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In this paper, I argue that the Valerian gens had a significant influence on the history of the Ludi Saeculares at Rome, particularly in the development of the Augustan games of 17 BCE. It is well known that Augustus worked with the jurist Ateius Capito to plan his Ludi Saeculares (cf. Zosimus 2.4), but modern scholarship has neglected evidence for a close association between Augustus and Valerii that shaped both the chronology and performances of the games.

In 88 B.C.E., Mithridates of Pontus ordered the massacre of all Roman citizens in Asia Minor and Greece. Several cities took advantage of the opportunity to avenge themselves against decades of abuse; surviving accounts report death tolls between 80,000 and 150,000. Yet some communities, such as the island of Cos, offered refuge to fleeing Romans. The episode offers a point of departure for the investigation of the visibility and privileged status of Romans abroad by motivating questions in respect to their experience as a diaspora.

As noted by Fergus Millar, the Greek cities of the Hellenistic world laid claim to three things: internal self-government, self-representation implying a degree of independence, and diplomatic respect (Rome, the Greek World, and the East).

In this paper I argue for a new reading of part of Polybius' programmatic statement as it appears first at 1.1.2 and again in a slightly modified form at 6.2.6. Taken together, these two variations on the same theme speak directly to the explicitly didactic nature of Polybius' work: the only way to learn how to endure nobly the reversals of Fortune (Tyche) is by understanding how others have done so in the past, which is in turn accomplished by perusing the history in the reader's hands.

Fate is an important aspect of Virgil's programmatic characterization of Aeneas, who is described as "fato profugus" before he is introduced by name (Aen. 1. 2). This is the first of Virgil's many references to fate in connection with individual characters. On epitaphs and in the Aeneid the fates are limiting forces, cutting short human desire and potential.

Virgil is a poet, not a lexicographer. This means he is more interested in the manipulation of language than in its precise meaning. This is certainly true of the poet’s use of the technical language of divination. As Nicholas Horsfall has argued, technical religious terminology constitutes a remarkably rich source of language in the Aeneid, but the poet’s use is more impressionistic than fastidious (Horsfall 1991: 149–150). This impressionism allows the poet to exploit the connotations of these terms for literary effect.

The boxing match between Dares and Entellus in Aeneid V invites readers to recall similar duels in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Apollonius’ Argonautica, and Theocritus’ Idyll XXII (McGowan, Poliakoff, Sens, Stégen). On the other glove, David Traill demonstrates convincingly how Vergil’s simile of Dares’ attack at 5.439-42 echoes Polybius’ description of Hamilcar’s siege of Eryx (56.1-57.2). Traill is understandably reluctant to posit Polybian influence on Vergil, for it is hard to imagine the poet slogging through Polybius.

Just as Virgil’s orientalizing Carthage displays more than one Persian feature, both Atossa queen of the Persians and Medea as ancestor of the Persians stand as significant models for Dido. This paper investigates Carthage’s and Dido’s Persian features, arguing that they point to a degree of continuity between the ideology of the Punic Wars and the Greek ‘invention’ of the barbarian Other.

Critics have long recognized that causae are a problem in the Aeneid. Motivations for even the most fundamental plot points are often obscured to the point of near incoherence, so as to complicate or thwart retrospective interpretation. Why does Juno harass Aeneas – what, in other words, is the motivating impetus for the whole poem? The answers that the poem gives, as commentators since Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus have pointed out, are notoriously dissatisfying.

Greek and Roman authors make complex observations about the sensory perception of taste and flavor. Although excellent work has been done in this area (e.g.,Wilkins and Hill 1993; Alcock 1993), scholars have not yet fully treated the Elder Pliny's ideas about taste and flavor. Pliny's Naturalis Historia relates flavor to a broader intellectual outlook that emphasizes change in the sense of both generation and decay.