By the colours and decoration of a vase fragment one determines the period and style to which the original belonged; while its physical contours show from what part of the original it comes. The material may be insufficient for a reconstruction of the whole design. But it is often legitimate to go beyond what is actually contained in the preserved pieces.

In Classical Quarterly N.S. ix (1959), 80 ff. Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones published an article on the closing scenes of Seven Against Thebes. In it he directed an assault on the orthodox belief that these scenes are, in whole or in part, not authentic. The movement in favour of authenticity seemed all the stronger when independently, and in the same year, Walter Potscher put forward arguments in Eranos in defence of some parts of the disputed passages.

Hitherto reconstructions of Empedocles' cosmic cycle have usually been offered as part of a larger work, a complete history of Presocratic thought, or a complete study of Empedocles. Consequently there has perhaps been a lack of thoroughness in collecting and sifting evidence that relates exclusively to the main features of the cosmic cycle.

In a recent article I drew attention to the fact that the well-known fable of the improvident cicada and the industrious ant has a close resemblance to the story of the twin brothers Amphion and Zethus and their classic debate on the respective merits of the artistic and practical life in Euripides' Antiope, which is reflected not only in the argument of Callicles and Socrates in the Gorgias and Horace, Ep. i. 18

In this scene Oedipus receives the delegation of suppliants who have come, under the leadership of the priest of Zeus, to entreat Oedipus to deliver them from the blight and the plague. The issue with which I propose to deal concerns the composition of this delegation.

Since the appearance in 1952 of Alexander Turyn's Studies in the Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Sophocles it has been quite clear that editors must abandon the traditional stemma and with it much of their traditional thinking about the text. One of Turyn's most important contributions to Sophoclean studies has been his treatment of what he calls the vetustiores.

In a note on Aesch. Ag. 1243 f. in C.R. lxxv (1961) 187-8, I had occasion to cite a number of examples of adverbial transference. Whether they were or were not (cf. C.R. lxxvii [1963], 127) adequate to establish the point I was seeking to make I leave to the judgement of others, but the idiom possesses interest of its own, and it seems worth while to quote some further instances of it that I have noted since my article appeared. I will divide them according as they occur with verbs of hearing or with other verbs.

Theocritus' four known Aeolic poems, 28–31, are all in metres used by Sappho and Alcaeus. 28, 30, and apparently 31, are in greater Asclepiads, and 29 is in Sapphic fourteen-syllable lines. Neither of these metres was in common use, and Theocritus is likely to have based his metrical practice, like his dialect, on the Lesbian models.

Alexandrian epic is ‘arte allusiva’–to use the Pasqualian term—par excellence: the best methodological introduction to this literary feature still remains Herter's monograph. In the following pages I should like to show how certain passages from Callimachus or ApoUonius can be properly understood only if interpreted according to the canons of the ‘arte allusiva’ as practised by the poets

Vindobonensis Y (21), written round about the beginning of the fourteenth century, contains sixteen dialogues and six Spuria in a curious order, the first two Tetralogies and the Parmenides, then the Gorgias, Meno, Hippias Major, Symposium, Timaeus, Alcibiades I and II, and Spuria 7, 1–5, and was thought by Jordan and Immisch

The notes that follow are concerned with certain mineralogical problems which could not be discussed at length in my edition of the De Lapidibus (Oxford, 1965). For the most part, only the bare conclusions are stated there.

In handling these problems I owe much to the discussions that I had during his lifetime with Dr. Stanley Smith, and to those that I have had more recently with Professor F. Coles Phillips and Mr. Robert H. S. Robertson.

Both the meaning of and the identity of the are in some doubt here. Gow's view that ‘Lacon thinks of labourers and cicadas vying with one another in the heat’ and that means ‘provoke to further exertions, put him on his mettle’ agrees in general with the scholiast

This paper is concerned with the position of a Roman paterfamilias with respect to his family's property in the period of the Republic. Rights over property are in Roman law strictly dominium and not potestas; but to understand the role of a family system in a society one must analyse how its property is managed and passed on.

In a previous article in this journal (C.Q., N.S., xii (1962), 169 ff.) I dealt with the transmission of Quintilian Inst. 10. 1. 46–131, a passage in which the general picture of the textual fortunes of the Institutio is blurred by complicating factors. An exception to the normal rules is also provided, for rather different reasons, by the opening part of the first book.

Yet an interval of upwards of a year, apparently, separates the two occasions; already by 4. 193–4 t n e winter is well advanced; at 5. 46 Aeneas tells his men that exactly a year has elapsed since Anchises' death—the last event (3. 714: hie labor extremus) narrated in Book 3. Dido's words, therefore, and those of the false Beroe are commonly held to be irreconcilable.

One would expect venditabat to imply that the rustic is attempting to sell the tunic in a fairly aggressive manner: he is not merely ‘offering it for sale’ (Loeb trans.), but ‘crying it up’. Yet he is doing so fastidiose and tamquam mendici spolium. These two latter notions do not cohere at all well with the former; and in any case, we are not particularly concerned with the vehemence of the rustic's salesmanship, but rather with how much he has manhandled the tunic. I therefore propose to read ventilabat for venditabat: ‘was waving it about’, an expression which gives an intelligible picture of the scene. The corruption, which is easy enough in itself, may have received an additional stimulus from vendentis two lines below.

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes (byrri) commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs (tapetia) were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing achievement.

This couplet has escaped critical attention, even though it contains two anomalies. First the combination ut iam has lost its normal meaning ‘even granted that’ (e.g. Ars 1. 346 ut iam fallaris tuta repulsa tua est) and must be split into its two elements and iam translated as though it were tandem. Second, the reflexive adjective is used in a dependent clause to refer to the subject of the main-clause verb: though there is no reason why Ovid should not have used this licence for metrical convenience.

In addition to the technical writers on music, a number of ancient authors, notably Plutarch and Athenaeus, have recorded several musical terms, either by way of illustrative material—Plutarch is particularly given to musical similes and metaphors—or in the course of anecdotes about music and musicians. As musical terminology in different ages contains words or phrases not only of general acceptance and familiarity, but other more ephemeral expressions which belong to the jargon of a narrower circle of executants and critics, it is possible that the musical significance of such words, when used in an apparently non-musical context, has escaped notice.

In recent years, the starting-dates of both the Historiae and the Annales of Tacitus have been criticized. In the case of the Historiae, Hainsworth has claimed that Tacitus chose to start his narrative with the events of A.D. 69, because for various reasons the events of A.D. 68 were an embarrassment to him. Syme has suggested, in the case of the Annales, that by starting with the accession of Tiberius, Tacitus has barred himself from a proper understanding of that principate.