The primary purpose of this essay is to illustrate from Greek the tendency for rare phonetic features of a language to become still rarer or completely lost. In the main the period studied will be that from Homer to classical Attic and Ionic, and the features studied will be initial consonant groups. This will lead sometimes to the consideration of the circumstances in which words with such features that have become rare are used in classical literature.

Some attempt is made also to account for the rarity of some phonetic features and for the presence in Greek of combinations rare in it and related languages, from some point of view abnormal to their patterning. The raw material and occasionally the interpretation of it is taken from standard works.

I print the passage without a full stop until the last line, to avoid interrupting the unity of its structure:

‘The stars of slight magnitude and slight brilliance between the Rudder and the Sea-monster, lying beneath the flanks of the grey Hare, are nameless in their course; they are not cast in a resemblance to the structure of any specific figure, like the numerous constellations that pass in ordered ranks along the same paths year after year, constellations that someone in a past generation observed and thought of calling all by names, after giving them definite shapes; he could not, of course, have named or identified all the stars taken individually, because they are too numerous all over the sky, many of them are alike in magnitude and in colour, and all of them have a circling movement; therefore it seemed best to him to make the stars into groups, so that different stars arranged in conjunction with each other could represent figures; and that is how the named constellations came into being, and no star-rising is a surprise nowadays; but while the stars in general are fixed in clear-cut figures when they appear, those beneath the hunted Hare are all very dim and nameless in their course.’

‘I have omitted Idylls xxiii and xxvi, because they are dull, stupid and worthless poems, and certainly not by Theocritus.’ R.C. Trevelyan’s words in the introduction to his translation of Theokritos (Cambridge, 1947, but the introduction significantly dates from 1925) make quaint reading today. I present no brief for the Erastes (Idyll xxiii), but even before the contribution made to the complexity of the Bacchantes (Idyll xxvi) by Pap. Antin. (3 in Gow’s sigla), it should have been obvious to the reader that the poem had the texture of quicksand and that its curious description of Pentheus’ offence and death, no less its elaborate protestations of piety, cried caution to the confident strider. But if there is tragedy in the failure to detect quicksands, the traveller can scarcely feel more secure in the services of three professional guides who have recently plotted three different courses for him.

The ancient critics were not in doubt about the purpose of the Aeneid: it was to glorify Rome and Augustus. In the Donatus-Suetonius life we read (21) ‘Last of all he began the Aeneid, a varied and complicated theme, a sort of equivalent of both Homer’s poems; also it was concerned with characters and events which were both Latin and Greek, while in it (and this was his special interest) there would be contained the origin of the city of Rome and of Augustus’ (… in quo, quod maxime studebat, Romanae simul urbis et Augusti origo contineretur). Similarly Tiberius Claudius Donatus says (Prooem. Aen. i): ‘he had to depict Aeneas as a worthy first ancestor of Augustus, in whose honour the poem was written’ (talem enim monstrare Aenean debuit, ut dignus Caesari, in cuius honorem haec scribebantur, parens et auctor generis praeberetur). And again, Servius (in the introductory note to his commentary on the Aeneid): ‘Virgil’s intention is to imitate Homer and to praise Augustus by means of his ancestors’ (intentio Vergilii haec est, Homerum imitari et Augustum laudare a parentibus); and he quotes a magno demissum nomen Iulo (i 288).

tum qui sequitur gregem circumspectus ac uigilans—id quod omnibus et omnium quadripedum custodibus praecipitur—magna dementia moderetur idemque propior quia silent et in agendis recipiendisque ouibus adclamatione ac baculo minetur nee umquam telum emittat in eas neque ab his longius recedat nec aut recubet aut considat. nam nisi procedit, stare debet, quoniam quidem custodis officium sublimem celsissimamque oculorum ueluti speculam desiderat, ut neque tardiores grauidas, dum cunctantur, neque agiles et fetas, dum procurrunt, separari a ceteris sinat, ne fur aut bestia halucinantem pastorem decipiat.

In A.D. 258 Valerian, for one reason or another, issued his second edict against the Christians; the victims envisaged included Caesariani. How numerous a body these Christian Caesariani were is difficult to assess for this period (as indeed, for other periods). One looks hopefully—but not very profitably—through martyr Acta for illustrative examples. One might also have recourse to archaeology as another possible source of information; and here inscriptions first published in 1923 have sometimes been enlisted for illustration.

The Lex Quisquis of Arcadius and Honorius was given at Ancyra on 4 September, 397, in a constitution addressed to Eutychianus, praetorian prefect in the East. This law, which is said to have been the last lex maiestatis, raises a number of difficulties, particularly in respect of the substantive category of wrongful acts which it laid down. The problems in this regard do not seem to have been satisfactorily resolved, nor even to have been fully noticed, and it is proposed to re-examine the position. Some attention will also be given to the penalties imposed by the lex, especially the rule denying the accused legal representation. Finally two postulates will be put forward: (i) that the law of 397 was no more than a restatement, in whole or substantial part, of an earlier law; and (ii) that the law of 397 was itself largely repealed in 399, but was subsequently re-enacted.

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to an unnoticed feature of the arrangement of Priscian’s treatise De metris fabularum Terentii and to speculate upon the origin of the quotations of republican drama contained in this treatise.

Priscianus of Caesarea in Mauretania taught Latin at Constantinople during the reign of Anastasius (491-518), a period when literary culture was in steep decline throughout the Latin-speaking Western Mediterranean. The mass of the population of Constantinople was probably Greek, at least in language, from the time of the city’s foundation but Constantine intended its public institutions to be Roman, and the emperors of the fifth and sixth centuries, most of whom either came from Latin-speaking communities or had received their principal education in Latin, jealously preserved the formal links with old Roman tradition. The Latin language remained in regular use in the army and the civil service until the time of Justinian. The latter even published his codification of the law in this language, although he issued most of his nouellae in Greek. Latin maintained itself longest on the coinage. Theodosius II made careful provision for the teaching of Latin grammar and rhetoric when he organized a state university in 425. The royal library, which lost 120,000 volumes in the fire of 475, possessed Latin as well as Greek works. At least three noted Latin grammarians, Euanthius, Charisius and Cledonius, taught at Constantinople before Priscian’s time.

One of the unsolved mysteries of Samaritan history is the problem of the Dosithean sect and its relationships with other Samaritan groups and with Christian and Gnostic sects. Of particular interest, in view of controversy over the history of Samaritan eschatology, is the question of whether the Dositheans believed in the resurrection of the dead and in a Messiah in the person of Joshua. It is more than fifty years since these questions were last examined in any detail and in the light of recent evidence accruing about the Samaritans the time would now seem to be opportune for a fresh evaluation of the evidence relating to Dositheanism.

MS. plut. LII 8 in the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana in Firenze contains (ff. 1-80 r.) an anonymous epitome of Boccacio’s de genealogia deorum, ascribed by Bandini to Domizio Calderini, an anonymous work described by Bandini as de rerum inuentoribus etc. (ff. 81 r.-103 r.) and a commentary on the first three books, and part of the fourth, of the Punica of Silius Italicus. The whole MS. is written by one hand in a humanistic cursive script. The watermark of the paper used is a horn (huchet) surmounted by a cross, the nearest example in Briquet (1st ed.), checked by a tracing, being No. 7833 = Venice, 1460. The volume was written by 1473, for an annotation, in a hand different from that of the text, is found on f. 30 r. in the right-hand margin—1473. i. se. mar. furabitur nisi custodietur Turcum. P. VR.