Critical comment on the end of the Odyssey has centred on a two-fold question: first, is Book 24, together with the last 76 lines of Book 23, an interpolation? And secondly, does this final section of the poem add significantly to the content or meaning of the poem as a whole, whether or not its originality can be established? Two of Homer's early critics, Aristophanes and Aristarchus, are reported by the scholiasts to have placed the ending of the poem at Book 23, line 296. However, the terms used for ‘ending’ (πέρας, τέλος) are subject to varying interpretations. It is uncertain whether these expressions indicate that the text in its entirety ends at this point, or simply that the substance of the narrative ends here, in which case what follows is inessential. Recent commentators have carried on the controversy; however, despite some forceful arguments to the contrary, the dominant consensus now favours the Unitarian position. The present discussion will attempt to reinforce this position and specifically to explore some ramifications of the second Nekyia which have not yet been fully dealt with.

In a well-known article appearing in 1967, E. L. Harrison examines Plato's manipulation of Thrasymachos in the first book of the Republic. Harrison looks into certain peculiarities in the argument between Thrasymachos and Socrates and explores motives that may have led Plato to have Thrasymachos develop his doctrine in this particular fashion. Though Harrison's conclusions are widely discussed and frequently accepted, it strikes me as interesting that little scholarly attention has been focussed on equally striking features of the debate between Socrates and Callicles in the Gorgias. For I believe it can be shown that Plato's presentation of Callicles contains numerous peculiarities of its own, that the powerful, vigorously argued doctrine of immoralism enunciated by Callicles in a celebrated portion of the dialogue is actually infected with glaring weaknesses. I do not believe that these weaknesses have been satisfactorily accounted for, nor has the possibility been explored that Plato could have put them there intentionally. The purpose of this paper, then, is threefold: (a) to examine the nature of these flaws in Callicles' position; (b) to demonstrate their apparently odd and gratuitous character; and (c) to explore possible reasons Plato may have had for incorporating them into his presentation of Callicles in the Gorgias.

The Puritan ethic insists that work is both necessary and virtuous. But if automation makes work unnecessary, is it still virtuous? Indeed, if work is in short supply, may not industry actually be vicious, since it would mean taking more than one's fair share of the work available to the community as a whole, a new sort of πλεονεξία? A letter appeared in the national press recently which said: ‘Work is virtuous only when it is necessary, and much of what was done in the past and for which people were trained, no longer needs to be done. We already have butter mountains, beef mountains, barley mountains, lakes of milk, surfeits of electricity generating capacity, of shipping, of coal and so on.… Twenty thousand miners could be retired tomorrow on £10,000 a year and there would still be a surplus of £50,000,000 from the quarter of a billion pounds we spend on keeping open uneconomic pits. Rather than see these pits close, Mr Scargill wants to condemn his members in perpetuity to that unpleasant job, when they could have the money without doing the work. I see nothing virtuous in a miner doing that sort of work for its own sake.’

For all its swashbuckling image, classical mercenary soldiering was, on the whole, as subject to the discipline of practical economics as less glamorous-sounding pursuits. Current economic and political considerations dictated whether and why a citizen would become a mercenary; what and how he would be paid; what negotiating power he possessed; whether a ruler would use mercenaries or his own citizenry to fight his wars, and the necessity for a recruiting centre or ‘mercenary market’ where prospective employers and employees could meet and strike a bargain.

The first flight of Harpalus is an enigma, more so than his second flight taking place some ten years later in 324, the motives for which are more apparent.

Critics have been fairly unanimous in their assessment of Menander's concerns. F. H. Sandbach asserts that ‘the authors of New Comedy shut their eyes, generally speaking, to politics as a whole’. He writes of Menander that ‘the politics of his time were far too grim and frustrated to make a suitable subject for an audience that wished to be entertained on a public holiday.… It is within domestic and private life that he found the subjects for his comedy’. T. B. L. Webster agrees that recent political events were ‘too painful to be remembered in comedy’. E. W. Handley believes that in Dyskolos Menander's ‘basic point is an ethical and not a political one’; considering the possibility that ‘the thought and moral tone are politically inspired’, he dismisses the idea that Menander was a propagandist. Michael Anderson recognizes that Dyskolos, as an ‘ethical’ comedy in Aristotelian terms, must relate the behaviour of individuals to society, but he does not go on to relate the play to the particular society for which Menander wrote.

Of the twenty-nine series in the Plautine corpus, seven may legitimately be called senex amator – that is, an old man who for some reason contracts a passion for a young girl and who, in varying degrees, attempts to satisfy this passion. They are Demaenetus (Asinaria), Philoxenus and Nicobulus (Bacchides), Demipho (Cistellaria), Lysidamus (Casino), Demipho (Mercator), and Antipho (Stichus). Two others – Periplectomenos (Miles) and Daemones (Rudens) – still, perhaps, feel the sap rising, but they keep their instincts within acceptable limits, and both are regarded as senes lepidt, a description which usually denotes approval of a character.

‘A prodigious memory, a facile talent for versification, a cheerful and kindly optimism, and an avoidance of all that was serious or profound or disquieting’ – so Professor Robert Browning not unjustly sums up the poetic character of Decimus Magnus Ausonius. He was a professor of Latin, and it shows in his work. That is not surprising, since it was on his professional and professorial skill as teacher and rhetorician that his whole career was founded. It was by displaying proficiency in Latin Prose and Verse Composition that he rose to provincial governorships and to the consulate, and to the post of tutor to the future Emperor Gratian. It is to this last circumstance that we owe his best poem, the Mosella, a celebration of the beauties of the river Moselle. In A.d. 367 the Imperial court had been established at Trier in Gaul; and Ausonius was required to accompany the Emperor Valentinian, with his pupil, on his German campaigns. These, continuing a policy inaugurated by Valentinian's predecessors, were directed towards the consolidation of a Roman presence on the German bank of the Rhine, with the ultimate object of incorporating the Germans in the Empire and setting up a bulwark against further barbarian encroachments. It is against this political and military background that the Mosella must be read. It was clearly intended as propaganda. ‘The purpose of the poem was to inspire the Gauls with confidence in the renewed peace and security.’ They stood in need of such reassurance, for the recent past in Gaul had been far from secure.