This paper builds an argument against R. D. Dawe, who believes that one of the most famous of all stories is inauthentic and badly told. In his notes on ‘When she showed the robe, after weaving the great web, washing it so that it looked like the sun or moon, then it was that an evil spirit brought Odysseus from somewhere’, Dawe remarks that the web story ‘hardly belongs’ in the Odyssey, and asks: ‘Why “showed”? And to whom? Why the otiose addition of “after weaving the great web”, as if we had not just been talking about that very thing? Answers to these questions will be given in my final paragraph.

To look closely into the epics, and if possible behind them, I will say a word about distinguishing the pre-text from the text. First, oral poets would enlarge and otherwise reshape their material, not always with flawless technique. It may be true but cannot be proven that one such poet, more than any other, created the Iliad, and that the same one, or a different one, more than any other, created the Odyssey.

Aeschylus, according to a famous report, described his tragedies as ‘cuts from Homer's great banquets’. The anecdote has the ring of truth, particularly as ‘Homer’ here must include the Epic Cycle, which would hardly have been possible after the fifth century; and there is an obvious source from which Athenaeus might have taken the story, the ’Eπιδημαι of Ion of Chios, which he cites in three other places. This work had the character of a personal memoir describing notable Athenian statesmen, poets, and philosophers whom Ion had known. The emphasis was on their personalities as revealed in their public speeches and private conversation. One of Athenaeus’ quotations from it is about Sophocles, and we know from other evidence that as a young man Ion had met Aeschylus too. The anecdote would have been perfectly in place in such a book.

The enduring fame of Aeschylus as the earliest of the ‘three great tragedians’ has made him in effect the first dramatist of the Western tradition, in chronological terms at least. At the same time it is worth noting that among the ancients he also enjoyed a reputation as a master of the satyr play, as Pausanias (2.13.6–7) and Diogenes Laertius (2.133) tell us. It is to this kind of drama, which comprised one-quarter of his output as tragedian, that I would like to turn, with particular focus on his Theoroi or Isthmiastai, and its treatment of another visual medium, the plastic arts. Our fragments of this play begin with a figure presenting a chorus of satyrs with artfully wrought images made in their likenesses which bring them a startled delight. In the second discernible scene of the fragment the chorus receivesνεοχμᾰ… θρματα ([c] col. ii 50), usually understood as athletic equipment, which the satyrs find rather more unsettling. The following piece is primarily concerned with the first scene in which the coryphaeus urges his companions to dedicate the depictions as votives on Poseidon's temple, relishing the prospect of the comical, terrifying effect these images would have on his own mother and travellers, the latter probably on their way to the Isthmian games. At least this much is clear from the papyrus (esp. lines 1–22). This part of the fragment has attracted a good deal of attention for the evident ‘realism’ of the images that excites the satyrs so much in the first place.

Many scholars argue that only three actors were needed in this problematic scene. I believe four are required. The case for a fourth actor can be made much stronger if we take into consideration the location of the Thracian, Trojan, and Greek camps as presented in the play. This argument has been overlooked in previous discussions of the passage.

In the Phaedrus scientific psychology is an integral part of Plato's outline of scientific rhetoric. An accomplished rhetorician must know all types of human souls (ψυχς γένη, 271b1–2), he must know what kind of soul is affected by what kind of speech, and he must be able to apply this theoretical knowledge in front of an audience, so as to achieve the intended persuasion with unfailing certainty. This knowledge is an essential qualification of a philosopher; it enables him to choose a soul of the right type (λαβῲν ψνχήν προσήκουσαν, 276e6) and plant in it words of wisdom. His words, that is the authentic logos, acquire new life in the soul of the recipient, who in his turn sows their progeny in other suitable souls (276e5–277a3). In the dialogue, Socrates implants the words of wisdom in the soul of Phaedrus, and wishes that Phaedrus may similarly influence Lysias (257ab).

Socrates’ work on Phaedrus permeates the whole dialogue, giving it its dramatic unity, and yet interpreters disagree on it. The late dating of the dialogue, which has been accepted as axiomatic throughout this century, stands in the way of seeing it clearly. Phaedrus in the Protagoras and in the Symposium does not appear like a man who would appropriate the exalted ideal raised before him in the Phaedrus. The majority of modern interpreters therefore cannot see Phaedrus’ conversion to philosophy in the Phaedrus as anything but ironic. I shall argue that Plato in the dialogue does enact his Phaedran ideal of the authentic communication of philosophy, and that this precludes the ironical reading of the dialogue.

Among the principal successors to Alexander the Great, Lysimachus is probably the one that has suffered most by neglect in the scanty literary sources at our disposal. His wars with the Getae and their king Dromichaetes are among the few events in his long career which have received more than a casual notice in the historical tradition; no wonder that they have been examined repeatedly both in the context of Lysimachus' political biography and of the history of the region and its Thracian population, the Getae. However, many aspects of the circumstances remain obscure and dubious, and their discussion has more than once ended with the expression of hope that one day new archaeological finds might permit the solution of some of the associated riddles. The recent archaeological discoveries near Sveshtari in north-eastern Bulgaria seem now to warrant a re-examination of these problems.

Introduction

As Aristotle himself says, A.Po. 2.13 is an attempt to provide some rules to hunt out the items predicated in what something is, namely to discover definitions. Since most of this chapter is devoted to the discussion of some rules of division (diairesis), it may be inferred that somehow division plays a central role in the discovery of definitions. However, in the following pages I shall not discuss what this role is. Nor shall I discuss what place division has in the wider discussion of definition and explanation as it emerges from A.Po. 2. 1 shall rather focus on the argument that Aristotle reports and discusses in A.Po. 2.13.97a6–22, and which our extant sources ascribe to Speusippus. As will become clear later on, this argument undermines the possibility of giving any definition, and Aristotle deals with it here because he can block it by exploiting some properties of the method of division.

Metaphysics Z.ll has in recent years received considerable attention, because of its importance for the exposition of Aristotle's psychology, which for some time now has been an immensely popular topic among Aristotelian scholars. Z.ll has proved contentious, however, especially over its statement of Aristotle's criticism of Socrates the Younger, who was wont to make a certain ‘comparison’ in the case of animals. Virtually nothing is known about this Socrates the Younger, nor is it known exactly what ‘comparison’ he made with animals. But, as most interpreters suppose from the context of Z. 11, his comparison certainly had much in common with that made by ‘some', who argue that natural objects, like man, are comparable to geometrical figures, like the circle, with respect to their relationship to their matter (1036b7–12). Just as the physical matter of circles, such as bronze, stone, and the like, are no part of the essence of the circle, so too the physical matter of man—flesh and bones—is no part of the essence of man. This comparison may hold true, even if, unlike circles, man is in fact found only in a single sort of matter, because the case of man may be like the counterfactual case in which all circles happen to be made of bronze. The bronze would still not belong to the essence of the circle; it would just be difficult psychologically to separate circularity from bronze (1036a31-b7).

When the Macedonians had conquered Greece, city-states continued to exist along-side the more powerful kingdoms, and were often forced to accommodate their policies to the wishes of the powerful kings who were, in theory, their allies. If kings and cities were to co-operate effectively, there would need to be some way of adapting the authority of royal wishes to the theoretical rights of the cities to self-determination.

The contrast between the powers of a king, theoretically all-powerful within his kingdom, and the autonomy of a city did not need to be total. Aristotle, who was acquainted with the Macedonian kingdom, made a clear distinction between kingship and tyranny, between rule by the law and autocracy. He listed Macedonia alongside Sparta and Epirus as kingdoms which were ruled in the interests of all.

All our ancient sources agree on the basic sequence of events after the battle of Pydna on 22 June 168: the consul L. Aemilius Paullus advanced to take possession of the whole of Macedonia and finally managed to capture Perseus, the defeated king, who had taken refuge on Samothrace. Once in complete control of the situation he sent his troops into winter quarters and himself set off on a trip that was to take him round the most famous sights of Greece. Only when he heard of the arrival of the customary senatorial commission did he return to Macedon, settle its affairs, hold magnificent games, and finally return to Italy. Thus far there is little cause for concern, but what most of these events lack is a properly established date. Livy, our only ancient source venturing to date them, places everything up to sending the troops into winter quarters (45.8.8–9) in the same consular year as Pydna and assigns the remaining events to autumn and winter 167 (45.27ff). He thereby creates an awkward gap of somewhat more than a year between the battle of Pydna and the subsequent actions of Aemilius Paullus. A majority of scholars either seem to have ignored this point altogether or silently corrected Livy's chronology by simply shifting the events in question back to 168/ (Julian calendar). Others, ranging from Miiller and Weissenborn to Hammond and Walbank in their magisterial History of Macedonia, have kept Livy's date,4 while only one scholar has actually attempted to argue for a correction of Livy.

This paper will examine the circumstances that inspired the famous utterance attributed to the haruspex Spurinna, ‘Beware the Ides of March!'1 Recently the argument has been made that this warning to Caesar was based upon an astrological calculation, rather than on the usual arts of an haruspex who read signs of the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals (exta) or by interpreting bolts of lightning (fulgura) and portents (ostenta). As intriguing as this astrological theory is, I am convinced that it is fatally flawed, and I intend to show why it must ultimately be rejected. The question is not merely an academic one, having to do with the methods employed by a particular seer on a given occasion. Rather, if it can be established as even probable that Spurinna based his prophecy upon an astrological calculation, which helped convince the conspirators that Caesar was vulnerable to attack on the Ides as being an unlucky day for him according to the stars, then we are presented with a very significant and hitherto unsuspected instance of astrology influencing the course of public affairs at Rome several decades before astrology came into its own under the early emperors. According to such a reconstruction, astrology played a key role in determining the date of one of the most fateful murders in Roman history. It is the contention of this paper, on the contrary, that there is no reason whatsoever to attribute Spurinna's prophecy to an astrological calculation.

The idea that ‘Horace repeatedly puns on his name’ has recently sprung up again. Flaccus we are told means ‘limp’ and Horace uses his name to make various jokes about impotence. This is a load of cobblers.

‘To attempt to say anything new about Horace may seem absurd.’ To attempt to say anything new about the Roman Odes may seem still more absurd; my purpose, nevertheless, is to reconsider the lines of Carm. 3.3 set out above, and to reinterpret an argument begun by the editor of the Delphin Horace (1691) in which the authority of Bentley is against me. My question is: what does Horace mean the reader to understand by describing Augustus as drinking nectar ‘purpureo ore’?

The necessity of emending immundas… dapes in 78 to immundos… pedes has long been recognized, but I argue here that the text is unsatisfactory in three further respects: (1) the difficulties of style, sense, and punctuation in 73–75; (2) diuitiis in 76, wrongly retained by most editors and, when emended, wrongly emended to deliciis; and (3) raros in 77, of which no satisfactory explanation has been offered.

Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia provide an opportunity of seeing how an undistinguished talent responded to the demise of the republic and the establishment of an imperial system. Fergus Millar has argued that we should view Valerius as a contemporary of Ovid, that is as an author influenced by the last years of Augustus and writing in the early years of Tiberius’ reign, but the internal evidence of Facta et dicta memorabilia better fits publication in the early 30s a.d. in the aftermath of Sejanus’ unsuccessful conspiracy. Although this does distance Valerius further from the key years of transition, he is not remote—and because of the relative paucity of prose authors of the period his presentation of the domus Augusta and of Augustus and Tiberius repays attention.

According to Tacitus, this was Galba's verdict on Nero's fall. The tyrant's undoing had been of his own making. As for what determined the outcome, Galba is unequivocal. Two factors had proved decisive: Nero's immanitas and luxuria.

At their first meeting Polynices and Tydeus come to blows. They are reconciled by Adrastus, who expresses the hope that their quarrel will lead to loyal friendship between them, as it did.

Esse pro fuisse dixit, says Lactantius, more ingenuously than Klotz, who tries to make the same thing more palatable by saying esse est pro imperfecti quodammodo infinitiuo. Some have taken the accusative and infinitive to be a general statement, but Heuvel is clearly right in saying that it is Tydeus and Polynices whom the poet has in mind. The most favoured solution has been Grater's conjecture isse, but (as Helm says) that produces an unnatural expression (the passages adduced by Mueller are not parallels); Mozley renders it by ‘grew’, thereby translating not what stands in his text but what ought perhaps to stand there, namely <cr>esse, a conjecture of Gil, which has been almost entirely overlooked. This contracted form is found in extant literature only at Lucretius 3.683 and (concresse) Ovid, Met. 7.416 (at 3.200 Statius flesse). The first letters of a line are particularly liable to omission; despite Hill, I do not find it at all surprising that at 1.544 perseus lost its first letter and the remnant became aureus.

At Quaestiones Graecae 32.298c–d, Plutarch raises the question, τίνες οἰ ειναται παρᾰ Μιλησίος, ‘Who were the Perpetual Sailors among the Milesians?’ he frames the circumstances of his answer using a genitive absolute clause: τν περ Θόαντα κα Δαμασήνορα τυράννων καταλυθέντων (‘when the tyrants around Thoas and Damasenor had been overthrown’). In the absence of any other mention of these men in the extent sources, these words—especially the appellation τυράνων—have caused concern among editors and commentators of Plutarch. In the Teubner edition of 1935 Titchener changes τυράνων to the accusative τυράννους, while Halliday in his Oxford commentary suggests that the word should be deleted as a gloss. Each of these suggested changes to the received text is motivated by the occurrence here of the common idiom οἵ πεί ⁺ Accus. nominis proprii. This expression is, from the time of Polybius on, frequently used by Greek historians to indicate succinctly a group or faction, especially one centred around an important personage. Furthermore, a rather odd periphrastic usage of this phrase has been identified by scholars of Greek grammar as common from at least the Roman period. In this usage, οἱ περί τινα I serves as the equivalent of the simple proper name. Thus τν περ Θόαντα κα Δαμασήνορα may be a periphrasis for Thoas and Damasenor alone.

Around 87 b.c. during the turmoil of the first Mithridatic war, Philo of Larissa, head of the so-called Fourth Academy, fled from Athens to Rome. There he gave lectures on philosophical topics and taught rhetoric. His classes were attended by a young man called Cicero, who was inspired by him to include in a work on rhetorical theory, somewhat inappropriately, a fervent confession of scepticism to which he stuck for the rest of his life. Later Cicero claimed to be—as an orator—not a product of the workshops of the teachers of rhetoric, but of the spacious walks of the Academy. And he developed the ideal of the philosopher-orator. Scholars disagree whether the idea to bring philosophy and rhetoric together is Cicero's own invention or an adaptation from someone else, for instance Philo.

A long-lasting and sometimes acrimonious debate over the correct vocative form of second-declension Latin words in -ius began more than 800 years ago. For the past century most classicists have considered the matter to be settled, and little discussion on the subject has taken place. Yet the century-old conclusions we now so unthinkingly accept are based on very little evidence and are internally inconsistent in some of their details. The past hundred years have provided us not only with more Latin to work with, better tools for search and analysis, and a more complete knowledge of the history of the Latin language, but also with a new understanding and respect for the ancient grammarians and their views on the structure of their language. It is time to re-examine the ancient and modern views on the vocative of -ius words, to see whether any viable conclusions can be drawn and whether the ancient grammarians may have more to contribute than our predecessors believed.