Most biblical commentators, and those writers on Roman history who bother to mention it, have placed the nativity at some time around 7 B.C. The problems associated with the date of the nativity have been aired and debated at great length in theological and historical journals for decades, but recently new light has been thrown on the subject, and in this article we shall consider the state of the debate as it stands at the moment.

One of the privileges which the Athenians prized very highly was parrhesia—the right of free speech. From the foundation of the democracy until the dangers of uncensored speech in the Pelopon-nesian War made some restraint advisable this privilege remained unimpaired, and it is an important part of their political, if not of their social, system. The recognition of this right of free speech should mean that no grievance need remain unspoken, and that politicians could be well informed about the state of public opinion.

His rebus gestis, ex litteris Caesaris dierum viginti supplicatio a senatu decreta est. With these words Caesar ends the account of his campaign in Gaul in 55 B.c.

This article explores Alexander Pope's experience as a translator of the Iliad and the Odyssey, particularly his engagement with Homer as a poet and his biographical tradition. The study focuses on how Homer features in Pope's correspondence as he worked on the translations, how the Greek poet is described in the prefatory essay by Thomas Parnell and Pope's own notes to the text, and finally how his physical presence materializes in the illustrations within Pope's translations. The article suggests that, by engaging with the biography of Homer, Pope explores issues such as poetic authority and divine inspiration, promotes his own translations against European competitors, and ultimately establishes himself as a translator and as a poet. Throughout the process, Homer appears as a presence that forces Pope constantly to challenge himself, until he feels he can stand a comparison with the greatest poet ever.

The Isle of Man was left untouched by the Romans. It was a stronghold of Celtic culture until in the Dark Ages the Scandinavian sea adventurers made it a naval base. The two races lived side by side and no influence other than theirs showed itself until the seventeenth century, when the English fashions in architecture and social life began to reproduce themselves in the island. Thus the contribution made to the British heritage by those two strains is more easily recognizable here than perhaps in any other part of the British Isles. In this paper I deal only with the Celts, our knowledge of whom (apart from archaeology) is based almost entirely on the records of Greece and Rome. I confine myself to two authors universally read in schools—Caesar, a competent observer at first hand, and Tacitus, a reliable conveyer of borrowed information. All quotations from the former are from the Gallic War, those from Books IV and V referring to Celts in Britain, the others referring to Celts in Gaul. All quotations from Tacitus are from the Agricola. There were really three types of Celts, but their culture was at the time of these writers fairly homogeneous. It is not to be wondered at that illustrations can be found in the Isle of Man for statements made about Celts in Britain and Gaul, for the whole of the Celtic world seems to have enjoyed free intercourse and to have shared the same religious organization.

The eighth poem of Catullus is in many ways fundamental to our understanding of the poet; in it can be seen something not only of his methods but also of his approach both to his poetry and to the experience which he attempted to express through it. It is possible, by thinking in terms of ‘the Catullan experience’, to be led to overemphasize particular aspects of it at the expense of others and to attempt to find in one particular experience or set of experiences a clue to the man and his poetry. Such an approach may be fruitful; it may throw light on particular aspects of Catullus; but unless we remember that our results can only be partial, there is a danger that we may think we understand him when we do not.

In his biography of Cicero, Plutarch quotes from Augustus an admission that the future emperor had once made use of Cicero's lover of power (philarchia) by offering to support the orator for a second consulship in return for Cicero's help. This incident allegedly dates from the period after Caesar's death when Octavian feared that he would otherwise be left without political support.

When Aeneas wakes up and finds Troy overrun (Aen 2.298 ff.), he simply wants to die bravely, taking as many Greeks as possible with him. We are clearly meant by Virgil to consider this reaction inadequate to the realities Aeneas must face. There is enough in the structure of the poem and in Virgil's choice of words to leave us in no doubt about that. As K. F. Quinn says, ‘Aeneas’ surrender to impulse is as futile as Priam's pathetic, foolish gesture'. Aeneas says in retrospect that he did not have enough reason as he rushed into arms. As soon as he stops to think, he immediately becomes inclined to turn away from his mindless deathward career (559). Venus (589 ff.) confirms him in this new course, or returns him to it, by showing him the futility of any attempt at defence or revenge.

The Cupid and Psyche episode in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius is rightly viewed as an escape from the novel's ‘real world’. But that does not of course prevent it from saying serious things about the nature of love and the psychology of the lovers. My aim in this article is to argue that the Cupid who removes Psyche to an earthly paradise (5.1–2.2) is just as much in need of an emotional education as she is. Indeed, initially Psyche could well have been better off with ‘the lowest of mankind’ with whom Venus had instructed him to ensnare her (4.31.3). For her, Cupid may in fact prove at the outset to be the malum (evil) of Apollo's sinister prophecy (4.33.1).

Aristotle's account of the περκνóπτεος the Black Eagle (H.A. ix. 32. b), is, in the main, an accurate enough description of the Lammergeyer (Gypaetus barbatus): λευκἠ κεϕαλἠ, μεγέθει ἠ μἑγιοτος, πτερἀ ἠ βραχύτατα, καì ὀρροπύγιον πρóμκες, γυπí ὃμοιος ὀρειπέλαργος καλε¯ται καí ὑπάετος. οἰkgr;ε’ ἂλση, τἀ μἐν κακἁ ταὐτἀ ἒχων τοῐς ἂλλοις, τν ’ ἀγαθν οὐἑν. ἁλíσκεται γἀρ καì ιὠκεται ὑττò κορἁκων καì τν ἂλλων, βαρύς γα καí κακóβιος καì τἀ τεθνετα ϕἑρων πειν’ ἑεì καì βοᾀ και μινυρíℑει. The birds which I observed in Abyssinia and Kenya appeared very black, and the white head (λευκἠ κεϕαλἡ) was very noticeable when the bird turned in the sun.

Again it is in fact the largest of the Old World raptores (μεγἑθει μἑγιατος), for specimens have been recorded which measured 10 feet between wing-tips. But it is untrue to say that its wings are βραχύτατα, for it possesses the graceful spread of a gigantic falcon. Sundevall, as Professor D'A. W. Thompson points out in A Glossary of Greek Birds (pp. 146–7, new edition, 1936), suggested that βραχύτατα was an error for μακρóτατα, but it is more likely, in view of Pliny's alts minimis, quoted below, that Aristotle was confusing the lammergeyer with another bird, perhaps Bonelli's (Nisaetus fasciatus Vieill.) or the Dwarf Eagle (Aquila naevia). In flight the lammergeyer's most prominent feature is its long, streamlined rump, which is faithfully described by ὀρροπὑγιον πρóμηκες (this characteristic is well portrayed in Leonard Gill's A First Guide to the Birds of South Africa).

One of the most primitive and genuine elements of Roman religion was the feeling that some mysterious power haunted the dark wood. Germany was pre-eminently the land of dark woods in which the practical-minded Roman faltered and lost his way. There were the woods along the banks of the Rhine, in which we sometimes walked in our student days at the University of Bonn. There was the wooded Taunus range, where we visited the reconstructed Saalburg, a fort belonging to the limes or line of entrenchments constructed to protect the Roman territory in south-west Germany. There was Abnoba, the Black Forest; there was the Hercynian Forest; a vague term applied to the vast range of wooded hills stretching a thousand miles from the Rhine along the Danube and around Bohemia to the Carpathians; there was the Saltus Teutoburgiensis, where in A.d. 9 Quintilius Varus and his three legions had been wiped out by the Cherusci under their leader Arminius in a battle which had turned the tide of history; there was the unknown island wood where our grim ancestors, the Anglii and the Saxones, performed the gloomy rites of the goddess Nerthus from which none of the slave ministrants was allowed to come away alive. Beyond lay even wilder regions and more savage peoples: the Aestii or Esthonians, who wore boars' heads and lived on the Baltic shore, from which they gathered amber and were astonished to receive a price for it from the traders; the nomadic Sarmatae of central and southern Russia, who lived in wagons and ate horse-flesh; the ferocious Fenni, or Finns, who had no home at all, but slept on the ground and lived on herbs and any animals they could shoot with their bone-tipped arrows, hunting with the bow being the life of both the man and the woman, while the babies were left with no protection against weather and wild creatures except a sort of hovel made out of interlaced branches; and further still the Hellusii and the Oxiones, who had the faces of men and the bodies of animals; to the north the dead seas of the midnight sun, the frozen Arctic Ocean, where every morning could be heard the noise of the sun rising from the waters, and the horses drawing his chariot could be seen.

The object of this article is to plead that Lucan is an underrated poet, and well worth reading at length. It is assumed that many readers of Greece and Rome have not read more than, at most, books i and vii, and such other pieces as may have met them from time to time in unseens.

Thucydides was, inter alia, a political thinker of rare insight, Isocrates an avowed propagandist. Their works present several passages of apparent congruity in their assessments of the Athenian Empire; but all such appearances are illusory. For by the nature of their personalities they view their subject from entirely different standpoints, and, in citing the same facts, only underline the differences that exist between them.

All writers are to some extent consciously interested in the technique of their art; many of them far more so than is generally realized. The majority follow the principle Ars maxima celare artem, and do not allow us more than a glimpse into their workshop; many a lyric that delights us by its apparent spontaneity has been hammered out slowly and shaped and altered until its final form contains hardly a trace of the original creation. The late W. B. Yeats in his Autobiography says:

‘Metrical composition is always very difficult to me. Nothing is done upon the first day, not one rhyme is in its place; and when at last the rhymes begin to come, the first rough draft of a six-line stanza takes the whole day. Sometimes a six-line stanza would take several days, and not seem finished even then.’