Since Gomme dated the embassy to Sardes to 506, he did not believe that the form of the Athenian government was still unsettled after the recent disturbances but was uncertain as to how Athenian politics worked at the beginning of the period with which he was concerned, 510 - 483. Where Gomme was doubtful, F.J. Frost is prepared to be positive:

Ajax is unmatched among the works of Sophocles in its barren, cruel atmosphere and its repulsive view of society. The dominant mood is hatred; sometimes it simply breaks out; but always it is there in language and action. Ajax’ curious emotional appeal to us was noted by earlier critics. ‘Odysseus is the wise man, Odysseus adopts the correct attitude, but it is to Ajax that the heart goes out.’ More recently, Kitto and Knox have modified the conception of an Ajax deserving of our pity. His suffering is largely self-inflicted, and is admirable solely because he labours so fiercely to purge his reputation of the damage caused by his wrongdoing. ‘Ajax had little Wisdom in the handling of his life, and his lack of Wisdom destroyed him, but nevertheless Ajax was magnificent.’ This view typifies the conventional opinion. Knox finds the essential issue to be the inadequacy of the old morality (τούς μέν φίλους εΰ ποιεϊν, τούς δ’ έχϑρούς κακῶς — to help your friends, harm your enemies). Its disadvantages are illustrated in Ajax’ blind retaliation at whatever cost. Knox builds a superb case from the scene where Ajax awakens to the fluctuation of human relationships in his famous soliloquy about the inroads of time (646 ff.). The instinctive resilience and self-control of Odysseus make him the triumphant figure. Indeed, the emergence of these qualities softens and harmonizes a discordant presentation of the hybris-ate motif. ‘The nature of man’s life in time, its instability, is recognized by all three parties, Ajax, Odysseus, the Atridae. The only code of conduct proper to such a vision of the human condition is that of Odysseus, a tolerant and tragic humility.’

Posterity has on the whole judged Thucydides not ungenerously over his failure to save Amphipolis in the winter of 424. Although some of those who have attempted to analyse the military circumstances of the loss, almost wholly from the historian’s own account, have found him culpable in some way, most scholars have preferred not to add their condemnation to that of the Athenian demos. Rather the majority have tended towards the non-committal or have celebrated what they have seen to be the author’s resolute determination, in his failure to present a palpable self-defence, not to be diverted from the primary aims of his work. Gomme even suggested reasons why Thucydides may actually have been in the right and why, by consequence, his exile may have been a perversion of justice. But in the end, of course, as Gomme and many others have realized, we simply do not have the evidence to judge with any certainty.

The Suda is hardly communicative on the literary productivity of Philitas: ‘his output included epigrams and elegies.’ From the surviving fragments, which do little to establish the obvious influence which the poet exercised over Hellenistic poetic thinking, we learn of the following titles of works in verse: Demeter, Hermes, Telephos, Paignia (apart from epigrams) and possibly a Hermeneia (Strab. iii 5.1). G. Luck emended Prop, ii 34B.31 to argue for the existence of a Merope, a work on Coan antiquities. G. Vitelli had already postulated a Kos, with presumably the same content, from the lacunose text of Kall. fr.1.10 (Kῶν πο]λύ τήν μακρήν). The context requires the unknown work in question to have been unsuccessful because of its prolixity; the proposed title fails for the opposite reason: ‘brevius spatio’ (Pfeiffer). For the sake of completeness it may be mentioned that Philitas did not write a play called The Unruly, as Gulick ad Ath. iii 114 e assumes; Athenaios wrote έv τοῖς ‘Άτάκτοις, of course a reference to Philitas’ glossary (Atakta or Ataktoi Glossai).

Agrarian legislation in the immediate aftermath of the Gracchi is the subject of continuing debate. Appian (BC i 27) records three laws, the last two of which are specified as being tribunician: the first removed the inalienability of land holdings; the second was perhaps the measure of Sp. Thorius, mentioned also by Cicero, which stopped land distribution, confirmed possession rights on the land and imposed a rent, the proceeds of which were to help the poor; the third abolished this rent. Appian provides chronological clues of a sort: the first measure came ‘not long after’ the death of C. Gracchus, the third ‘not long after’ Thorius’ law, and the whole business was perhaps finished within fifteen years άπò τῆς Γράκχου νομοϑεσίας. I say ‘perhaps’ because it remains arguable whether the point of reference for these fifteen years is Tiberius or Gaius Gracchus. I intend to argue elsewhere that Tiberius is meant, but as such an argument cannot be regarded as conclusive, there is still a point in this respect in examining the lex agraria which is the inscription CIL i2 585. The law is naturally important in its own right. It is dated internally to 111 B.C. and attempts have been made to equate it with either the second or third of Appian’s laws. If it was the second, this allows a retention of the fifteen years and the placing of the third law in 109 or 108. But if Appian has accurately reported the second law, it imposed a rent, while the first part of the inscriptional law talks of removing rent.

The first four Caesars formed a dynasty, and each successively was his predecessor’s chief and legitimate heir, inheriting the bulk of his private property, including his slaves, and taking his place as patron of his clientes, who included his freedmen. The conspirators who killed Gaius Caligula also ended the dynasty, and when the Senate met on the Capitol to consider the state of the Republic, it was proposed to obliterate the Julian name. The empire, it seemed, had ended, and though no one yet knew what would take its place, the Roman state would surely no longer be bequeathed like an heirloom in the family of the Caesars: ‘Liberty’ was restored.

Pliny’s basic practice in Books i-ix was to introduce a single topic in each of his published letters, but this letter to Sempronius Rufus seems to include two items connected only by the chance appearance of Junius Mauricus in both anecdotes. The first concerns the presence of Pliny and Mauricus as members of a consilium principis, and was surely written soon after the event, since Pliny was very proud of consiliar attendance. The second concerns a dinner party given by Nerva at a time earlier than 104-105, the date of the letter

The notion that the Letters of Themistokles constitute some sort of ‘historical novelette in epistolary form’ has always run up against two major difficulties. One is that the letters are not arranged in chronological sequence; the other, that there are serious inconsistencies between individual letters in both factual material and the portrayal of the hero’s character. The existence of these difficulties has led some scholars to deny any real artistic unity to the collection; and the prevailing attitude seems to be that its only merit consists in the titbits of historical information that some of the letters contain – though even the reliability of these has been disputed.