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Cassius Dio's depiction of Septimius Severus is a crucial part of the author's Roman History, as it informs questions of the historian's relationship with the Severan regime, his overall goals in writing his history, and even the process of composing the history itself. Difficulties of interpretation arise because of Cassius Dio's seemingly critical stance toward the emperor throughout much of his narration of Severus' reign, in contrast to the generally positive obituary that Severus receives at the end of book 77[76].

In the paraepic fantasy world of the late fifth- and early fourth-century comic poet Theopompus, Odysseus is a man who knows – and likes – his Homer. Eustathius preserves a fragment of Theopompus in which the character of Odysseus refers to “an elaborate cloak you brought and gave to me, which Homer excellently compared to the skin of an onion” (fr. 34).

„The Origins of Christian Monasticism are embedded in Christian Asceticism“. With this statement Karl Suso Frank opened up his study of the history of Christian monasticism (6^th edition, 2010). According to his view monasticism developed gradually out of a movement of hermits or anchorites into coenobitic communities. This progression was enhanced through a strong religious motivation of self-fulfillment, which was often accompanied by a form of escapism.

Plato’s readers cannot describe his method of argumentation with much consistency. Vlastos asserted that the “Socratic elenchus is a search for moral truth by adversary argument”, with certain other conditions (1991: 39 and 44ff). Benson called it an examination of “doxastic coherence.” (2011: 198). Vogt (2012) has suggested that Socrates exposes the blameworthy ignorance of interlocutors so as to induce investigation in place of knowledge claims. In response to the lack of consensus, Brickhouse and Smith claimed Socrates had no methodology (1994: 5).

The Erotic Letters of Philostratus (c.170s-late 240s C.E.) consist of seventy-three letters, the majority addressed to anonymous boys and women and seventeen to named sophists and Roman authorities. Many of the letters by displaying more “classicizing” elements appear to distance Philostratus from his contemporary world (Patricia Rosenmeyer). Yet scholars have used the letter addressed to Julia Domna (no. 73) to situate Philostratus as part of the empress’s literary circle (Graham Anderson; Simon Goldhill; Robert Penella).

The Spartan general Brasidas is one of the heroes of Thucydides’ History (Harley 1941; Daverio Rocchi 1985; Wylie 1992; Hornblower 1996: 38–61; Boëldieu-Trevet 1997; Hoffmann 2000; Howie 2005; Bosworth 2009; Nichols 2014: 78–106). Aside from receiving a literary portrayal as a virtually Homeric figure, Brasidas seems to captivate Thucydides by being so unlike his fellow Spartans.

The importance of birth within the genealogies of the Theogony has long been recognized (e.g. Angier 1964; West 1967; Arthur 1982; Thalmann 1984; Clay 2003; Scully 2015). As a primary catalyst of both cosmological and narrative development, birth provides the activity necessary to populate the physical and poetic landscape, moving the cosmos from formlessness to particularity by the mingling of both bodies and words.

Although it is conventional to consider the prominent women of the Bronze Age as queens, the Homeric poems indicate otherwise, for the title "queen" (basileia) was a specific and limiting term. The word does not appear in the Iliad, and was not used for most of the famous royal women who are mentioned in the Odyssey. Homer did not consider Clytaemnesta or Helen to be queens. It is only by the fifth century BC, in drama, that these and other royal women would be called a basileia, clearly an anachronism.

When comparing Thucydides and Demosthenes, Wilamowitz (1911) said of the latter, “Thukydideische Gedankentiefe fehlt; ein Menschenkenner war er[Demosthenes] nicht….” In more recent studies, scholars have continued to view the relationship as a more or less appropriative one: Demosthenes adopted the Periclean ethos (Yunis) or simply reversed and negated Thucydides’ characterizations of Athens in its Golden Age (Mader). In this paper I argue that he was a much more sensitive reader of Thucydides than has generally been claimed.