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.

The adjective ωἷνοψ in the phrase translated ‘the wine-dark sea’ is normally regarded as a formulaic epithet, a meaningless romantic flourish evoking the colour or texture of wine. Homer's wine is elsewhere only red or black (⋯ρυθρός, Od. 5.165, 9.163; μέλας,5.265, 9.196, 346; αἶθωψ, Il. 1.462, 4.259), and thus, we assume, the colour of modern Mavrodaphni. Cattle of this colour (Od. 13.32, Il. 13.703) are probably dark red.

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.

Why should Antigone in Sophocles' play want to return to Polyneices' body, after apparently successfully burying it, if we may judge from the guard's report to Creon at lines 245ff.? Ever since it was first raised by Jebb in his note on Antigone 429, this question has given scholars almost as much trouble as the original burial gave Antigone herself. Basically, there are two opposed views on the problem. Firstly, that both burials were performed by Antigone and their duplication is to be explained primarily in terms of the play's dramatic organization. Secondly, that not only is it impossible within the framework of the play's chronology for Antigone to have performed the first burial but that, had she done so, there would have been no need for her to return to the body after sprinkling the symbolic dust. Therefore it was not Antigone, but the gods, who first buried Polyneices.

The problem which in recent years has generally been regarded as the main problem about Akharnians is: has the play a political purpose? Fifty years ago, I suppose, no one doubted that the play did have two purposes. One was to entertain the audience and make them laugh. The other was a purpose of extreme seriousness, to persuade the audience that the Peloponnesian War, now in its sixth year, was a terrible mistake, and peace ought to be made as soon as possible. This view is associated especially with the name of Gilbert Murray, who in 1897 wrote, simply as a statement of fact, ‘It is political in its main purpose, and is directed against Cleon and Lamachus, as representing the war party’. In his later monograph on Aristophanes, he still holds this view; Akharnians is, he says, ‘a definite plea for peace’. But in 1938 A. W. Gomme published an important article on Aristophanes and politics, in which he maintains that the question ‘What were Aristophanes' political views?’ is not relevant to the interpretation and criticism of his plays, and that we cannot tell from Akharnians whether he was in favour of peace or not. That is a non-committal position, almost a defeatist one. But more recently two scholars have gone much further in opposing the old view that the play is a plea for peace. W. G. Forrest considers that no one could have made a plea for peace in Athens in 425 B.C.; at that date the Athenians, he thinks, were so fully engaged in the war that making peace was completely out of the question.

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’.

The comparative infrequency of references to women in Thucydides' history has often been remarked upon, and explained as due in part to the choice of warfare as his theme, and in part to the success of the Greek republics in excluding women from the political arena. As Pericles says in his funeral speech, women ought to give their menfolk the least possible cause to have to take note of them (2.45.2). But the exclusion of women from the subject-matter of historical discourse is peculiarly Thucydidean. Powell's Lexicon tells us that Thucydides' contemporary Herodotus uses γ⋯νηs 373 times, while the number of references to women/wives, mothers, priestesses etc. in Thucydides is less than fifty. This does not mean of course that Thucydides has no interest in, or sympathy for, women: frequently he mentions them as the passive objects of military circumstances precisely in order to underline the tragic effects of warfare. But some of the references to women are decidedly curious. There is a clear example in the account of the unsuccessful Theban attack on Plataea in 431 B.C., with which active hostilities began. Thucydides tells us that some of the Thebans who were locked into the town escaped by breaking open a deserted gate without being noticed (2.4.4). Why does he gratuitously mention that it was a women – presumably a Plataean – who gave her enemies an axe: γυναικ⋯ς δο⋯σης π⋯λɛκυν Clearly, it is an overimplification to say that Thucydides ignores women.

The year 1983 marks the 2300th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second Punic War, one of the most momentous conflicts in history. The outstanding figure of that war was, of course, the Carthaginian leader Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca. His invasion of Italy at the outset of the war was a model of strategic daring and skill. His tactics in destroying the much larger Roman army at Cannae remain a classic exemplar of a battle of envelopment. He came near to bringing down Roman power, a near-miss for which his Roman contemporaries never forgave him, while their descendants accorded him grudging respect or even admiration. These achievements have made him, indeed, the most famous of the adversaries of Rome and one of the three most highly rated generals of antiquity (with Alexander and Julius Caesar). There is some irony in this, for of the three he was the only one to fail ultimately in his enterprise.

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.

Between the ‘home’ territory of the Roman people in the Italian peninsula and the tribes of Gaul and Germany lay two provinces – Cisalpine Gaul, most of whose population were actually already Roman citizens or in possession of Latin rights, and Transalpine Gaul, a province only since 121 B.C., but already in Caesar's time displaying a developed urban civilization based on the Greek model, under the influence of Massilia. By the end of the first century B.C. well-to-do Romans considered the schools of Massilia an acceptable alternative to those of Athens for their sons' higher studies (Strabo 4.1.5). On the fringes of the Province, however, and beyond in Gaul proper were the ‘long-haired’ Gauls (hence Gallia Comata) and beyond them the German tribes. Only occasionally had these presented any real and immediate threat to the security of the Italian peninsula. Nevertheless, they were present in Roman consciousness as a kind of bogeymen. In 44 B.C., the founding charter of Urso, a Julian colony in southern Spain, included a provision that certain minor public officials should be exempt from military service except tumultus Italici Gallicive causa (ILS 6087). Events of this nature were hardly likely to necessitate conscription in southern Spain, but this clause was clearly taken over from the standard charter of an Italian municipality, where these were seen as possible emergencies.

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.

What is the cure for unrequited love? According to the Hellenistic poet Theocritus the cure is song. To illustrate this thesis Theocritus wrote two poems about the lovesick cyclops Polyphemus. Alexandrian poets were very interested in the subject of love, especially when it went wrong, and they were also keen to show off their literary knowledge and skills by borrowing and adapting ideas from their predecessors. The lovesick cyclops of Idylls 6 and 11 combined both concerns. Theocritus was able to demonstrate his literary debt to Homer by borrowing many grotesque details from the cyclops in Homer's Odyssey. He was also able to devote the bulk of his poems to making his point that the only successful cure for lovesickness is to be found in poetry and singing.

It is probably still true to say that the satires of Juvenal's last two books, apart from the tenth, continue to suffer an undeserved popular neglect (using that phrase in a somewhat special sense by virtue of which it may permissible to suggest that, say, the Odes of Horace or the Amoves of Ovid do not suffer ‘popular neglect'). Certainly, one recent critical work on Roman satire contains no analysis of any of the Juvenal satires later than the sixth. Satires 11–15, and obviously not 16, do not generally receive the supreme accolade of being ‘set’ by the examiners for the Advanced level of the G.C.E.; they occasionally do not feature even in university examinations. There has indeed been no lack of recent scholarly interest in the later satires, but it would be optimistic to believe that that interest is good evidence for the poems’ actually being more generally, or more attentively, read.

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.