^{page 34 note 1} I am extremely grateful for the criticisms and encouragement offered to me at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington by Bernard Knox and Nicolaos Hour-mouziades. I have also signalled below some debts to Edinburgh colleagues and to the editors of C.Q.

^{page 34 note 2} Though one could point to two recent palmary emendations: by Jackson at 1094 (Marginalia Scaenica, Oxford, 1955, p. 114Google Scholar), and a by Philp at 782 (C.R. viii (1958), 220).Google Scholar

^{page 34 note 3} Linforth, I. M., Philoctetes: the Play and the ManGoogle Scholar (= Un. Cal. Pub. Class. Phil. xv. 3Google Scholar), Berkeley, 1956. Kitto, H. D. F., Form and Meaning in Drama, London, 1956, chap, iv,Google ScholarKnox, B. M. W., The Heroic Temper, Berkeley, 1964, chap. v.Google Scholar

^{page 34 note 4} J.H.S. xxxii (1912), pp. 239–49.Google Scholar

^{page 34 note 5} Wiener Studien lxix (1956), pp. 104-6.Google Scholar

^{page 35 note 1} On this kind of problem see Dover, K. J., ‘The Skene in Aristophanes’, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. N.s. xii (1966), 2–17.Google Scholar

^{page 35 note 2} Linforth's paragraph on this is excellent (p. 125).

^{page 37 note 1} Ar. Poet. 1449^a18.Google Scholar

^{page 37 note 2} Even if A represents a Byzantine recension, it cannot therefore be ignored; con tamination begins to seem almost universal in Greek MSS. I shall argue for A's reading at 220.

^{page 37 note 3} Paralipomena Sophoclea, London, 1907, p. 199.Google Scholar

^{page 37 note 4} As Linforth noted (p. 97 n. 2).

^{page 38 note 1} This would still be part of the Cyclops' final exit of the play, but a little delay would help to make it quite clear that he was not going to succeed in smashing Odysseus' ship with rocks. This whole suggestion of course assumes, with Miss Dale, that the Cyclops could be dated to 408 B.C.

^{page 38 note 2} In Pearson's apparatus.

^{page 39 note 1} Dr. E. K. Borthwick reminded me of Jebb's note on Professor Dover suggests that even long before Theocritus a shepherd's life and music may have been proverbially idyllic and cheerful.

^{page 40 note 1} Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc., 1927, p. 34.Google Scholar

^{page 42 note 1} Mr. A. H. Coxon scrutinized this section for me.

^{page 43 note 1} See Kirk, G. S., Heraclitus, The Cosmic Fragments, Cambridge, 1954, pp. 116–22.Google Scholar

^{page 44 note 1} Mr. Michael Stokes adds from Hesiod, , Erga 2–3.Google Scholar

^{page 45 note 1} Die Dramatische Technik des Sophokles, Berlin, 1917Google Scholar (= Phil. Untersuch. xxii), p. 304.Google Scholar

^{page 46 note 1} By Hinds, A. E., C.Q. xvii (1967), 175, who says, ‘I doubt if this (silliness) should trouble us in a chorus.’ But choruses are not allow to be silly to no dramatic purpose.Google Scholar

^{page 47 note 1} As Professor Dover reminds me.

^{page 47 note 2} Professor Knox gives a documented and less schematic account of the difficulties posed by oracles in his Oedipus at Thebes (New Haven, 2nd printing, 1965), pp. 35 sq.Google Scholar

^{page 47 note 3} I shall discuss this below.

^{page 48 note 1} That literalism about oracles is not Neoptolemus' true motive has been said before; see Kirkwood, G. M., A Study of Sophoclean Drama (Ithaca, 1958), p. 147.Google Scholar The empty sententiousness of 842 was noticed but wrongly explained by Kitto, , Form and Meaning, p. 120: it is Neoptolemus, not Sophocles, who is embarrassed by the thinness of his utterance.Google Scholar

^{page 49 note 1} The Heroic Temper, p. 192 n. 38.Google Scholar

^{page 50 note 1} The Heroic Temper, pp. 188–9.Google Scholar

^{page 52 note 1} Professor Dover reminds me that of course variant versions of myths were no new thing in the fifth century: as he remarks, ‘the poets' exercise of choice and modifications was built into poetic treatment of myth right from the beginning’.

^{page 54 note 1} I am here repeating points made by both Linforth and Kitto.

^{page 54 note 2} The dramatic reasons are clear, of course; but the theological reasons ?

^{page 55 note 1} Though it is possible that Euripides made room for complete treatments of the myths partly as a poet's reaction to a problem which purely as a dramatist he found a nuisance. He must have been perfectly conscious that some of his prologues and epilogues were unashamedly undramatic; this represents choice, not incompetence.

^{page 55 note 2} I borrow the word from Professor Dodds; see The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), p. 49.Google Scholar