Since 2007, a team of American and British ancient historians has been preparing a new translation of the Codex Justinianus. The ‘Codex Project’ was launched by chief editor Bruce W. Frier; the goal of the project is to create the first reliable English translation of the Codex Justinianus on the basis of the standard edition by Paul Krüger. Since 1932, the notoriously unreliable translation by Scott has remained the only one in English. The new translation by the Codex Project should appear soon.

dicar, qua uiolens obstrepit Aufidus
et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium
regnauit populorum ex humili potens
princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos 13
deduxisse modos.

uirginibus Tyriis mos est gestare pharetram,
purpureoque alte suras uincire cothurno.

It is customary for us Tyrian girls to carry a quiver
and to lace our calves up high in red boots.
(Verg. Aen. 1.336–7)

In Book 10 of the Aeneid, Virgil presents an epic catalogue of Etruscan allies who return under Aeneas' command to the beleaguered Trojan camp (10.166–214), including the forces from Liguria. The account of the Ligurians initially conforms to the general pattern of the catalogue, as Virgil briefly introduces and describes the two leaders. But the description of Cupauo's swan-feather crest leads to a digression about the paternal origins of the avian symbol. Cupauo's father Cycnus, stricken with grief for his beloved Phaethon, was transformed from a mournful singer into the swan that bears his name (10.185–93):

non ego te, Ligurum ductor fortissime bello,
transierim, Cinyre, et paucis comitate Cupauo,
cuius olorinae surgunt de uertice pennae
(crimen, Amor, uestrum) formaeque insigne paternae.
namque ferunt luctu Cycnum Phaethontis amati,
populeas inter frondes umbramque sororum 190
dum canit et maestum Musa solatur amorem,
canentem molli pluma duxisse senectam
linquentem terras et sidera uoce sequentem.

It has long been known that there is a significant connection between Aphrodite and Semitic goddesses. In Walter Burkert's recent words, ‘Behind the figure of Aphrodite there clearly stands the ancient Semitic goddess of love, Ishtar-Astarte.’ This was already recognized by Herodotus (1.105, 131) and Philo of Byblos (Eus. Prep. evang. 1.812). I want here to note a curious and striking item of connection that has not been noticed.

At the beginning of Aeneid 12, a truce is agreed so that Aeneas and Turnus can fight each other in single combat (12.161-215). But this truce is violated through the instigation of Turnus’ sister Juturna (222–56), who in turn has been instigated by Juno (134–60). The Italian Tolumnius casts a spear that kills an Etruscan warrior (257–82). Aeneas pleads for calm and the maintenance of the truce, but he in turn is wounded by an arrow (311–23). Turnus, seeing the Trojans in disarray, rushes into battle, and a general engagement ensues (324–82). So Turnus, even if he did not instigate the breach, does nothing to heal it, and for that reason alone (in the eyes of some commentators) is a criminal, who deserves his ultimate death at the hands of Aeneas.

πολλὰ γὰρ πολλᾷ λέλεκται, νεαρὰ δ᾽ ἐξευρόντα δόμεν βαϲάνῳ     20
ἐϲ ἔλεγχον, ἅπαϲ κίνδυνοϲ· ὄψον δὲ λόγοι φθονεροῖϲιν,
ἅπτεται δ᾽ ἐϲλῶν ἀεί, χειρόνεϲϲι δ᾽ οὐκ ἐρίζει.
κεῖνοϲ καὶ Τελαμῶνοϲ δάψεν υἱόν, φαϲγάνῳ ἀμφικυλίϲαιϲ.

21. ὄψον δὲ λόγοι BD : δὲ λόγοι om. Triclinius
φθονεροῖϲιν BD : φθόνῳ εἰϲίν Vauvilliers (vel potius φθονερῷ ᾽ιϲιν)

In his recent edition of Aeschylus' Persae Garvie prints the second strophe of the amoibaion

ὀτοτοτοῖ, µάταν
τὰ πολλὰ βέλεα παµµιγῆ    270
γᾶς ἀπ᾽ ᾿Ασίδος ἦλθεν, αἰαῖ,
δᾴαν Ἑλλάδα χώραν.

Gutter-minded readings of Ovid have a venerable ancient precedent in Martial. As Stephen Hinds points out, the epigrammatist has a particular knack for ‘editorializing on the euphemistic language of elegy by “staining” it, in more or less complicated ways; it can be argued that the intertext between Ovidian and Martialian erotics, as well as differentiating them, tends to give the reader both a more Ovidian Martial and a more Martialian Ovid than before’. The present note will subject a famous and somewhat puzzling Ovidian passage to the kind of treatment that Martial might have given it. The alert reader will notice that this is, on one level, a dodge—an excuse for skirting the issue of Ovid's intentions and abjuring responsibility for whatever ‘staining’ may occur. But perhaps I shall be forgiven if I can show how listening in on an imagined intertextual conversation between two of antiquity's wittiest authors pays dividends in bringing out Martial's Ovidian side, a genius for innuendo combined with literary insight that can be too easily drowned out by his barrage of primary obscenities.

Sophocles, fr. 316 comprises matching entries in Photius, Lex. p. 489 Porson and the Suda ρ166, which are thought to derive from Pausanias the Atticist's dictionary. Erbse presents the following text (ρ5):

The phrase sacra mensae appears in only a select number of instances from the first century a.d. onwards. This paper seeks to demonstrate that references to sacra mensae are not coincidental, and that they were employed deliberately by authors such as Valerius Maximus and, after him, Quintilian, Tacitus and Seneca, based on an assumed shared understanding of their significance on the part of Roman audiences. Although it appears across a variety of literary works and in a range of contexts, the phrase does not seem to have been used in reference to a specific rite or rites performed at the table. Instead, sacra mensae appears to have been used primarily in a metaphorical sense, designed to epitomize the customs and respect attached to dining in Roman culture. Religion certainly played an important part in creating the aura surrounding the table, which was subject to various rituals and superstitions that were discussed by ancient authors. However, beyond the sphere of religion there was the equally important social emphasis on dining, which enforced notions of conviviality and personal obligation between hosts and guests. Disregard of such traditions came to be identified as a hallmark of tyranny, which provided the writers of the Principate with an opportunity to use the sacra mensae as a powerful literary device against those who failed to respect established customs of hospitality.

On 15 March 46 Claudius published at Baiae an edict enfranchising the Anauni, Tulliasses and Sinduni. The citizenship of these tribespeople in the Italian Alps had previously been uncertain: they were attached to the nearby municipium of Tridentum, which already enjoyed Roman citizenship, but were themselves no more than de facto Roman citizens. Claudius now confirmed their legal status as Romans.

There has been much controversy over the completeness and unity of Euripides᾽ Heraclidae in the last two centuries. Hermann᾽s characterization of the play as a heavily mutilated piece, which was adopted by Kirchhoff, Wilamowitz, Nauck and Murray, prevailed for a long time. Wilamowitz's thesis that the Heraclidae was revised by the ancient director found its adherents. It was Günther Zuntz who led the general offensive against this widely accepted opinion and whose critical scrutiny reversed the view of the play. According to Zuntz, the play has come down to us substantially as it was written. The alleged mutilation, as well as the specific dramatic technique, shortness and swiftness of the Heraclidae, also influenced the general evaluation of the play as a minor or odd piece. It was Günter Zuntz again and also Franz Stoessl who reconstituted the reputation of the Heraclidae. Today Euripides᾽ Heraclidae is studied and recognized as a classical Hikesiedrama, a play deeply rooted in Athenian ideology and in the social and religious context of fifth-century Athens, and representing various aspects of communal life. Since the play has been interpreted and scrutinized from a very wide range of perspectives, I do not aim at a radically new general interpretation of the Heraclidae, but I would like to make a short remark on an aspect of it which has, as far as I know, been neglected or only briefly referred to: the term ἀμηχανία in crucial passages of the play, which signifies, or rather describes, a situation which is desperate, hopeless, and with no way out. I would like to show that for the characters in the Heraclidae who follow the ideal of justice (τὸ δίκαιον), in contrast to those who prefer profit (κέρδος), no situation is hopeless, even as it was not for Heracles, who managed to do things which could be evaluated as impossible (defeating the Hydra of Lerna and the Nemean lion, gaining the apples of the Hesperides, etc.). On the other hand, those who opt for the Heraclean ideal have to prepare to face the ultimate challenges.

In an article in an earlier issue of this journal Vivienne Gray sought to challenge my claim that Xenophon's account of Prodicus' narrative concerning the Choice of Heracles (Mem. 2.1.21–34) represents ‘a very close approximation to Prodicus’ actual wording'. Since that time, Gray's article has been cited approvingly by Louis-André Dorion and David Wolfsdorf, both of whom consider that Gray has settled the matter, at least as far as the linguistic aspect of my argument is concerned. In view of this, I feel it necessary to point out that Gray's argument is fundamentally flawed. In addition, I should like to take this opportunity to show that the arguments of Dorion and Wolfsdorf, which are aimed at other aspects of the case that I made for Xenophon's faithfulness to Prodicus' text, are likewise invalid.

The primary obscenity futuo (‘the male part in sexual intercourse with a woman’) is unsurprisingly rare in literary Latin. Apart from a single occurrence in Horace's Satires (1.2.127, in a passage evoking the adultery mime), its usage is limited to the even lower genre of scoptic epigram, as represented by Catullus, Octavian, Martial and the Priapeia, though it frequently occurs in graffiti. Adams has shown how it tends to be a neutral and even affectionate term, lacking any sense of aggression, though not of the assertion of conventional virility. Nevertheless, it is used almost exclusively of recreational, extramarital and/or illicit sex. This may be in part a function of the way in which its obscenity and low linguistic register (closely equivalent to its English equivalent ‘fuck’) restrict it to the low genres which tend to deal with such subject matter, but this is a potentially circular argument and, whether chicken or egg came first, the undeniable result is an association of the verb with intercourse which is not primarily or even in any way aimed at procreation. It is striking and anomalous, therefore, when Martial uses futuo, on five occasions, in contexts relating to the production (or avoidance of the production) of children. Of course, on a purely logical and biological level, the connection between futuo (specifically the penetration of the vagina by the penis, carefully differentiated by Martial in particular from sexual practices involving other orifices and/or members, such as pedicatio, fellatio and cunnilingus) and the engendering of children is an obvious one. Nevertheless, the aforementioned strong associations of the verb with sex aimed at everything but procreation renders its use in this context jarring. This incongruity and clash of registers is, of course, characteristic of Martial's technique, and the obscenity gains an added spice from being applied to respectable marital relations. The jarring quality is an end in itself and accounts for itself. Yet I wish to argue that there is a further dimension to this discordant association of ‘fucking’ and ‘begetting’, based on a bilingual wordplay between futuo and its near-homonym, the Greek verb φυτεύω. By means of this pun, Martial mischievously suggests not only that ‘fucking’ can be mentioned in the context of ‘begetting’, but also that the two are—in accordance with biology but against all decorum—identical.

In the opening chapter of his thirty-sixth oration, Dio Chrysostom tells his listeners how in the course of a journey ‘through the lands of the Scythians to that of the Getae’, he stopped over in the city of Borysthenes (Olbia) ‘in the summer after my exile’ (τὸ θέρος … μετὰ τὴν φυγήν). Dio had been exiled by Domitian, probably in a.d. 83 or 84; since his exile ended after the death of Domitian in September 96, it is generally accepted that his visit to Borysthenes took place in the summer of 97.

In his description of India Strabo (after Eratosthenes) alludes to various Indian crops: in the rainy seasons (summer) the land grows flax, millet, sesame, rice and bosmoron, and in the winter – wheat, barley, pulse ‘and other edible crops with which we are unacquainted (καὶ ἄλλοι καρποὶ ἐδώδιμοι, ὧν ἡμεῖς ἄπειροι)’ (15.1.13, C 690). Later on in his survey, Strabo briefly refers to the cultivation of rice, where he relies mainly and specifically on Aristobulus of Cassandria, one of the companions of Alexander the Great in his campaign in the East. Aristobulus composed an account of Alexander's expedition and, in all likelihood, personally witnessed most of the details included in the fragments of his lost work (FGrHist 139). His descriptions are therefore highly valuable as reports reflecting one of the first encounters of the Greek culture with India.

Stating that Olympias and Eurydice fought the first war ever between women, Duris of Samos explained the behaviour of Eurydice by reporting that she learned the art of war from Cynnane ‘the Illyrian’ (ἀσκηθεῖσαν τὰ πολεμικὰ παρὰ Κυννάνῃ τῇ Ἰλλυρίδι).

It will be noticed that, in the stemma above, no line of descent is marked from the first generation registered therein to the following generations. The genealogy of the Emperor Nerva is customarily traced back to the consul of 36 b.c., M. Cocceius Nerva (above, right). This short note will underline the ancient testimony found amongst the Pseudacroniana tracing his descent from the latter's brother, the consummate diplomat (above, left). There are ramifications. Amongst the items of interest will be the light shone upon what Dio and Eutropius (and/or their sources) understood to be Nerva's standing at the time of his accession. Before passing on to Pseudacron's datum, it might be worthwhile pausing on that point, as well as briefly contemplating the factors that actually bore upon the emperor's ancestral training.