1. It's no use. There is no hope, not a dog's chance. Whatever I write in this essay, who will go root out Grattius' poem The World of Hunting to Hounds? No course-teacher will track him down, whether as Augustan writer or as didactic poet. Big books about Latin Literature have to be perfectly inclusive works of reference if they are to spare him a sop, and even then he'll barely get a sniff (of précis) in the paragraph he is allotted. Ancient writers leave him without a trace: only the exceptional circumstances of exile had whining Ovid lump him – in 28th place – into his exhaustively comprehensive catalogue of contemporary writers, meant to figure collectively that non-event ‘The Action at Rome minus Naso’, in the last of his Letters from Pontus (4.16.34: our sole testimonium). So he has never been needed for writing about any other author.

It is now a recognised phenomenon in the study of ancient philosophy – especially of the Hellenistic period – that the various philosophical schools disseminated or fabricated stories about the life of their chosen founder which were supposed to embody the theories – especially the ethical theories – to which that school subscribed. This may be termed ‘biodoxography’: the presentation and manipulation of purportedly biographical anecdotes in order to illustrate a particular philosophical stance. This biodoxography could be used for various and sometimes conflicting ends. While a particular philosophical school might attempt to publicise and embody in the image of its founder what it thought was an attractive model for living, opponents of that school were encouraged by this very biodoxographical practice to scrutinise the details of a chosen figure-head's conduct in order to produce possible conflicts with the proposed doctrine. The greater the emphasis laid on the founder's life as a model and paradigm of a particular philosophy, the greater the profit in finding some contradiction between his behaviour and the doctrine of the school.

Semonides 7 is a remarkable poem. At 118 lines it is by far the longest example of early Greek iambus. It is indeed by far the longest non-hexameter poem to survive from before the classical period. What is more this is a poem of whose seventh-century date we can be reasonably confident, and it is not a poem concerned with the mythical world but a poem directly related to everyday life. It has a strong a priori claim therefore to the attention of both literary scholars and historians. Yet it is a poem hardly discussed by either. In this paper I shall argue that if we take this poem seriously it can not merely shed light on one specific place and moment in Greek history, and on one particular writer, but should affect the whole way in which we think about relations between men and women in seventh-century Greece and about archaic Greek literature.

Xenophon's Oeconomicus is a work which has recently prompted a number of widely divergent responses. A predominant reading offers that the work is a testimony to Greek misogyny in the classical period: the husband Ischomachus takes a young, inexperienced wife, who is accordingly and following custom tamed and instructed to manage the space within the οἶχος. Another interpretation regards Xenophon and Ischomachus as better-than-average Greek men with respect to women's standing in society, or even as proto-feminist. In this treatment of the dialogue, the fact that the husband allows the wife her own space – the home (as distinct from the farm outdoors) – and teaches her her own activities – housework and the management of the household slaves – demonstrates a considerable degree of respect for the wife and for woman's worth, while Socrates' exclamation that the wife has a ‘masculine intellect (ἀνδϱιχὴν διάνοιαν)’ (10.1) is to be taken as proof of the Xenophontic wife's authority. There are further variations which qualify these interpretations: either the husband is regarded as echoing Socratic sympathy towards women while continuing to insist that the wife be a domestic; or the husband, despite being a misogynist, is seen as granting the wife some degree of autonomy.

The idea of examining law as a cultural phenomenon seems surprisingly underappreciated – especially by legal scholars. Black-letter law, sociology of law, Eigentum und Besitz, law and life, life and law (which of you imitates the other?), all rank among the usual suspects in professional discourse, to the evident exclusion of law as culture. This is of course potentially a broad topic, even if we limit it to the assumptions or assertions about law found in literary discourse, an area of study that naturally requires no small degree of non-legal expertise. That may be the difficulty. A few exceptions, whom I admire and hope to emulate – for their ambitious, pioneering spirit, have spied an opportunity here. Perhaps the best-known example of this approach is John Crook, who writes:

… legal talk and terminology seem rather more frequent and more at home in Roman literature than in ours. Legal terms of art could be used for literary metaphor, could be the foundation of stage jokes or furnish analogy in philosophical discussion. And a corollary of this is that many a passage of Latin belles lettres needs a knowledge of the law for its comprehension.

Crook, disappointingly, lets it go at that, failing to fulfil the promise of boundless opportunity expressed in the last sentence.

In a recent article published in the CQ I argued the likelihood that in comparable underworld scenes Vergil modelled Charon's challenge to Aeneas in Aeneid 6.388–97 on Aeacus' challenge to Heracles in a surviving fragment of the tragedy Pirithous composed by either Euripides or Critias, and I took the episode to be a reinforcement or a possible modification of E. Norden's suggestion that Aeneas' descent into the Underworld is modelled on a catabasis of Heracles. In the play Aeacus sees a figure approaching him and demands to know of the stranger both his identity and his business in coming. Heracles responds by giving his name and explaining that he has come hither at Eurystheus' command to fetch Cerberus alive from Hades and bring him to Mycenae's gates. Heracles must then have overcome Aeacus. for we next find Theseus and Heracles conversing in the Underworld about Pirithous. Earlier in the play Pirithous had lamented that he still languishes in Hades for having attempted, with Theseus as his accomplice, to carry off from the world below the goddess Persephone to be his bride. In the usual version both heroes are caught and punished in the world below and only Theseus is rescued by Heracles. In this play, however, Heracles now heaps praise upon Theseus for his loyalty in electing to stay with his friend Pirithous in Hades. Heracles then rescues both heroes.

Lucian's singular role within the socio-cultural context of the period known as the Second Sophistic has found increasing appreciation amongst scholars, particularly over the last fifteen years. Although not a sophist in the true sense, Lucian can be regarded as an outstanding pepaideumenos, meaning this: during an era in which being Greek was less a matter of political than of cultural definition, and in which membership in the upper administrative echelons was dependent on academic qualifications, on the mastery, that is, of a code which consisted of broad general knowledge and rhetorical activity partnered by thorough conversancy with the literary heritage and language of Attic Greece – during this age, then, Lucian proved himself not only a worthy representative of such paideia, but also contributed with his literary works to its development and adaptation.

At some time in the second quarter of the second century AD, the controversial sophist–philosopher Favorinus seems to have delivered a speech in Corinth, complaining about the removal of a statue which had previously been erected there in his honour. In doing so he was addressing the inhabitants of a city which occupied an unusual – in many ways unique – position between Greek and Roman identity: Corinth had been sacked by Roman forces in 146 BC, and then refounded as a Roman colony more than one hundred years later, and even in the second century AD it was still sometimes represented as a Roman intrusion within the Greek world, even though it had been strongly influenced by the Greek populations surrounding it in the intervening years. My aim in this article is to examine Favorinus' Corinthian Oration in the light of the cultural ambiguities of its setting. Despite increasing interest in Favorinus in recent years, and despite an increasing volume of archaeological evidence for Corinthian life in the second century, there have been very few detailed readings of the speech's complexities, and even fewer which have recognized the way in which it is crucially anchored within its Corinthian context.

Constantine the Great's sons, Constantine II, Constantius II and Constans, were the first Roman emperors since Commodus (AD 180–92), Marcus Aurelius' son, to have been brought up in the imperial household and groomed as heirs apparent. Constantine II reigned for a mere three years and suffered damnatio memoriae, while our evidence for Constans is scant due to the loss of the early books of Ammianus' Res Gestae. As a result, we know little detail regarding their education and any subsequent influence it may have had upon their respective rules. Fortunately, the same is not true of their brother, Constantius, who reigned for some twenty-four years as Augustus and is the subject of seven still-extant panegyrics.

Such is the reading of the MSS, but it has never given universal satisfaction. Erasmus, because praeponere with accusative and dative regularly means ‘to prefer one thing to another’, suggested undique decerptae frondi praeponere olivam, meaning to prefer the olive, as symbol of Athens, to the leaf plucked from everywhere else. However undique is still a problem, as it means ‘from everywhere’ not ‘from everywhere else’; furthermore modern editors hold that Bentley (ad loc.) justifies the use of praeponere as meaning ‘to place prominently upon’.

One might suggest the following as a useful methodological principle: textual corruption should be suspected in any passage which has been explained by a sufficient number of scholars in ways which are incompatible with one another and which could never have occurred to any ordinary reader. This principle can be illustrated by the extraordinarily diverse and recondite explanations given here for undique; thus Bentley interprets it as ex eo argumento undiquaque exhausto; R. G. M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard report and reject such suggestions of others as ‘from every quarter of Attic soil’, ‘from every source in Attic legend’, ‘from every other poet's [brow]’ and ‘by everyone’; they themselves suggest ‘from anywhere and everywhere’, and support this with a reference to Odes 1.16.14, where in fact undique has its proper meaning of ‘from everywhere’, i.e. from each of the animals already created; Kenneth Quinn sees an ‘ironic ambiguity’ between ‘the ubiquitous olive’ and the ‘olive picked by all’; David West accepts ‘from anywhere and everywhere’, and interprets it as ‘meaning that their writings are derivative, being made up of imitations culled from the whole body of Greek poetry’ – but only a minute part of ‘the whole body of Greek poetry’ would have provided relevant material.

My title has a narrow and a broader reference. The narrower one relates to the question of whether the study of ancient science will continue in this University. Valedictories do not have the same well-established conventions as inaugurals. But some taking stock of what has been happening in the field of studies picked out by the title of the Professorship that I have held for fifteen years may be thought appropriate or at least will be forgiven. The very fact that I raise this as a question (‘is there a future?) may suggest that in this last public act of my professorship, I may be about to pronounce an obituary for a subject that I have cultivated ever since I first began lecturing in this University. The prospects for the study of the subject here are indeed unclear. It may not be so much a matter of après moi le déluge, as après moi – rien ne va plus. But I am more concerned here – the Vice-Chancellor may be relieved to hear – not with the narrow, so much as with the broader issues suggested by my title. Where, in the wake of recent developments in the history and philosophy of science, is there a place – and is there a place – for ancient science?

This article takes its starting-point from the intuition that, in some sense, the extant Aristotelian corpus was written in paragraphs. I hasten to explain. First – almost needless to say this explicitly – I do not suggest that the Aristotelian corpus was set out in the indented form we are familiar with from modern editions. Second, and more to the point, I do not have anything to say about the question, whether the text was formally set out divided by the paragraphē mark (a horizontal line used to signal divisions in ancient papyrus rolls). The paragraphē was certainly in use in Aristotle's time – he himself refers to it in Rhet. 1409a20 – although how widespread its use was, we do not know. Nor do we know with any certainty how the ancients themselves conceptualised this mark and its significance. It does seem, however, to have corresponded more to our concept of a full stop than to our concept of a paragraph. Be that as it may, my argument is not about how the text was set out on the space of the page, but about how the text was conceived: in the most general sense, how it was written and read. The Aristotelian corpus may well have been originally, in appearance, just a constant stream of undivided columns on papyri. Yet it had a certain discursive structure which, I suggest, is best approached as that of a paragraph. It is upon this discursive structure of Aristotle's works that I focus in this article.