This paper analyses the probability of a reading so far neglected by editors in Lactantius Placidus’ late antique commentary on Stat. Theb. 5.16. Next, the article argues that, regardless of the accepted reading, this part of the scholium is likely an interpolation.

The urgency of climate change has never been greater, nor the moral case for responding to it more compelling. This review essay critically compares Darrel Moellendorf's Mobilizing Hope and Catriona McKinnon's Climate Change and Political Theory. Moellendorf's book defends the moral importance of poverty alleviation through sustainable economic growth and argues for a mass climate movement based on the promise of a more prosperous future. By contrast, McKinnon provides a political vocabulary to articulate the many faces of climate injustice, and to critically examine proposed policy solutions—notably including the indefinite pursuit of economic growth. While both find reasons to be hopeful, their wide-ranging accounts reflect different visions of what a just and sustainable future might look like. They reflect different understandings of sustainable development and the significance of environmental values; the scope of permissible climate activism; and the ethics of geoengineering. Building upon them, I argue in favor of a more pluralistic vision of a just climate future, one that is capable of speaking to the range of moral interests bearing upon the climate and biodiversity crises, and that supports sustainable development that is inclusive of diverse human-nature relationships.

The social virtues are not discussed thematically in the Socratic writings of Plato and Xenophon, but they are on display everywhere. Taking Aristotle's accounts of these virtues as a touchstone, this paper explores the portrait of Socrates as a model of good humour in Xenophon's Symposium. While Xenophon is addressing the same issues as Aristotle, and shares some of his red lines, his conception of the ideal humourist and of virtue in general differs from Aristotle's not only in detail but also in general conception. While he never actually violates the rules Aristotle sets down for eutrapelia, Xenophon's Socrates strives not to avoid opposites but to combine them. It is the careful combining of the spoudaion and the geloion that redeems Xenophon's otherwise outrageous portrait of Socratic humour. This suggests a broader paradigm in which virtuous behaviour is a combination of opposites rather than a middle path.

Flows originating from black hole magnetospheres via Blandford-Znajek (BZ) process start highly relativistically, with very large Lorentz factors γ01, imprinted into the flow during pair production within the gaps. As a result, BZ-driven outflows would produce spine-brightened images, contrary to observations of the edge-brightened jet in M87. We conclude that M87 jet is not BZ-driven.

The excavation of a large administrative building at the city of Tell Brak in northern Syria saw the recovery of a considerable quantity of charred cereals dated to the mid-third millennium B.C.E. This remarkable discovery provides a rare snapshot into the nature of agriculture in Upper Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze Age. The material has been studied using a combination of primary archaeobotanical analysis, crop stable isotope determinations, and functional weed ecology to deliver new insights into cultivation strategies at Tell Brak as well as to contribute to the wider debate regarding trade and crop importation in this region. Specific crop regime choices also reveal how the farmers of Tell Brak were able to reduce the overall risk of crop failure by careful water management, a vitally important factor in this semi-arid region, with potential implications for the analysis of other large-scale urban agro-economies in the Middle East and beyond.

The extensive clearing and modification of forests by anthropogenic activities is a major driver of biodiversity loss. Declines of common species are especially concerning because of the potentially large cascading effects they might have on ecosystems. Regrowth of secondary forests may help reverse population declines by restoring habitats to similar conditions prior to land conversion but the value of these secondary forests to fauna is not well understood. We compared the abundance of a direct-developing terrestrial frog, Craugastor stejnegerianus, in riparian and upland habitats of pasture, secondary forest, and mature forest sites. Mean abundance per transect was lower in upland pasture compared to mature forest. Secondary forest had similar abundance to mature forest regardless of age. We show that conversion of forest habitat to pasture represents a conservation threat to this species. However, riparian buffers help mitigate the negative effect of conversion of forest to pasture, and regrowth of secondary forest is an effective management strategy for restoring the abundance of this common leaf-litter species.

The complexity of supply chains means that it is difficult to tell where national security arguments begin and end. That may weaken some of the traditional arguments for free trade for the same reasons that we accept the difficulty of rational economic calculation in a socialist society. National security arguments for protectionism may not remain restricted to very small and manageable segments of the economy. Liberals and cosmopolitans will need to pay greater heed to these problems. This essay also considers why complex supply chains may create problems for a carbon tax and for the notion of corporate social responsibility.