Volume 5 of PLLS was the last of the Liverpool series of seminar volumes. Between 1975 and 1985 the Liverpool Latin Seminar held 52 ordinary meetings and 4 colloquia, involving altogether 156 papers and participants from all over the world. Although many diverse approaches were represented in the Seminar, it was underpinned by two underlying convictions: first, that ancient literature functions at the highest intellectual level and deserves to be studied at that level, and second, that the ancient literatures can only be understood properly against the background of the societies in which they originated.