Defining national identity is an ongoing and open-ended process, which is pursued constantly and competitively through every available medium. Identity can be defined by what we have to say about ourselves as a group, or about individuals who seem to embody characteristics considered either desirable or undesirable for the group as a whole. It is defined too by what we have to say about others, because at the same time we are thereby defining ourselves. It is also defined by what others have to say - or choose to leave unsaid - about us. Further definitions are also created when, as is often the case, a national group also finds itself a subgroup of a wider linguistic entity. English and Scots, Americans and Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, metropolitan and colonial French, Chileans and Argentinians - the modern list is almost endless, just as it was in ancient Greece with its plethora of rival city states, all speaking a common language yet all with their own distinct political traditions, systems of coinage, dialects, and social structures.

Past readings of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (458 BC) have spawned numerous theories about the nature and significance of the cloth stage prop central to the ‘Carpet Scene’ (783-974). Kenneth Morrell has pointed out that ‘recent critics at best emphasize the ambiguous nature of the “fabric” ’, which the critics refer to variously as something carpet-like, as rugs or blankets, as garment-like tapestries or loosely-fitting garments, as draperies, and more generally as the household's treasure. But what fabric, if any, would have been versatile enough to function as a tapestry, a robe, and a blanket, and would have inspired outrage when used as a rug?

More symbolically significant than the most luxurious carpet, the fabric strewn on the ground before Agamemnon strongly suggests a bridal cloth, an object replete with symbolism, which would have served as both a nuptial robe and a coverlet for the marriage bed. Scholars who discuss Athenian weddings in the context of the Oresteia have overlooked the nuptial nuances of the ‘carpet’.

On a day without precise date some time in Judaea in the first century of the common era, an interview of exceptional historical importance took place between a representative of Roman power and a Jewish prophet. What passed between them has left an indelible imprint on history, although religious believers, historians, and theologians have struggled for almost two thousand years to comprehend the legacy. The Roman was Titus Flavius Vespasianus, general of a vast army on its way to Jerusalem, and the Jewish prophet, priest and pharisee was Yosef ben Matthityahu.

The year was AD 67. In the summer of the previous year, the priests of the great temple of the Jewish God in Jerusalem had suspended the sacrifices which had been held twice a day for more than two generations in honour of the emperors of Rome. The suspension marked the formal beginning of a disastrous revolt mounted by the Jews against the empire of Rome in the East. Josephus had been appointed as a commander as soon as the revolt broke out and he had been sent to Galilee, some 50 miles north of Jerusalem, to organize resistance there. After initial success, he had been besieged by Roman forces at Jotapata, 10 miles from Nazareth. And when it became clear to the rebels that they were likely to fall into Roman hands he alleges that they carried out an elaborate mass-suicide, killing their comrades, starting at the lowest levels in the command and working up.

While modern ethical philosophy has tended to proceed in an impersonal manner by addressing moral problems from a deontological or consequentialist (or broadly utilitarian) standpoint, ancient ethics was based on character and the development of a virtuous disposition. For Plato at Republic 441d-444e, for example, the ideal was a psuche that balanced the three functions of reason, thumos, and appetite and from which virtuous actions would flow automatically, while for Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (e.g. 2.1, 6.2, 6.5, 6.13) the object was to develop, in part through the exercise of practical intelligence (phronesis), an increasingly refined disposition (hexis) to perform virtuous acts. The focus was on the virtuous intention rather than on the moral quality of the result - a point brought out with striking clarity in the Stoic idea that virtue consisted as it were in the correct aim, whereas the actual hitting of the target was morally irrelevant.

When Calpurnius’ old Roman tells Corydon, the country-boy fresh in town, that nothing that one has seen before can prepare one adequately for Nero's Roman spectacle (probably the games of 57 CE), it is almost impossible not to recall the magnificent loathing that Suetonius (Nero 12.1-2) and Tacitus (Annals 13.31) express for the new emperor's extravaganzas. Eleanor Leach comments that: ‘The builder of the amphitheatre [Nero] has combed the world for his marvels, creating a new cosmos within his gilded wooden oval.’ This spectacular new cosmos maps out a world in which pastoral can no longer exist because Nero has distorted the notion of rus in urbe to such an extent that Calpurnius’ only recourse is obituary. Here, Calpurnius’ eclogue functions not just as an elegy for pastoral, but as a poem which opens up a dialogue with Lucan's civil war landscape; in this world, metaphorical and real species of ruin take on an ever greater cultural urgency as means of interpreting the dramatic artifice of Rome's present.