The war between the Seleucid and the Mauryan empires (305–303 BCE) is covered briefly, if at all, in our main literary sources (Appian and Justin). These accounts have usually been accepted by modern scholars with little scepticism, the conflict treated as a minor military operation which resulted in an equitable ‘Treaty of the Indus’, where territory was exchanged for elephants. Such readings are in keeping with the view that the Seleucids pursued a limited empire and were keen to construct a clearly delineated imperial map. This article highlights the contradictions in this current understanding. Rather than a limited empire, elements of the ‘Seleucus legend’ and anabasis which speak to universal imperial claims are identified. I propose that the campaign at the Indus was no ‘special military operation’ but a failed invasion which profoundly disrupted the regime’s expansionist narrative. I argue that a carefully crafted coverup utilised techniques of misdirection, euphemism, omission, and a dismissive colonial lens to minimise the conflict. Consideration of the treaty’s provisions will highlight the strategic and ideological difficulties posed by the war. I suggest this crisis acted as the catalyst for subsequent geographic propaganda published in the Seleucid court, which would influence Hellenistic maps for centuries to follow.

The settlement imposed by Titus Quinctius Flamininus in 196 after the Second Macedonian War effectively restricted Macedonia to its ancient boundaries. However, Philip V rebuilt Macedonian power and influence relatively quickly. His success in doing so naturally provoked fear and apprehension among his neighbours, particularly those states which had been rivals of the Macedonian kings in central Greece for centuries. These fears resulted in concerted diplomatic efforts in the mid-180s when a series of embassies from the central Greek states, as well as Pergamum and the Thracian cities of Aenus and Maronea, arrived in Rome to lodge complaints against the Macedonian king; Philip, of course, sent his own envoys to explain and justify his activities. Both ancient sources and modern scholarship take Rome’s response to these embassies – the dispatch of a series of commissions and ultimately declarations that Philip should vacate the cities which he had occupied – as indicative of a desire to limit and even humiliate Philip V and Macedonia. In this article, I examine Rome’s responses to the Greek embassies to show that they were not motivated so much by a desire to weaken Macedonia as by a desire to maintain post-war settlements.

This article is a study of political morality using historical, philosophical, and literary sources in combination. It evaluates ‘greatness of soul’ (magnanimitas/magnitudo animi; μεγαλοψυχία), a moral and political concept which I argue was of central importance to the Cornelian family inheritance. Greatness of soul was present in the Roman consciousness in the second century BC, linked to the life and actions of Scipio Africanus. The concept had been Stoicised in the Hellenistic period to express the moral quality of the outstanding individual labouring on behalf of others, and it was received in this form by Africanus’ descendants. Stoic philosophers, active in Rome, advised its statesmen of the imperative to identify action with morality in making progress to virtue. However, there were different interpretations of Stoic doctrine which insisted on different roles for the man of great soul: reform for the benefit of the people (the Gracchi), conservation for the benefit of the community (Scipio Aemilianus). Magnanimitas was contested by the descendants of Scipio Africanus and their rival interpretations of greatness of soul help explain divergence in their ethical intentions and actions.

Suetonius’ Life of Divus Iulius is (i) rich in material on the sexual activities of Caesar and (ii) rich in material that transmits contemporary perceptions of Caesar by his opponents: chapter 22 provides an instance in which these two come together. Caesar boasted to a packed senate that, in the case of his enemies, insultaturum omnium capitibus (‘he would come down on the heads of all of them’). This article presents a philological study of Caesar’s initial insult and of the interjection of an unnamed senator that this would not be easy ulli feminae (‘for any woman’) and examines rhetorically Caesar’s final response in Suria quoque regnasse Samiramin magnamque Asiae partem Amazonas tenuisse quondam (‘in Syria too Semiramis had reigned and the Amazons had once controlled a large part of Asia’). Suetonius’ overall presentation of Caesar in the Life is key to his inclusion and interpretation of Caesar’s words, revealing a uniquely dark sense of humour for Rome’s first emperor.

This article argues that Marcus Argentarius, the witty and obscene epigrammatist from the Garland of Philip, juxtaposes his brand of erotic, sympotic poetry with the learned astronomical poetry of Aratus in two poems that utilise imagery of the cosmos and constellations, Anth. Pal. 5.105/7 G–P and Anth. Pal. 9.270/26 G–P. I review the (recognised) obscene double entendres in Anth. Pal. 5.105/7 G–P, compare that poem to Philodemus’ own ‘dirty astronomy’ epigram (Anth. Pal. 11.318/28 G–P/31 Sider), and then suggest that Anth. Pal. 9.270/26 G–P also contains obscene double entendres, which equate Argentarius’ lyre-playing with masturbation, and masturbation with the writing of amusing, erotic epigrams.

Commentators on the younger Pliny’s obituary of Silius Italicus (Ep. 3.7) have often remarked its chilly and emotionally distant tone. This article argues that Pliny’s stance towards Silius is more subtly antagonistic than has generally been realised. To that end, it explores various stratagems whereby Pliny strives to diminish Silius’ standing as politician and man of letters. Most important, Pliny problematises Silius’ suicide. He does so in two ways. The first is the terminological nebulousness of the clauus which, we are informed by Pliny, was the cause of Silius’ suicide. Perusal of Greek and Roman medical texts establishes that clauus can refer to a whole range of afflictions, some serious, others not, so that, in the absence of further clinical detail, it is difficult to determine whether the suicide was justified or not – especially since Pliny also lists a number of contingent circumstances which might have acted as a brake on Silius’ intention of killing himself. The second is to cast doubt on the philosophical, civic and familial validity of Silius’ suicide. All this stands in profound contrast to the expansive and highly apologist account of the suicide of Corellius Rufus (Ep. 1.12) which, in the article’s conclusion, is mined for the political implications to be drawn from it in relation both to Corellius and to Pliny himself.

This article studies how some of the narrative settings in Herodian’s History supply the reader with fundamental rhetorical information about the actio of its speeches. I examine the actio in the settings of the speeches delivered by Marcus Aurelius (1.4.2–6), Crispinus (8.3.4–6), and Maximinus (7.8.4–8). These settings can determine the length of a speech, the typology of an address, or the characterisation of the speaker. Accordingly, readers can understand why the historian chooses a particular type of speech in each narrative context. All this evinces the great care which Herodian put into the writing of these sections of his History.

This article examines the intersection between imperial writings on animals and post-Hellenistic debates about exegesis. It is the first study to argue that interpreters drawing on Aristotelian theories of voice and Hellenistic ideas of natural sympathy treated the meaningful but non-verbal animal as a test case of nature’s availability to reading, and as an opportunity to reflect on how exegetes transfer their skills between literature and the natural world. Four texts illustrate, through different genres and techniques, how their authors used animal behaviour both to shape and to address questions of philosophical hermeneutics.

Part 1 considers selected works by Plutarch that link literary competence with natural reasoning (On the Cleverness of Animals) and propose a form of isomorphism between nature and literature (Gryllus). Part 2 turns to a non-zoological text, Origen’s Contra Celsum, showing how it brings animal creation into a broader discussion of scriptural authority and interpretation. Part 3 reads Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Animates as an interpretive manifesto that treats human–animal relations as an entry point into Porphyry’s wider exploration of cosmic interconnectedness and the possibility of reading the world as, and through, literature.

In the late fifth- and early sixth-century Latin poetry of Dracontius complex female characters abound. This article analyses Dracontius’ use of the word virago in reference to three women, all murderesses: Medea, the mother-cum-murderess, who kills Glauce, her husband’s betrothed and Glauce’s father Creon, before stabbing her own children to death; Clytemnestra, the mother of Orestes, who conspires with her lover Aegisthus to murder Orestes’ father Agamemnon; and Judith, the biblical heroine, who saves Israel by decapitating the evil general and tyrant Holofernes. It argues that Dracontius’ use of the word virago to refer to these women is a distinct attempt to gender the act of murder, as it is only by these characters’ murderous acts that they become viragines.