Classical literature abounds with references to natural phenomena which have no obvious counterparts in the present day; and it is always difficult to know how to interpret such references, whether they should be dismissed forthwith as the excesses of overwrought imaginations, or whether they should be classified as poetic licence, or whether they should be taken more seriously still and explanations sought in terms of subtle or uncommon natural processes which occurred in ancient times as well as modern.

In his last days, after his defeat at Actium, M. Antonhis sojourned in solitude by the sea declaring that he was going to live like Timon, since the injuries and ingratitude which he hadsuffered from his friends had taught him, like Timon, to distrust and detest all mankind. So both Strabo (17.1.9) and Plutarch relate. Plutarch explains that this man Timon was a citizen of Athens who lived at the time of the Peloponnesian War, to judge from plays of Aristophanes and Plato Comicus, in which Timon was held up to ridicule as a surly misanthrope who repulsed all friendly advances but displayed unwonted cordiality towards the brilliant young politician Alcibiades, because he divined, and gleefully predicted, that Alcibiades would do infinite mischieftoAthens (Ant.69–70; Alc. 16). The reference to the ingratitude of Timon's friends is illumined by Lucian's dialogue Timon, or the Misanthrope, in which Timon, identified as son of Echecratides and demotes of Colyttus, has lavished his patrimony on flattering friends who abandon him once his funds are exhausted, and in consequence he has been reduced to labouring in the fields. Luckily he digs up a crock of gold, and when his former friends reappear one by one in the hope of battening on him again, he repulses them with blows and clods of earth.

In the eighth and ninth books of the Republic Plato describes the four inferior or corrupt types of government – timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny – and the four related types of human personality – the timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical man (544dff.). Closest to the ideal, and first therefore in sequence of decline, is the timocratic state, the term timocracy being employed not in the Aristotelian sense of a polity demanding a property qualification of its ruling class but with ‘the peculiar meaning of government by the principle of honour (τιμ). The timocratic state, it is claimed (545cff.), develops when its members no longer live in harmony but come into conflict as the guardians join brides and bridegrooms ‘inopportunely’ (παρ καιρν, 546d), so that their offspring are neither well-born nor blessed by fortune. The result is a form of government which retains some of the features of its good predecessor, anticipates some of the features of its worse successor, and also boasts some features unique to itself, such as a preference for the ‘spirited’, men better suited for war than for peace. Above all else such a state will be distinguished by a cultivation of competition and a passion for honour: διαϕανστατον δ’ ναὐστν τι μνον… ϕιλονκαι κα ϕιλοτμαι (548c).

The subject of the so-called ‘veristic’ portraits of the late Republic holds a special fascination for the classical art-historian, especially on the vexatious question of the origins of the style; a question which still remains, essentially, open and unsolved. Yet despite the thoroughness with which the topic is debated, one possible influence upon the emerging veristic style, that of the ancestral portrait, continues to receive inadequate consideration.

Little of the ‘Iliadic’ Aeneid is devoted to actual combat: two-fifths of books 7–12, on a generous count. Modern scholarship largely avoids the topic; certainly, Virgil has not yet found his Fenik. This paper grew from a desire to know just what determined victory in Virgilian combat, and though the actual answer may prove simple and unexciting, the question itself sheds new light upon the structure and personalities of the later books. The issue is vastly more complex in Homer's huge battle-scenes: there the ‘serious and grim Achaeans’ are more frequent victors and it is clear that the outcome of many duels will have pre-existed the creation of the Iliad and could not be altered. In Homer too, the vastly greater number of heroes developed into figures of individual interest results in the establishment of what is in effect an unofficial ‘rating’ system: not only is ‘The minor warriors of the Iliad' substantial and valuable study, but within that group, further clear discriminations of ranking apply: Idomeneus, Antilochus, Helenus, Deiphobus, for example, stand in mid-scale and Homer's system of ‘seeding’ excludes unexpected or improbable winners: thus when Aeneas meets Diomedes in Il. 5, he is clearly outclassed, but also, traditionally, survives the battles against the Achaeans. An honourably drawn fight would be too good a result for Aeneas' talents and a divine rescue is an alternative fortunately open to Homer. What then happens in the Aeneid?

The political unification of the Mediterranean world in the last epoch of the Roman Republic doubtless provided the stimulus for the composition of world histories. One of these is the only universal history written in Latin, under the title Historiae Philippicae, by Pompeius Trogus in the time of Augustus. The original work is lost, but we have an Epitoma produced around the year A.D. 200 by Iustinus. The prologi, which contain summaries of the original work, have been preserved, but there is no indication of authorship.

A striking feature of the speeches in Tacitus' Histories is their responsion to one another. Previous discussions have centred round responsions of theme and argument between speeches given by different speakers. So Galba's advocacy of adoptive versus hereditary monarchy (1.15–16) is balanced by Mucianus' speech urging Vespasian to seek the throne for himself and his son (2.76–77), while Piso's attack on Otho's vicious character (1.30.1) is matched by Otho's criticisms of Piso as a deutero-Galba, harsh and avaricious (1.38.1). In this paper, I shall explore a different kind of responsion, hitherto unnoticed, between four speeches delivered by the same speaker. Tacitus binds Otho's first four speeches (1.21; 37–38; 83–84; 2.47) together through the consistent application of traditional motifs from the general's harangue before battle, although none of them is in fact a cohortatio. The topoi of the battle harangue form a remarkably stable repertoire through ancient historiography and epic and they would have been very familiar to the ancient reader. He would, therefore, have been sensitive to any changes rung on these tropes by the author. An examination of Plutarch's versions of the speeches suggests that Tacitus may well have added these exhortation motifs to express his distinctive point of view. In closing, I shall suggest a possible antecedent for this particular technique.