It is argued that the Emperor Tiberius reacted as badly as he did to the fisherman who climbed the cliffs at Capri to offer him a gift of a surmullet (Suet. Tib. 60) because he regarded this event as an omen that his death was near at hand. He had the fisherman’s face scrubbed with the surmullet to transfer the force of the omen to him instead.

This article deals with a well-known crux in Juvenal (6.195). Previous conjectures are discussed before a new emendation is proposed.

This article takes up the question of the possible existence of an ‘Auctus’ version of Suetonius’ De uita Caesarum: D. Rohrbacher raised legitimate doubts in an article published in 2009 about divergences between quotations in Servius and Suetonius’ text; yet nobody has given them proper attention. This article therefore reviews all occurrences at stake, trying to understand where the divergences may come from, then confronts another discrepancy between Suetonius, Aurelius Victor and the Epitome de Caesaribus on the one hand, and Jerome and Eutropius on the other. It concludes that the hypothesis of a Suetonius Auctus is not necessary to explain these differences, which rather help us better understand how ancient scholars could work.

This article examines the reception of Sappho in Julius Pollux’s Onomasticon. The article shows that Pollux primarily quotes Sappho as an authoritative source on clothing and textiles. This presentation of Sappho is unusual, given that other ancient sources largely locate her poetry within an erotic, and sometimes sympotic, framework; and it is particularly notable for the way in which it emphasizes Sappho’s status as a specifically female poet with special insight into, and expertise in, the feminine domestic world. The article argues that this domestication of Sappho’s verses is not (primarily) an act of sexist belittlement, but rather demonstrates how Pollux reimagines Sappho in his own image. In the material world of the Onomasticon, Sappho becomes in turn an emblem of (feminine) materiality, whose apparent preoccupation with the fabric of everyday life productively mirrors the encyclopaedia’s own. As a whole, the article argues that Pollux’s creative engagement with Sappho’s poetry is both an important constituent part of, and a foil to, her wider reception in both antiquity and modernity.

This article examines Arrian’s decision to date events in the Anabasis and Indica by eponymous archon of Athens and Athenian month. In the past, scholars have only been concerned with whether the dates are correct rather than with why Arrian is using them in the first place. His sources Ptolemy and Aristoboulus did not use this dating system, so Arrian must have converted the dates he found in his sources to this format, and he must have done so for a purpose. It is argued that the key to the schema is Arrian’s use of an archon date to mark Alexander’s crossing of the Euphrates at Thapsacus: this is an unimportant event in Alexander’s anabasis, but a crucial turning point in Xenophon’s. The archon dates thus structure a comparison between the two anabaseis, emphasizing how much greater Alexander’s was by comparison with Xenophon’s in line with his comments on the subject in the Second Preface. Arrian used Athenian archon dates for this purpose to indicate his own familiarity with Athens without having to explicitly state it. This is indicative of how, again in line with his statement in the Second Preface, he preferred to intimate details of his biography to his readers rather than state them openly.

This article examines a report in Dio of a vow made by Augustus in response to a prophecy. It establishes the setting as a festival for the Magna Mater rather than ludi magni, as has recently been suggested. Based on calendar entries and a passage from Ovid, the article then associates the content of the vow with altars of Ceres and Ops established in 7 c.e.

Dreams were an important but epistemically ambiguous feature of ancient medicine and a key site of religious experience. Galen of Pergamum, whose father’s dreams were decisive in his becoming a physician, incorporates dreams into diagnostic inquiry, therapeutic innovation and theological speculation. Scholars have long treated Galen’s positive descriptions of his and others’ dreams as indications of religious commitments at odds with his avowed rationalist epistemology. This article re-examines Galenic texts on dream diagnosis, references to dream-based therapies and descriptions of his father’s dreams. Having traced Galen’s sources and descriptions of dreams, it shows that the oneiric is perfectly comprehensible within his rationalist, physiological framework. The article shifts questions of dreams’ significance from their origins to descriptions of their quality and the context of their mention. The article concludes by showing that, consonant with his own epistemological and rhetorical commitments, dreams offer the Pergamene physician confirmatory techniques, means of surprise and innovation and a rhetorical strategy for validating his knowledge, skill and standing.

Euripides is one of Clement of Alexandria’s most frequently cited sources, and his enthusiastic borrowings have received fresh attention in recent years. This interest has proceeded under the assumption that Clement’s theatrical engagement was primarily limited to the reading of dramatic texts instead of through performance. This article argues that a careful examination of Clement’s Euripidean material in fact reflects the broader performance landscape of the ancient city in which this Christian author lived and wrote. Taken against the backdrop of contemporary Alexandrian performance, this reveals a fresh complexity to Clement’s use of Euripides, and uncovers an author actively participating in and shaped by the cultural activities of this Graeco-Roman city.

The poetic investiture scene in Quintus’ Posthomerica (12.308–13) is the only passage in which this epic’s narrator speaks about himself in the first person. These lines have often been commented upon from an intertextual and metaliterary perspective, but the specificity of the geographical markers mentioned by Quintus has not been adequately explained. This article proposes that Quintus places his Homer specifically at the site of the old city of Smyrna, which is not the same as that of the Roman (and modern) city. Other elements of the investiture scene allude precisely to the legend which, in the Imperial age, ascribed to Alexander the Great the relocation of the city from its old site, nearer the Hermus river, to the new, near the Meles. Local legends and traditions help to explain several details of the investiture, from its placement in the precinct of a temple to the presentation of Quintus’ young Homer as a shepherd. The article also explores the ideological implications of the poem’s return to the distant, pre-Ionian past of Smyrna and its appeal to the city’s ancient history and legends, from the suggestion that Quintus may be de-Romanizing his poem to the relevance of Homer in a rapidly Christianizing third-century Smyrna.

Modern translators and commentators have uniformly taken the phrase καὶ τιμωμένων ἀντετιμᾶτο in Max. Tyr. Or. 3.2 as a reference to Socrates’ reported proposal of a counter-penalty as depicted in the second speech of Plato’s Apology. This article suggests an alternative interpretation rooted in both the surrounding context of Or. 3 and an analysis of Greek forensic vocabulary and usage. The latter analysis also serves to cast doubt on the claim, common in discussions of Athenian law, that ἀντιτιμᾶσθαι served as the technical term for making a counter-penalty proposal.

In a problematic passage at the beginning of his treatise De mixtione (I, 1.9–16), Alexander of Aphrodisias judges Chrysippus’ theory of total blending to be more paradoxical than two other paradoxical claims on mixture. Scholars understand these two claims either as a unitary position or as two distinct positions. In the latter case, they maintain that an emendation is necessary to make sense of the first claim. Through textual and philosophical analysis, this article shows that the claims represent two distinct positions—the realist view and Democritus’ reductionist account—and that no emendation is necessary. The article defends the transmitted text by explaining how Alexander can characterize the realist view as paradoxical despite endorsing it himself. To do so, it illustrates the meaning of ‘paradoxical’ in light of Alexander’s use of common notions (koinai ennoiai) as evaluative criteria and thoroughly connects the passage to the wider dialectical framework of the De mixtione, thus reconstructing the rationale behind Alexander’s evaluation of each of these three positions as paradoxical.

This article attempts the first systematic look at the use of similes in the poetry of the imperial Greek poet Triphiodorus. It proposes that Triphiodorus, having access to a vast repository of epic poetry (and similes), draws on existing formulas, mechanisms and vocabulary, which he slightly modifies to make his mark. It concludes that similes i) are used to humorous effect, ii) occasionally defy Homeric rules and categorization, iii) offer a stage for emulation, competition or rivalry with predecessors, and iv) reflect key tenets of the poem’s programme.

This article considers the vexed problem of whether the letters of the Antiochene sophist Libanius provide evidence for the life and career of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus. After brief consideration of the debate on Ep. 1063, it turns to Ep. 233 of a.d. 360, which mentions an Ammianus in imperial service, setting out the various attempts to identify this individual as the historian. It then outlines the later Roman onomastic system, casting new light in particular on the role which names played in indicating social status and on the way in which Libanius used names. It shows that fourth-century conventions of naming preclude identifying the Ammianus of the letter with Ammianus Marcellinus.

An emendation in Euripides, Hecuba 1045.

A conjecture in Birds 786–8.

Justin’s epitome is a central source for significant parts of especially Hellenistic history, and it is our only window into the important work of Trogus. To understand Justin’s epitome and use it methodologically soundly, a reasonably firm grasp on its date of composition is, as always with ancient writers, central. This has proved elusive: the only indisputable terminus ante quem is Jerome’s mention of Justin from 407, and most commonly Justin is dated to either the year 200 or the late fourth and early fifth centuries. This article provides new arguments for a late dating of Justin’s work: Justin presents the obeisance demanded by Alexander the Great as a form of adoratio, a gesture which in turn is depicted as royal and Persian. This presentation of Alexander’s obeisance deviates markedly from the parallel sources, and the conceptualization of adoratio as Persian is unprecedented before the fourth century. On the other hand, Justin’s description exhibits clear parallels with the fourth-century critique of Diocletian for introducing the adoratio. This provides strong support for a late dating of Justin’s work, and the 390s or the first years of the fifth century may tentatively be suggested.

Several epigrams of Callimachus showcase a larger content in a smaller format: one of these is Callim. Epigr. 2 Pf. = 34 G–P.

In In Parmenidem 1.15.7–14, Damascius surveys several principles in a first attempt to determine what is the cause of matter qua matter. This article aims to correct the text and interpretation of these lines adopted in the standard edition of Damascius’ In Parmenidem by Westerink and Combès, by proposing the emendation δύναμιν οὖσαν in line 11; more generally, it seeks to elucidate this intricate passage, which is a largely neglected source for Damascius’ conception of the material layers. In doing so, the article sheds light on his present strategy to address the question, by showing that it involves going through several aspects of the material substrate—that is, various material layers—from the most specific to the most elementary, and taking into consideration the cause of each of them. Moreover, the article clarifies the identity of the various entities that Damascius mentions in the passage. This analysis will thus contribute to the reconstruction of Damascius’ theory of the origin of matter.

This note offers the solution to a puzzle in the manuscript tradition of Polybius that has baffled eminent modern authorities.

This note presents a new supplement for Euripides, Protesilaus fr. 646a Kannicht.