The disappearance of the imperial biographies written by Marius Maximus is one of the more frustrating losses of Latin literature, for various reasons: the well-known testimony of Ammianus, the interest (and frivolity) of Marius Maximus' attested contribution to the Historia Augusta, his importance, much in dispute, to the writer of that work, the lack of information on much of the period he covered, and, not least, the fascinating role assigned to him by modern scholars, remodelling a previous duality of sources, of bad biographer in contrast to the good Ignotus. It has recently become common practice for the evidence of Ausonius' (so-called) Caesares to be used in the search for this biographer. The suggestion goes back to a dissertation of F. della Corte in 1956/7, and was taken up in his edition of Ausonius' works by Pastorino, and discussed in the following year by Cazzaniga who, though uncertain about the dependence of Ausonius on Marius Maximus, does misleadingly assert (perhaps echoing Momigliano) ‘e certo che l'ultima epigramma tocca Elagabalo, che chiude la silloge’. More recently, della Corte has returned to the question and sketched a possible model for the growth of the whole extant collection of Ausonius' Caesares, on the basis of the manuscript tradition. The same volume contains a contribution to the question by S. d'Elia and includes, by a felicitous piece of editing, an extended footnote in which d'Elia is able to comment on the relevant part of della Corte's paper.

Meanwhile, outside Italy, there have been parallel and independent developments.

Lexicographers have always considered ‘advantage’, ‘profit’ as a possible meaning of kairos. And yet none of the ten passages cited in LSJ under this meaning (s.v. iv) is convincing. No less than four of these instances exemplify kairos as ‘due measure’ (s.v. i). Three other instances exemplify spatial kairos (a sense ignored by LSJ but recognized in W. Pape's Griechisch-Deutsches Handwörterbuch s.v.). The remaining instances exemplify the meaning ‘opportunity’ that develops from temporal kairos (‘the right time’). In none of the examples are we encouraged to take the further step from ‘what is morally, spatially or temporally appropriate’ to the ‘profit’, if any, deriving therefrom. Before considering whether kairos can ever bear this meaning, I will start from the citations in LSJ.

Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51) has seldom gone short of approbation: not only noble and patrician but the first jurist to reach the consulate since Q. Scaevola. When Cicero in 63 spoke in defence of Murena he deprecated and derided the claims of legal erudition. Seventeen years later, composing in dialogue form a history of Roman eloquence, he made handsome amends to Servius, at some length (Brutus 150 ff.).

After matching M. Antonius with L. Crassus, the pair of masters who dominated the epoch preceding his own, the expositor brings Crassus into comparison with the jurist Q. Mucius Scaevola (by happy coincidence they shared the fasces in 95). Each was far from incompetent in the science professed by the other. Whereupon the alert Brutus was moved to intervene with a question: might not a similar parallel for excellence obtain between Cicero and Ser. Sulpicius, likewise coeval?

The artful device insinuates a long excursus, breaking the chronological order of the whole treatise. Together from early youth and together at Rhodes, the two friends practised the same ‘exercitationes’. In oratory Servius might perhaps have become ‘par principibus’. He preferred the law: in fact he excelled Scaevola and all predecessors, so Cicero affirms, to the ingenuous surprise of the interlocutor.

Servius had made a sagacious choice between the two civilian arts. In oratory (first in rank and estimation at Rome) Servius achieved enough for a lawyer and a consul: ‘quantum esset et ad tuendum ius civile et ad obtinendam consularem dignitatem satis’ (Brutus 155).

The Brutus furnishes ready and vivid verdicts on speakers of the time. Five consular Lentuli are put on show for style and manner, from Clodianus and Sura to the savage and minatory Crus. All dead, it is true, and they benefit from much indulgence. For Servius no writing of Cicero acclaims a public occasion when the consul displayed his talent – and no appeal to an oration of any kind. For the eloquence of Servius the friend falls back on what the legal works disclose: ‘et litterarum scientiam et loquendi elegantiam’ (153). Posterity is defrauded, the earnest student at a loss.

In every generation the overwhelming majority of those who inhabited the imperium Romanum worked on the land and derived their sustenance directly from it. The notion is commonplace and scarcely admits of debate, but its implications for long have suffered unwarranted neglect. The well-being of any society ultimately rests upon the quantity and diversity of its food supplies, but the immediacy of their contact with the soil continually reminded the Roman people of this platitude with a force which few students of their history today can readily appreciate. The annual yield of wheat in particular, always a staple item in the Roman diet, and to a lesser extent of such cereals as panic and millet, acutely affected every segment of the Roman community. One example will serve to illustrate the point. The dependence of the plebs urbana upon imported surpluses is notorious, equally the intense suffering and violence which typically accompanied any disruption of their supply. Such outbreaks frequently punctuated the chaotic final decades of the Republic, but they also scarred more than one régime during the first two centuries of the Principate.

In a recently published article I have suggested an amendment of the textual crux in Suetonius, Tiberius 21. 4 and an interpretation of the passage as providing direct evidence that the arrangement of the marriages of Germanicus and the younger Drusus was integral to Augustus' settlement of 26 June a.d. 4, even if (as seems on balance likely) they were not celebrated until early 5. This view differs from the more usual assumption that while the marriages took place in 5, the date of their arrangement was not particularly significant, or from the possibility implied by Levick that Germanicus' marriage may have been arranged to placate the ‘faction’ (or what remained of it) of the elder Julia after the consolidation in 4 of the position of Livia's descendants. The more precise hypothesis that the marriages were intended as part of the settlement may help us to bring into sharper focus some of the political events of the next few years, and this article attempts to do so; in particular it looks at (a) the internal balance of the settlement; (b) the anomalous separate adoption of Agrippa Postumus; and (c) the decline and fall of Agrippa Postumus and the younger Julia. First, however, some further observations on the hypothesis in my earlier article.

In assessing the value of any historical work it is necessary for the investigator to undertake the often frustrating and tedious task of Quellenforschung. In the case of the De Caesaribus the first substantial attempts began in Germany in 1873 and 1874 with the appearance of two important studies by A. Enmann and A. Cohn. Enmann sought to explain the mass of verbal similarities, numerous errors and shared idiosyncrasies to be found in Victor's De Caesaribus, Eutropius' Breviarium 7–10, and parts of the Historia Augusta by postulating a common source which has subsequently come to be known as the Kaisergeschichte. He was so convinced by his findings that he stated (p. 459), ‘Victor und Eutrop es beide als Haupt – wenn nicht als einzige Quelle benutzt haben’.

Working quite independently Cohn's examination of the first eleven chapters led him to conclude that from the beginning of Augustus' sole reign to the death of Domitian Victor, Eutropius and the Epitomator followed a common source which he entitled Suetonius auctus, an account excerpted from Suetonius with some new material added. Enmann, however, had already described the Kaisergeschichte's early chapters in this way and the two were readily identified.

One major problem remained. The traditional date of the completion of the HA was still believed to be 305/6; consequently if the K.G. had been used by its authors then the K.G. must have been written by that year. Nevertheless notable similarities between Victor and Eutropius continued apparently till 357 and Enmann therefore suggested a continuation of the K.G. until that date.

The eleventh-century Byzantine compiler Cedrenus includes a unique story in the midst of his otherwise traditional and hagiographic material on the emperor Constantine. Mentioning the outbreak of war between the Roman and Persian empires, he describes the cause of the breakdown of peace somewhat as follows. A certain Metrodorus, who was of Persian origin, went to visit the Brahmins in India to study philosophy and won the reputation of being a holy man through his asceticism. He also built water mills and baths, unknown to the Indians till that time. Having acquired this reputation, he entered the temples and took away many precious stones and pearls. He also received gifts from the king of the Indians. On his return to Byzantium he gave them to the emperor Constantine as being gifts of his own. When Constantine expressed his astonishment, Metrodorus said he had sent other gifts by the land route but that they had been detained by the Persians. Constantine then wrote a strong protest to Sapor demanding the gifts but received no reply; thus the peace was broken.

This remarkable conte, more appropriate to the Arabian Nights than to sober history, is generally supposed to be referred to in a passage in Ammianus. Towards the end of a long section commenting on the personality and achievements of Julian, Ammianus turns briefly to the question of the ultimate responsibility for the Persian War which ended so disastrously for Julian and the Roman Empire:

et quoniam eum obtrectatoribus novos bellorum tumultus ad perniciem rei communis insimulant concitasse, sciant docente veritate perspicue, non Iulianum sed Constantinum (MS. Constantium) ardores Parthicos succendisse, cum Metrodori mendaciis avidius acquiescit, ut dudum rettulimus plane.

Part of the baths regulations preserved on a bronze plaque, engraved more or less identically on each side, from the copper mine at Vipasca, Lusitania. The manager is to wash, clean and grease the waterheating vats once a month. Such vats, as mentioned by Vitruvius in his discussion of public baths (5. 10. 1), were three in number: aena supra hypocausim tria sunt componenda. They were sizeable articles: Propertius (3. 24. 13) seems to see himself tortured in one: Veneris torrebar aeno. The greasing was to keep aerugo, copper rust, at bay; for this purpose Cato (Agr. 98.2) in general recommends amurca, lees of olive oil: ahena omnia amurca unguito…et aerugo non erit molesta; and also for greasing axles (106) amurca axem unguito. For bronze tablets exposed to the weather such as the numerous public records on temple walls and the like (including the present document) Pliny (HN 34.99) recommends olive oil: aera…robiginem celerius trahunt…nisi oleo perunguantur. The phrase e recenti which occurs in both versions of the text is unexampled, and the CIL editors suggest that it means ex integro, afresh. However I am inclined to think that the engraver had a faulty copy in front of him and we should read adipe recenti.

In his note on Hesiod, WD 705 M. L. West tentatively suggests adeo for deo, saying rightly that ‘Charon is not a god in the literary tradition generally or in Virgil's scheme’ (see now Austin ad loc.). Palaeographically nothing could be more attractive than this emendation. But for all Virgil's fondness for adeo (see my note on Aen. 3. 203, Fordyce on 7. 427) he (like other authors) does not use it in this intensifying sense with adjectives other than those indicating number (Aen. 3. 203, 7. 629, Geo. 3. 242), nor does he ever use it later than the second foot (3 times out of 31, the other 28 being in the first foot).

The difficulty which West is combating is a very real one, but it is not solved by the removal of deo. Virgil's dilemma was that the old ferryman must be as timeless as all the other members of Pluto's establishment, and to achieve this object of portraying an unchanging picture of the machinery of the underworld he has elevated Charon to the rank of dues. In Olympus the gods are frozen at the point suitable for the anthropomorphic vision of them: Cupid is always a boy, Apollo young and handsome, Neptune older and more austere. Similarly Charon is frozen just as he has reached (iam senior) vigorous old age. He may not be, indeed is not, a real god, but he is a necessary part of the world of the gods and so must share their agelessness.

‘…as the name of the second letter of the alphabet beta (Greek) is curtailed to be. This could be expressed by substituting quod for sed: “What I am in Latin when incomplete (non tota), I am called in Greek complete.”’ So most recently Shackleton Bailey. Read rather the verse aloud to solve the riddle, tota heard as Greek would be τωτα, i.e. τῷ τα (τῷ being written τ⋯ at this period):

My name is whole (with a TA) in Greek, but I am not whole (with a TA) in Latin.

The strained use of the instrumental dative τῷ τα would be objectionable, were the poet writing continuous Greek as such. But as a pun concealed within the Latin word tota, this secondary meaning and construction should be tolerated. The conceit is in fact rather clever. What are the chances of tota admitting so apt a sense, when heard as Greek, as a result of coincidence alone and not design?

post rorem, ‘after the dew’, seems nonsense and Shackleton Bailey has not unreasonably proposed post florem, comparing for the idiom Columella RR 2. 11. 10 diebus quadraginta, quibus post florem ad maturitatem devenit. But ros here stands for ros marinus, ‘rosemary’, as in Vergil, Georg. 2. 212–13:

nam ieiuna quidem clivosi glarea ruris

vix humilis apibus casias roremque ministrat.

The poet is not presenting us with a piece of botanical information about the relative seasons of the violet and rosemary; he means rather that all flowers wither and fade, one after the other. Four specific examples illustrate his point. For the collocation of these same four flowers see Ovid, Met. 12. 410–11:

ut modo rore maris, modo se violave rosave

inplicet, interdum canentia lilia gestet

‘pedibus makes no better sense than metre.’ Shackleton Bailey, who suspects an allusion to the exclusus amator theme and accordingly suggests unctis…postibus (‘Here it would be the husband who anoints the doorposts to placate a fierce wife and then uses them for cover’). But iunctis pedibus is idiomatic Latin for an all-out fight and has an authentic look to it; Ovid, Met. 9. 42–4 illustrates the usage:

rursusque ad bella coimus

inque gradu stetimus certi non cedere, eratque

cum pede pes iunctus.

See further Verg. A. 10. 361 haeret pede pes densusque viro vir; Liv. 38. 21. 13 pede collato pugnandum est; Sil. 4. 352–53 teritur iunctis umbonibus umbo, pesque pedem permit; Ov. Am. 1. 4. 44 (in an erotic context) nec tenerum duro cum pede iunge pedem. However, ‘Stand up to your wife, Cresciturus, and fight’ will not do. That would be a humourless piece of advice and, in any event, Cresciturus appears to be too henpecked to act on it. Since he cannot fight with fair means, he must resort to foul. pēdibus is neither corruption nor false quantity, but a comic coinage: pēs, pēdis, from pēdo ( = πέρδομαι), on the analogy of pēs, pĕdis, ‘foot’: Cresciture, si non vis vapulare, coniugi iterum atque iterum oppedas necesse est. Dorsa in the first verse calls attention to the fact that Cresciturus enjoys a strategic position for such a manoeuvre – a position which is the very reverse of iunctis pĕdibus in its normal sense. In short, iunctis…pēdibus is a παρ⋯ προσδοκ⋯αν for iunctis…pĕdibus.