I reckon myself to be a sufficiently competent map-reader to find routes that are interesting and scenic rather than merely obvious. Today I have mapped out a lecture with a track that is far from direct or main-road: I am going to wander and diverge to various look-out points and hidden spots along the way. I hope that, nonetheless, it will become clear that it has an itinerary and a destination.‘Life is a journey from the cradle to the grave.’ When we want to piece together some theme in the story of our life, we try to establish some time-markers, and we tend to string these along a kind of path or route. And we often pinpoint places in counterpoint with the time. This modelling of life as a road is a ‘metaphor we live by’, to borrow an apt phrase from cognitive studies; and the ancient Greeks often used this metaphor as well. The prime itinerary of our social and inner life would probably be constructed from our rites de passage, our close relationships, our inspirations; and very often we trace these through places as well. I was asked recently to write a very brief intellectual autobiography (so far), and I found that I was plotting it through locations: Epidauros, Oxford, the South Bank in London, Delphi, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles … And the same would be no less applicable to the story of my personal life, with some key places in common - Delphi, for instance.

Can there be a less promising topic than this? It is well known that Tiberius twice took time off from a busy career, first as heir-apparent and finally as emperor, but at first glance such withdrawals appear to be non-travel rather than travel. By the same token, his military expeditions seem to be tours of duty rather than travel in the sense classical scholars have constituted that rubric. Arguably the Capri stay was not travel but retirement. As the writer Norman Douglas put it, with a hint of apology: ‘In retiring at the close of an arduous life to enjoy the beauties of nature on fabled Siren shores, he was only doing what any civilised person might be expected to do.’ But there is more that can be said. In so far as such movements constitute imperial travel, there is a short but rich section of Millar'sThe Emperor in the Roman Worldas well as the detailed study by Halfmann,Itinera Principum, to read alongside ancient and modern biographies.

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Herodotus has a lot to say about slavery and about particular slaves and groups of slaves. The broad theme was, of course, central to his historical conception and presentation of the Persian Wars and of warfare in general, as well as being key to the contrastingnomoiwhose range and significance he is concerned to explore. Against that large background, I wish to examine Herodotus' understanding of slavery and slave-trading on the north coast of the Black Sea, with a view to a fuller appreciation of hisHistoriesand of exchange in the region. Three broad observations will assist.

For D.H. KellyUn homme d'esprit sent ce que les autres ne font que savoir(Montesquieu, Oeuvres complètes [Paris 1951] 1.57)Although F.M. Cornford’s name was already known to me from his commentary on Plato’sTheaitetos,my first acquaintance with hisThucydides Mythistoricuscame in my earliest years of teaching Ancient History in the mid-1970s under the tutelage of the one to whom this essay is dedicated. I have drawn on Cornford’s book regularly when teaching Greek History, and found it useful as a provocation to students reading Thucydides. With the centenary since its publication looming, two years ago I felt it was high time to learn more about the context in which the book arose. Already a generation ago, W.M. Calder III identified Cornford as ‘an outstanding scholar, a personality, and a man involved in the issues of his time’ who merits a biography.

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In a much discussed passage Pindar uses the expression when speaking of early performances of the dithyramb. The passage was famous in antiquity and before the discovery of a papyrus fragment early in the Twentieth Century, we owed our knowledge of it chiefly to citations in Athenaeus. In discussing it, Athenaeus explains the words in the context of asigmatic odes, i.e. odes in which for the sake of euphony the letter sigma was avoided or omitted altogether. This explanation remains the most commonly accepted one, though scholars continue to puzzle over it, as it is hard to see why Pindar would use the word which means ‘false’ or ‘counterfeit’ in such a context. A more natural interpretation, and one which would, I believe, have been readily accepted had it not been for the comments of Athenaeus, is that in early dithyrambic performances the ‘s’ sound was in some way impure or unauthentic when compared with current practice. In what follows, I will re-open the discussion, arguing that Athenaeus misunderstood the passage or based his explanation on a tradition which obscured its true meaning. It will be necessary in the first place to examine evidence for the pronunciation of Greek sibilants and it is here that some light may be cast upon the discussion from a rather unexpected source—the adaptation of the Greek alphabet for writing down the Middle Iranian language of Bactria.

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The status and activities of Polyperchon in the period following 315 B.C. remain obscure to scholars, even after the several detailed reconstructions of the Diadochian era that were made during the 1980s. Heckel refers to him as a ‘jackal among lions’, Hornblower as one of the ‘second-class’ generals. He was propelled to prominence upon inheriting Antipater’s mantle as guardian of the young kings and supreme commander in late 319 (Diod. 18.48.4), and had ample opportunity to make himself the dominant figure among Alexander the Great’s Successors in Europe. However, he was indecisive, unlucky, and more than a little incompetent in his handling of affairs in Greece and Macedonia over the next two years, being thoroughly outmanoeuvred on the military, diplomatic, and propaganda fronts by Antipater’s son, Cassander. By 316 Polyperchon had lost custody of the royal family, and was little more than a fugitive in Aetolia, but ambiguity regarding his legal and diplomatic status in relation to the regency and the other Diadochs continued to dog him until his disappearance from recorded history some fifteen years later.

Of the c. 270 inscribed Greek and Latin inscriptions held at Burdur Archaeological Museum in Turkey, only three definitely are metrical, all of which are in Greek. A fourth, fragmentary item reused as a Moslem gravestone has not been located during research at the Museum in the last decade. The one presented here is unpublished, and will be included more briefly in an edition of all the Greek and Latin inscriptions at Burdur which is currently being prepared for publication by R. A. Kearsley and the present writer. As with the other unpublished verse text (inv. 23.43.88, also funerary), there is no specific provenance known, but both can be attributed generally to the region of Pisidia. The other inscription, first published last century, was brought into the Museum from Akören in 1994 (inv. no. 499.141.94); it has been presented in an improved edition with commentary and photographs elsewhere.