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.