bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Odysseus and the Genus ‘Hero’
Authors: Finkelberg Margalit
Published: September 2009

TheIliadproceeds from an idea of hero which is pure and simple: a hero is one who prizes honour and glory above life itself and dies on the battlefield in the prime of life. Indeed, in spite of what Achilles says at a bitter moment of the choice between a short and glorious life and a long and obscure one, his actual choice is made when, warned by Thetis that Hector's death is only a prelude to his own, he prefers to kill Hector and die himself rather than leave Patroclus unavenged. Hector behaves in a similar way: having chosen honour over life, he remains outside the walls of Troy to meet his death at Achilles' hands. Hundreds of minor Iliadic warriors make the same choice in a less spectacular way, by the very fact that they volunteered to come to Troy in order to win glory in war. This is true both of young Simoeisios, who came to Troy even before he had time to take a wife, and fell ‘like a black poplar' at Ajax’ hands, and of Lycaon son of Priamus who, having slipped away from nearby Arisbe where he was kept in safety as a hostage, returned to the battlefield only to be taught in his last moments the bitter lesson that death is after all the inevitable conclusion to life.
The Piraeus – a World Apart
Authors: von Reden Sitta
Published: September 2009

In book 5 of thePoliticsAristotle discusses the causes for change in constitutions. He argues that, since people have opposing and often mistaken views about their just share in government, the main condition of political stability – that is, justice according to proportionate equality – is impaired. Aristotle then gives eleven particular reasons for civil strife (stasis) of which the last one may serve as a starting point for this paper:

Sometimespoleisenter into the civil strife because of the regional conditions (dia tous topous), because the land is not well suited for apolisto become a single unit. As for example, the people at Chytus in Clazomenai, or those from Colophon and Notion. And also at Athens they are not all in harmony (ouk homoiôs eisin) but those living in Piraeus are more democratic (mallon demotikoi) than in the city (13O3b7).
Culture and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt: the Museum and Library of Alexandria
Authors: Erskine Andrew
Published: September 2009

Within the palace complex in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander in Egypt, a community of scholars was established in what was known as the Museum (or Mouseion); linked to this was a library, the Great Library of Alexandria. These two institutions are often celebrated for their role in the history of scholarship, but they were also the products of the Hellenistic age and of the competition which arose between the successors of Alexander. In many ways these two institutions encapsulate the ideology and policy of the early Ptolemies. It is the purpose of this paper to explore this aspect and set them in a wider context.
Rome Without Spectacles
Authors: Horsfall Nicholas
Published: September 2009

This is not a paper about Christianity and the decline of theatre and amphitheatre: perhaps, like another transported Englishman, W. V. Harris, I should have learned to say ‘eye-glasses’, but, as it is, I would like to examine some of the problems that surround reading and writing at Rome. In a recent paper, R. J. Starr offers a useful survey of the material onlectores, 2 a term that can mean both one who reads a text (Hor.Ep.1.19.35), and, likeanagnostes, one who reads aloud to others as his principal activity. Starr's paper suggests,passim, an author aware that his topic could well have wider implications, as it most certainly does. The history of books, reading, writing, and research in antiquity is a fascinating topic, endlessly rich and complex in its ramifications, as witness the debate on W. V. Harris'sLiteracyand the work of Guglielmo Cavallo.
A Latin Master from Roman Spain
Authors: Fear A. T.
Published: September 2009

Recently there has been an upsurge in the discussion of the extent of literacy in the ancient world. An important area within this debate is the examination of the attitude of state authorities to the promotion of literacy. In today's world it is taken for granted that any given government will seek to promote the highest level of literacy possible amongst its subjects. The reward for doing so is prestige, and the penalty for failure considerable opprobrium.
Adam Smith, the Wicked Knight, and the use of Anecdotes
Authors: Africa Thomas W.
Published: September 2009

Since Herodotus, historians have found anecdotes indispensable and notoriously unreliable. Although the historicity of an anecdote may be elusive, its use by posterity can be illuminating. Whether or not Canute commanded the incoming tide to halt cannot be proven, because the episode was not reported until a century later by a moralistic chronicler, Henry of Huntingdoa According to Henry, the king staged the scene to demonstrate to sycophantic courtiers his impotence before the forces of nature and their creator. However, later generations forgot his pious motive, and Canute survives in the popular imagination as an examplar of executive folly, like Xerxes who had the Hellspont scourged. Whatever the facts, posterity has its own uses for anecdotes.
By Gods, Tongues, and Dogs: the use of Oaths in Aristophanic Comedy
Authors: Dillon Matthew
Published: September 2009

The gods appear in nearly every passage of Aristophanic dialogue; it is hard to imagine more than five minutes passing in the comic theatre before hearing the name of an Olympian deity. This remarkable density is perhaps less telling than it might seem, for the vast majority of such references occur in oaths. Formally, an oath calls on one or more gods to witness (using the particlesnēorma)an assertion, a denial, or a promise. Less formally, simple oaths withnēormaadd colour and emphasis to colloquial language, somewhat like ‘swear words’ in English, and it is this usage which predominates in Aristophanes; to give just one example, the most popular oath ‘by Zeus’ occurs over 250 times in the eleven comedies. So common are these ‘oaths’ that they hardly seem worthy of the name; at most, they might seem to offer no more than insight into colloquial language at the profane level. Numerous instances, however, take issue with the institution of the oath itself and acquire considerable importance due to the integral role the oath played in Greek religion, especially given the state of that religion precisely during the period of Aristophanes' career, when traditional values were assaulted from numerous directions, and the forces of orthodoxy lashed back with a vengeance.
Theocritus' Adoniazusae
Authors: Davies Malcolm
Published: September 2009

Theocritus' poem on the women celebrating the festival of Adonis (Idyll 15) has received surprisingly little attention over the years, especially when compared with other Theocritean Idylls of like length. Matthew Arnold's notorious rhapsody (‘a page torn fresh out of the book of human life. What freedom! What animation! What gaiety! What naturalness! … When such is Greek poetry of the decadence, what must be Greek poetry of the prime?’) has perhaps done more harm than good, by focusing attention too exclusively on the first hundred lines or so of the poem (and indeed Arnold himself was of the opinion that the hymn to Adonis at vv. 100ff. contains ‘of religious emotion, in our acceptation of the words, and of the comfort springing from religious emotion, not a particle’). And yet the poem is second only to Euripides' Bacchae as a document revealing the ways in which religion in the ancient Greek world could offer women an escape (however temporary) from the drab banalities of their everyday existence. And the central contrast between the eternal and idealized glamour of the world of myth and the time-bound existence of Praxinoa and Gorgo (a contrast which is crucial for the above-mentioned role of religion) is absolutely characteristic of one essential aspect of Hellenistic poetry, an aspect that looks back to the world of Euripides and forward to that of Roman poets like Catullus or Propertius. In this paper I shall examine both these features of the Idyll. Also, inspired by those scholars who have illuminated facets of the Dionysiac religion by adducing comparable (if secular) twentieth-century material, I shall try to achieve something similar for Theocritus' poem by drawing on comparative material from late twentieth-century Japan relating to a phenomenon that allows Japanese housewives temporary escape from a tedious and restricted way of life.
The Death of Themistocles
Authors: Marr John
Published: September 2009

Our sources present us with three different versions of Themistocles' death. The purpose of this article is to examine these different versions, explain how and why they developed in the form they did, and show which version is most likely to be correct.
The Most Silent Women of Greece and Rome: Rural Labour and Women's Life in the Ancient World (I)
Authors: Schidel Walter
Published: September 2009

Over the last twenty years, the study of the women of the Greek and Roman world has experienced a boom that, if it is judged by the sheer output of relevant publications, dwarfs any other recent innovations and redirections in the field of ancient history. In view of the ongoing proliferation of studies on this topic, I can only hope that my present paper not only adds to the bulk but also a little to the stock (to heed Laurence Sterne's lament over the historian's business) in that it seeks to redress an imbalance that informs most previous research on women's life in classical antiquity. In short, the large majority of studies in this particular field concentrate on urban environments and, as a consequence, give undue prominence to a certain segment, actually a minority group in terms of quantity, of ancient society. Needless to say, however, that, given the nature of our sources, anything else than this biased focus would have been a big surprise and probably impossible to achieve. Even so, the busy study of those layers of ancient society that produced, or caught the eye of, the authors of Greek and Roman literature, inscriptions, papyri, and coinlegends, can be fully vindicated only when the more shadowy and obscure regions of ancient history are not allowed to be passed over in complete silence. The contribution of women to ancient agriculture is an issue that falls squarely within that latter, underprivileged category of subjects. In her introduction to a collection of essays on new methodological approaches to the study of women in antiquity, Marilyn Skinner pointed out that ‘Real women, like other muted groups, are not to be found so much in the explicit text of the historical record as in its gaps and silences – a circumstance that requires the application of research methods based largely upon controlled inference’
Tacitus and the Principate
Authors: Percival John
Published: September 2009

In the opening chapter of his Annals Tacitus gives us a potted history of Rome to the point at which his work begins. First, there were kings; then, with Lucius Junius Brutus, came liberty and the consulship (or, as we would say, the Republic); from time to time there were periods of one-man rule, most of them short-lived; and finally there was Augustus, who found the whole state exhausted by civil strife and therefore took it all into his own control and began what we call the Principate.
A Further Point in Catullus' Attack on Volusius
Authors: Townend G. B.
Published: September 2009

Among a number of short Latin poems by Walter Savage Landor, of which an interesting appreciation was published recently by Bruce Mackinnon, of British Columbia, is one particularly attractive pastiche of Catullan hendecasyllables. In many respects this poem could claim to reproduce the manner of Catullus himself. My own uneasiness was aroused by the rhythm of the opening line:

I was aware of no rule for the composition of this type of verse which was infringed here; but the run of the words appeared curiously prosaic. After some consideration, I identified the metrical feature in question as the opening of the verse with two disyllables: the former spondaic (no examples were to turn up, as it happened, with a trochaic or iambic word), the latter of necessity trochaic. It is a rhythm often employed by Landor in the fifty and more pages of hendecasyllables found in the 1847 edition of his Poemata et Inscriptiones (pp. 125–78), occurring for example in poems 3, 5, 9, 10, and three times in 12. A particularly striking example is found in 88.8, quaedam scripsit avunculus… which nobody would mistake for a production of Catullus.
Bow, Oracle, and Epiphany in Sophocles'Philoctetes
Authors: Gill Christopher
Published: September 2009

There are certain puzzling features about Sophocles'Philoctetes, notably concerning the oracle of Helenus that is the mainspring of the whole action. What were the exact terms of Helenus' prophecy? Did he state simply that Troy was to fall to Neoptolemus and the bow of Heracles; or did he also stipulate that the bow was to be used by its present owner, Philoctetes, that Philoctetes was to come willingly to-Troy, and that his wound was to be healed there? By the end of the play, we may well think that the prophecy made these further stipulations; but the references to the prophecy earlier in the play (and the actions of Odysseus, who should be familiar with its conditions) do little to make this plain. It is also difficult to determine exactly how much Neoptolemus knows about the prophecy. In the opening dialogue with Odysseus, he seems to know nothing about the oracle, not even the role of the bow in the capture of Troy (112 ff.). But, as the play proceeds, he gives an increasingly precise account of its conditions; although the source of his expanding knowledge is by no means clear. A further problem is posed by the epiphany of Heracles that concludes the play. Why has Sophocles constructed his play in such a way that the natural conclusion of the human characters' interaction is in direct contradiction both to the divine plan and the traditional myth, and needs (as it may seem) to be awkwardly reversed by adeus ex machina??
Metaphors of war and travel in seneca's prose works
Authors: Lavery Gerard B.
Published: September 2009

The purpose of this paper is an examination of the metaphors of life as warfare and life as a journey in the prose writings of the philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca. The discussion will centre on the essays and letters; the tragedies will not be directly considered. The philosopher's use of these metaphors will be related to a review of the teachings of Seneca and of the Stoic school on death and on certain other central Stoic concepts.
Thucydides: Fact-Grubber or Philosopher?
Authors: Whitehead David
Published: September 2009

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the significance, whether historical or historiographical, of the year 431 BC:historical, in that it saw the outbreak of a war which in its scope and consequences was to be unprecedented in the Greek world of its day; and historiographical, because a serious-minded young man in Athens realized the importance of what was happening and made up his mind to put it on record for posterity.
Laocoön and Sinon: Virgil Aeneid 2.40—198
Authors: Lynch John P.
Published: September 2009

Aeneid 2 is for the most part a book of action, telling the whole story of the rapid series of events that led to Troy's final destruction. Aeneas' narrative of these events is fast-paced, almost breathless; it has the flavour and emotional intensity of an eye-witness account rather than a retelling of a past experience. But it is noteworthy that Aeneas begins the story very slowly, by recounting in detail an exchange of speeches between Laocoon and Sinon (40—198). A quick summary of Trojan reactions to the horse might have sufficed for Aeneas' purposes. Virgil's model, Demodokos' song in Homer's Odyssey, treats the debate over the Trojan horse by simply summarizing the three positions taken (Od. 8. 499—513). When Odysseus asked the bard Demodokos to sing the story of the wooden horse (487 ff.), there is no suggestion, either in the wording of Odysseus' request or in the summary of Demodokos' response, of a pivotal debate between Laocoon and Sinon; in Homer's version of the story the major debate was internal to the Trojans and took place after the wooden horse was brought into the city. Why did Virgil have Aeneas linger over the exact words of Laocoön and Sinon? What, beyond a report of causes and events, is suggested by the speeches of Laocoön and Sinon? It would seem that the personalities and oratorical styles of these two men, not just their viewpoints in debate or their roles in the story, are important for the reader to understand.
Plautus and Seneca: Acting in Nero's Rome
Authors: Grant M. D.
Published: September 2009

Anyone who has ever read the tragedies of Seneca must have wondered at the intention of the author. In the absence of any external evidence for their staging this is not surprising. W. Beare argues for declamation before a select audience who would have appreciated the sparkle of the rhetoric. G. E. Duckworth, whilst stressing that presentation on stage cannot be proved, suggests tentatively that they were at least written with an eye to performance. C. D. N. Costa holds out for solo virtuoso recitals, with perhaps extracts or a few scenes being performed. F. Ahl recalls the emperor Domitian's enactment forbidding plays to be presented anywhere except indoors, and thus the large houses of the aristocracy may have been home to tragic theatre. V. Sorensen feels that a public performance of Seneca's tragedies would have been a notable public occasion, and with his ample means to fund such events, Seneca may have been trying to entice a large audience towards the benefits of Stoic philosophy.
Medea and British Legislation Before The First World War
Authors: Hall Edith
Published: September 2009

Euripides' Medea has penetrated to parts of modernity most mythical figures have not reached. Since she first rolled off the printing presses half a millennium ago, she has inspired hundreds of performances, plays, paintings, and operas. Medea has murdered her way into a privileged place in the history of the imagination of the West, and can today command huge audiences in the commercial theatre. Yet in Britain, at least, her popularity on the stage is a relatively recent phenomenon. Medea has transcended history partly because she enacts a primal terror universal to human beings: that the motherfigure shouldintentionallydestroy her own children. Yet this dimension of the ancient tragedy was until the twentieth century found so disturbing as largely to prevent unadapted performances. On the British stage it was not until 1907 that Euripides'Medeawas performed, without alteration, in English translation.
The Unstated Climax of Catullus 64
Authors: Townend G. B.
Published: September 2009

Definition of the class of poem which modern scholarship has agreed to describe by the convenient, if unauthorized, title of epyllion has never proved altogether successful. The claim has commonly been made that Catullus' sixty-fourth poem may be accepted as the type and that all or most of the features revealed in it may be assumed to exist more or less completely realized in earlier examples from the Alexandrian period: in particular, that the epyllion always possesses a secondary story enclosed within the primary one.
Wives And Husbands
Authors: Lefkowitz Mary R.
Published: September 2009

If recently feminist writers have placed too much emphasis on the restrictions and limitations of ancient women's lives, at least they have provided some compensation for the apologetic and uncritical estimations made before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. These earlier studies had tended to single out the accomplishments of certain exceptional women; they tended also to leave the impression that since most ancient women did not appear to have complained about the kind of lives they led, they regarded the customs and laws that governed their lives as equitable and natural. It is easy (at least now) to see that neither premise is acceptable.
Plato And Persuasion
Authors: Warman M. S.
Published: September 2009

The inculcation of techniques of persuasion by Greeks and Romans, i. e. rhetoric, in those days a highly necessary form of vocational training for top people, led eventually to the British classical education. But it is probable that few topics are more disliked by classical students of today than rhetoric; and examinees blench at the mere sight of questions in which the word ‘rhetoric’ appears. As E. R. Dodds remarks, ‘To the average modern Englishman “rhetoric” means a distastefully emotional or showy way of talking;… to the contemporaries of Socrates it meant the practical art of influencing men's will through the spoken word.’ Such an art is presumably still of some importance, and it is still worth considering what Plato/Socrates had to say about it. The enquiry is made the more piquant by the fact that Plato himself has been called e.g. ‘an orator himself in mocking other orators’ (Cic. De Or. 1.47), a ‘propagandist’,2 and most recently ‘[a man who] writes not as a scholar or scientist but from first to last as an advocate, an heir to the tradition of didactic poetry, a nursling of Attic drama and a product, no less than the politicians and litigants whom he criticized so articulately, of a culture which admired the art of the persuader’.
Lavinia's Blush: Vergil, Aeneid 12.64–70
Authors: Lyne R. O. A. M.
Published: September 2009

In the Aeneid actions are consistent with character and psychology, indeed indicative of character and psychology. This statement has, I think, general if not universal truth. At any rate, one should not hastily assume otherwise.
Treasure-Trove and Nero
Authors: Braund David
Published: September 2009

At the very beginning of Annals 16, Tacitus recounts the story of Caesellius Bassus. He says that Bassus, a man of Punic stock and disturbed mind, was inspired by a dream to journey to Nero at Rome: there he told the emperor that he had found on his estate a vast cave, which contained a very great quantity of ancient gold bullion. This was the treasure of Dido, he said, who, upon her flight from Tyre and foundation of Carthage, had hidden the hoard so as not to encourage luxury among her subjects nor an attack by the hostile Numidian kings.
Dio Chrysostom the Moral Philosopher
Authors: Berry Edmund
Published: September 2009

When we think of the philosophers of the first and second centuries of the Christian era the names that occur to our minds are almost certainly those of Stoics - Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. It would not occur to many to include Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom. Plutarch is generally regarded primarily as the author of Lives, while Dio Chrysostom is more often thought of as an orator. But these two have a philosophic approach also, which tends to be overlooked because it cannot be labelled as belonging to any one philosophical school. Both are eclectic and adhere to no single philosophical line; both adopt reasonableness and common sense as their guides. Their aim is to give useful, practical advice to men and communities on how to survive in the present world and to maintain moral principles. They are first and foremost moralists.
Eris In Euripides
Authors: Wilson John R.
Published: September 2009

As a goddess Eris or Strife plays no role at all in Greek religion and an extremely restricted role in Greek literature. In èpic she briefly appears in the preliminaries to the Judgement of Paris, but is normally confined to emblematic appearances in mass battle scenes. As a concept Hesiod gives her some importance by distinguishing between a good and an evil Eris. Generally, though, whether as a goddess or a concept,erisremains inconspicuous until Euripides gives the word a thematic importance in a number of his works. This is most obvious inAndromacheand most impressive in a nearly unbroken series of plays starting withHelenand ending with the posthumousIphigeneia in Aulis.
Ethics and Poetry in Horace'sOdes
Authors: Macleod C. W.
Published: September 2009

A generally recognized achievement of Horace is his working into Latin lyric poetry the moral teachings of Greek philosophy. But it is still worth while to ask how deeply he absorbed, and how significantly he shaped them. This question demands not a sweeping answer based on a mere set of references, but patient examination of individual odes; for as a poet, Horace naturally couches his thought in poems, which are, as it happens, highly elaborate works of art. This paper takes two pieces for such consideration and suggests that the coherence of their argument and the particulars of their diction may be better appreciated if they are read in relation to Epicurean ethics. My method is tentative and cumulative: there is no reason to presuppose the justice of such a reading, and it is justified only if it illumines the whole poem in detail (as it surely does 3.29). The purpose of this paper, then, is not to attach a scholastic label toOdes1.20 and 2.3, but to bring out their meaning and coherence.
Hybrisand Dishonour: II
Authors: Fisher N. R. E.
Published: September 2009

In a previous article I argued that the most successful approach to the concept ofhybriswas through the definition of Aristotle, who placed the core of the concept in behaviour that was intended gratuitously to inflict dishonour and shame upon others; such an account, I argued, would be able adequately to explain the meaning and moral force of the term in authors from Homer to Aristotle, and was more precise than the account offered by D. M. MacDowell, who had definedhybrisas self-indulgent misuse of energy or power. In a number of areas of Greek literature, however, different interpretations ofhybrishave been and still are widely held; I wish here to suggest briefly how my account will stand in these areas as well.
Herodotus' Sigynnai (5.9) and Gipsies
Authors: Barrett D. S.
Published: September 2009

For well over 150 years commentators on Herodotus have raised the possibility of a connection between the Sigynnai and gipsies, sometimes on their own account, sometimes by reference to others. The latest is B. Virgilio, who cites Ph.-E. Legrand, who argues that the Sigynnai lived in what is now Hungary, and that their name is therefore linked with cigany, the Hungarian word for ‘gipsy’ (in German, Zigeuner). H. Verdin states that they are ‘sometimes' identified with gipsies, but warns that K. von Fritz regards the matter as very uncertain. F. H. Weissbach refers almost wearily to the prevalence of the theory;s R. W. Macan6 ascribes it to J. W. Blakesley; E. Abbot refers to it fleetingly; P. Bataillard propounded it in a series of studies between 1844 and 1885.
The FourthGeorgic, Virgil, and Rome
Authors: Griffin Jasper
Published: September 2009

Never were more prophetic words penned than these of Friedrich Klingner. Many and various have been the interpretations put forth since then, and some of them have been very strange indeed. The reader who has duly confronted Coleman, Otis, Segal, Bradley, Wender, Wilkinson, Wankenne, Coleiro, Hardie, Joudoux, Wormell, Otis again, Parry, Putnam, Cova, Chomarat, and Stehle, feels dismay; perhaps despair. For some, the point of the Aristaeus and Orpheus episodes is political propaganda (so Coleiro: Gallus could have survived had he humbled himself like Aristaeus, the moral being the duty of subordination to the Princeps; so, rather differently, Joudoux: the poem is propaganda for the supremacy of Octavian, in terms of the threefold Indo-European structure ofDumezil). For others, it is moral (so, for instance, Wender: Orpheus turned away from the hard and morally ambiguous farmer's life, as lived by Aristaeus; Aristaeus gets bugonia as his reward, while Orpheus is dismembered and scattered in order to fertilize the earth); or religious (so Chomarat: the experience of Aristaeus is presented under the schema of initiation into a mystery religion); or political and moral (so Wormell and Otis: Aristaeus ‘stands for the sinful self-destruction, atonement and revival of the Roman people’; life emerges from death, ‘in political terms, the Augustan restoration from the anarchy of civil war’; ‘Aristaeus, it is to be presumed [sic], was induced to heed the lesson’).
The Nativity Census: What Does Luke Actually Say?
Authors: Thorlev John
Published: September 2009

The first two verses of Chapter 2 of Luke's Gospel are amongst the best known of the whole Bible, and historically amongst the most controversial. Luke refers to a census decreed by Augustus, of which we appear to have no other record, and implies that P. Sulpicius Quirinius was governor of Syria at some time around 6–5 B.C, the possibility of which has been much debated. This is all very odd, particularly since Luke is usually so careful with political background, if not with exact chronology, and is clearly trying in his account of the Nativity to place the event in its historical context, as well as to explain why Jesus was born in Bethlehem and not at the family home in Nazareth. One must assume that the details about the Nativity which Luke gives did at least make some sort of historical sense to his earliest readers, and yet the versions which we read so frequently can hardly be said to do so. But what exactly does Luke say? If we are to doubt the accuracy of his statements we should first be certain that we understand precisely what it is that he is saying.
Pliny in Bithynia–and what Followed
Authors: Levick Barbara
Published: September 2009

The view that the younger Pliny was sent to the province of Pontus et Bithynia (Bithynia for short) as a ‘financial expert’ who would deal with the accounts of the cities has been thoroughly and properly discredited. Pliny in his province did all the things that his predecessors and successors did or might have done. His funerary inscription at Comum shows him to have been legatus pro praetore consulari potestate, an imperial legate, but with consular power; the regular governors had been proconsuls, men appointed by the senate for one year only after drawing lots for the post with their fellows of equal seniority. But in spite of their title they had been only ex-praetors, while Pliny had held the consulship; hence his cansularis potestas, which secured him the same number of fasces as they had enjoyed, one more than he could have held as a plain legatus Augusti pro praetore. Pliny was a governor of superior standing, chosen by Trajan on the strength of a decree of the senate, to take full charge of the province and to correct all the abuses that were rampant there (‘quoniam multa in ea emendanda apparuerint’, 32.2); and he died in office near the end of his second year of tenure.
A Misunderstood Scene in Sophokles,Oidipous(O.T.300–462)
Authors: Bain David
Published: September 2009

Just as(paceBlaydes and Dawe) ὒβριζ φυτει τ⋯ραννον, Sophokles'Oidipouscontinues to beget misunderstanding. One can guarantee that any conversation about the play will soon produce any one of at least four large-scale misconceptions regarding it. One of these is discussed here, not so much for the purpose of dispelling it, as in the hope that such discussion will lead to some general conclusions about the dramatic technique of the Greek tragedians.
Attitudes Towards Animals in Ancient Greece
Authors: Lonsdale Steven H.
Published: September 2009

Among the general questions that arise in analysing a culture's outlook on its fauna are the following: Where do animals belong in the world-view of that culture, in their cosmogony or historical mythology, and how do these aetiological beliefs reflect upon the economic position of animals? What is the range of emotional attitudes towards man's enigmatic and uncanny half-brothers, especially domesticated species? Are animals used in entertainment? Questions such as these may be further refined by determining which species are domesticated, which hunted; which are eaten by man, which taboo; which animals does man sacrifice or worship? Are animals kept as pets, and if so, what kinds of names does a culture give them–human names or abstract names embodying a spiritual quality or force in nature? To what extent are these non-verbal creatures a substitute for affection or sadistic punishment, or a target for aggressive or hostile feelings? In other words, what qualities does man project onto animals? Or put slightly differently, which powers does he attribute to the animal? Is an animal thought capable of curing illness, for example? And finally, what are some of the recurrent symbols that emerge for a given animal in legend or myth?
Herodotus and Aristophanes on Monarchy
Authors: Davie John N.
Published: September 2009

It is a commonplace in the criticism of Attic drama to dwell on its severe, starkly unsympathetic treatment of monarchia, the rule of a single man. The often violent dislike of tyrannical government illustrated in the extant plays has been largely responsible for the widespread assumption among scholars that the attitude of fifth-century Athenians to monarchic rule was one of unrelieved hostility. Certainly it can hardly be doubted that the subsequent portrayal of the tyrant in Attic prose literature as a monster of depravity owes much to the art of Aeschylus and his successors, or, again, that this marked antipathy to sole rule reflects to a considerable extent the feelings of the dramatists' contemporaries.
Propertius Consults his Astrologer
Authors: Kidd D. A.
Published: September 2009

In current texts of Propertius the first elegy of Book 4 is printed as one continuous poem of 150 lines. But at the same time most editors show a break after line 70 and supply a subheading, such as the name HOROS (Butler and Barber, Schuster, Barber in the Oxford text, Luck, Fedeli, Pasoli) or IA (Butler) or IB (Camps), to distinguish the second half of the poem.
The Roman Empire and the Kushans
Authors: Thorley John
Published: September 2009

It may seem strange to link the Roman Empire with a Himalayan kingdom which hardly gets a mention in most standard works on Roman history, but in fact during the second and early third centuries A. D. these two powers enjoyed a cordial and mutually profitable relationship which was of considerable economic importance to both. From the end of the first century A. D. to the middle of the third century the Kushans controlled what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, parts of Soviet and Chinese Central Asia, and much of the Ganges plain. Their history has proved difficult to reconstruct, since they left no historical writing, and even the chronology of their kings is still disputed, but enough is now known for us to begin to piece together, though still somewhat tentatively, the strange and exotic relationship between this distant state and the Roman world, and perhaps in the process to contribute from Roman history to the problems of Kushan dating.
Homer's Wine-Dark Sea
Authors: Rutherfurd-Dyer R.
Published: September 2009

The adjective ωἷνοψ in the phrase translated ‘the wine-dark sea’ is normally regarded as a formulaic epithet, a meaningless romantic flourish evoking the colour or texture of wine. Homer's wine is elsewhere only red or black (⋯ρυθρός, Od. 5.165, 9.163; μέλας,5.265, 9.196, 346; αἶθωψ, Il. 1.462, 4.259), and thus, we assume, the colour of modern Mavrodaphni. Cattle of this colour (Od. 13.32, Il. 13.703) are probably dark red.
The Background To Polyneices' Disinterment and Reburial
Authors: Whitehorne J. E. G.
Published: September 2009

Why should Antigone in Sophocles' play want to return to Polyneices' body, after apparently successfully burying it, if we may judge from the guard's report to Creon at lines 245ff.? Ever since it was first raised by Jebb in his note onAntigone429, this question has given scholars almost as much trouble as the original burial gave Antigone herself. Basically, there are two opposed views on the problem. Firstly, that both burials were performed by Antigone and their duplication is to be explained primarily in terms of the play's dramatic organization. Secondly, that not only is it impossible within the framework of the play's chronology for Antigone to have performed the first burial but that, had she done so, there would have been no need for her to return to the body after sprinkling the symbolic dust. Therefore it was not Antigone, but the gods, who first buried Polyneices.
The Nature of Aristophanes'Akharnians
Authors: Macdowell Douglas M.
Published: September 2009

The problem which in recent years has generally been regarded as the main problem aboutAkharniansis: has the play a political purpose? Fifty years ago, I suppose, no one doubted that the play did have two purposes. One was to entertain the audience and make them laugh. The other was a purpose of extreme seriousness, to persuade the audience that the Peloponnesian War, now in its sixth year, was a terrible mistake, and peace ought to be made as soon as possible. This view is associated especially with the name of Gilbert Murray, who in 1897 wrote, simply as a statement of fact, ‘It is political in its main purpose, and is directed against Cleon and Lamachus, as representing the war party’. In his later monograph on Aristophanes, he still holds this view;Akharniansis, he says, ‘a definite plea for peace’. But in 1938 A. W. Gomme published an important article on Aristophanes and politics, in which he maintains that the question ‘What were Aristophanes' political views?’ is not relevant to the interpretation and criticism of his plays, and that we cannot tell fromAkharnianswhether he was in favour of peace or not. That is a non-committal position, almost a defeatist one. But more recently two scholars have gone much further in opposing the old view that the play is a plea for peace. W. G. Forrest considers that no one could have made a plea for peace in Athens in 425 B.C.; at that date the Athenians, he thinks, were so fully engaged in the war that making peace was completely out of the question.
ἐλάχɩστον … ἐν τοῖς ἄρσεσι κλέος: Thucydides, Women, and the Limits of Rational Analysis
Authors: Wiedemann Thomas E. J.
Published: September 2009

The comparative infrequency of references to women in Thucydides' history has often been remarked upon, and explained as due in part to the choice of warfare as his theme, and in part to the success of the Greek republics in excluding women from the political arena. As Pericles says in his funeral speech, women ought to give their menfolk the least possible cause to have to take note of them (2.45.2). But the exclusion of women from the subject-matter of historical discourse is peculiarly Thucydidean. Powell'sLexicontells us that Thucydides' contemporary Herodotus uses γ⋯νηs 373 times, while the number of references to women/wives, mothers, priestesses etc. in Thucydides is less than fifty. This does not mean of course that Thucydides has no interest in, or sympathy for, women: frequently he mentions them as the passive objects of military circumstances precisely in order to underline the tragic effects of warfare. But some of the references to women are decidedly curious. There is a clear example in the account of the unsuccessful Theban attack on Plataea in 431 B.C., with which active hostilities began. Thucydides tells us that some of the Thebans who were locked into the town escaped by breaking open a deserted gate without being noticed (2.4.4). Why does he gratuitously mention that it was a women – presumably a Plataean – who gave her enemies an axe: γυναικ⋯ς δο⋯σης π⋯λɛκυν Clearly, it is an overimplification to say that Thucydides ignores women.
Hannibal: What Kind of Genius?
Authors: Hoyos B. D.
Published: September 2009

The year 1983 marks the 2300th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second Punic War, one of the most momentous conflicts in history. The outstanding figure of that war was, of course, the Carthaginian leader Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca. His invasion of Italy at the outset of the war was a model of strategic daring and skill. His tactics in destroying the much larger Roman army at Cannae remain a classic exemplar of a battle of envelopment. He came near to bringing down Roman power, a near-miss for which his Roman contemporaries never forgave him, while their descendants accorded him grudging respect or even admiration. These achievements have made him, indeed, the most famous of the adversaries of Rome and one of the three most highly rated generals of antiquity (with Alexander and Julius Caesar). There is some irony in this, for of the three he was the only one to fail ultimately in his enterprise.
The ‘Gallic Menace‘ in Caesar's Propaganda
Authors: Gardner Jane F.
Published: September 2009

Between the ‘home’ territory of the Roman people in the Italian peninsula and the tribes of Gaul and Germany lay two provinces – Cisalpine Gaul, most of whose population were actually already Roman citizens or in possession of Latin rights, and Transalpine Gaul, a province only since 121 B.C., but already in Caesar's time displaying a developed urban civilization based on the Greek model, under the influence of Massilia. By the end of the first century B.C. well-to-do Romans considered the schools of Massilia an acceptable alternative to those of Athens for their sons' higher studies (Strabo 4.1.5). On the fringes of the Province, however, and beyond in Gaul proper were the ‘long-haired’ Gauls (hence Gallia Comata) and beyond them the German tribes. Only occasionally had these presented any real and immediate threat to the security of the Italian peninsula. Nevertheless, they were present in Roman consciousness as a kind of bogeymen. In 44 B.C., the founding charter of Urso, a Julian colony in southern Spain, included a provision that certain minor public officials should be exempt from military service except tumultus Italici Gallicive causa (ILS 6087). Events of this nature were hardly likely to necessitate conscription in southern Spain, but this clause was clearly taken over from the standard charter of an Italian municipality, where these were seen as possible emergencies.
Unrequited Love: Polyphemus and Galatea in Ovid's Metamorphoses
Authors: Griffin Alan H. F.
Published: September 2009

What is the cure for unrequited love? According to the Hellenistic poet Theocritus the cure is song. To illustrate this thesis Theocritus wrote two poems about the lovesick cyclops Polyphemus. Alexandrian poets were very interested in the subject of love, especially when it went wrong, and they were also keen to show off their literary knowledge and skills by borrowing and adapting ideas from their predecessors. The lovesick cyclops of Idylls 6 and 11 combined both concerns. Theocritus was able to demonstrate his literary debt to Homer by borrowing many grotesque details from the cyclops in Homer's Odyssey. He was also able to devote the bulk of his poems to making his point that the only successful cure for lovesickness is to be found in poetry and singing.
Juvenal's Fifteenth Satire: A Reading
Authors: Singleton D.
Published: September 2009

It is probably still true to say that the satires of Juvenal's last two books, apart from the tenth, continue to suffer an undeserved popular neglect (using that phrase in a somewhat special sense by virtue of which it may permissible to suggest that, say, theOdesof Horace or theAmovesof Ovid do not suffer ‘popular neglect'). Certainly, one recent critical work on Roman satire contains no analysis of any of the Juvenal satires later than the sixth. Satires 11–15, and obviously not 16, do not generally receive the supreme accolade of being ‘set’ by the examiners for the Advanced level of the G.C.E.; they occasionally do not feature even in university examinations. There has indeed been no lack of recent scholarly interest in the later satires, but it would be optimistic to believe that that interest is good evidence for the poems’ actually being more generally, or more attentively, read.
Thucydides and The Power Syndrome
Authors: French A.
Published: September 2009

In the twentieth century the content of historiography has been expanded to envelop a very broad range of studies. But in a popular sense History retains familiar associations. Although theoretically its subject-matter can be as wide as the range of human activities and the life of all God's creatures, popular history deals mainly with the past of ruling groups: the weak are historically insignificant and touch upon History only by their contact with the great. The powerful make History: the weak endure and illustrate it. History appears as a retrospect on human activities organized around the theme of power—its origin, use, misuse, and consequences.
Primus and Gabinius
Authors: Lacey W. K.
Published: September 2009

M. Primus governed Macedonia, presumably for a year, between 25 and 23 B.C. On his return he was prosecuted for maiestas for attacking a friendly Thracian tribe, the Odrysae. In his defence he pleaded orders from Augustus, which Augustus denied when he came to the court and gave evidence without being summoned. It might be thought that either he told the truth or he did not. Certainly any order he gave must have been oral, not written, since a written order could have been produced in evidence. None was produced, and it is clear (as Dr. Levick has shown) that Primus' defence counsel Murena would not have compromised his case by failing to produce an order if he could have done so.
The Aeneas–Dido Episode as an Attack on Aeneas' Mission and Rome
Authors: Farron Steven
Published: September 2009

Since antiquity the Aeneas—Dido episode has generally been recognized as the most powerful and memorable part of the Aeneid. During the past several decades there has been a considerable amount of argument as to whether it shows Aeneas' mission in a favourable or unfavourable light. Yet this problem has not been studied systematically. It is the purpose of this article to demonstrate systematically that Vergil deliberately protrays Aeneas' mission as brutal and destructive.
Anecdotes as Historical Evidence for the Principate
Authors: Saller Richard
Published: September 2009

Historians' judgements about the evidential value of anecdotes have oscillated over the past decades. In the early part of this century authors of German textbooks on historical method warned students against using anecdotes on the grounds that their form was not fixed and their contents fluctuated since the narrators exercised their imaginations to improve stories with each telling. J. Vansina, an anthropologist studying the value of oral traditions for reconstructing African history, concluded in his more recent work that the anecdote is among the least reliable types of oral tradition. Nevertheless, recent scholarly works on Roman imperial history have utilized anecdotes for the sorts of social, economic, and administrative details which the available political narratives ignore. No systematic analysis has been undertaken to justify this use. I shall attempt to fill the gap by asking three basic questions: in what social contexts were anecdotes generated and transmitted; what changes in content were likely to occur during transmission; and what are the implications for the use of anecdotes as historical evidence?
Critical Appreciations VI: Homer, Iliad 1.1–52
Authors: Griffin Jasper , Hammond Martin
Published: September 2009

The following is the sixth of the series which began in G & R 20 (1973), 38 ff. and 155 ff. and was continued in volumes 21 (1974), 165 ff., 25 (1978), 70 ff. and 125 ff., and 27 (1980), 48 ff.
The Gods in the Aeneid
Authors: Coleman Robert
Published: September 2009

The supernatural forces at work in Vergil's epic narrative are succinctly presented in the opening lines – ‘Italiam fato profugus Lauiniaque uenit | litora … iactatus et alto | ui superum saeuae memorem Iunonis ob iram’: far more prominently too than in Homer. If the Stoic overtones that fatum carried in Augustan Latin were remote from the notion of a divine autocrat's arbitrary will, the wrath of Juno takes us back uncompromisingly to the Homeric world in which the seafaring
Odysseus is perpetually harassed by Poseidon (Od. 1.20 etc.) and Hera is implacably opposed to Trojans (Il. 1.536 etc.), on account of the judgement of Paris and the abduction of Ganymede, which are explicitly mentioned in Aen, 1.26–8.