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In previous work, we established that τρυφή is mistranslated as “luxury, softness, delicacy, daintiness, effeminacy,” and even “wantonness” (LSJ). The meaning is so contaminated that, come the Hellenistic Era, scholars require special pleading to explain what are thought to be its “new,” complimentary implications as an epithet of Ptolemy VIII (e.g., Heinen 1983) as well as its irrefutably positive presence in the Septuagint. While the definition “luxury” may be appropriate in a vague sense, it is uninformative.

The present contribution reassesses the textual history underlying the medieval manuscript tradition of Terence. This tradition, it has long been recognized, derives from two lost ancient sources: Γ, ancestor to one group of Carolingian manuscripts, and Δ, ancestor to another. In what follows, the class of manuscripts descending recta via from Γ will be called ‘γ’, those so descending from Δ ‘δ’.

In 2011, I identified a new fragment of Ovid’s lost tragedy Medea in L. Caecilius Minutianus Apuleius’ de orthographia:

de orthographia fr. 18 Osann Vulcanus cum duplici .uu. Praecipitatus est a Iove de coelo, quia matri in se auxilium ferre voluerit, Homero in primo . . . et . . . Sed et Valerius in Argonauticis. At Ovidius in Medea a Iunone.

Called “a “hoax,” “a fraud,” “an imposture” (Syme 1968, 1983), the series of imperial biographies known as the Historia Augusta has been the victim of a rather notorious reputation. Dessau first suggested that the Historia Augusta (HA) is the work of a single author from the mid- to late-fourth century CE instead of what it purports to be, the collective work of six biographers writing during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine (Dessau 1889, 1892).

The coinage of most Roman imperial usurpers ignores direct mention of the legitimate regime with which they were in conflict. However, starting in the third century, some men in tension or conflict with the legitimate regime nonetheless had coins struck in their name advertising a positive relationship between themselves and the ruling emperor(s). This paper will examine three examples of this phenomenon. Firstly, the coinage of Vaballathus, prior to his proclamation as Augustus, featuring the Palmyrene on the obverse, and Aurelian on the reverse (eg, RIC V(1) 260, 308).

In December 63 BCE, Roman soldiers, on orders from the consul Cicero, intercepted several letters written on wax-tablets (tabellae), which the Catilinarian conspirators had given to the Allobroges’ ambassadors in an effort to forge an alliance with this tribe. In the Third Catilinarian, Cicero carefully describes the physical features of these tabellae as he narrates to the populus how he confronted the conspirators before the senate with this proof of their treachery (10-11).

The Alexander Romance, a historical novel composed between the late Hellenistic and High Imperial period, features over thirty letters inserted into the narrative framework. The drastic variation in length, content, and style of these letters has made it difficult to understand what role they play within the novel. Reinhold Merkelbach’s seminal study of the Alexander Romance in 1954 established a helpful distinction between the novel’s fantastical letters and those with a semblance of historical authenticity.

At the climactic moment of Troades Talthybios enters with the corpse of Astyanax, and the Chorus exclaim provocatively that the Greeks hurled him from the towers like “a bitter throw of the discus” (diskêma pikron, 1121). Although English translations typically ignore the reference to the discus, I argue that these words are no dead metaphor but part of an intricate appropriation of athletic discourse by the tragedian.

In Euripides’ Trojan Women, the Greeks hurl the body of Hector and Andromache’s young son Astyanax from the walls of Troy to his death. Critics have noted the great pathos of Hecuba’s ensuing speech over her grandson’s corpse, as she focuses the audience’s attention on his mangled body parts. One particularly striking metaphor she uses to describe the horror of the sight before her stands out: the “extremely bold” (Barlow 1986) image of Astyanax’s blood as it “bursts out laughing” (ἐκγελᾶι 1176) from the broken bones of his shattered skull.

This paper builds on a recent discussion of map-making and early Greek prose narratives, by adding a consideration of some world-mapping narratives in Athenian tragedy. In Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative, Alex Purves observes a distinction in epic narratives between the divine worldview, which can see the whole universe at once, and the human one, which is limited. Thus the bard, about to recite the catalogue of ships, invokes the Muse; he needs the help of divine vision to outline his map of the world (Purves 36).