Similarities between ancient Greek philosophy and Indian philosophy have long been recognized and are usually ascribed to East-West contact. However, when similarities are recognized between Greek and Indian poetic diction or, more generally, between the myths and the poetry of the two cultures, they are often ascribed to Indo-European common origin; and one asks whether the same explanation could apply in philosophy. The two types of explanation are not incompatible, for a remote common origin could have been followed by one or more periods of interaction. Nevertheless, it is worth seeing how far an explanation of common origin can be pressed before falling back on the explanation of contact.

The Suda tells us the following about the elder Theodectas, the Phaselian orator and tragedian:

Modern readers view ancient theories of blood flow through the lens of circulation. Since the nineteenth century, scholarly work on the ancient understanding of the vascular system has run the gamut from attempting to prove that an ancient author had in fact, to some extent or another, pre-empted Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood or towards attempting, often with some empathetic embarrassment, to explain the failure on the part of an ancient author to notice something that seems so obvious to the modern eye. Thus C.R.S. Harris's 1973 book The Heart and Vascular System in Ancient Greek Medicine, which remains the standard on the topic, opens with a sentence in which he marvels at how the otherwise admirable ancient Greek physicians could have ‘failed entirely to arrive at any conception of the circulation of the blood’. This modern vantage point has had an unfortunate effect. In the case of Aristotle in particular, understanding of his cardiovascular system has been diminished by a tendency to define it in contradistinction to our own modern understanding of circulation. By deliberately uncoupling from the framework of modern physiology, this paper will offer a richer and more accurate picture of his views.

How to inculcate virtue in the citizens of Magnesia by means of the dance component of choreia constitutes one of the principal concerns in the Laws (= Leg.), revealing Plato's evolving ideas about the expediency of music and paideia for the construction of his ideal city since the Republic. Indeed, a steady stream of monographs and articles on the Laws has enriched our understanding of how Plato theorizes the body as a site of intervention and choral dance as instrumental in solidifying social relations and in conditioning the ethical and political self. As one scholar has aptly put it: ‘a city and its sociopolitical character [are] effectively danced into existence.’ Drawing on this recent work, I focus on an enigmatic passage in Laws Book 7 that merits more attention than it has received, in which Plato curiously singles out Bacchic dances from those that are ‘without controversy’ (815b7–d4):

Aristotle's assertion in Politics 1.2 that there is a natural impulse to form political communities is immediately contraposed with the claim that the person responsible for their foundation is the cause (αἴτιος) of the greatest of goods (Pol. 1253a33). The attribution of an essential role to the legislator as an efficient cause appears to clash, however, with Aristotle's political naturalism. If the polis exists by nature and humans are by nature political animals (1253a1–2), then the question arises as to why active intervention by the legislator is necessary for a polis. Conversely, if the polis is an artefact of practical reason, then Aristotle's distinction between products of the intellect and natural entities seems to preclude the status of the polis as natural. In light of this apparent tension between different aspects of Aristotle's account of the origins of political communities, the current paper seeks to demonstrate their reconcilability. Section 1 considers the role of the Aristotelian legislator in light of broader Greek assumptions regarding law-making. Section 2 then considers the status of law-making expertise (νομοθετική) as part of political science (πολιτική) and examines the mode of practical reason that is exercised by the legislative founder. Finally, in section 3, and building on recent interpretations which have emphasized that Aristotle operates with an extended teleological conception of nature, I argue that acts of legislative founding and nature can consistently serve as joint causes of the polis, because the ‘products’ of the practical rationality of the architectonic legislator are themselves an expression of distinctly human nature.

In the opening sentences of Book 2 of Posterior Analytics, Aristotle defines the four types of question that one can pose within the demonstrative science. In the edition by William D. Ross, the text reads as follows (89b23–31):

In Demosthenes’ speech On the False Embassy (Oration 19), we read an obelized infinitive at §231, †εὐθενεῖσθαι†, ‘to be flourishing’, in an imaginary dialogue designed to captivate and persuade the judges through its striking antitheses and dramatic tone:

The phrase ἐγχέλυές τε καὶ ἰχθύες (‘eels and fish’) appears twice in Iliad Book 21, in descriptions of actions involving the river Xanthus:

τὸν μὲν ἄρ’ ἐγχέλυές τε καὶ ἰχθύες ἀμφεπένοντο (203)
the eels and fish dealt with him [sc. Asteropaeus].

τείροντ᾽ ἐγχέλυές τε καὶ ἰχθύες οἱ κατὰ δίνας (353)
distressed were the eels and fish beneath the eddies.

Theocritus divides his second Idyll into two roughly equal sections, each punctuated by ten refrains: in the first half, a courtesan named Simaetha describes an ongoing erotic spell that she and her servant are performing and at the same time she enacts it by reciting a series of short similia-similibus incantations; in the second half, she speaks to Selene in the night sky and tells her the story of her brief affair with and betrayal by a handsome young athlete named Delphis. Literary scholars have written much about this poem, but they are more often concerned with the second, confessional half, with its complicated narrative layers and its charmingly naïve and unreliable narrator. Historians of religion and magic, on the other hand, have focussed most of their energies on the first half of the poem, using as comparanda the much later evidence of Roman-era curse tablets (katadesmoi) and late antique magical papyri to make sense of what Simaetha does and says during her long ritual, an approach that was enshrined by Gow in the middle of the last century, when he argued that, because of the conservative nature of these later magical spells, there was little risk of serious anachronism in using them for comparison.

The list of Apollo's virtues (ἀρεταί) in the second hymn of Callimachus describes, in the context of the appearance of the god, a mysterious healing substance which trickles from the hair of the patron of medicine (lines 45–6). Hymn 2.38–41:

αἱ δὲ κόμαι θυόεντα πέδῳ λείβουσιν ἔλαια⋅
οὐ λίπος ᾿Απόλλωνος ἀποστάζουσιν ἔθειραι,
ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὴν πανάκειαν⋅ ἐν ἄστεϊ δ᾽ ᾧ κεν ἐκεῖναι
πρῶκες ἔραζε πέσωσιν, ἀκήρια πάντ᾽ ἐγένοντο.

Scholars continue to make progress addressing the lacunae in our papyrological sources for Callimachus’ prologue to the Aetia, both by lending additional support to old supplements and by discounting others or demonstrating their weaknesses. To the first category belongs the crucial verb at the end of line 5, where, in my view, Callimachus first characterizes the making of his poetry (Aet. 1–6):

πολλάκι μοι Τελχῖνες ἐπιτρύζουσιν ἀοιδῇ,
νήιδες οἳ Μούσης οὐκ ἐγένοντο φίλοι,
εἵνεκε]ν οὐχ ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκὲς ἢ βασιλ[η
⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅]ας ἐν πολλαῖς ἤνυσα χιλιάσιν
ἢ⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅]⋅ους ἥρωας, ἔπος δ᾽ ἐπὶ τυτθὸν ἑλ[ίσσω
παῖς ἅτε, τῶν δ᾽ ἐτέων ἡ δεκὰς οὐκ ὀλίγη.

Often the Telchines mutter at my poetry,
being ignorant and no friends of the Muse,
because I have not completed one continuous poem
in many thousands … on kings and …
… heroes, but I … my poem only a little
like a child, though the decades of my years are not few.

Like most other fragments of Nicander's Georgica, fr. 74 is preserved by Athenaeus, who presents it as a catalogue of flowers used for making wreaths (15.683a Νίκανδρος δ’ ἐν δευτέρῳ Γεωργικῶν καταλέγων καὶ αὐτὸς στεφανωτικὰ ἄνθη). Transmitted in the only independent manuscript of the fuller text of Athenaeus (A, cod. Ven. Marc. 447), the fragment's text is extremely corrupt, which, coupled with its technical subject matter and intricate style, renders its restoration an arduous and uncertain job. In what follows I challenge the established reconstruction and interpretation of the section dealing with the ivy, and propose my own instead.

This is an investigation of an aspect of Virgil's Aeneid—ultimately, of the ways in which the poet guides his reader's response to Aeneas’ stay in Carthage—and, while it touches on Roman religious practice, clothing codes, late antique Virgilian commentary and Augustan ideology, it hinges on a single word in Aeneid Book 4 and its implications for Virgil's depiction of his hero in this book. That word is laena, and it features in one of the most celebrated scenes of the poem, when Mercury descends to earth to find Aeneas busily engaged in founding Carthage (Aen. 4.259–64):

ut primum alatis tetigit magalia plantis,
Aenean fundantem arces ac tecta nouantem
conspicit. atque illi stellatus iaspide fulua
ensis erat Tyrioque ardebat murice laena
demissa ex umeris, diues quae munera Dido
fecerat, et tenui telas discreuerat auro.

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? (‘Just how much longer, really, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?’). The famous incipit—‘And what are you reading, Master Buddenbrook? Ah, Cicero! A difficult text, the work of a great Roman orator. Quousque tandem, Catilina. Huh-uh-hmm, yes, I've not entirely forgotten my Latin, either’— already impressed contemporaries, including some ordinarily not so readily impressed. It rings through Sallust's version of Catiline's shadowy address to his followers, when he asks regarding the injustices they suffer (Cat. 20.9): quae quousque tandem patiemini, o fortissumi uiri? (‘Just how much longer, really, will you put up with these, o bravest men?’). More playfully, and less well-known, Sallust employed the expression again in a speech by Philippus (Hist. 1.77.17 M./67 R.): uos autem, patres conscripti, quo usque cunctando rem publicam intutam patiemini et uerbis arma temptabitis? (‘But you, members of the Senate, just how much longer will you suffer our Republic to be unsafe by your hesitation and make an attempt on arms with words?’). Soon afterwards it served Cicero's son, who, as governor of Asia, put down Hybreas fils for having dared to quote from his father's work in his presence (Sen. Suas. 7.14): ‘age’, inquit [sc. Marcus Tullius], ‘non putas me didicisse patris mei: “quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra”?’ (‘“Come now”, he said, “do you think that I do not know by heart my father's ‘Just how much longer, really, Catiline, will you abuse our patience’?”’). Just about the same time, Livy recalled it in order to colour Manlius’ exhortation of his followers (6.18.5): quousque tandem ignorabitis uires uestras, quas natura ne beluas quidem ignorare uoluit? … audendum est aliquid uniuersis aut omnia singulis patienda. quousque me circumspectabitis? (‘Just how much longer, really, will you remain ignorant of your own strength, which nature has willed even brutes to know? … We must dare all together, or else, separately, suffer all. Just how much longer will you keep looking round for me?’). Thereafter Quintilian would refer to it twice, when discussing apostrophe and rhetorical questions (Inst. 4.1.68, 9.2.7), just a couple of years before Tacitus has the maladroit Q. Haterius encourage Tiberius to seize the reins—quo usque patieris, Caesar, non adesse caput rei publicae? (‘Just how much longer, Caesar, will you suffer the absence of the head of state?’, Ann. 1.13.4); a few decades later still, Apuleius puts it into the mouth of the slave who chastises his master, now in asinine form (Met. 3.27): ‘quo usque tandem’, inquit, ‘cantherium patiemur istum paulo ante cibariis iumentorum, nunc etiam simulacris deorum infestum?’ (‘“Just how much longer, really,” he said, “will we suffer this old gelding to attack the animals’ food just a little while ago and now even the gods’ statues?”’). He trusted, no doubt, that the famous question would alert his readers more than anything to the many ‘similarities between Catiline and Lucius’, in order to have them appreciate this ‘ludicrous copy of Cicero's arch-enemy’. Some time after, and in a different corner of the Empire altogether, a teacher's bronze statue would carry the inscription:

VERBACICRO | NISQVOVSQ | TANDEMABVTE | RECATELINAPA | TIENTIANOS | TRA.

This article deals with one particular aspect of Livy's narrative of the Gallic Sack of Rome, told in Book 5, and traditionally placed in 390 b.c.—namely the issue over the validity of the ransom agreement struck by the Romans with the Gauls. The broader context is well known—and needs only brief reiteration here. When the Gauls march on Rome, the Romans give battle at the river Allia, leading to a resounding Gallic victory. Most of the Romans flee the battlefield and then the city, except for a small group of both old and young, male and female, who hold out on the Capitoline Hill. That hill is subsequently put under siege by the Gauls. Following several months of beleaguerment, both sides are depicted as severely worn out by hunger and fighting. It is important for present purposes to stress that, when the Gauls stood at the gates and besieged the city, one of Rome's greatest heroes, Marcus Furius Camillus, was noticeably absent. Camillus was in neighbouring Ardea, some fifty miles south of Rome, training an army of Roman soldiers to challenge the Gallic invaders after his recent recall from exile and appointment to the dictatorship. But before Camillus’ return to Rome, the besieged Romans surrendered and agreed a ransom with the Gauls in order to liberate their city. The continuation of the story as given in Livy is equally well known. Camillus arrives in the middle of the ransom exchange, asking for the exchange to be stopped. Unsurprisingly, the Gauls are not keen on following Camillus’ orders, and insist on the ransom. Consequently, Camillus challenges the agreement between Romans and Gauls on a constitutional basis; the agreement was reached with a lesser magistrate after Camillus’ appointment to the dictatorship (5.49.2):

Our manuscripts of Cicero contain dozens of Greek words that are presented in some passages in Greek letters, and in others are transliterated into Latin. In a recent paper I collected the evidence for this phenomenon in connection with common nouns and adjectives (for example ὑποθήκη vs hypotheca, ἱστορικός vs historicus), surveyed scholarship to date and posited an interpretative framework which is assumed in this study also. Key components of this framework are the use of mixed alphabets in surviving ancient documents (especially inscriptions) and an awareness of the frequency with which modern editors change the alphabets in the manuscripts when dealing with Greek words—hence the importance of using the apparatus critici, not just the printed text, of our editions. The earlier paper was also strict in its exclusion of words in continuous passages, and even short phrases, of Greek, since that context excludes the option of transliteration for the author. The major contention of that earlier study was that a coherent pattern of use in the manuscripts can only really be a reflection of Cicero's own considered choice of alphabets: consistently inexplicable choice may indicate that Cicero himself was indifferent to which alphabet he used for single Greek words, or that our copyists paid no attention to this aspect of their exemplars, or both.

sat es beatus (Catull. 23.27)

In the aggressively philosophical poem 23, Catullus attempts to change Furius’ mind about how he perceives his poverty, ‘advice’ which has been identified as either Stoic or Epicurean. Irrespective of the precise school of thought, it is clear that the poet ridicules Furius in eudaimonistic language. The poet of social commentary seeks to define the beatus uir. In fact, the term beatus has rich philosophical resonance and Catullus uses it in several other poems where attitudes to wealth form a significant backdrop to the poet's social posturing. Catullus was no philosopher. He employs the language and ideas of different schools, and, while his work does not reflect a coherent philosophical position, he was writing at a time when public discourse increasingly drew upon philosophical language and topoi. I will examine Catullus’ use of the term beatus in poems 9, 10, 22 and 23 to demonstrate that the poet draws a contrast between its different meanings across these pairs of adjacent poems. I will argue that Catullus contrasts the eudaimonistic and material meanings of the word to show the differences between clear-sighted wisdom and deceptive pleasures, between the good life and a life filled with goods.

According to Livy (26.18.3–26.19.2), in late 211 Publius Cornelius Scipio was elected priuatus cum imperio pro consule by the comitia centuriata and sent to Spain in charge of the legions formerly led by his father Publius and his uncle Gnaeus. This was the beginning of a new phase in the Hannibalic War, which would ultimately lead Rome to victory against its most dangerous enemy. As has long been recognized, Livy assigns Scipio a central role in the narrative development of the Third Decade. For most critics, this centrality coincides with (and is the result of) Livy's admiration: in his view, Scipio is the fatalis dux, the commander sent by Providence to lead Rome to victory; he is Hannibal's rival par excellence, the only leader capable of matching the enemy's military genius and blocking his relentless advance against the Republic; he is, above all, the most shining example of the Roman virtues.

Roman emperors were at the pinnacle of society. They were supreme commanders of the armies, the highest priests and the ultimate source of law and justice. These three roles were made clear to the inhabitants of the empire from the reign of Augustus onwards through a variety of media. Public ceremonies showed emperors leaving the city for campaigns, and returning in triumph, at sacrifice, or sitting in judgement. Inscriptions likewise indicated the main roles of emperors through titulature or narrative. The military and the religious leadership of emperors were also made abundantly clear through public monuments and on centrally issued coinage. Yet, throughout Roman imperial history these last two types of source material are surprisingly silent on the emperors’ legal role.

In his Bellum Ciuile, Caesar reports the events of 1 January 49 with these words (1.3.1):