This paper considers the representation of Achilles in Roman poetry and art and, in particular, Roman interest in his childhood, culminating in the ‘exposure’ on Scyros. It is argued that common features in literature and art support the existence of illustrated mythographic handbooks. The relationship of Statius' Achilleid to the cycle of scenes representing Achilles' early years known from wall-paintings, mosaics, sarcophagi and the Kaiseraugst plate is discussed. Although the surviving book of the Achilleid concerns the pre-Troy years, it is suggested that Statius' real focus was the Trojan War itself.

Odes 4.8 is anomalous: its thirty-four lines are not a multiple of four. Most editors delete two or six lines, but this involves deleting at least one blameless line and disturbing the stanzaic structure of the poem. Instead mark a lacuna of two or six lines before the final couplet. The missing lines will have contained a prayer for Censorinus' immortality and some words of praise, thereby fulfilling the expectations raised earlier in the poem. Vota in 34 refers to Horace's prayer, which Bacchus fulfils as god of poetry. Finally, the conceit that uates potentes can in real terms immortalize or deify their subjects chimes in with a feature of Roman religion noted by A. D. Nock.

This article begins with a review of the traditional dates for Palladas (c. A.D. 360–450) and the current consensus of most scholars (c. A.D. 319–400). The first of these relies almost exclusively on the dubious manuscript lemmata and the second on an interpretation of Palladas' epigrams pertaining to the rise of Christianity and the weakening of the pagan cults, which are supposed to be Theodosian in date. Both timelines are difficult to reconcile with two external clues, which together suggest that his floruit must have been earlier than the second half of the fourth century. Further analysis reveals that the important pagan-Christian epigrams are full of Constantine's political and religious propaganda post-324. Another line of inquiry establishes a new set of dates: c. A.D. 259–340.

Different methods of estimating the Gross Domestic Product of the Roman Empire in the second century C.E. produce convergent results that point to total output and consumption equivalent to 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year. It is estimated that élites (around 1.5 per cent of the imperial population) controlled approximately one-fifth of total income, while middling households (perhaps 10 per cent of the population) consumed another fifth. These findings shed new light on the scale of economic inequality and the distribution of demand in the Roman world.

This paper considers the interplay of Latin and Greek in the workings of both State and Church in sixth-century Constantinople, and the way that these two languages are represented in the written records of each. The richest source of evidence is provided by the Acts of the Church Councils and Synods, because at the end of a session, or of a multi-authored document, it was the custom for those involved to make a one-sentence statement of assent in their own handwriting. These processes also leave room for reflections of the use of Syriac (but not for items of actual Syriac text), but of no other language.

Responding to recent discussions of brother-sister marriage in Roman Egypt, this article re-examines the Greek and Egyptian evidence for the practice, both papyrological and literary. Exploring possible antecedents in Egypt and Greece and the distinctive development of Egyptian inheritance practice, we argue that the brother-sister marriages involved real siblings, and that by the beginning of Roman rule such marriages were legitimised by a Ptolemaic law and the prevalent belief that they followed ancient Egyptian custom. But new circumstances introduced by Roman rule, particularly the increasing importance of private property ownership, encouraged the practice to become popular through much of northern Egypt. The explanation for brother-sister marriage in Egypt must be sought in the immediate local historical context, not that of the Eastern Mediterranean generally.

Codex Theodosianus 3.14.1, issued in the early 370s, has been understood in the past to indicate a ban on all marriages between ‘Romans’ and ‘barbarians’. But this interpretation contradicts evidence that Roman-barbarian marriages occurred with great frequency, and the lack of any other evidence for such a ban. This study argues that the specific wording of the law, referring to gentiles (barbarian soldiers) and provinciales (residents of provinces), suggests that the ban was imposed to ensure the continued performance of specific duties incumbent upon these two classes of individuals, and had nothing to do with ethnicity-qua-ethnicity.

The article offers a re-edition of a Latin stilus tablet found in 1917 at Tolsum in the Netherlands, the region inhabited in Roman times by the tribe of the Frisii, and first published as a contract of sale for an ox. The re-edition, with readings based on new techniques of digital image capture, establishes the date of the text (A.D. 29) and shows that it does not concern the sale of an ox, but is more probably the second half of a loan-note for a sum of money now lost, between a debtor whose name is lost and a creditor named Carus (or perhaps Andecarus) who was a slave of Iulia(?) Secunda, herself perhaps the wife of a tribune of Legion V named T(itus) Cassius