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The discovery of the Law Code by Federico Halbherr in 1884 inaugurated the study of Cretan epigraphy, and in 1950 the publication of the Inscriptiones Creticae by Margherita Guarducci established the canonical ordination of the corpus of Gortynian legal inscriptions. The fourth volume of IC is inspired by various criteria (mainly palaeographical, topographical, and archaeological) and by the idea that Cretan writing practice evolved over time. The reader is left with the impression that the epigraphical history of Gortyn is that of a community searching for a

The concept of austerity has been with us in studies of Archaic and Classical Crete in one form or another since the 1950s. Austerity has no real basis in the ancient literary depictions of Archaic Crete such as Aristotle’s account, nor does it figure in the rich epigraphic sources for Cretan political and social institutions. Instead, the concept emerged as archaeologists revealed enough about the 6th and 5th centuries BC to postulate a decline in artistic production in comparison to the Orientalizing renaissance of the 8th and 7th centuries.

When Virgil published his First Eclogue (c.35 BC), in which a young man (iuvenis, 1.42) is deified for having restored freedom (libertas, 1.27) to Tityrus and released him from enslavement (servitio, 1.40), the poet could not have foreseen that some fifty years later Augustus, on the verge of divinisation, would open his Res Gestae with the sentence:

annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata impensa comparavi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem vindicavi.

Vergil’s Victores: A Study of the Epithet Victor in the Georgics

Vergil’s fear that Octavian will become an authoritarian ruler is a primary concern of the poet in

the Georgics . Indeed, Vergil’s concern for the nature of Octavian’s rule provides an overarching

frame for the narrative. In the proem to Book 1, Vergil advises Octavian to consider carefully

which domain of the universe he wishes to rule, lest too dreadful a desire of ruling should take

Although seen as primarily a goddess of the hunt today, to the native Italians and Romans, Diana had many political associations. Glinster notes that “Diana’s remit thus embraced strong political and civilizing elements” (Glinster 2020, 52), and Dumezil suggests that she might be the Latin equivalent of an Indo-European “celestial god who was not and could not himself be either king or father, but who guaranteed the continuity of births and provided for the succession of kings” (Dumézil 1970, 409).

Nec legitur pars ulla magis: Vergil’s Aeneid 4 from Ovid’s Exile

In Tristia 2.533-36 Ovid famously claims that no part of the Aeneid is more read than the affair

of Dido and Aeneas - non legitimo foedere iunctus amor - and that this is prima facie an

argument against his sentence of exile by Augustus. Nevertheless, Ovid's deployment of Vergil

as a defense against authoritarian suppression both ostentatiously presents him as an imperial

One of the great classicists of the twentieth century, Sir Ronald Syme (1903-1989) was among the earliest

to compare the consolidation of power by the Emperor Augustus with the rise of authoritarian regimes in

contemporary Europe. In light of his famed ability to process and present documentary evidence, it is all to

easy to overlook the fact that Syme was also a philologist of the highest order, with an exacting knowledge

of Latin and of Roman literature. In fact, his best works are marked by the intricate weaving of traditional

The pseudo-Theocritean Idyll 23 is a morbid poem: a perverted paraclausithryon which narrates the deaths of both a spurned exclusus amator and the hard-hearted boy who is the target of his love. The poem has been roundly criticized by modern scholars: in the view of Gow, it is “wretched writing” (1952 II:413) and “the least attractive [poem] in the whole Theocritean corpus” (1952 II:408; cf. Kyriakou 2018:122).

This paper discusses the (in)consistencies between the early Stoic attempts to theorize beauty and the later attempts to theorize arts, especially music and poetry, arguing that this comparison leads to a more nuanced articulation of the functionality condition in both. 

Leonidas of Tarentum wrote many epigrams commemorating dedications by poor laborers. His epigrams also include ecphrases of famous artworks, e.g. Apelles’ Aphprodite Anadyomene and Myron’s Cow, which evoke aristocratic tastes and prestige. How do we reconcile these two seemingly discordant registers? Leonidas himself offers a solution when he presents two epigrams on the dedications of woodworkers (AP 6.204, 205) in ecphrastic terms.