Meges, ruler of the men of Dulichium and the Echinades, is a personage who has occasioned some trouble to the commentators on the Iliad. The difficulties are stated fully, perhaps over-fully, by Walter Leaf (Homer and History, London, 1915, pp. 161 f.):

In my article ‘Two Textual Problems in Euripides’ Antiope, Fr. 188' (C.Q. N.S. xvii [1967], 41 ff.), in which I compared the debate of Amphion the unpractical musician and his industrious brother Zethus to the fable of the cicada and the ant, I drew attention to a passage of Olympiodorus' commentary on the Gorgias (p. 161, Norvin) which had been overlooked in the testimonia to Euripides' play, and which begins

Every Greek scholar knows the celebrated lapsus linguae committed by the tragic actor Hegelochus at the Great Dionysia of 408 B.C., when he faltered in his enunciation of line 279 of Euripides' Orestes and gave the impression to the mirthful audience of having said I am surprised, however, that the commentators on this line (and on Ar. Ran. 303, the most notable of the references in the comic poets to Hegelochus' lapse) have only partially explained the reason for its having seemed exceptonally funny.

The story of Dion of Syracuse was told by ancient writers, and is still being told by modern historians, in the main as a story of ‘freedom versus tyranny’. The liberation of the greatest state in the Hellenic world from the rule of the most powerful tyrants' house in Greek experience fired the imagination and aroused the admiration of contemporary and later writers. There is, however, another side to the story of Dion.

Sixty years have now passed since Lefebvre first published the Cairo papyrus of Menander (Fragments d'un manuscrit de Menandre, Cairo, 1907), and Körte's still authoritative third Teubner edition (Menandri quae supersunt, pars prior, Leipzig, 1938, reprinted in 1955 with addenda by Thierfelder) appeared almost exactly halfway between then and now. It laid the coping-stone on the labours of many scholars, of whom four rose head and shoulders above the crowd:

It is well known that when resolution occurs in the stichic iambics and trochaics of tragedy word-end is not found between the two shorts so produced: w or, more accurately, that the first short of resolution must not be the last syllable of a polysyllabic word. Moreover, the syllables in resolution most often form part of the same word as the following short or anceps, e.g.: Ion 1143:

The purpose of this article is to present arguments which indicate that PA 2. 16. 659b13–19 may not be authentic.

The value and date of Vaticanus graecus 1339 (Bekker's P), which contains many of the works of Aristotle, have been much disputed. Here I want only to argue that at the beginning of the De Partibus Animalium, the first work it contains, it is closely related to Parisinus graecus 1853 (Bekker's E), the great tenth-century manuscript which is one of our major authorities for many of Aristotle's writings.

Heliodorus has been edited twice in the last thirty years, by Colonna (Rome, 1938) and by Rattenbury and Lumb (Budé; vol. i, 1935; vol. ii, 1938; vol. iii, 1943).

Colonna's text is erratic, but in another respect his work on Heliodorus has been productive: he has put it beyond doubt that Book 9 of Aethiopica was written after the third siege of Nisibis, which took place in A.D. 350 (Athetueum, 1950, 79–87). There is no point in repeating Colonna's arguments here; they merit mention because no one has taken any notice of them.

Each of the Orphic Hymns is headed in the manuscripts by the name of the deity to which it is addressed, and in most cases a specification of the kind of incense to be used: thus 2 Only the first hymn lacks a heading. It is preceded in the manuscripts by a poem in which Orpheus addresses Musaeus and teaches him a prayer to a multitude of gods

It is the almost unanimous opinion of modern scholars' that this man is M. Licinius Crassus. Manutius's explanation, that ex Nanneianis is a reference to Crassus' profiteering in the proscriptions and in particular to the property of one Nanneius, to be identified with the Nannius named as a proscription victim in Comm. Pet. 9, is accepted without hesitation.

Since Klingner's dissertation it has generally been accepted by Ciceronian scholars that Molon's influence upon Cicero's prose style consisted in his imparting to his pupil no new stylistic ideal but rather moderation in both language and style. According to Cicero (Brutus 325), Molon's style had developed under the teaching of Menecles of Alabanda who, though himself an Asianist, aimed rather at crebrae venustaeque sententiae, a more elegant and concise form of antithesis, parallelism, and stylistic balance.

It seems to be becoming a fable convenue that Propertius opened his most elaborate book with a poem of hopeless illogicality. Shackleton Bailey complains on 3. 1. 25, ‘nam quis perhaps = quisnam as in Virg. Georg. 4. 445; see on 3. 11. 27. Even so, the absence of logical sequence from the theme of 21–4 (pascitur in uiuis liuor, post fata quiescit) to that of 25–32 (uixere fortes ante Agamemnona) is noteworthy and characteristic… In 33 the poet becomes conscious of having lost his way and uses Homer as a bridge back to the earlier motif.’

As is well known, the Amores of Ovid appeared in two different editions, of which only the second survives. Hence, scholars being what they are, it is hardly surprising that almost as much has been written about the first as the second. If I have ventured to add yet another contribution to the already over-long bibliography of the subject

In each example an adjective is separated from its noun by a verb and an unqualified noun. The separation by the verb may be regarded as conditioned by the metre, but not the further separation by the unqualified noun, as the qualified and unqualified nouns are metrically interchangeable. Horace would appear to prefer the wider separation to the less wide.

The manuscript tradition of Seneca's Dialogues consists of one eleventhcentury manuscript, Ambrosianus C 90 inf. (= A), which is the main source for the text, and a ruck of later manuscripts of lesser and disputed worth. There are over a hundred of these, far more than has been supposed.

In the fourteenth letter to Lucilius, Seneca explains how to avoid physical danger and discomfort: the worst threats to the body come not from nature but from men in power; therefore safety lies in not giving offence. Ad philosophiam confugiendum est (11): the study of philosophy incurs neither envy nor contempt, provided that the philosopher pursues it peacefully and without ostentation.

The appearance of a new and modern Teubner text of Valerius Flaccus, eliminating much consecrated chaff, is greatly to be welcomed. Its editor, E. Courtney of King's College, University of London, kindly lent me his text in typescript several years ago, so that my metrical statistics might be published at about the same time.

Vollmer, modifying the transposition by Fr. Jacobs of 61–74 after 24, placed these lines after 23; this finally put paid to the reading exordiar astus, which the authority of the Aldine edition had imposed on the early editors, and consequently v. 24 could no longer be taken as concluding the sense of the preceding lines.

It is usual to read nomina (Puteolanus), with which three interpretations are possible.

(1) The stronger arrogates to himself the titles of moderation and justice. So in the excellent Rumanian translation of 1871 by Gavrilu J. Munteanu: ‘Cându are sâ decida pumnulu, celu mai tare si atribue titlu de moderatu şi de onestu.’