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The electoral scene in the period from 133 to 129 b.c.e. was doubtless unpredictable, even in the centuriate assembly, and any prosopographical modelling based on the available data would be adventurous. The report that Appius Claudius Pulcher (cos. 143 and bitter opponent to Scipio Aemilianus) ran in 133 for a second consulship is not implausible, and the possibility of a thwarted candidature, whatever its duration and the reason for its termination, should be registered. The successful candidates were P. Popillius Laenas and P. Rupilius, the latter a close associate of Scipio. The unsuccessful consular candidacy of Rupilius’ brother Lucius should be dated to 132, 131 or 130. The elimination of the first of those options by F.X. Ryan (CQ 45 [1995], 263–5) is challenged.

This article argues that Virgil includes an allusion to the fourth-century censor Appius Claudius Caecus in Book 8 of the Aeneid. Three pieces of evidence point to this allusion: (1) wordplay, especially the near echo of ‘Caecus’ in ‘Cacus’; (2) semantic associations between Cacus and darkness; and (3) repeated references to sight and Cacus’ eyes. By invoking the memory of Appius, whose blinding in 312 b.c.e. allegedly came at the hands of Hercules as punishment for transferring control of the god's rites at the Ara Maxima to the state, Virgil underscores the importance of properly observing religious rituals. This aligns with Evander's original intent with the Hercules–Cacus story to prove to Aeneas and the Trojans that the Arcadians’ religious practices are no uana superstitio (8.187).

In 264 B.C.E. Roman forces under the command of the consul Appius Claudius crossed the Strait of Messina and entered Sicily. The historian Florus notes that these straits were not just marked by the violence of their waters but were also notorious for the mythical monsters to which they played host. Eleven years later, the consuls Gnaeus Servilius and Gaius Sempronius were conducting naval operations off the coast of Libya and in the region of the Lesser Syrtis when they found themselves grounded on the island of Meninx. According to Polybius, Meninx was formerly the land of the Lotus-Eaters. Here, Leigh examines this pattern, to engage with what it meant for Rome suddenly to transform itself into a naval power, and to ask how this relates to the development of Roman epic verse in the Odusia of Livius Andronicus and the Bellum Punicum of Naevius.

The conflicts between Pyrrhos and Rome give way to contradictions in the sources; through a certain number of devices, the historians, Roman and Greek alike, distort historical reality and give it a Roman colouring. The narrative of the battle of Heraclea is an outstanding example of this. Likewise the war against Tarentum becomes a just war. The year 280, the year of the rout at Heraclea is passed over in silence and doomed to oblivion. The victor has progressively been able to impose his vision of affairs by silencing the Greek sources.

Stories about brothers were central to Romans' public and poetic myth making, to their experience of family life, and to their ideas about intimacy among men. Through the analysis of literary and legal representations of brothers, Cynthia Bannon attempts to re-create the context and contradictions that shaped Roman ideas about brothers. She draws together expressions of brotherly love and rivalry around an idealized notion of fraternity: fraternalpietas--the traditional Roman virtue that combined affection and duty in kinship. Romans believed that the relationship between brothers was especially close since their natural kinship made them nearly alter egos. Because of this special status, the fraternal relationship became a model for Romans of relationships between friends, lovers, and soldiers. The fraternal relationship first took shape at home, where inheritance laws and practices fostered cooperation among brothers in managing family property and caring for relatives. Appeals to fraternalpietasin political rhetoric drew a large audience in the forum, because brothers' devotion symbolized themos maiorum, the traditional morality that grounded Roman politics and celebrated brothers fighting together on the battlefield. Fraternalpietasand fratricide became powerful metaphors for Romans as they grappled with the experience of recurrent civil war in the late Republic and with the changes brought by empire. Mythological figures like Romulus and Remus epitomized the fraternal symbolism that pervaded Roman society and culture. InThe Brothers of Romulus, Bannon combines literary criticism with historical legal analysis for a better understanding of Roman conceptions of brotherhood.

Les conflits entre Pyrrhus et Rome donnent lieu à des contradictions dans les sources ; par un certain nombre de procédés, les historiens, tant latins que grecs, déforment la réalité historique et lui donnent une tonalité romaine. Le récit de la bataille d’Héraclée en est le meilleur exemple. De même, la guerre contre Tarente devient une guerre juste. L’année 280, celle de la débâcle d’Héraclée est passée sous silence et condamnée à l’oubli. Le vainqueur a su progressivement imposer sa vision en passant sous silence les sources grecques.

This essay discusses various structures in the first pentad of Livy's history and how they are created, dealing both with strategies used to construct patterns within books and within the pentad as a whole. It is argued that Livy's evident wish to differentiate the first five books from what follows prepares his reader for his unusually complex treatment of their overall architecture—one not seen elsewhere in extant books of the Ab urbe condita and unexampled, as far as we know, in previous Greek and Latin historiography.

The narrative presented in books 5‐10 of Livy is of an exceptional interest for the understanding of the political and ideological transformations experienced by the Roman Republic during the fourth century B.C, for it represents the principal source of historical information for this era. After determining Livy's sources and the historiographical methods for this period, this study successively approaches the reorganization of the magistracy linked to the sharing of imperium between patricians and plebeians, the formation of the patricio‐plebeian nobility and its value system, the construction of republican consensus on the ideological concepts of libertas and concordia, the affirmation of the role of the territorial tribe in the administrative organization of the Republic and in the integration of new citizens brought by the beginnings of the conquest of Italy, and finally the unification of civic space and time by the publication of a civic calendar and of the formulae of the civic law at the end of the fourth century.