Some time early in 50 B.C. the two elder sons of M. Calpurnius Bibulus the Roman governor of Syria were killed in Egypt by milites Gabiniani, Roman soldiers left there by A. Gabinius – an earlier governor of Syria. What Bibulus' sons were doingin Egypt is a mystery, partly because we do not know how old they were; all we know about them is that they were outstandingly gifted or outstandingly beautiful, or both. The soldiers had been left in Egypt (basically as mercenaries) by Gabinius in 54 B.C. when hehad been bribed by Ptolemy XII Auletes to restore him to the throne from which he had been driven by his exasperated subjects. Why these particular troops took it into their heads to murder Bibulus' sons is another mystery, which we will touch upon, but our main concern here is the effect which the death of his sons had on Bibulus. Our contention is simply that the incident is part of a rarely documented example from the classical world of a clear mental breakdown in one prominent individual. In Bibulus' case it took the form of paralysing shock, followed by grief, depression, and a frenzy of sleepless activity in which he eventually wore himself to death. To understand how this operated in the way it did in this particular case, we need to understand Bibulus the man and his personal history.

JuliusCaesar wrote seven books (a book to every year) on his campaigns in Gaul from 58 to 52 b.c., and three books (the first two describing the events of 49, the third those of 48) on his campaigns against Pompey and the Republican government in the civil war. A. Hirtius, who had perhaps been his secretary in Gaul, wrote Book viii of the B.G.—presumably in the latter part of 44—to describe Caesar's doings in 51 and 50, to link the two parts of Caesar's work together. This we know from Hirtius' own evidence, from the modest little introduction to his book. Who wrote the surviving accounts of Caesar's campaigns from 47 to 45 (the Bellum Alexandrinum, Bellum Africum, and Bellum Hispaniense), we do not know at all.

Juvenal is here alluding to two passages of Horace's hexameter poetry in particular. First, by listing various alternative genres (epic, comedy, elegy, tragedy) before stating his own preference for writing satire (19 hoc campo), Juvenal recalls Horace's use of the same technique at S. 1.10.40ff. Second, Juvenal has borrowed several words, phrases, and ideas from Hor. Epist. 2.2.90–105

The patera (‘drinking-bowl’) of King Pterelas that Amphitruo brings back as a trophy of his victory over the Teleboeans plays a central role in Plautus' Amphitruo. Amphitruo and Sosia plan to show it off to Alcumena to impress her and to aggrandize their triumph, and this military bragging characterizes Amphitruo as a modified miles gloriosus (‘braggart soldier’). Jupiter steals it and, in disguise as Amphitruo, gives it to Alcumena, wooing her and further solidifying her belief that she has just spent the night with her husband. After Amphitruo accuses his wife of lying when she states that she has slept only with him and that he gave her the drinking-bowl, he commands Sosia to open their box containing it to prove otherwise; of course, it has vanished, and its disappearance leads to more confusion and accusations. The drinking-bowl thus also serves as a physical token that might establish a character's identity, just like the cistella (‘box’) of Plautus' Cistellaria or Rudens, but with the twist that Jupiter's manipulation of the token intensifies misunderstanding rather than dispels it, per the usual model of comic anagnorisis. In short, this prop contributes greatly to Amphitruo's characterization, narrative development, and metatheatrical play.

The greatest contribution which Rome made to the history of the world is perhaps to be found in her government, in her solution of political problems, and in the machinery she devised to carry out the hundred and one duties that fall to the lot of executive powers. No one institution of Rome is so interesting and intriguing in its origin and development as the Senate, which from the early days of the Republic down to the foundation of the Empire played an enormous part in moulding the whole political life of Rome; and even when the golden days of senatorial authority were over, its name and tradition remained to exercise a great influence and fascination on succeeding times. When we read of the Senate and its part in Roman history we try to think of parallels in our own government, and the first thing that suggests itself to us is the Houses of Parliament and more particularly the House of Commons. But there are so many differences between the two that it is worth while briefly to describe the Senate and in so doing compare it with our own system.

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.

This article argues that Aelius Aristides adapts the word atopos (‘strange’, ‘out of place’) as figured speech in his Embassy Speech to Achilles, meaning something that is either illogical according to rhetorical topoi or inconsistent with the text of Homer's Iliad. By doing so, he not only expands the semantic range of atopos but also comments on the rhetorical, intertextual, and pedagogical relationship between oratory and the Homeric tradition.

I have been invited to write an article on the subject of the pronunciation of Latin. I put this fact in the forefront, for I do not wish it to be supposed that I am a fanatic who seeks every opportunity of bombarding an unwilling audience with his one fixed idea. As a matter of fact, my main feeling in the matter is that a completely undue importance has been attached to the question, and that it is the so-called reformers and not their opponents who are responsible for this tedious discussion. Having made this apology I will state my case with what brevity I can.

The best Latin poetry loses nearly all its quality in translation and even the beginnings of its appreciation need a little knowledge of Latin. This is not entirely a truism, or universally applicable. Some poetry, like Homer and the Psalter, can be truly though partially apprehended through translations; but the spirit of Latin poetry, deprived of its own embodiment, eludes us. The Italian Camena, however wooingly the great translators approach her, ‘flies, plunges deeper in the bowering wood’, in that sylvan felicity of sound answering to sound, which links Latin poetry to the senses rather than to the intellect, and refuses to yield up its secret in any language except its own.

Peter Bruegel's The Fall of Icarus—his only painting with a mythological subject—has long been seen as an allegory: Charles de Tolnay has shown how Bruegel took the details which he found in Ovid and used them, contrary to the accepted tradition of his time, to contrast the futility of Icarus' venture with the solid worth of the peasant labourer's life. Ovid, like Bruegel's contemporaries (for the most part), emphasized the wonder and novelty of the flight: the people in his landscape stopped in the middle of their tasks to wonder at the god-like beings who flew so effortlessly above them:

hos aliquis tremula dum captat harundine pisces aut pastor baculo stivave innixus arator vidit et obstipuit, quique aethera carpere possent credidit esse deos.

One might easily say that the Tale of Troy was the most famous in the Western world. Already in the days of the earliest European literature it furnishes the background of half its drama and poetry. Homer alone would confer immortality on his epic theme, and all through ancient and medieval times Troy provided motives for every kind of art. And yet can one to-day say that the legend and the way in which literature has handled it are familiar to the general reader? Is even the Iliad, whether in the original Greek or in translation, known at first hand to more than a small minority? Perhaps, then, it is not superfluous to look back over the literary history of some 3,000 years and see by what channels this celebrated theme has come down to us.

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.

The social and economic life of the ancient world was reared upon a substructure of slavery. The commercial greatness of Carthage, Tyre, and Babylon had depended on the same principle. Amid all the variety of notions and dominant ideas current in classical civilization there was one point of agreement. ‘It was universally assumed’, as Dr. A. N. Whitehead expresses it, ‘that a large slave population was required to perform services which were unworthy to engage the activities of a fully civilized man.’

Where the dusty village of Smirat now sits hunched against the winds of the Tunisian desert, there once stood the country villa of a wealthy Roman named Magerius. Prominently displayed in Magerius’ villa was a (now well-known) mosaic depicting a beast hunt in the arena. But the presumed stars of the show, four pairs of hunters and leopards, are placed at the corners of the mosaic, while centre-stage is dominated by a figure bearing a plate of money, and a block of text explaining that these are the funds with which Magerius has generously offered to pay for the show. Contrary to the ancient donor's expectations, however, the modern observer is not struck by Magerius’ munificence, but rather by the meanness of his show compared to those put on in Rome. The emperor Titus (r. 79–81), for example, had 9,000 animals killed during the hundred-day-long inauguration of the Flavian Amphitheatre (Cass. Dio 66[66 Cary].25.1). Magerius’ leopards, worthy of a mosaic in the provinces, would have provided about ten minutes’ worth of entertainment in the capital.

The Trojan cycle has been retold and re-envisioned many times from antiquity to modern times. The themes covered by these myths, especially the Homeric poems, have captivated the minds and hearts of poets, historians, authors, and others. Homer's Iliad extoled the grandeur as well as exposed the ugliness and folly of war. These humanistic virtues resonated with various cultures around the world. In this article we examine the reception of the Trojan cycle, especially the Iliad, on the noted manga artist Tezuka Osamu (1928–89). Recent reception theories focus on the creation of a new composition or artefact as part of the reception process; we shall thus discuss the Phoenix: Early Works manga as an example of such reception.