Abstract This article explores literary records of the fourth-century senatorial dedications that illustrate the perception of inscribed monuments in variegated spatial contexts. It offers considerations about literary reflections of material conditions in which late antique statues were set, staged, and perceived, their interaction with urban and domestic contexts, accessibility, and ways in which their mise-en-scène had an impact on an onlooker. Late antique and middle Byzantine patrographic attestations highlight the pleasure experienced by viewing inscribed monuments in city fora. I argue that literary accounts of statue and epigraphic representations of the senatorial aristocracy mediate the phenomenon of the expansion of new, spatially mobile elites. I examine literary descriptions of (1) statuary set up for senatorial office-holders; (2) dedications for emperors and other recipients awarded by senatorial officials; (3) statue monuments erected by senates. I conclude with an elaboration on what different media genres, as mediating structures by which aristocracy and rulers articulated their interaction, reveal about members of the senatorial order fashioning their relationship with the imperial court and the broader public. The elusive traces in late antique and medieval literary reports furnish fragments of historical evidence of how the memory of individual senators was constructed, reshaped, and perceived.

Abstract The military punishment ofdecimatio, the cudgelling by lot of one in ten men in a disgraced unit, often described as a cornerstone of Roman military discipline, was never practised during the third and second centuries BC. The punishment was possibly used as an extraordinary measure a couple of times in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. It soon fell into total desuetude but was cultivated as a rhetorical construct that proclaimed theoretical powers commanders no longer dared effect. It was only revived, or rather reinvented, during the Late Republic, a violent moment that saw the confluence of antiquarian enthusiasm with military dynasts whose unrestrained powers allowed them to manifest what had previously been an aristocratic talking point.

Abstract Our image of ‘conversion’ takes its form from well-known episodes in the lives of St Paul and St Augustine. Paul's life is turned around by a blinding vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus (Act. Ap. 9.1–22); Augustine is directed by an oracle to a scriptural passage that ends his hesitations and sets him on the course that he has long known he should take (August. Conf. 8.12). Very much in parallel, although in a non-Christian context, are crisis-provoked life-changes reported by the Second Sophistic orators Dion of Prousa and Aelius Aristeides. Aristeides finds his life transformed by the intervention of the god Asklepios; Dion receives – he claims, from a god – advice that, put into effect, makes him the philosopher he has aspired to be. Were Dion and Aristeides ‘converts’? Adopting a conservative definition of ‘conversion’, I will argue that their accounts – though not autobiographies in the strict sense of that term – can legitimately be called ‘conversion narratives’. I will then test each for its goodness-of-fit to two influential life-change models, the first developed by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner in the context of initiation rituals, and the second, Lewis Rambo's process model of conversion.

Abstract Since the late sixteenth century parts of the ‘imperial frieze’ of the Ara Pacis have been known. The most striking figure in the background of the southern frieze is that long thought to be a portrait of Maecenas, the Etruscan prince and literary patron of the Augustan era. This article attempts three things: to discover1.Where and how this identification originated,2.What evidence there now is for that identification, and3.What alternative identifications can be offered.The bibliography is substantial, the trail is complicated and highly paradoxical, and fantasy has often played a large role. The ‘evidence’ in play for centuries has sometimes evaporated into thin air. The identities proposed are, in fact, numerous. Not of least interest is the hidden or mistaken identity, in turn, of crucial modern scholars. A method is proposed at last for evaluating the identifications of this background portrait, including obvious comparison with other background figures. This analysis emphasizes how much is still not known about the most famous piece of Augustan art. An attempt is nevertheless made in the last analysis, to support what can be offered, in the light of current understanding, as the most plausible identification.

Abstract In 133 BC, when Scipio Aemilianus heard of the violent death of his cousin and brother-in-law, Ti. Gracchus, he uttered a line from Homer: ‘Thus perish all who attempt such.’ In effect, this endorsed the lynching of Gracchus. At a deeper level, it cast Gracchus (in the Homeric context of that quotation) as the tyrant Aegisthus. It may also have suggested an image of moral turpitude, Aegisthus having debauched his cousin Agamemnon’s wife. By analogy (if intended), that would have suggested an adulterous union between Gracchus and his sister Sempronia. It is further suggested that gossip arising from this extraordinary insinuation might have prompted a special reading of the claimscirca102 BC of L. Equitius to be the bastard son of Gracchus.

Abstract In the second half of the 6th century BC four South Italian Greek colonial cities – Sybaris, Croton, Metapontum and Caulonia – were minting silver-copper alloy coins, all in the incuse fabric, with the same weight standard of c. 8gm. These incuse coins were to remain in production at Croton and Metapontum for the next 100 years.Coins hoards indicate that these four cities began minting their coinage at the outset as very fine, artistic – even exquisite – objects of fine crafts-manship. Each coin was thin (1mm), broad (30mm) and of a consistently uniform weight and diameter, and each coin was struck between dies of exceptional quality. During subsequent decades the diameter of the coinage was progressively reduced.At Monash University in 1980 we conducted experiments in coin manufacturing to determine how the minters at Croton in the 6th century produced these thin, incuse coins from only a small amount (8gm) of silver alloy, how they maintained a consistent weight standard across a century of minting, and why they progressively reduced the size of their coins during this period.It is well-known that the manufacturing processes of objects made from metal alloys can be revealed by examining their crystal structures.In our experiments in manufacturing broad, thin ‘Monash coins’, we examined the crystal structures at various stages throughout the process. To do this we made coin blanks of various diameters, all made from 8gm of silver-copper alloy. These blanks were subjected to hardness tests and photographs were made of the alloy’s crystal microstructures. ‘Coins’ were then minted by striking blanks between two manufactured replica dies, and their microstructures were compared with the microstructures of a genuine Croton incuse coin fragment.This is the first time these results have been published.

Abstract This article studies a Euripidean innovation: the introduction into tragic language and the subsequent (selective) usage of the expression oὐκ ἂν δυναίμην by Euripides. This negative potential optative appears sixteen times within the surviving Euripidean corpus, as a stereotypical syntactic structure that is intertwined with dramatic content and meaning. But, surprisingly, this expression is absent from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and all other tragedians. Through close reading of the sixteen Euripidean cases, the article traces and defines the conspicuous context of this expression: oὐκ ἂν δυναίμην is uttered by high-status individuals (for example, members of a royal family), when they envisage theimpossible/unattainablein present and future within an intensely emotional atmosphere (ranging from hatred and loathing to agonising grief and despair), during pivotal moments of the play. Metrical convenience is also served, as the expression covers the first five elements of the iambic trimeter.

Abstract This paper continues the author's long-standing quest to define the historicity of ‘epic society’ and to understand epic warfare and battle descriptions. It summarises the range of questions involved and a number of aspects on which some agreement has been achieved. Further progress is only possible by using new approaches. One of these, the comparative study of epic traditions, has recently yielded important results that are briefly summarised. Another new approach, overlapping with that of narratology, aims at understanding the working methods and conventions of the epic singer's art. The application of this approach to the narrative of epic battles has made it possible to distinguish between two large type scenes: ‘normal battles’ and ‘flight andaristeiaphases’. The former are essentially historical and thus help us understand early Greek fighting, while the latter are essentially fantastic. Three elements occur predominantly or almost exclusively in these fantasy scenes: thearisteiaiof the greatest heroes, the active intervention of gods in battle, and the use of chariotsin battle.The demonstration, provided in the final section of this paper, that the latter — a component of Homeric battle that has long resisted convincing explanation — is part of the singer's arsenal of fantastic entertainment and ‘special effects’, removes it from historical consideration and further facilitates the explanation of epic battles and their historicity.

Abstract This article analyses two texts, Caesar'sBellum Civileand Catullus'Carmen12, as a window onto linguistic politics in mid-first century Rome. Both writers use ‘codeswitches’ between Latin and Greek as a means of indirect characterisation of the subjects of their texts. On one hand, isolated switches into Greek in Caesar's text contribute to the sense of foreignness with which Caesar polemically characterises Pompey throughout theBellum Civile.On the other hand, Catullus' use of the wordmnemosynumin his twelfth poem is part of the establishment of a sophisticated language of elite aestheticism from which the napkin-thief Asinius is pointedly excluded. Both these authors have connections to a larger first century controversy that fixated on Latin linguistic purity — a controversy in which politics and language use were inextricably linked.