitalization that the present paper proposes to describe.