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When the Edict of Maximum Prices was promulgated late in 301 CE, Lactantius tells us that, rather than cap prices and regulate the marketplace, the law resulted in bloodshed and a thriving black market: in short, the law was a dramatic failure. The scholarship discussing the Edict largely agrees with Lactantius that the law could not have succeeded as an economic policy (cf. Duncan-Jones, 1982; Williams, 1985; MacMullen, 1976). However, this position is based on assumptions about the intentions of Diocletian and the Tetrarchs that need to be reexamined.

There is no satisfactory account for the etymology of the name Aphrodite that provides a plausible linguistic explanation and accounts for her connections to goddesses of the Near East: Astarte, Ishtar, and Inanna. The various attempts to derive Aphrodite from Indo-European (Janda 2010; Mallory and Adams 1997) are necessarily committed to Indo-European speakers migrating from their homeland to Greece accompanied by a goddess named Aphrodite.

My paper explores how the vitis, the vine-stock that a Roman legionary centurion wielded as a cane with which to punish his soldiers, developed during the Principate from a punitive tool to a positive symbol of military status and imperial authority. As Augustus and his successors transformed the legions into a permanent, standing army, centurions acquired responsibilities beyond combat, including the management of outposts, logistics and supply, policing, and local administration, and they received greater pay and social benefits to match.

In Herodotus 2.152, the exiled Psammetichus, erstwhile warlord in the Nile Delta, receives a prophecy from the oracle at Buto: “vengeance would come from the sea, whence bronze men would appear.” Shortly thereafter, Psammetichus recruits a crew of shipwrecked Ionian and Carian pirates to help retake his kingdom. The tradition of raiders in the Delta is well established by the time of Herodotus.

Though Sappho’s ‘Brothers Poem’ contains many familiar features—an invocation to a female divinity, expressions of personal anxiety, and gnomic reflections on the human and the divine—the absence of erotic love makes it difficult to compare the Brothers Poem to other poems in Sappho’s corpus. As a result, domestic affairs, sibling affection, and ‘The Brothers’ have dominated many discussions of this new fragment.

Nikophon’s “Law on Silver Coinage” of 375/4 is already familiar to most students of Classical Athens and the ancient economy (SEG 26.72; Rhodes-Osborne, GHI 25). The inscription is largely complete and the text’s literal meanings generally well understood, yet despite continuous discussion since Stroud’s editio princeps (1974) the law’s basic motivation remains mysterious. Most previous discussions share two assumptions: that the law is concerned with the quality of the Athenian money supply and that it intends to regulate everyday retail transactions.

Pompa diaboli: Christian Rhetoric, Imperial Law, and the Roman Games

Thucydides’ emphasis on vision in the battle between Athenian and Sicilian forces in the Great Harbor of Syracuse (7.70-1), the moment at which the Sicilian Expedition becomes an inescapable disaster for Athens, was noted as early as Plutarch (Moralia 347a), but the significance of this aspect of the text has not been fully explored. I argue that Thucydides’ presentation of this conflict is highly reminiscent of sculptural depictions of battle, and especially funerary reliefs, works that would have been innovative and conspicuous in his time.

In this paper, I read Ovid’s Tristia 3.1 against Cicero’s ad Atticum 4.1, one letter written by a poet in exile, the other by an orator recently recalled. I show allusion by Ovid to Cicero who, I argue, provides a blueprint from which Ovid designs and structures his own letter. Ovidian allusion is ground well covered (Sharrock, Hinds, Newlands). Allusions to Cicero in exile have been noted too (Nagle, Claassen).

ἀλλὰ τὰς ἐξοχάς ὼς <ἂν> εἴποι τις, ἀριστίνδην ἐκκαθήραντες ἐπισυνέθηκαν, οὐδὲν φλοιῶδες ἢ ἄσεμνον ἢ σχολικὸν ἐγκατατάτοντες διὰ μέσου λυμαίνεται γὰρ ταῦτα τὸ ὅλον ὡσανεὶ ψύγματα ἢ ἀραιώματα ἐμποιοῦντα μεγέθη συνοικονομούμενα τῇ πρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσει συντετειχισμένα.