As a student at Cambridge forty years ago I received a good training in the language and literature of classical Greece, and had the good fortune to study paleography under the late E. H. Minns. For all this I am deeply grateful. But I had no training in Byzantine Greek. It was only later, and more or less by accident, that I discovered Byzantine and Modern Greek. It is not my intention to discuss the wider aspects of this question now, but to appeal, on the basis of some passages in the Oresteia, for a new approach to textual criticism, or rather for the renewal of an old approach.

Alkman's Partheneion contains so many obscure details that even the elucidation of a single point seems worth while. It is proposed to show that the Kolaxaian horse, (59), hitherto identified as the typical Skythian horse,1 is an altogether different breed, specifically associated with Skythian royalty.

Context. The Partheneion mentions four breeds: The winged dream horse, the Enetic courser, and, together, the Ibenian and Kolaxaian (49, 51, 59). Not one of these breeds has, as yet, been definitely identified. All of them are, however, exotic breeds, and this regardless of whether the Enetic is a Venetic or a Paphlagonian steed, the Ibenian a horse of Keltic or of Ionian origin, and the Kolaxaian a Skythian steppe pony or some other Skythian breed. Other exotic elements are Lydian coifs and the Xanthos river (67–68, 100).

The recurrence of horse-imagery in Alcman's Partheneion (47 ff., 50, 58-59, 92) suggested to Bowra that the chorus may have been the guild of priestesses called Leucippides, who seem from a mysterious gloss in Hesychius to have been known as It is true that the comparison of girls with fillies is common enough in Greek, but the appearance of Helen as of girls like at Ar. Lys. 1308–15 seems, as Bowra says, ‘to hide a ritual use of ’. The existence of this guild of priestesses appears to be established from Paus. 3. 16. 1 and 3. 13. 7. In the latter passage they join with the in offering sacrifice to Dionysus and the unnamed hero who first guided him to Sparta, but it seems reasonable to assume that their principal concern was with the cult of the goddesses Phoebe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Leucippus, from whom, as Pausanias explicitly says (3. 13. 7), they took their name.

‘Alcman lived sometime in the seventh century.’

‘At some period in the seventh century Sparta was occupied with the Second Messenian War, but we do not know its date or whether Alcman lived before or during or after it.’

Between these two utterances, part of a papyrus commentary on Alcman was published,3 from which it appeared that the poet mentioned names known to us from the Spartan king-lists. It might have been expected that this discovery would lead to a more precise dating for Alcman. Some people think, that in fact it does, and I am one of them.

I print the text as given in Pearson. I agree with Jebb and Sheppard that the strophe is sound, and therefore I would retain at 866–7. The problem now lies with the antistrophe, where with the manuscript reading at 877 we lack either or-to give proper responsion with 867.

The manuscript text can be vindicated if we detect that simplest of scribal errors, haplography. Thus for 876–7 I would read

I. We know fairly well how the City Dionysia at Athens was celebrated in classical times. But although the numerous dramatic festivals of the Hellenistic period were in many respects modelled on the Athenian Dionysia, it is not clear how the performances at these festivals were organized. The difficulty arises from the fact that apart from a few great centres which may have had their own theatre production, playwrights, actors, etc., the majority of cities depended on the travelling of Dionysos’.1 It seems that the of Dionysiac artists were formed early in the third century. Three major Dionysiac associations—the Athenian, the Isthmian and Nemean, and the Ionian and Hellespontian—operated in Greece, Asia Minor, and the islands in Hellenistic times. The question is how these associations functioned. Were they theatrical companies as well as professional guilds? Did they undertake the organization of musical and dramatic performances at various festivals? Was there a division of territories between the and were certain festivals dominated by certain guilds?

(Anth. Pal. 10.92)

So the Palatinus, our only source for this poem. No satisfactory explanation of has ever been propounded, and the words are surely corrupt. By deftly changing two letters and replacing by Jacobs restored a sense of sorts:

The work with which I am concerned is not the one that appears under the name of Tryphon in Rhetores Graeci, viii. 726–60 Walz, iii. 191–206 Spengel, but the one that appears under the name of Gregory of Corinth, viii. 761–78 W. and iii. 215–26 Sp. What I now offer amounts to a makeshift edition. I call it makeshift, because I have not sought out and assessed all existing manuscripts of the work, or versed myself in Greek grammatical writing to the extent that a serious editor would have to do; I offer it because, whatever its deficiencies, it represents a more complete and a recensionally better founded text than those of the three existing editions, the most recent of which is now 109 years old.

In the doxographical tradition the concept of a ‘crystalline’ outer-heaven is ascribed to two Presocratic thinkers. Aëtius tells us that Anaximenes held that the stars were fastened like nails in the ‘crystalline’: (2. 14–3 DK. 13 A14) and, again, that Empedocles believed that the fixed stars were attached to the ‘crystalline’, while the planets were unattached: (2. 13. II DK 31 A54.) The ascription of this concept to both these Presocratic philosophers is decidedly odd; for, whereas, in the case of Empedocles’ thought, fire acts as a solidifying agent, Anaximenes, on the other hand, connected solidity with cold and rarity with heat and in his cosmology the heavenly bodies are created by the rarefaction into fire of vapour from the earth. For this reason the concept of a solid outer-heaven is quite incompatible with the little else that is known of his cosmogony and cosmology.

Scholars have known for some time that Plotinus' treatment of memory forms an important part of his philosophy; and while there are various points of view from which his doctrine can be approached, one seems singularly important. His analysis of memory boldly contrasts conscious and unconscious behaviour in human beings and so materially advances our knowledge of his concept of conscious experience.

This is manifestly a rather elusive subject, shifting with time, place, and circumstance, and obscured by insufficient evidence. However, an attempt to arrive at certain generalizations about Greek diplomacy, particularly in view of some modern assumptions which seem to be mistaken, may be thought justified.

Plutarch of Chaeronea was a voluminous writer whose experience of the Graeco-Roman world of his own day was quite as comprehensive as his knowledge of earlier ages. The ancient historian is often daunted by the sheer bulk of Plutarch's work and prefers customarily to concentrate his attention upon the Lives, which, if not history, at least contain much historical matter.

The primary meaning of haurire is ‘to take by scooping, to draw’, and it is used of liquids and of solids which pour. The first section of this paper will try to show that this meaning is frequent and sometimes missed by the commentators. The second section will trace the development of other meanings showing that this root is not applied to drinking and swallowing, except metaphorically, until well into the first century A.D., except once in Livy.

Trinvndinvm, best known as the minimum interval prescribed between the promulgatio and rogatio of a law by the Lex Caecilia Didia of 98 B.C., but also employed in a number of other constitutional and legal contexts, is generally supposed now to mean a period of 24 days R (I shall use this symbol to show that I am following the Roman method of counting, in which the day from which the reckoning starts and the day with which it finished are both included): in other words, it is held to be three Roman eight-day weeks.

Walter Savage Landor's exasperated marginal comment on line 13 of Horace, C. 1. 4 (‘pallida mors has nothing to do with the above’) has sent modern commentators scurrying to the poem's defence. The skirmish has been won for Horace, but at the expense perhaps of magnifying the importance of line 13: A. Y. Campbell insisted that pallida mors, far from being irrelevant, was ‘the focus of the whole poem’

Whatever fond hopes their author may have entertained when he published them, the Letters of the younger Pliny did not meet with an appreciative public. The first, indeed almost the only, writer before modern times to have read them with care and to have signalled his admiration by imitation is Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Auvergne in the late fifth century.

Readings from a manuscript which once belonged to Rodolphus Agricola and later to Theodore Ryck were well known to and lightly esteemed by the editors of Tacitus from the late seventeenth to mid nineteenth centuries. Ryck cited over 1,200 of them in his edition of 1687. Later the whereabouts of the manuscript remained long unknown, until it was rediscovered by C. W. Mendell as Leidensis BPL 16. B in the University Library at Leiden.

In conjunction with the Imperial status-indication, the Imperial nomina gentilicia provide the basic dating criterion for the Augusti liberti. Especially useful is the terminus ad quem, which is, in general, approximately 40 years after the death of the last possible manumitting emperor. Thus, the inscription of a Ti. Claudius Aug. lib. is not likely to be later than A.D. 100 and certainly (except under exceptional circumstances) not later than A.D. IIO.