The inhabitants of Tomi are angry with Ovid because he has so often expressed his hatred of their country. The poet defends himself by saying that it is only the country, not its inhabitants, that he detests. Do not they themselves complain about the unpleasantness of their surroundings? Did not Hesiod complain about Ascra, his own birth-place?

esset perpetuo sua quam uitabilis Ascra
ausa est agricolae Musa docere senis.

Strictly speaking Hesiod did not say that Ascra was ‘always to be avoided’, though this is a natural inference from his words in Erga, 639–40:

νἀσσατο δ᾿ ἄγχ᾿ Ἑλικῶνος ὀιӡυρῇ ἐνὶ κώμῃ
”Ασκρῃ, χεῖμα κακῇ, θέρει ἀργαλέῃ, οὐδέ ποτ᾿ ἐσθλῇ.

The variants offered by the dett., miserabilis, mirabilis, mutabilis, point to the conclusion that the archetype was here difficult to make out. I suspect that the original was uitiabilis, the word here having the force of uitiosa. Lucretius (VI, 1231) has aerumnabile in the sense of aerumnosum; cf. the use of perniciabilis and lacrimabilis.

The literary sources upon which Claudian drew for De Raptu Proserpinae were recognized early. A great number were noted by Parrhasius in his edition of the poem (1500), and others by the editors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly Heinsius. The eighteenth-century editors of Claudian had less work to do in this field. Gesner's edition (1759) made an important contribution to the study of Claudian, but the value of his commentary, both on the De Raptu and on the other poems, lay in judicious observation rather than discovery. Birt's edition in M.G.H. (1892) assembled the material in a valuable form, yet with the omission of some significant parallels and the addition of some which are slight and even questionable. Our task now is not so much to discover the sources of Claudian's language as to examine his use of them, and in attempting this we have two advantages. We have a better knowledge than our predecessors of Claudian's milieu and of classical culture at the end of the fourth century A.D.; and we have not been accustomed to regard poetry as necessarily less original because it is a grouping of associations.

In neither Lewis and Short nor the old Forcellini is there a single reference under ‘Magus’ to Pliny, and yet the word occurs in the Natural History about one hundred times; this work in fact is one of our primary authorities for Magism.

The story of the Magi has been dealt with ably in Pauly and Hastings, and there is an interesting note by A. D. Nock in The Beginnings of Christianity (Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake), pt. I, pp. 164–88. The writer thinks that Apion was Pliny's authority. The Magi were originally a local tribe of the Medes, but later they grew to be a priestly caste, as did the tribe of Levi among the Hebrews. The Magian religion appears to have been introduced among the Persians by Cyrus. It contained much priestcraft and esoteric knowledge, but whether in these early times fraudulent ‘magic’ took part in it is a matter of dispute. Herodotus speaks of Magian incantations, but a fragment of Aristotle declares that Magism was innocent of wizardry. The honourable priesthood of the Magi, however, began from the first to give a name to dishonest deceit and quackery.

In the ninth chapter of his Life of Cimon, Plutarch tells how Cimon, appointed to allot the spoils from Sestos and Byzantium, set the prisoners on one side, and the material booty on the other. The allies, invited to choose between the two, chose the latter as being much the more attractive in value, and Cimon's division was laughed at as ridiculous. But later, when the ransom money for the prisoners came in, the tables were turned, and the Athenians, thanks to Cimon's device, were seen to have had the best of the bargain after all.

This story, which is repeated by Polyaenus, originally came from Ion of Chios, who said that Cimon himself told it to him at a dinner-party, and that he (Cimon) thought it one of the cleverest things he had ever done. The prisoners and booty, which he was allotting, came from Sestos and Byzantium. Now the information from Herodotus and Thucydides is that Sestos was besieged at the end of 479; when it fell is another problem to which I shall return. Byzantium was certainly captured in the summer of 478. But the commander at Sestos, when the Athenians were the backbone of the Hellenic forces (the Spartans having sailed home), was Xanthippus, the father of Pericles: while the commander at the siege of Byzantium was the Spartan Pausanias, the victor of Plataea. Subsequently Pausanias himself, as a refugee from Sparta, seized Byzantium and had to be driven out of it again by the Athenians in 477. On this occasion the Athenian forces, made up of the contingents of the new Delian Confederation, were commanded by Cimon. Are we to understand from this passage of Plutarch that, on this same campaign, Cimon also captured Sestos, and that Sestos had, like Byzantium, fallen into the hands of Pausanias since its original liberation?

The denarius of L. Atilius has, for types, obv. Head of Bellona, in winged helmet: XVI—rev. Victory driving biga r.: l. atili: nom on tablet under horses. There are here two features of interest—the mark of value (XVI) and the nom instead of roma on the tablet. It comes near the close of the first period of Roman denarii, with stereotyped obverse, head of Bellona, and reverses Dioscuri or Diana or Victory in a biga. On general grounds of style, a date ca. 140–130 B.C. or later would be assigned.

The mark of value XVI occurs for L. Atilius and five other moneyers only. It is most natural to suppose that the new mark appears when the valuation of the denarius was changed from X to XVI. Pliny and Festus place this change in 217 B.C., in the Second Punic War. But here for once we are compelled to desert our ancient authorities. A change of standard there was in 217, but a much earlier one than this. The coins with XVI can be assigned with certainty to a much later date, and the appearance of the new mark must coincide with the change in tariff. After XVI follows the new mark , which certainly denotes the same value: but x persists in use with it for a time, suggesting that the old tariff of 10 to the denarius continued to subsist beside the new.

The description of Brundisium, Lucan, II, 610–27, concludes:

hoc fuga nautarum, cum totas Hadria vires
movit et in nubes abiere Ceraunia cumque
spumoso Calaber perfunditur aequore Sason.

Sason appears to be the small island just north of the Ceraunian headland off the west coast of Macedonia, modern Sasena (cf. Strab. vi, iii, 5, p. 281; Polyb. v, 110; Plin. H.N. III, 152; Ptol. III, 12 ad fin.), and it is taken in that sense by those editors who notice it. The description would fit such an island in a storm very well.

Two questions arise: (1) Why is the island called Calabrian? (2) Why is the epithet masculine?

(1) It would hardly seem reasonable to call an island ‘Calabrian’ in a geographical sense unless it were off Calabria. Lucan may have thought the island to lie farther out in the straits than it does (cf. Strab. loc. cit. μέση πως): ancient maps may well have so represented it (cf. Ptol.), certainly if medieval maps can be taken as a guide. His description might then be by hypallage for spumosus Calabro…(pace Palmer., Graec. Antiq. Descr. I, 33, ‘procul dubio quod Calabri olim incoluerant primi’).

(i) Th. x, 935–9.

Stat tamen, extremumque in sidera versus anhelat,
pectoraque invisis obicit fumantia muris,
937 ne caderet: sed membra virum terrena relinquunt,
exuiturque animus: paulum si tardius artus
cessissent, potuit fulmen sperare secundum.

937 Nec PQr Nee BLMNCfbWDS Turon. Brux. 5337 Nee (Ne sscr.) Tol.

The last part of book x of the Thebaid describes the grandiose defiance of Capaneus. He grows weary of dealing death below the walls of Thebes, and climbs to the height of the battlements, where he towers above the city and terrifies it with his huge shadow. He taunts the gods and Jupiter himself to do battle for Thebes against him, and when Jupiter in anger darkens the sky and lightning begins to flash, he cries

His, ait, in Thebas, his iam decet ignibus uti,
hinc renovare faces, lassamque accendere quercum. (925–6.)

I often write a letter or paragraph, and on revision throw my MS. away in disgust and vexation. Some word, perhaps one of my ‘pet’ words and nearly always a trivial one, has occurred in possibly three out of four sentences. On the first occasion my conscious mind chose the word intentionally; on the other occasions my unconscious mind thrust the word into places where my conscious mind would have rejected it.

Some years ago I began to be on the watch for similar phenomena in Greek and Latin authors. The thought occurs at once that unconscious repetitions would be revised by the writer, and so would leave no trace in our extant MSS. But the fact remains that there are such traces. Fifty years ago many of them were collected and commented on by A. B. Cook in the article mentioned above, but his passages and mine have nothing in common, nor are his conclusions quite the same as mine.

Σ Ar. Eq. 438 (p. 49, col. 2, 1. 25 Dübner): Dobree's σφῶν for ἐφ' ὧν is obviously right, but ϓενέσθαι still requires emendation. We should read ϓεύεσθαι, cf. Thuc. II, 70, I: καί τινεϛ καὶ ἀλλήλων ἐγέγευντο.

Thuc. IV, 117, 2: Thucydides is here discussing the motives that both sides had for desiring a truce in 423, after the accession of Torone to Brasidas. It seems certain, though it has in the past been denied, that Λακεδαιμόνιοι is the subject of ἐποιοῦντο, and that the general sense of the passage is that the Spartans were especially keen on recovering the men taken prisoner at Sphacteria while Brasidas was still successful, because his successes put them in a strong bargaining position. The conjunction ὡς creates an initial difficulty; the meaning required is ‘while’ ‘as long as’, as the whole emphasis of the passage is temporal, and the Spartans are reflecting on factors in the situation which obtained at a particular time, ὡς cannot be synonymous with ἔως(ἔως for ὡς is now universally accepted at Soph. Ai. 1117, Phil. 1330) and we should follow Herwerden and Hude in reading ἔως from an otherwise inaccurate quotation in Σ Ar. Pax 479.

(a) Aeschylus, P. V. 1. 331 πάντων μετασχὼν καὶ τετολμηκὼς ἐμοί is bad in syntax and inadmissible here in sense (see 1. 234). μετασχεῖν Weil, rec. Wecklein; πόνων Weil, τούτων Wecklein. This reconstruction, which is the general favourite, professes to make the line refer to the present expression of sympathy on the part of Oceanus. But that is quite inconceivable. Zeus does not punish a mortal on the spot, even if it were for mutinous language; and Oceanus has in fact been admonishing the rebel, in twenty-three lines of most orthodox and pious homily. Prometheus himself, on the other hand, denounces Zeus intermittently from ll. 88 to 943 before Zeus even sends Hermes to warn him. As for sympathy, those who within this play openly express keen sympathy with Zeus' victim are Hephaestus, the chorus of Nereids throughout, and (by report at least) the inhabitants, many of them warlike, of all the surrounding countries; cf. also 1. 162. The sympathy of O. is tepid by comparison.

Denniston, C.R. XLVII (1933), 164, and Lawson, Proc. Camb. Philol. Soc. CLIX (1934), II, are not helpful.

At the head of this little paper I set the descriptions of the three denarii, upon which it is based:

(1) obv. Head of Titus Tatius, bare-headed, bearded r. sabin. Ā. rev. Two Romans carrying off two Sabine women, L TITVRI.

Sometimes A PV with palm-branch stands in place of Ā, sometimes palm-branch only. The same obverse type is found with two other reverses: (a) Tarpeia buried under shields, (b) Victory in biga r. With (a) the obverse shows A PV and palm-branch or palm-branch alone, with (b) neither. There is Aes of the semiuncial standard. Grueber's date (BMC. Rep. I, pp. 297 ff. nos. 2322 ff.) is ca. 87 B.C. Babelon gives ca. 88 B.C., Mommsen gives ca. 86 (near end of period, 100–84 B.C.).

(2) obv. Bust of Diana, draped r, with quiver and bow, ending in stags' horns. rev. Hound running r.; spear, c postvmi. Ā.

Professor Robertson rejected recent proposals to substitute the name of some other animals (e.g. cats) for eagles in Plutarch, Mor. 520F (ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ ἀετοὶ καὶ οἱ λέοντες ἐν τῷ περιιπατεῖν συστρέϕουσιν εἴσω τοὺς ὄνυχας) by reference to Aristotle's statement (H.A. 563 a 17, echoed by Pliny, N.H. x, 3 (4) and Horapollo II, 99) that eagles' claws are distorted during incubation. He suggested that either οἱ ἀετοὶ καὶ is a reader's interpolation based on Aristotle, or <ἐν τῷ ἐπῳάЗειν καὶ> has been lost between οἱ λέοντες and περιπατεῖν.

Among the points discussed were (1) the possibility that Socrates was the common source of the pronouncements by Plato and Democritus on this subject; (2) Collingwood's view of Plato's attitude in the Ion; (3) the relation of Phaedrus 245 A to passages in earlier dialogues, viz. Ion, Cratylus, Meno; (4) the silence of the Republic on this matter; (5) the difficulties arising out of Laws 719c.

Nestor's account of how he was beaten in a chariot-race by the sons of Actor has caused trouble to commentators and has been misunderstood by translators. The word πλήθει in particular has seemed obscure, but it appears that Nestor quite clearly explains what happened. The sons of Actor beat him by virtue of superiority in numbers. There were two of them. One drove steadily on all the time, while the other drove vigorously, using his whip. The one who drove steadily saw to it, presumably, that Nestor did not pass him, and so helped to ensure his brother's victory—a simple, if not very sporting, tactical device.

This epigram, which tells us that Phayllus jumped 55 feet and threw the discus 95 feet, has caused difficulty because it is clear that no man can or could jump 55 feet. But this difficulty only arises if we consider a foot to be an absolute, or nearly absolute, measure of distance, as in our own linear measurement. However, the flea that jumped from the head of Chaerephon to the head of Socrates (Aristophanes, Clouds 150) had its jump measured in terms of its own feet, so the feet in which Phayllus's jump was measured may have been less than normal human feet—perhaps the feet of his small son. We may like to assume that some wag composed the epigram for the amusement of those who knew what happened and the baffling of those who did not, which includes ourselves. This explanation would also help to clarify his apparently equally phenomenal performance in throwing the discus. If we may judge from the account of the chariot-race at the funeral games of Patroclus in Iliad XXIII δίσκουρα was a distance not much more than the length of a chariot and horses, perhaps 40 or 45 feet. In this case, then, Phayllus' performance in both events is represented as being about double that which might be expected from an athlete— or, if my explanation is accepted, his distances were measured in feet rather less than half the length of a normal foot.

Plato Rep. 538A.

Read

Plut. Mor. 825 c.

Read .

ib. 841 E. Amyotus.