What sort of person was Penelope? If Homer were consulted about the casting for a dramatization of the story, what type would he choose to play her part? What sort of person was this Penelope, for whom her husband abandoned a goddess—more than one goddess, indeed—but in whom he yet felt so little confidence on his return that she was almost the last person in the household to learn his identity? One hundred and eight suitors, according to Telemachos' careful count, buzzed about her; either she could not or she would not dismiss them entirely, but she put them off year after year, while she wept for her absent husband, and looked after the housekeeping, and managed the estate, with no help at all from her father-in-law—managed it pretty successfully too, one would think, for all Telemachos' dissatisfaction, or the house could hardly have stood the drain of such continuous entertainment. In all her appearances in the story she seems irreproachably circumspect; yet her own son, a rather staid and solemn fellow, said to a complete stranger, ‘My mother says I am Odysseus' son, but how should I know?’ Even allowing for a conventional reference to a proverbial saying, it is a strange remark from a modest, unsophisticated young man who did not set himself up for a wit, and who, as he justly remarked to his father, was ‘not in the habit of behaving like a light-headed fool’. It is certainly not the sort of answer that Homeric heroes customarily give about their lineage.

In 1969 on a riverside near the Lenyardi caves (about 5 kilometres from present-day Junnar, in the Indian state of Maharashtra), Dr Satish Deshmukh discovered an alabaster object in the form of half an egg (longitudinally cut) with a young male child lying inside it (with small traces of red paint on the right side of the object). This high-quality oval object (figures 1 and 2) measures about 5 cm × 3.4 cm and is usually interpreted as an item that was originally manufactured in the Mediterranean world before being brought to India, rather than a piece of artwork produced in India itself. One possible, and largely accepted, interpretation is that this figure represents the birth of the god Eros. However, identification of the figure within the egg-like structure is not easily made. While the figure does bear similarities to the putto-style representation of Eros in instances of Greek and Roman art, it does not possess any clear identifying features (such as the wings with which Eros is often depicted). The figure's resemblance to Eros in some of his other iconographic depictions and the egg-like structure around him suggest a possible identification of this infant with Eros and the myth of his birth from an egg. However, without evidence from other iconography of a more clearly identifiable Eros in similar contexts, the figure cannot be said to be him with any certainty. As Dhavalikar notes, this object ‘is the only one of its kind among the classical antiquities so far found in the Indian subcontinent and perhaps has no parallel in the classical world’. Thus the identification of this sculpture as a depiction of Eros in the egg is possible, but not certain.

Variety is a keynote of Ovid's Metamorphoses: variety of myth is complemented by variety of structure and style to create a symphony of sophisticated versatility. From this arise complex techniques of wit and it is the purpose of this paper to investigate these within myths which are basically similar. It is our purpose to examine comparatively three myths in order to elucidate the particular form of wit which predominates in each.

‘All political lives…end in failure’, as Enoch Powell said; and Themistocles son of Neocles died twice. His first life ended with his ostracism in the late 470 s, after which he was dead to an Athens enthralled by Cimon; but he would not lie down. This article considers his two afterlives: one which ended about 459 in Magnesia on the Maeander, and the other which commenced in the fifth century but continues to resonate today. The examination, however, will be in reverse order, considering first the Themistocles who at Athens was written into what Tim Whitmarsh would call ‘the archive’, then drawing inferences from that literary afterlife to comment on Athenian politics in Themistocles’ years of ostracism, then exile.

‘Here the prince held a review in the park and took a muster of our countrymen and they amounted all told to 11,000 heavy-armed and about 2,000 light-armed infantry. Thence he marched to—, a populous town, where he halted five days. More than three months’ pay was now owing to the troops and they came often to his gates and demanded it. He talked hopefully and tried to put them off, but was obviously worried. For it was not like him to withhold money when he had it. At this place the wife of a neighbouring king came to the prince and, it was said, gave him a large sum of money. At any rate he gave the troops four months' pay. This queen had a body-guard of her own men, but according to camp gossip the prince knew how to pass the sentries. Thence he proceeded another two marches further inland to another large town. There he halted three days and there, it was said, the queen asked him to show her his army. This was in accord with his own wishes. So he held a review of our countrymen and of his own troops. He ordered our men to draw up in their accustomed order of battle, each general in command of his own contingent. So they formed up four deep. The prince inspected his own forces first and they marched past, the horse by squadrons and the foot by companies.Then he inspected our men, driving up and down the lines in a chariot, and the queen following in an armoured wagon.

Vergil has an accurate eye for visual detail, and describes much as an artist might each cameo of his narrative. It is for this reason that we are shocked by images that cannot be easily translated visually. Perhaps the most arresting of such passages is the description of the monstrum Fama at A. 4. 173ff., which defies any reasonable attempt to convert it into a visual or narrative image.

Towards the end of the winter 1939–40 I was asked by a nephew, who is the Mayor of a Midland town and had to request his Council to confer the freedom of the borough on some notable, whether there was not in Demosthenes an appropriate compliment for him to quote, expressing the high qualities of the candidate for the honour. I guessed that my nephew had a vague recollection from his school-days of the De Corona, and I found what I thought was in his mind in § 84—the spurious decree granting a crown to Demosthenes because he had always been friendly to the city, and had always said and done all the good in his power on its behalf. My nephew was pleased and used the quotation in his speech. I was then moved to explore the De Corona for myself, and very soon was startled by remarkable parallels to events in Europe in 1940; and the idea of this paper came to me. In the presence of experts, may I ask indulgence for my ignorance? My knowledge of Greek history, especially of this period, is but the sediment of what was never more than a very small cupful.

In his 1982 essay on Catullus 64, Richard Jenkyns offered an eloquent and elegant counterblast to the ‘reductivism that has characterized much recent criticism of Latin poetry’ (p. 82). He argued that to impose a unifying interpretation on such a work as Peleus and Thetis impoverishes it. ‘Anyone who has failed to perceive that throughout this poem Catullus is deliberately various, disproportionate and unpredictable has certainly not understood it’ (p. 92). With the advent of the millennium, it seems that Jenkyns, even if he won the battle, did not win the war, though, doubtless because of him, the unities which scholars now advocate have become decidedly more capacious, more able to serve as hold-alls, than those imposed by their predecessors. The instinct to identify unifying principles appears to be a strong one. In any case, Jenkyns’ own view of the poem – that it ‘is made up of pictures in that it is a gallery of tableaux or set pieces’ (p. 150) – can surely be taken as suggesting the kind of e pluribus unum of a work such as Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The various tableaux, each of them displayed, as it were, by the poet to elicit a differing response, may add up to a single experience. It is not simply that the total may be greater than the sum of the individual parts; it is rather that the total may attain a unity of its own.

To one nurtured on the pure and sustaining milk of Cicero and the Augustans, with an occasional dash of Tacitus and Juvenal for medicinal purposes, the writings of Apuleius come with something of the force of a knock-me-down. The very words are unfamiliar. Barrio is onomatopoeic enough to be guessed, but what does vispellio mean to anyone outside the legal profession? What of cambio? His is a strange language, highly artificial, with its borrowings from the Greek—myoparo, schedium, and naulum, which Juvenal took before him, for instance; with its echoes of Plautus—tuburdnor, scitulus, atticisso, capero, ientaculum, agaso, lurco, pollinctor, cincinnus, and examussim are all Plautine; with its diminutives, always a sign of artifice, as it was the sign of the Graecis-santes of Cicero's day—mellitula, tenella, centunculus, sdtulus spring to the mind; with comparatively unfamiliar literary words—tesca and blatero are both Horatian, but are very rare; and with his own occasional extensions of usage, as when he describes his horse as vector meus, or speaks of a kiss being given pressule, or seemingly coins subterlabere for ‘to slight’. But with this mannered artificiality goes the easy conversational idiom of the professional popular writer, evinced by his repeated use of commodum in the Metamorphoses to carry on the flow of ideas. Fuscis avibus or sinistro pede for ‘without luck’ are as artificial as the rest, but minimo minus for ‘almost’, or dicam an with the indicative for immo vero are surely conversational.

Ancient drama is frequently said nowadays to be unsuited to the taste of modern audiences, and when one sees modern productions of ancient plays one is inclined to agree. And yet the plays read well, and they certainly appealed to a wide variety of audiences in ancient times. Can it be that it is the production and not the play that is at fault? Apart from the obvious fact that most modern producers are unable or unwilling to handle a chorus effectively, it does seem very often that the production is based on an interpretation of the play, which, if it is not actually misguided, is at any rate hesitant. There are two factors which make it extremely difficult to interpret or appreciate an ancient play. First, the influence of Aristotle has caused us to judge ancient drama by the rules which he laid down and to measure all tragedies by the standard of Sophokles' Oedipus the King, although it is obvious that the poets were not guided by Aristotle's rules and that many tragedies aimed at effects quite different from those of the Oedipus the King. Thus we expect ancient tragedy to be ‘tragic’ in our sense of the word, and we are baffled when we find no ‘tragic’ element to satisfy our expectations. Secondly, the knowledge that drama originated as part of the cult of Dionysos impels us to label it ‘ritual drama’, and to feel that it must be solemn and conventional and must concern itself with weighty moral and theological problems. We are slightly surprised to find that it is not confined to a re-enactment of the Dionysos myths, and we hardly dare to contemplate the possibility that poets dealt very freely with the myths and legends which they took as their subjects. But ancient drama had to appeal to mixed audiences. It could not afford to be bound by academic rules or by excessive subservience to tradition. The fact that dramatic performances were organized as competitions was in itself an inducement to introduce new methods of handling the traditional material; and, if we look at the plays which have survived, we can see that drama changed constantly to suit the inevitable changes in public taste.

Aristotle'sPoetics has centuries of tradition behind it as a substitute for first-hand appreciation in dramatic criticism, and this work has lent colour to the old view that the characters of Greek tragedy were all ‘idealized types’ in a performance in which the plot was the thing. This is because Aristotle explicitly puts plot above character in his list of the essentials of a tragedy, and when he comes to treat of character has little to say which appeals to us. But the pure tragic drama of human feeling depends entirely on its success in eliciting sympathy with its characters. Of this art Sophocles, like Shakespeare, is the acknowledged champion. Aeschylus is inspired to ‘justify the ways of God to man’, Euripides is concerned to question the ways of man to his neighbour. When Aeschylus added characterization to his loftier qualities, he produced in the Agamemnon the greatest play ever written, but we do not suspect his ‘Prometheus’ of character drawing any more than Shelley's. And in Euripides, as sometimes in Shaw, the characters are so under the thumb of the theories that we forget to take much personal interest in them. But in Sophocles we are not distracted by the prophet or the propagandist, and we can let his pathetic, human people stir in us their own hopes and sorrows.

Many a traveller sailing up the Rhine gorge must have wondered what lies beyond the noble cliffs on either hand. Not all perhaps have realized that if they could scale the heights on their left, leave the ruined castles and flourishing vineyards behind them, and walk some ten or fifteen miles to the north-east, they would cross the great earthen mound and ditch which still remain to mark the boudary of the Roman Empire. This barrier, part of a system more than three hundred miles in length, stretching from Rhine to Danube, is well worth the attention of those who are interested in the British frontier walls.

One of the main concerns of Plato's Phaedrus is rhetoric. This concern pervades the dialogue right from the opening scene, where Phaedrus – someone with an obsessive and conspicuously superficial attachment to speech-making – is seen taking a walk in the country, having just come from hearing the great orator Lysias deliver a display speech (πíδϵιξις). There follows a sequence of three speeches: Phaedrus' reading of Lysias' speech, followed by Socrates' two speeches. In the latter half of the dialogue, the scene shifts from a presentation of rhetoric to an extended discussion about rhetoric. In particular, it presents an extended critique of contemporary rhetoric, and outlines what Plato takes to be the ‘true τχνη’ (techne – ‘art’, ‘craft’, or ‘science’) of rhetoric.

The medical literature of the Greeks from the classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods is very full and of inexhaustible interest for the history of science, but its public, even among scholars, is small, particularly in Great Britain. On the theoretical and technical side independent study is likely to remain the preoccupation of a few, but on the practical and human side there is abundant material of historical and social interest that deserves to be more widely known. Among that material the present article is concerned only with the evidence from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the first age of scientific medicine among the Greeks. Some is to be found in commonly read authors, such as Plato, but for fuller details the only contemporary source of much value is the Corpus Hippocraticum, the mixed collection of medical writings from these centuries which has reached us under the name of Hippocrates, but in fact contains treatises, essays, pamphlets, and notes by the most various authors, as their styles and contents show.

For English readers by far the most useful edition of any large part of the Corpus is the four volumes of the Loeb Hippocrates—i, ii, and iv by Dr. W. H. S. Jones, and iii by Dr. E. T. Withington, containing the surgical books. But this is not exhaustive; for the complete Corpus the most recent edition is still the ten volumes of Émile Littré, Œuvres complètes d'Hippocrate (Paris, 1839–61). This, like the Loeb, has translations opposite the text, introductions, and a few illustrations; it is now a rare book and still valuable in spite of its age.

In 1797 Ennius Quirinus Visconti declared that the starting-gate (aphesis) at Olympia, described by Pausanias, had caused more crashes among modern antiquaries than ever the turning-posts did among the charioteers whom in its heyday it launched on their course; the intervening 170 years have lengthened the tale of academic disasters. But even at the risk of adding to the pile-up of reputations it seems legitimate to attempt another investigation of the subject. The moment is opportune, now that experiments are being made in the use of starting-stalls for horses on British race-courses.