The political situation in Hellas in the early part of 419 B.C. was extremely promising for the Athenians.

Alcibiades had succeeded in 420 in concluding an alliance with Argos, Mantinea and Elis, and although the Fifty years Truce of Nicias had not yet been formally denounced and the alliance with the Argives and their allies was purely defensive, yet the star of Lacedaemon was to all appearances on the wane. Alcibiades had brought off successfully his first great coup and had begun his ascent towards the principal place in the leadership of Athens.

In these days no edition of a classic, least of all of a ‘new’ classic, can claim to be final; and since the able editor of the Cambridge Herodas has found reason to reconsider some of his readings, there is clearly room for an independent examination of the text. This paper embodies the result of several weeks' close study of the papyrus in 1923 and 1924. To save space I have begun a note with a new line only where it is of more than usual interest. By the use of a letter of thicker type I mean that there are traces consistent with that letter, but not necessarily with that alone—which seems to me the only way by which Herodas can be saved from the restorer who regards doubtful letter-traces as equivalent to a gap. I begin with three passages which seem to me to stand in a class apart.

This paper sets out to answer four apparently unconnected questions, which, however, I hope to show to be parts of one question:

(1) Why did Haimon kill himself over the body of Antigone?

(2) Why did Philinnion return for three nights to her father's house?

(3) Why is it unlawful(ού θέμɩς) to leave a story unfinished?

(4) Why is a magician sometimes torn in pieces by his own devils, or otherwise destroyed by his own magic?

Horace has told us that the author of a literary work,

qui uariare cupit rem prodigialiter unam,

falls into absurdities. Much more likely to meet this fate is the interpolator who has the same ambition. The above four lines are a case in point; for it is fairly certain that if this Hymn were presented to readers as it came from the hand of its author, the whole passage with its phenomenal bull and its four pacifist dogs which apparently had agreed together not to bark and bite, ‘as is their nature to,’ would not be found in the text. Undoubtedly it is true, though it is by no means a marvel (θαμα), that the bull which was somewhere else and the dogs which were following in his wake were not taken by the infant cattle-lifter who was satisfied, as he well might be, with a trifle of fifty cows. The veracity of the interpolater in this regard may, therefore, pass without question, and furthermore his knowledge of epic metre does not fail seriously till he reaches the fourth line, although ό δ ταρος is not really epic and λλων not ἄλλων is required in the opening line, for he certainly did not mean, as he unwittingly says ‘other bulls,’ but ‘the others, the cows.’ After ο μνἔλειθεν (not οἳ μν as a recent edition has it) it is quite out of the question that οĩ τε κύνες ὃ τε ταȗρος, two flagrant examples of the later article, should follow.

My colleague, Professor W. M. Lindsay, invites, or challenges, me to reply to his note on ‘Ciris’ (Class. Quart. XIX., pp. 103, 104); I can but take him at his word.

Professor Lindsay seeks to identify the two birds Haliaetus and Ciris, and finds the task an easy one; he identifies Ciris with a Tern confidently and categorically. We learn (he says) ‘from Gallus' epyllium … that it was a sea-bird with red legs, so rapid in flight that it always evaded the swoop of the sea-eagle. What can this be but a tern?’

Interpretation of this ode has not been very happy in spite of the care lavished upon it by editors obviously determined to extract some sort of consistent sense. That Horace started from Pindar's Olymp. II. is evident enough; when and why, under what stimulus, or for what occasion he wrote is not so clear. The older commentators do not give much help. I believe, however, that in attending to the list of gods, demi-gods, and Roman heroes given in the ode we have a chance of coming somewhere near to an adequate understanding of the poem.

Others must have shared my surprise at reading the two articles on this subject in the Classical Quarterly (XIX., pp. 22 sqq., 92 sq.), one by Mr. P. H. Ling, writing ‘in the light of our present knowledge,’ and one by Professor H. J. Rose. Among the Hibeh Papyri (I. 7) is a fragment of an anthology which hereabouts contains quotations from Tragedy and Epicharmus. It gives four verses, the last of which was rightly identified by the editors Grenfell and Hunt. Of the lemma only a spot of ink on a loose fibre remains.

Polybius II. 39. 9: ο μν λλá γε καί πεр тŵν μφσβηтοтμΈνων πÉрεψαν θηβαîοι καί λακεδαιμόνιοι μόνοις рŵν Έλλήνων Χαιοας, ο πρòς рήν δùναμν ἀποβλÉψανрες, σΧÉδον γαρ λαΧασрην рòрε γεрων έλλήνωνεîΧον рó δÉ πλεαον, εας νήν πασрν καα ὅλην καλοκαγαθααν Strabo VIII.

The succeeding pages were destined, had matters gone otherwise, to form one section of a chapter devoted to the text of those deservedly neglected authors whom, after a mortal illness released Anton Westermann from the task, Rudolf Hercher marshalled between the two covers of the Didot Epistolographi. That chapter, in its turn, was to have been the last in a volume of Adversaria, and, if the truth is to be told, perhaps not the least important function of some of my proposals was to supply a colourable pretext for dealing with passages of other writers (especially Clement of Alexandria and Libanius) whom I had not treated in the body of the book.

There seem to be five manuscripts of the Aethiopica of Heliodorus which are of value for establishing the text:

To these may be added with some doubt three others:

I prefix to this paper for convenience of reference the three extant chapters of the law:

K.L. III. Quae colonia hac lege deducta quodue municipium praefectura forum conciliabulum constitutum erit, qui ager intra fines eorum erit, qui termini in eo agro statuti erunt, quo in loco terminus non stabit, in eo loco is, cuius is ager erit, terminum restituendum curato, uti quod recte factum esse uolet: idque magistratus, qui in ea colonia municipio praefectura foro conciliabulo iure dicundo praeerit, facito ut fiat.

The purpose of the following notes is to draw attention to certain glosses in the Philoxenus glossary, and to discuss points arising out of them. The numeration of the glosses is that adopted in the forthcoming critical edition of this important bilingual dictionary.

The Dative or Ablative of this ‘plurale tantum’ (Charisius 33, 7 arid 549, I) was used by one of the earlier Republican writers. It is quoted by Ps.-Placidus (see Jouvn. Phil. 34, 254) from a MS. which had the marginal note ‘capillis muliebribus ante, id est a fronte, pendentibus.’ These marginal notes were often direct traditions from the earliest glossographi, the ‘glossematum scriptores,’ who provided material also for Varro and Verrius Flaccus, either directly or through the writings of earlier grammatici.

A Few years ago Professor Souter made the suggestion that the curious custom of beginning each page of a MS., or each column of a page, with a large letter might be of African origin. He was struck with this feature while examining a fragment, newly acquired for the British Museum, of the celebrated Codex Palatinus of the Gospels (formerly at Vienna, MS. 1185, now at Trent), which is supposed to give us the African text of the New Testament. In reply to the suggestion, the present writer submitted a list of eighteen MSS. in which this usage is illustrated. As most of the MSS. are manifestly Italian, the African origin of the practice was shown to be untenable. Quite recently another theory has been put forward, localizing the practice within still narrower limits. According to Professor Weinberger, the use of a capital at the beginning of each page would seem to be a peculiarity of MSS. coming from Cassiodore's library at Vivarium; and he proceeded to use this feature as a touchstone for detecting Codices Vivarienses. Impressed by the unusual interest attaching to this feature, I began to assemble all the instances I had, and to look for others. I collected a list of nearly fifty items, an inspection of which showed me at once that in registering the phenomenon under discussion I had unwittingly drawn up a list of very ancient MSS. The list does not, to be sure, hold all our oldest MSS., but most of those it holds are, as will be seen, among the oldest. In other words, the use of a large letter at the beginning of each page is clearly a custom of very great antiquity. This being so, it seemed useful to interrogate these MSS. further, in order to ascertain what other practices they have of interest to palaeographers.

The adjective Οὖλος is used very frequently by Theophrastus in his History of Plants. The English word 'curly’ may be accepted as its equivalent in phrases like ‘curly leaves’ or ‘curly roots’; but there is something not quite so natural in an expression like ‘curly wood,’ as when Theophrastus says (H.P. III. 11. 3) that the ξνуα (which is a variety of maple-tree) ἒϰει τὐ ξύλον ξανθὐν καἰ οὖλον, ‘has yellow and curly wood.’ Sir Arthur Hort has accordingly translated it in many passages by the word ‘close-grained,’ and this not only gives a permissible sense in a large number of passages, but seems to be the only one which yields a good sense in III. 11. 3, where Theophrastus says ‘there are two kinds of ash. Of these one is lofty and of strong growth, with white wood of good fibre, softer, with fewer knots, and of more compact texture (τ ξύλον ἒϰουσα οὐλότερον).’ Schneider, who recognized only the sense ‘curly,’ felt the absurdity of saying ‘with fewer knots and curlier, and he therefore proposed to substitute νουλότερον (comparative of ἂνουλος, a word which does not occur anywhere in Greek literature). The difficulty vanishes if Sir Arthur Hort's rendering is accepted.