I have long been tempted by the vast haul of ostraka from the Kerameikos excavations of 1966-8 to review afresh the whole history of ostracism at Athens. Though they have still been only summarily published, enough is now known to make the enterprise worthwhile. I leave aside the question whether Kleisthenes introduced the institution as part of his legislative programme, possibly in a form that involved only his new Council and not the people as a whole. This intriguing topic does not affect the history of ostracism as we know it. Scholars agree that the first victim was Hipparchos Charmou in 487 B.C., but the Kerameikos ostraka tell us nothing of this occasion. Nor do they help with the ostracisms of Xanthippos and Aristeides and, since nothing can really be done with the Agora ostraka here, I shall omit these also from my survey. But the ostracism of Megakles has been brilliantly illuminated.

With this reflection on mortal folly Poseidon concludes the divine prologue of Euripides' Troades. This text was printed by Murray with the addition of a comma at the end of line 95, but Diggle accepts Page's emendation I shall argue that the manuscript reading gives perfect sense and that, since it is good Greek, there is no need for emendation.

D. Kovacs has pointed out that these lines make no mention of desecration, for to bring temples into desolation () is quite different from desecrating them. Further, since it is regularly assumed in Greek thought that cities can be sacked without sacrilege, the folly on which Poseidon comments does not consist in a victor's incurring divine punishment simply by the act of sacking a city. I agree with Kovacs on these points and believe that his argument refutes the widely held view that in these lines Euripides is condemning on moral or religious grounds the sacking of cities in general.

‘As in the decade after C. Gracchus' murder, so in the decade after Saturninus’ murder popular fervor abated …’

In the unexceptional judgement quoted above Saturninus is clearly identified with the ‘popular cause’ and from that equation all sorts of assumptions flow. The presumption that Marius turned to Saturninus (as to Glaucia) because he needed his strengths, amongst which, it is assumed, was his influence with the populace, is rarely challenged. That is understandable. The presumption of Saturninus' popularity would seem to be based on ancient judgement.

Plutarch reports that when Sulla was giving himself airs after his successful service under Marius in the Jugurthine war (107-105 B.C.), one of the nobility reproached him with regard to his improved circumstances. (It is my guess Sulla had asserted that his achievements in Numidia heralded a return of his family's interrupted renown — with all the social, moral and financial assumptions this implied.) The riposte was, according to Plutarch: (Sulla 1.4), which Plutarch took to mean (i) that Sulla's patrimony had been negligible (having already stated categorically that Sulla was reared in unenviable domestic circumstances — intelligence he seems to have gathered from this item and one other [discussed below] which he proceeds to relate as evidence) and (ii) that his wealth had been gained subsequently (and, it goes without saying, from other quarters). Plainly the antagonistic observation implied that Sulla's fortune was outside the bounds of what was proper. Sulla was demeaned. The biographer comments for his readers' information that ‘… though the age of pure and upright manners had passed and people had degenerated and given way to their appetites for luxury and extravagance, yet [the Romans of that period] still thought that to forsake one's hereditary poverty was just as disgraceful as to squander a fortune that one had inherited‘ (ibid).

Horse doctors of the Roman period were often, but not always, of low social status. On the one hand we hear of ueterinarii I mulomedici who were slaves or freedmen, but on the other hand the Greek-speaking Theomnestus was the friend of an emperor (probably Licinius), and accompanied him on an expedition: note particularly Hipp. Ber. 34.12, CHG I, p. 183.22 f. . Apsyrtus too, whatever his date, was a of some status.