This is an exploratory reading of a distinctive text, a 43-line hexameter Greek poem composed for Domitian’s Games for Capitoline Jupiter in 94 CE by Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, who was 11 years old. The following discussion considers the case of this talented but inevitably inexpert poet, and its implications for our reading practices as classicists.

The source of material for Group XX stone artefacts is reassessed using extant geological and petrological information and complemented with new field and artefact pXRF analyses. Our reassessment of extant archaeological and petrological data supports earlier conclusions that a possible origin for Group XX stone tools is in the Charnwood Forest area, just north of Leicester. Based on petrographic evidence, this source is now considered to lie within the geological Bradgate Formation. This formation is exposed in a broad, U-shaped band around the eastern and southern fringes of Charnwood Forest where the Ediacaran volcanic tuff rocks form rugged exposures penetrating the overlying Triassic sandstones and mudstones. A new study of Group XX artefacts at museums in Cambridge, Leicester, Lincoln, and Sheffield revealed a number of distinct morphologies, two of which lead us to suggest that they represent axehead templates that are likely to have derived from specific design and manufacturing, rather than from ad-hoc extraction or loose material selection and random shaping. New pXRF data are used to supplement existing information and similarities in immobile large ion lithophile and high field strength element concentrations between both artefacts and exposures, presenting the possibility that the immediate area near the Windmill Hill exposure of the Bradgate Formation, at Woodhouse Eaves, is close to, or indeed contains the source of, Group XX material.

This article investigates the dynamics of microcredit in late-medieval Italy by examining the case of fourteenth-century Vercelli and its surrounding rural area. Drawing on an extensive corpus of notarial sources, it highlights how credit networks were sustained not only by elite bankers and merchants but also by less prominent actors embedded in everyday social and economic life. Two case studies – the baker Enrico da Greggio and the priest Salerno Ferraroto – illustrate the role of small-scale lenders and borrowers in structuring a dense web of transactions. Their activities reveal how personal trust, proximity and reciprocity enabled access to liquidity through loans, rents and credit, often mediated by the Sant’Andrea monastery and hospital. Far from marginal, these practices constituted a vital infrastructure of support for urban and rural populations alike, allowing individuals of modest means to become active participants in the circulation of capital. By analysing these intertwined networks, the article underscores the significance of documentary practices in shaping the economy of trust and credit. The study ultimately argues that grassroots credit systems were central to the functioning of late-medieval urban society, challenging narratives that privilege only large-scale or institutional forms of credit.

The year 2024 was a year of elections and voting in Ireland. It saw two government-initiated referendums fail. That caused the resignation of a Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and party leader and his replacement with a younger colleague as leader of Fine Gael. The following local and European elections crystallised the drop in support for Sinn Féin that polls had forecast in the previous year, while two of the governing parties’ support held up reasonably well. Probably because of the results of those elections, a general election was called at the end of the year. Though a government had not been formed by the end of 2024, it was clear that the new government would be a variant of the outgoing one, with the Green Party replaced by a number of independent TDs (Teachta Dala, MPs) supporting the government, with several independents serving as ministers.

Excavations at the Agora of Amathous, Cyprus, were carried out between 1977 and 2003, initially under the auspices of the Department of Antiquities and the direction of Michael Loulloupis, and subsequently by the French School at Athens, under the direction of Jean-Paul Prête. While the plans and chronological phases of the Agora’s buildings have been successfully reconstructed, the rich assemblage of architectural decorations – exceptionally well preserved – has yet to be thoroughly studied. The remarkable state of preservation and completeness was the primary motivation for undertaking the current research, which aims to identify the fragments of architectural decoration with their respective stoas. The reconstructed decorative program significantly enhances our understanding of historical Cypriot architecture, illuminating the influence of Alexandria and other Mediterranean centers on architectural trends. It highlights how agoras were framed with colonnaded stoas that combined traditional elements with innovative designs, revitalizing the architectural landscape of Cyprus in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

German politics tends to be rather stable, yet 2024 marked a particularly volatile year with four major elections. In the state elections in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg, as well as the European Parliament (EP) elections, the parties of the federal governing coalition suffered heavy losses, while the radical-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland) and the newly founded left-conservative Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht) made significant gains. Following the EP elections, German Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen (Christlich Demokratische Union) was re-elected as European Commission President. Amid a deepening economic recession and intensifying public controversy over migration that fuelled public discontent with the federal government, internal tensions within the coalition over fiscal policy ultimately culminated in a government crisis. In December, social democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party of Germany/Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) initiated a vote of confidence, which he deliberately lost, prompting the collapse of the coalition. As a result, snap elections were scheduled for February 2025.

Rangers are indispensable to the management and protection of fragile ecosystems, especially when these come under threat from armed conflict. Yet, in such circumstances, rangers themselves become highly vulnerable as their responsibilities – such as preventing the plunder of natural resources or disrupting the trafficking of endangered species – frequently bring them into confrontation with parties to the conflict. Despite the critical nature of their work, international humanitarian law (IHL) provides them with no special safeguards beyond the general protection afforded to civilians. While certain analogies with IHL’s protection for relief personnel or civil defence actors might be drawn to extend an additional layer of legal security, it remains unclear whether these could be applied in practice to rangers. It is therefore crucial to examine relevant international environmental norms and principles – particularly those protecting areas of exceptional ecological value – in order to assess whether they could offer a more robust protective framework during warfare, thereby reinforcing the protection of the vital environmental functions that rangers perform.

This study investigates the English of-NP (noun phrase) evaluation construction (e.g., It’s nice of you to help me plan this wedding), hypothesizing that its constructional meaning encodes socially mediated evaluation and imposes semantic constraints on the NP slot. We adopt a dual methodological approach, combining collostructional analysis to identify lexeme–construction associations with surprisal analysis using a large language model (LLM) (GPT-2) to assess predictive processing difficulty. The two methods complement each other, capturing both static distributional patterns and dynamic expectancy profiles. Three experimental manipulations were implemented: preposition alternation, variation in NP agentivity and variation in NP intentionality. Results show that NPs conforming to the hypothesized slot constraints yield lower surprisal values, whereas constraint-violating NPs trigger higher surprisal, aligning with the observed collostructional strengths. These findings provide empirical support for the view that constructional compatibility shapes predictive processing and contributes to integrating Construction Grammar (CxG) with prediction-based models of language processing.

This editorial critically examines the European Union’s rearmament agenda, framed by the Commission’s Readiness 2030 plan and the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) Regulation, in response to geopolitical threats and possible US disengagement. While EU leaders present military investment as essential for safeguarding the ‘European way of life’, the measures proposed reveal a deep disjunction between rhetoric and reality. The plan falls short of establishing genuine strategic autonomy, as NATO remains central and procurement from US industries is reinforced, undermining the claim of independence. Moreover, by relying primarily on national spending and only modest EU financial instruments, the initiative risks entrenching asymmetries between Member States, strengthening national military–industrial complexes rather than building a coordinated European defence framework. By the same token, the legal dimension is equally fraught: the selective use of (national) escape clauses in the Stability and Growth Pact and the reliance on Article 122 TFEU for SAFE highlight the EU’s increasing dependence on creative but legally precarious interpretations. Substantively, the rearmament effort may erode the European social model, as higher defence spending is likely to erode welfare and public investment. Ultimately, the project reflects continuity with past crises: lofty integrationist rhetoric coupled with measures that entrench fragmentation and fiscal imbalance.

In the judgment Lameck Bazil v. United Republic of Tanzania, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR) dealt with the application of the death penalty in Tanzania.1

The article explores how the Coto Donana was understood, protected, and shaped as a national park and nature reserve between the early 1950s and late 1980s. In doing so, the article pays attention to the different valuations that were given to the region over the course of the twentieth century and the distinct cultures of landscape which were formed. The strongest contrast was between the reserving of the region as an elite sporting landscape evident in Chapman’s writings and its re-imagining and re-configuring within ecological science and conservation practice as a nature reserve. In exploring this shaping of the Coto Donana as a changing landscape, my account draws on and seeks to extend the work on cultures of landscape to understand the competing ways of knowing, managing, representing, and valuing the natural environment, as well as the different forms of conduct and pleasure associated with contrasting uses of the land.

Government-opposition confrontation intensified in Finland in 2024, with major reforms to welfare, labour and immigration policy introduced and passed through to legislation. The first half was marked by presidential and European elections. The tight race between two internationally known candidates, Alexander Stubb from the National Coalition Party/Kokoomus (KOK) and the Green politician Pekka Haavisto, in this decreasingly semi-presidential political system, was won by the liberal European Trans-Atlanticist Iron Man Stubb. The European elections were also won by KOK to the European People's Party on the theme of national security, and surprise results also brought three seats to the Left Alliance/Vasemmistoliitto. While the Social Democratic Party/Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen puolue only secured two seats, they led the polls by the end of 2024. The austerity measures made the Orpo I (KOK) government unpopular but mainstreamed the main junior partner Finns Party/Perussuomalaiset’s anti-migrant, welfare-chauvinist agenda despite their declining support.

Since the mid-20th century, approaches to musical notation have multiplied, giving rise to a multitude of terminologies and classifications. While there exists an extremely rich literature on new approaches to musical notation, it is easy to be confused by a nomenclature that is still under construction and has yet to be formalised. Based on a narrative review of the scientific literature comprising over 250 documents on new forms of notations, this article aims to present the main terminologies used to describe the different approaches to notation. This article proposes a framework illustrating what we observed as the most prominent notation approaches (action-based scores, animated scores, graphic scores, etc.) according to the types of indications (prescriptive and/or descriptive), the notation encoding (semantic and temporal encoding), and the mediums used for transmission (screen, printed, etc.). The contemporary notation framework aims to provide tools for the further analysis and classification of musical notation used in contemporary instrumental, electronic, and electroacoustic music.

Smith’s “luxury hypothesis” seems to assert that the endless violence of the feudal era ended with the appearance of luxury goods. This view holds that feudal lords had nothing to do with their wealth but to wage war—no other markets were available to them. As luxury goods became available, the lords dropped their weapons and disbanded their armies so that they could buy more luxury goods. The traditional account has causality going from the appearance of luxury goods to the lords disbanding their armies. On my approach, ubiquitous violence under feudalism implies that the causal logic in this account goes from the logic of violence to the gradual and sequential appearance of luxury goods to ending violence near the towns and cities, but not in the agrarian hinterland.

Plasma spectroscopy is a versatile tool for diagnosing key properties of plasmas, including those generated by discharges. It provides critical parameters-such as electron density and temperature-needed to optimize plasma sources for laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA). Stable, uniform plasma channels are essential to sustain GV/m wakefield and generate high-quality electron beams for advanced applications like radiation therapy (RT). Accurate spectral measurements require reliable wavelength calibration, as optical components can drift with environmental changes. In this study, atomic emission (AE) lamps-specifically mercury (Hg) and neon-argon (Ne-Ar) were utilized as reference light sources for wavelength calibration of a spectrometer system coupled to an intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) camera. The known emission lines from these lamps ensured high-precision calibration across the relevant spectral range, facilitating accurate extraction of plasma parameters. This precise calibration enabled the determination of electron density and temperature through spectroscopic diagnostics, which are critical for understanding plasma behaviour. These measurements contribute to the development of gas-filled capillary discharge systems for LWFA and support the experimental objectives of the I-LUCE facility, dedicated to exploring laser-plasma interactions and advancing very high-energy electron beam (VHEE) applications. Monte Carlo (MC) simulations were conducted to assess the dose distribution of VHEE beams for RT applications.

This paper examines the Catarinella Askos in order to explore the funerary culture and social dynamics of the elite in Hellenistic-Republican Daunia. The vessel, found in Lavello (Basilicata) but produced in the city of Canosa (Apulia) in the late 2nd/early 1st c. BCE, depicts an elaborate funerary ceremony with a procession, music, and mourning rituals. The paper contextualizes the images by linking them to material evidence of Canosan funerary practices. It aims to reconstruct the sensory experiences of those who attended and performed at funerals, including aspects of staging and movement, gesture and utterance, and sensation and emotion. By demonstrating how these multimodal spectacles served as arenas for social distinction, competitive consumption, and political consolidation among elite families during Roman hegemony, the paper argues for the resilience of Italian elite culture and social structures rooted in the pre-Roman period.

This contribution presents a tight body of evidence – hoards of medieval coins found during archaeological investigations in churches in a confined area of southern Albania in close proximity to Phoinike – whose formations and abandonments date to within a decade or so of one another in the central years of the fourteenth century. A detailed numismatic analysis of the represented coin issues, principally deniers tournois of Arta and soldini of Venice, and of the hoards themselves, allows the authors to draw monetary and historical conclusions. One of the hoards defines in a decisive manner the pattern of coin production at Arta for about a decade after 1323. The presented evidence highlights the administration and the commerce of the territory, and its geo-strategic fate in the face of serious pressures which came to bear on it from all sides during the 1330s and 1340s. The main protagonists in this story are the lords and despots in Epiros of the house of Kephallenia, Zakynthos, Leukas, and Ithaka; the Angevins of southern Italy who had important holdings in the area, especially the island of Kerkyra; and the Byzantine and Serbian empires which took control respectively in the fourth and fifth decades of the fourteenth century.