Simonton, Matthew, The Mouth of the Demagogue. Demochares of Athens between Monstrosity and Monument, 386-409

A major player in the politics of early Hellenistic Athens, Demochares of Leuconoeon has received renewed attention recently, but scholars have so far not noted the focus in the ancient sources on Demochares’ body, particularly his mouth. This paper situates the controversy around Demochares’ mouth within a broader tradition of critical discourse on the figure of the demagogue. I argue that Demochares and his supporters attempted to counter negative traditions about the corrupt demagogic mouth, traditions also attached to Demochares’ uncle Demosthenes, with the claim that Demochares’ oratory amounted to a militant defense of Athens.

Steel, Catherine, Senatus frequens revisited. The Quorum in the Roman Republican Senate, 410-424

The term senatus frequens, when used of the Republican Senate, does not refer to a quorum; it was an instruction by the magistrate who summoned the meeting that all senators who were in a position to do so should attend. There were no categories of business which automatically required discussion at a senatus frequens; summoning one was a judgement by the presiding magistrate that the business in hand required or justified a high level of attendance. Quora for senatorial meetings did exist, but in the late Republic are known to have been required only in relation to the lex Cornelia concerning dispensations from the laws.

Lott, J. Bert, Updating the Inscribed Marble Calendars. The Additions to the Fasti Praenestini, 425-448

This article examines a group of additions made to the marble calendar monument from Praeneste. Previously, these additions have been treated as simply chronologically different, in that they were inscribed at a later date, rather than distinct in substance or context from the original calendar. I examine the reasons why an inscribed calendar might be changed and the reasons why they often were not. I conclude that responsibility for the few updates that were made lay at the local scale of individual calendar monuments, even if the content of the changes focused on the scale of Rome and the emperor. I suggest that the updates to the calendar monument at Praeneste were a creative local response to visits by members of the imperial family to the town.

Colombo, Maurizio, Le tariffe dell’ Edictum de pretiis rerum uenalium, il costo del grano durante il IV secolo e il modius, 449-474

Diocletian’s notorious Edictum de pretiis rerum uenalium is the bête noire of most scholars in the academic fields of Roman history and ancient economy. This paper will express a very heterodox perspective on the economic and monetary policy of Diocletian. The broader purpose will be to show the realistic background of the maximum prices (gold included) in comparison to those recorded in the “free market” after the first Tetrarchy. Three special issues will discuss the solidus as a true coin, the price of wheat in the wheat-growing provinces, the exact ratio of the modius castrensis to the modius Italicus and their coexistence as official units of measurement.

Perelman Fajardo, Marcelo, The Influence of Eduard Meyer on the Work of Moses Finley, 475-510

This paper examines the historiographical influence of the nineteenth-century German historian Eduard Meyer on the work of Moses Finley, and argues that Meyer was a critical influence on many of Finley’s innovative views, from ancient slavery to the Homeric question and the interpretation of archaic Greece. This debt to Meyer has been ignored by contemporary historians, partly because Meyer’s work has been forgotten, but mainly because Finley himself concealed it. In order to clarify the development of twentieth-century historiography - in which Finley played a protagonist role - this paper argues that it is essential to break with the legend that Finley made of himself and that historians naively believed.

Gutachter, 511-512