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In spite of the fact that Porphyry is reported to have loathed the body (Eunapius at 1T.44-45 Smith), he was certainly a polymath in wide range of suspect areas of knowledge.

In England, the seventeenth century was marked by an interest in the problems surrounding epistemology, from Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning in 1605 to John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1689. Even if we might think of English authors of this period strictly as empiricist reformers, they nevertheless looked to the rhetorical texts of antiquity for inspiration. This double interest can be seen clearly in Thomas Hobbes’ compressed English translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

Reading Virgil was an expensive proposition from the earliest times. So much is clear from the lavishly illustrated fifth century 'codex Romanus' (Vat. Lat. 3867) down to William Morris' stunning collaboration with Edward Burne-Jones on a de luxe illustrated manuscript of the Aeneid (1873-75). The same applies to translations of Virgil.

After the discovery of the first Medicean manuscript, which contained Annals 1-6, Tacitus became extremely popular in Europe, receiving numerous editions and Latin commentaries. It was especially Lipsius’ edition (1574), and his subsequent commentary on the Annals, that can be singled out as the most influential edition of Tacitus in early modern Europe. Although Lipsius’ work was mainly philological, it is undeniable that one can already detect in Lipsius a certain “political reading” that was soon to become dominant among readers and commentators.

Why did Marcus Antonius set out on a huge expedition to Parthia in 37 BCE? Biographers and historians, for example Goldsworthy 2007 and Halfmann 2011, tend to take the answer for granted: all Romans wanted to avenge Marcus Crassus’ defeat and bring back the standards his army lost there, thereby restoring the proper order of world politics. For too long our understanding of Romano-Parthian interaction has been dominated by the assumption, based on the Augustan message, that Rome had to triumph over the Parthians to restore national honour.

This paper examines the political relationships between the Triumvir M. Antonius and the individual commanders who administered the eastern half of the empire in the years 41-32 BCE. The establishment of the Triumvirate created a new situation in terms of the jurisdiction of the provincial commanders vis-à-vis the Triumvirs. Negotiating this new legal situation also had the potential to be politically difficult for those involved.

This paper examines later Roman Republican contacts with the Danube region, and treats especially the so-called Geto-Dacian copies and imitations in silver of Republican denarius coinage. There are several hundreds of these types, with new ones persistently surfacing on the art market. Most seem to have been struck in the years ca. 80-40 BCE, and served as a locally accepted currency that supplemented official Roman money.

This paper argues that new ways of thinking about Roman imperium developed in the 70s BCE, in response to the Mediterranean-wide crisis of violence ushered in by the rebellion of Rome’s Italian allies in 91 BCE. I focus especially on Gnaeus Pompeius’ vision of a more careful imperium marked by well-organized provinces, sensitivity to local circumstances, and just treatment of Rome’s allies, as well as techniques of governance developed in Quintus Sertorius’ independent Spanish state.