In Aëtius 1.7.8 Mansfeld–Runia, Diogenes, Cleanthes and Oenopides are said to have maintained that the deity is the world-soul. However, the identity of the Diogenes whom the doxographer mentions here has long been a matter of scholarly dispute. In response to attempts to ascribe the doxa to Diogenes of Apollonia, this paper reassesses old arguments and proposes new considerations to argue that a fundamental aspect of Diogenes of Babylon's theology is at stake here.

Rufus of Ephesus (fl. c.100 c.e.) was a prolific medical author and practitioner in the Imperial period whose historical importance has been obscured by the loss of most of his works. One of the largest gaps in our knowledge of Rufus’ corpus is his gynaecological writings, none of which survives in full. This article assembles and comments on several fragments from Rufus’ lost gynaecological work On the Retention of Menses (perhaps Περὶ τῶν ἐπεχομένων ἐμμήνων). Comparison of overlapping passages from the authors Ibn al-Jazzār (tenth century) and Aëtius of Amida (sixth century) reveals that more fragments of this work in Arabic and Greek have survived than previously thought. These fragments provide new evidence for the analysis of Rufus’ medical thought, and further our understanding of gynaecology in the Roman empire.

P.Bon. 5 preserves the only known collection of ancient Latin model letters, accompanied by a Greek translation. This article argues that the Latin is the primary version and dates the composition to before the early third century. Comparisons with other model letter collections, principally ps.-Demetrius’ Epistolary Types and ps.-Libanius’ Epistolary Styles, locate the text within a wider literary genre. A new reconstructed text is provided in the Appendix at the end of this article.

Apuleius tells us of his own popularity as a writer, and yet both the literary and the material records are silent about his works for almost one hundred and fifty years after his death. Various attempts to identify allusions to his works before Lactantius and other fourth-century authors have proven unconvincing. This article suggests that there is a clear allusion to the Metamorphoses in Tertullian's treatise Aduersus Valentinianos (beginning of the third century). Tertullian uses Apuleius to denigrate the Valentinians and to assimilate the name of one of their gods to the braying of an ass.

This article argues that Panegyricus Latinus XII(9), a speech performed before Constantine in Trier in 313 c.e. following his defeat of Maxentius the previous year, acted as a crucial localized act of communication to the emperor. Through a series of allusions and the careful presentation of his narrative, the orator made a case for the continued political and cultural importance of Trier within the newly expanded Constantinian empire.

Of the many accounts of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in a.d. 312 written soon after the conflict, only those of Eusebius of Caesarea have Maxentius cross the Tiber on a bridge of boats to face the forces of Constantine. This detail, it is here argued, suggests that Maxentius may be seen as a latter-day Xerxes, the Persian emperor who, in preparation for his invasion of Greece in 480 b.c., famously spanned the Hellespont with a pair of boat-bridges. The article first reviews the seminal accounts of Xerxes’ feat in Aeschylus’ Persians and Herodotus’ Histories, and next discusses the story's long afterlife in subsequent Greek (and Latin) authors, including those of Late Antiquity. Close analysis of Eusebius’ battle narratives in his Ecclesiastical History (9.9.3–8) and in his Life of Constantine (1.38) reveals that their vocabulary echoes the distinctive language used by Aeschylus, Herodotus and later writers in reference to Xerxes’ achievement. The article concludes by exploring the implications of this identification of Maxentius with Xerxes. It exemplifies two venerable tactics in Roman political propaganda: that of portraying a native rival as a foreign enemy and that of mapping the Persian Wars onto contemporary events. As Xerxes rediuiuus, Maxentius is cast as the quintessential barbarian tyrant, an Eastern despot resident in Rome.

This article reconsiders the methodological issues posed by the reception of archaic and classical poetry in imperial rhetorical texts. It argues that references to ancient poems and poets in the works of imperial sophists are always already the product of appropriation and rewriting, and that the study of sophists’ engagement with poetry should go beyond Quellenforschung to explore how and why poetic models were transformed in light of their new rhetorical and imperial contexts. To illustrate this approach and its contribution to our understanding of both ancient-reception phenomena and imperial rhetorical culture, the article focusses on Himerius of Athens, a fourth-century c.e. sophist and teacher of rhetoric whose fondness for lyric poetry has caused his Orations to be used as a quarry for lyric fragments and testimonia. Himerius’ treatment of carefully chosen lyric models is here discussed with attention to his self-presentation and rhetorical agenda to show how the sophist appropriated the voices of diverse lyric icons to promote his school and negotiate his position in relation to the imperial administration. This analysis restores Himerius’ intellectual significance within late imperial culture and society, but it also demonstrates how a more in-depth study of the reception of ancient poetry in imperial sophistic literature has the potential to illuminate the strategies of cultural politics used by imperial authors to (re)construct Greek tradition.

Emperor Julian's three-book treatise Contra Galilaeos survives solely in those Christian sources that quoted it in order to respond to its forceful attack on Christianity. The bulk of these survivals comes from Cyril of Alexandria's twenty-book Contra Iulianum. The recent publication of the first modern critical edition of Cyril's work creates the occasion for a fresh study of the remnants of Julian's text that can be recovered from it. This is especially true for Books 11–20 of Cyril's treatise that are themselves lost and survive only in quotations in later Greek and Syriac sources. The present article undertakes a reassessment of the Julianic material preserved via the Syriac transmission of Contra Iulianum, including several passages hitherto unknown or ignored in earlier studies of Julian's treatise. It provides the Syriac text and English translation of eight passages and contextualizes them in the wider argumentative aim of Contra Galilaeos.

This article discusses three textual problems in Servius’ commentary on Virgil (Serv. on Aen. 11.741; Ecl. 2.58; Ecl. 4.4). In two notes a new conjecture is proposed; in one passage a transmitted reading, so far neglected by earlier editors, is supported.

In Essay Six of his Commentary on Plato's Republic, the Platonist Proclus offers a defence of the poetry of Homer and attempts to harmonize the Homeric epics, as inspired texts, with the philosophy of Plato as he interprets it. The tendency of late antique Platonists to turn to allegorical reading is well known, but in this instance Proclus interprets Achilles by other means. In particular, he is careful to place Achilles’ actions relative to what he sees as the correct position in the scale of virtues (at the level of the political virtues). In some further remarkable passages Proclus sees Achilles’ ritual activities as a kind of prefiguration of the theurgic practices embraced by the Platonic school of Proclus’ era.

This article presents, as a case study, the various inconsistencies which occur in the prosopographical entries concerning Simplicius, one of Sidonius’ most frequent addressees. Through the exegesis of passages of letters addressed to him (Epist. 3.11, 4.4, 4.7, 4.12, 5.4) and of passages believed to concern him (Carm. 24.89; Epist. 2.9 and 5.7), it argues for a revision of the common identification of Simplicius as brother of Apollinaris and Thaumastus, and for a re-evaluation of the sources which supposedly lead to this conclusion. Some cautionary remarks on the unchecked use of prosopography as a tool are followed by a hypothesis concerning the identity of this addressee of Sidonius.

This article focusses on a hitherto underappreciated distinction between immortality and everlastingness in a Greek commentary of disputed authorship on Aristotle's De anima Book 3. This article argues that this distinction calls into question the attribution of the commentary to Philoponus.

Photius’ lexicon contains an entry on the rare adjective ἀναλφάβητος (‘illiterate, ignorant’) that cites Phrynichus Atticista. Based on this testimony, the whole passage has been edited as fr. 19 of Phrynichus’ Praeparatio sophistica. This article demonstrates that in this lemma Photius conflates material which comes from Phrynichus and one other source, hypothetically identified with the anonymous Antiatticist lexicon, which preserves an abridged entry on ἀναλφάβητος and which Photius employed in the compilation of his lexicon. The article also explores the possibility that the work in which Phrynichus dealt with ἀναλφάβητος was not the Praeparatio sophistica but the Eclogue. This hypothesis requires challenging some assumptions concerning the transmission of Atticist lexicography in the Byzantine era, chiefly the assumption that material from the Eclogue did not circulate at Byzantium before the fourteenth century.

At the climax of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in the Iliad, Achilles ponders whether to kill the king (1.191). The first half of the line, however, has received little attention, but the various interpretations that have been put forth have been unconvincing. This article proposes an interpretation that reveals an Achilles at least momentarily contemplating fomenting a revolt on the part of the army against Agamemnon's authority.

This note considers a Pindaric crux. It argues that Aristarchus’ ‘solution’ should not have been so readily accepted because the evidence can be interpreted differently, giving more satisfactory sense if ἐϲλ᾽ ὡς rather than ἐϲλούϲ is read for the manuscripts’ ἐϲλόϲ.

This note offers a new conjecture on the manuscripts’ puri at Lucr. 4.1026 which would identify more clearly the dreaming bed-wetters as well-wined dinner guests.

Since a problematic passage in Virgil's Aeneid (10.366–7) shows the same influence of Sallust (Cat. 58–60) as do the dozen lines preceding and following, it should not be deleted, as has been suggested.

This note proposes to emend the problematic preserved reading ad cuius mensae sacra (Val. Max. 4.2.3) to ad Iouis mensae sacra.

This paper suggests a new emendation to the text of the final passage of Pliny's Panegyric, where a small lacuna has long been suspected after substiti.

Suetonius says that court jesters put slippers on Claudius’ hands while he napped during Caligula's dinner parties so that he would rub his face with them when he awoke. Since touching someone with the sole of a shoe was an insult, the joke is that Claudius insulted himself when he unwittingly rubbed his own face with the slippers.