IT has long been recognized that Circe's instructions to Odysseus at Od. 10. 516–40 were composed after their fulfilment at 11. 2 3–50.2 Something similar in Iliad 9 seems to have been overlooked.

Agamemnon–s offer to Achilles at 122–57 is reported by Odysseus at 264–99 in more or less the same words.

A number of scholars have discussed the difficulty of preserving accurately—or at all—information about the past1 in the Greek Dark Ages when the literacy of Minoan/Mycenean Greece had been lost. Such preservation necessarily depended on the memories of the members of the society, especially those of the professional ‘rememberers’, the bards of the oral tradition: in such a society, if knowledge of an event is to be available to future generations, it must not be forgotten.

In a recent article1 the psychiatrist George Devereux reached the following conclusion about fr. 31: Sappho as a ‘masculine lesbian’ experiences ‘a perfect, “text-book case”, anxiety attack’, elicited by ‘a love-crisis’, viz. by the presence of a male rival for the attention of Sappho's favourite girl. He then sums up: ‘In fact, even if there existed no explicit tradition concerning Sappho's lesbianism, her reaction to her male rival would represent for the psychiatrist prima facie evidence of her perversion’ (p. 21).

Towards the end of Plutarch's treatise de Pytkiae oraculis (409 b 29) Theon quotes a short passage of verse but does not identify its author. The fragment is now customarily printed among the remains of Pindar's Parthenea, most recently by Snell:

Much space is devoted by Broadhead to the discussion of this strophe and its ‘various difficulties’. The discussion centres on two main issues:

1. ‘If the Chorus say ; that implies there has already been some call he might have heard & But to Darius there has been no appeal at all; nor surely could the previous invocation have been described in these excessive epithets.’ So Headlam,3 who then proceeded, in the light of Luc. Necyom

No speech in Attic tragedy has made a stronger impression on later generations than Medea's farewell to her children. Four changes of mind and two displays of maternal affection lay bare the depths of a tortured soul; ‘there, in a short space, arelove and hatred, firmness and hesitation, fierce joy and unfathomable sorrow’.

This need not in itself be surprising if the speeches of Thucydides are, as many believe, fairly free compositions, but it is difficult to explain the immediate irrelevances of [P] in particular on any view of , if this is what Thucydides is claiming to give us (1. 22. 1). As the effect of the foregoing analysis is to suggest that the generalization forms an important part of Thucydides’ ‘historical’ technique, it would be interesting to pursue the extent to which the emphasis should in 1. 22. 1 be placed on , if these can possibly be ‘generalizations’ as opposed to the usual translation as ‘particular occasions’.

This is one of the most controversial passages in Thucydides' Archaeological Introduction, and perhaps the least happily phrased. Scholiasts explain is as meaning (a) Athens in other respects, (b) Greece other than Athens. Jowett, whose suggestions have not on the whole been bettered by later commentators, suggests three main possibilities of interpretation:

Professor Andrewes has recently been kind enough to refer in his commentary on Thucydides to a suggestion of mine. This present note seeks to expand the idea, and to relate it to north Arcadian politics of the early fourth century B.C.

Tradition gave some prominence in the archaic period to Orchomenus in eastern Arcadia; and genealogy supported this prominence, since, apart from a belief that Areas himself was a son of the eponym Orchomenus, there was a continuing belief that this Orchomenus founded not only Orchomenus itself but also Methydrium.

A Distinction of four species of tragedy and epic poetry is laid down, though not explained at length, in two passages of the Poetics (18, I455b32–56a3 and 24, I459b7–16), and, as I hope to show, mentioned in another (12, ). At the end of the treatise, Aristotle positively says that he has given an explanation of both the species and the component parts of tragedy and epic poetry (l462bl6–l8 ).

Stylometry can be defined as the use of numerical methods for the solution of literary problems, most often problems of authorship, integrity, and chronology. As stylometry has been described it seems hardly more than the application of common sense to a literary situation. For example:

It consists in collecting as many peculiarities of style and grammar as possible from these works [the dialogues of Plato], particularly the Laws, which are known, or for good reasons supposed to belong to the author's latest period, and observing the frequency with which these occur in other dialogues. If it is then found, e.g., that one dialogue uses commonly 100 of these, another but 60, it is reasonable to suppose the former to be nearer in time to the Laws, i.e. later.

The sense of line 34 is obvious: ‘une prairie était à leur disposition’, Legrand; all editors print this text, and assume this meaning. But Gow is worried about the Greek: is common enough of tracts or places, but usually of their geographical position, which is not here in point. The verb seems rather to be selected to indicate a store or deposit &’—but the vox propria for ‘to be at someone's disposal as a store’ is , and P. Oxy. 694 in fact reads here. We should restore , which accounts for both readings.

In CQ N.S. xxi (1971), 146 f. Dr. G. Giangrande reaffirms his claim that the reading of most manuscripts at A. R. I. 1333 is sound. I argued in CQ N.S. xix (1969), 274 f. that is more likely to be from than from , on the ground that readers (or hearers) of an epic poem would not take it in any other way, since Homer has only and from . Giangrande now produces the variants and found here and there in Homer's text. According to him, ‘the more obscure and debated the variant, the more elegant its reproduction was felt to be’. Apollonius thus campaigns for from on the basis of these obscure varian.

The accent of Greek (Ionic-Attic) orthotonic words was mobile with limited freedom of movement, i.e. it could not stand outside a definite zone at the end of the word. Had the limit of this zone been the same for all words and had the accent been allowed to stand anywhere within it (as is the case in Modern Greek), there would have been no problem. Unfortunately, the length of the accentuable zone did vary whatever the unit we use (2 or 3 final syllables; 3 or 4 final vocalic morae) and there was a place within it where the accent was prohibited (the penult vocalic mora of some words). Hence the problem of explaining these ‘irregularities’.

The battle of Panormus, in which L. Caecilius Metellus (cos. 251) decisively defeated the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal, was one of the major victories of the First Punic War. The year in which it took place, however, has long been matter for dispute, reasons being found for placing it in 251 or 250. There is now, it is true, a general preference for 250, so that there may seem to be little need to traverse this ground yet again. But there is also Polybius' reputation to consider. Whichever dating scholars prefer, they invariably maintain that Polybius' account of the years 253–250 (1. 39. 7–41. 4) is more or less disfigured by confusion, contradiction, and inaccuracy; on either view he is accused, expressly or by implication, of making remarks which point to the wrong year.

In Plutarch's account (Cato min. 34–9) of the younger Cato's mission to Cyprus a fairly prominent place is given to one Canidius, described as one of Cato's friends. He is also twice mentioned in connection with the same events in Brut. 3. 2–3, but here the great majority of our MSS. read κανίνΉον, while only one family (Z), and perhaps a later hand in the early MS. L, have κανί΄ων.

Canidius is a very rare gentilicium—a fact obscured perhaps by scholars' familiarity with Horace's witch—and besides the subject of the present investigation there is only one known bearer of the name in Republican times, namely P. Canidius Crassus (Miinzer, R.E. iii. 1475 f., no. 2) cos. stiff. 40. He served with Lepidus in Gaul and then became a partisan of Antony, whom he accompanied to the East after earning a suffect consulship.

We know very little about the life of the jurist, A. Cascellius, but in his famous potted history of Roman legal science, parts of which are preserved in the Digest, Pomponius does tell us that Cascellius never rose beyond the rank of quaestor and that he rejected the consulship when Augustus offered it to him (D. 1. 2. 2. 45, Pomponius libro singulari enchiridii). Such are the ways of scholars, however, that several modern writers are intent on posthumously awarding him a praetorship under the Triumvirate. The purpose of this note is to raise an objection to this tendency, which shows signs of causing trouble in the field of Roman law also.

Line 2 has puzzled editors: ‘The significance of the name is beyond knowledge’ (Shackleton-Bailey); ‘Hie versus inter difHcillimos Properti est’ (Enk). It should mean, ‘a door known to the chastity of Tarpeia’, i.e. ‘known to Tarpeia when she was still chaste‘, i.e. ‘known to Tarpeia as a girl’; and I suggest it means just that.

‘The authenticity of the ille ego lines fails on every count’ was the conclusion of an article by Professor R. G. Austin1 on the lines of the Aeneid preceding arma virumque cano. The aim of the following discussion is to suggest that perhaps, after all, Virgil did write the lines. To avoid unnecessary repetition I adhere as closely as possible to Prof. Austin's arrangement of the points to be considered. It is not always the arrangement that I should have chosen myself but I have only had to deviate from it in as far as I have found it necessary to discuss part of the contents of section V ‘Conclusions’ along with section I ‘The Ancient Evidence’. 1t will be understood that only the reader with Prof. Austin's article to hand will find the following fully intelligible.

Much else was done by Rose and Sullivan in their possibly conclusive attempt to restore sense to the rebus passage, but the reading super scorpionem locustam was Gaselee's, as Rose and Sullivan clearly acknowledge. This seems unluckily to have escaped B. Baldwin, otherwise he would have noticed that Gaselee also fancied in his correction an allusion to the poisoner Locusta. For those who may have difficulty in obtaining Gaselee's collotype reproduction, I quote the relevant part: ‘But what have lobsters to do with poisoners? Is it permissible to see a more or less open reference to Locusta, the queen of all poisoners? If so, we have here another little piece of evidence which will help us to date the Satyricon.’