It has been argued, above all by Bruno Snell, that there is lacking in the Homeric poems any notion of the ‘self as an integrated whole; the individual is regarded rather as an assembly of more or less independent psychic forces. There can thus, it is argued, be no making of decisions by individuals in the Homeric poems, because there is no such thing as a psychic whole which could decide; in his Scenes from Greek Drama, Snell argues not only that Homer in the Iliad does not explicitly present Achilles as deciding to avenge Patroclus and die young, but also that there are differences in outlook between Homer and Aeschylus which mean that Homer could not portray such a decision, whereas Aeschylus could.

Few would dispute that Frogs is one of Aristophanes’ supreme achievements; many would further claim as one of his most successful and famous scenes Dionysos’ encounter with those eponymous amphibians, the frogs themselves. This, however, brings us face to face with a major paradox which critics of Aristophanes frequently fail to emphasize in anything like adequate terms: quite simply, and astonishingly for such a well-loved scene, there is no scholarly agreement, even on the broadest level, as to how it was actually presented in the theatre. Apart from the fact that it is far from clear how Charon's boat was represented, we do not even have a sure answer to an even more basic question—whether those famous characters the frogs were visibly presented to the audience as yet another of Aristophanes’ coups de theatre, or whether they were only heard singing from offstage, thus altering the emphasis (or at least the focus) of the scene very considerably. Lack of agreement among scholars on such an important point is lamentable enough, but, worse, some recent criticism appears to have been developing a dangerous tendency not only to assert without adequate argument that the frogs were indeed visibly represented but, further, to build this highly insecure element into the foundations of various theories of wider significance as if it were a piece of orthodoxy. This suggests that a careful re-examination of the whole scene might not be out of place in an attempt to support or refute the ancient scholiastic opinion (Z Frogs 211), for long unquestioned, which states quite unequivocally ‘…the frogs are not seen in the theatre, nor is the chorus, but rather they imitate the frogs from offstage. The true chorus is composed of righteous souls of the dead.’ I will argue, from close consideration of the actual wording of the scene, and of its setting and action, that the frogs were indeed unseen and were only heard singing from somewhere offstage. To support this view, I believe important considerations of comparative dramatic practice, and even of natural history, can be adduced.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

Juvenal is here alluding to two passages of Horace's hexameter poetry in particular. First, by listing various alternative genres (epic, comedy, elegy, tragedy) before stating his own preference for writing satire (19 hoc campo), Juvenal recalls Horace's use of the same technique at S. 1.10.40ff. Second, Juvenal has borrowed several words, phrases, and ideas from Hor. Epist. 2.2.90–105