In his illuminating discussion of ‘the Caspian question’ Sir William Tarn, basing his case mainly on Aristotle, Meteorologica, 2. 1. 10 and Strabo, 11. 7. 4, argued that Alexander knew of the existence of the Aral Sea. Tarn's conclusion, however, was soon challenged by Professor Lionel Pearson, who disagreed in particular with Tarn's interpretation of the passage in Strabo. But, although he undoubtedly succeeds in showing that some of Tarn's arguments are not valid, Pearson fails, as it seems to me, to disprove his main contention. Indeed, Pearson misunderstands the line of Strabo's argument and is led to propose an unnecessary emendation of the text.

Among other things, R. O. A. M. Lyne's recent edition and commentary of the Ciris (Cambridge, 1978) has established the general method of composition followed by this pseudo-neoteric poet: he demonstrably lifted wholesale and applied to his own poem words, phrases, lines, and even entire sequences from the works of the neoterics and the poets of the following generation. Accordingly, one of the poem's chief attributes is that it serves as a means for recovering the general content, and at times the actual wording, of earlier, more important poetry. This paper offers some additional areas in the Ciris where such influence may exist. I confine myself to Cinna and Calvus, whose poetry may justly be considered the missing two-thirds of the neoteric movement.

When Demosthenes brought Aeschines to trial on a charge of malfeasance as an ambassador, he made what seems now the astonishing declaration in connection with Aeschines' acting of the part of Creon in Sophocles' Antigone: ⋯στε γ⋯ρ δ⋯που το⋯θ' ὅτι ⋯ν ἅπασι τοῖς δρ⋯μασι τοῖς τραγικοῖς ⋯ξα⋯ρετ⋯ν ⋯στιν ὥσπερ γ⋯ρας τοῖς τριταγωνισ ταῖς τὺ τοὺς τυρ⋯ννους κα⋯ τοὺς τ⋯ σκ⋯πτρ' ἔχοντας εἰσι⋯ναι. Until the last generation (and even later) this was taken at face value as indicating that of the three actors presenting a tragedy the third (and least important) was regularly assigned the part of royalty. But that the title rôle in such plays as Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus or an important character such as Creon in the Antigone should have been entrusted to the third ranking actor is incredible. How is the discrepancy to be explained?

A good story bears retelling many times, and an appreciative audience will delight in debating its finer points; each participant is – of course – always convinced that only his memory, his understanding, of what the author said is the correct one.

At Aen. 6.562–627 the Sibyl gives Aeneas a description of the criminals in Tartarus and the punishments to which they are condemned. The criminals are presented to us in several groups. The first consists of mythical figures, the Titans (580–1), the sons of Aloeus (582–4), Salmoneus (585–94), Tityos (595–600) and Ixion and Pirithous (601–7). Next Virgil turns away from mythical figures to particular categories of criminal. He mentions those who hated their brothers, who assaulted a parent, who cheated a cliens, who gloated over wealth they had acquired without setting aside a part for their family, who were put to death for adultery, and those who, breaking their masters' (‘dominorum’, 613) trust, made war on their country (608–14). The reference to the contemporary scene is unmistakable. The mention of a cliens (609) indicates that we have moved from Greece to Rome. Moreover, ‘quique ob adulterium caesi’ (612) brings to mind Augustus' concern over moral standards, the subject of legislation in 28 B.c., 18 B.c. and A.d. 9; the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis (18 B.c., but no doubt in the air for some time previously) gave to fathers of adulteresses the right to put to death both guilty parties. Thirdly, ‘arma...impia’ (612–13) is an obvious reference to civil war (cf. Geo. 1.511–14; Aen. 1.294–6), which as Servius argues is more narrowly defined by ‘nee veriti dominorum fallere dextras’ (613) so as to exclude Caesar and Octavian: undoubtedly the allusion is to the war against Sextus Pompeius, which Augustan propaganda chose to represent as a war against runaway slaves. Virgil continues by sketching the penalties paid in Tartarus by such men (614–17). While doing so, however, he retreats once again into the realm of mythology: the punishments he describes are those more normally associated with Sisyphus and Ixion (rolling a stone uphill, suspension on a wheel). This reversion is completed at 617–20 where, confusingly, Virgil denies that he has been alluding to events of contemporary significance by naming two mythical personages, Theseus and Phlegyas (the father of Ixion). Virgil therefore implies, but then denies, contemporary relevance. It is this kind of protean elusiveness (most marked, perhaps, in the Eclogues) which makes the contemporary allusions in Virgil so difficult to pin down.

‘Some of Martial's shortest epigrams are also the obscurest’, observes P. T. Eden, apropos of 1.102. This two-line poem has certainly generated a remarkable diversity of interpretations. All the critics are agreed that the portrait of Venus owned by the courtesan Lycoris (‘Venerem tuam, Lycori’) is in some way botched or unattractive, but, beyond this, their explanations differ widely.

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.

I cite manuscripts from my own collations. Information about most of these manuscripts, and explanation of the symbols by which I designate them, may be found in A. Turyn, The Byzantine Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Euripides (Urbana, 1953), K. Matthiessen, Studien zur Textüberlieferung der Euripideischen Hekabe (Heidelberg, 1974), and D. J. Mastronarde and J. M. Bremer, The Textual Tradition of Euripides' Phoinissai (Berkeley, 1982). I shall discuss the affiliations and the relative value of these manuscripts on a later occasion. For the present no knowledge of these matters is needed. I refer to modern editions by the names of their editors: Wecklein = N. Wecklein (Leipzig, 1890), Wecklein (1906) = N. Wecklein (Leipzig and Berlin, 1906), Di Benedetto = V. Di Benedetto (Florence, 1965), Biehl = W. Biehl (Leipzig, Teubner, 1975), Willink = C. W. Willink (Oxford, 1986, 1989 [with Addendis Addenda]), West = M. L. West (Warminster, Aris and Phillips, 1987). Studies refers to my Studies on the Text of Euripides (Oxford, 1981).

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.

Every student of Plato will be inclined to admit that, among his dialogues, the Parmenides is one of the hardest to understand. The attempt to elucidate it has continued since ancient times, but even to-day we still lack a definitive interpretation. The first part of the dialogue is relatively simple; it is with the second that the great difficulty begins. Two questions are raised: firstly, how this part is to be understood, and, secondly, how it is related to the first part.

Until the issue of Altheim's book Roemische Religionsgeschichte there was little doubt about the correctness of Wissowa's view that the two groups of the diindigetes and the di novensides combined with each other represent the whole of theRoman pantheon, the di indigetes being the old, indigenous deities of the Roman people, inherited so to speak from the days of Romulus, the di novensides the new deities, imported in historical times from foreign peoples. This view has now been abandoned, owing to Altheim's arguments. Besides this, Altheim and later C. Koch have proved that the proximity of the expressions divi novensiles and di indigetes in Livy's report about the devotio of P. Decius Mus (viii. 9) does not in itself justify the conclusion that the di indigetes and the di novensides are linked together in such a manner that the solution of the problem of one group involves that of the other. Hence the questions arise, first, what is the nature of the di novensides or of the di indigetes, and whether either of these questions has been satisfactorily answered; secondly, is it possible to establish any relationship between these two groups of deities, and can such a relation be usedas a starting-point from which to investigate the nature of the other group? In choosing this line of research it seems to me that an attempt to solve the problem of the novensides rather than that of the indigetes promises greater success. I shall, therefore, treat the di novensides in the first part of this paper.

In an earlier contribution to this journal I argued that many details in the experience of Pentheus in the Bacchae derive from the ritual of mystic initiation. One of these details was his vision of two suns, two cities of Thebes, and Dionysos as a bull. I would like to add here a further point of the same kind about this vision.

The episode at Croton is the last series of events we possess from the surviving Satyrica, though not necessarily the last part of the novel in its original form. The action takes place in a town which no longer existed at the suggested time of the novel's composition. The plot is focused, mainly, on two themes: legacy-hunting and Encolpius' impotence. His unsuccessful relationship with the nymphomaniac Circe (126.1–130.8) and his painful experience with the witch-like priestesses Proselenos and Oenothea (131.1–139.5) are manifestations of the latter theme. Philomela's prostitution of her children (140.1–11) is a brief example of the former theme and shows the kind of gifts the Crotonians offered Eumolpus in order to win his favour and a share in his vast legacy (124.4). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the anecdote of the matron Philomela was composed by Petronius as a narrative equivalent of a theatrical farce. The paper is divided in two parts. The first aims to establish the theatrical (mimic) backcloth of the story, in front of which the ensuing action is going to take place. The second shows the theatrical nature of the anecdote itself, i.e. the structure, the characters, the staging, the language and the multiple levels of its description that demonstrate its theatricality.

This passage seems to have escaped identification so far. This is somewhat surprising, since it clearly refers to an incident at the sack of Maiozamalcha during Julian's Persian campaign which has been much discussed by editors ind critics of Ammianus and Zosimus. The reason may well be that in some ilder editions of Suidas (e.g. Küster) the name appears as.

The aim of this paper is the discussion, and in some cases also, it is hoped, the clarification, of several passages in the fragments of the comic poet Alexis, where either the traditional text has been attacked because there occurred in it an allegedly objectionable split anapaest, or alternatively an excellent emendation has been rejected because laws framed by modern scholars have wrongly been applied to the passage being emended.

The Greater Alcibiades has been dismissed as spurious by a great many scholars including most of the major Platonists, and for a variety of reasons. Many of these reasons are to my mind extremely weak, and would apply with equal force to some of the undoubtedly genuine dialogues: Bluck has argued that nearly all can be met by supposing that Plato wrote it for some special purpose, for instance as a reply to Polycrates' attack on Socrates. It is noteworthy that several scholars, while rejecting die work, do so with reluctance and a hint of misgiving. Shorey, for instance, sees touches worthy of Plato himself, and de Strycker thinks the work may actually have been revised by Plato.

Those who write about early Greek literature often assume that each item in the ancient vocabulary answers to a single concept in the world-view of its users. It seems reasonable to hope that the body of ideas represented by a particular Greek word will frame one's discussion better than any question that could be asked in English: so that a cautious scholar might prefer to discuss the phenomenon called αἰδώς, for example, than to plunge into a study of Greek ideas of ‘honour and shame' irrespective of whether those anthropologists’ labels mark off a single body of ancient ideas. But the question is not merely one of common sense: in recent years, for example, a strategy of extrapolating deep ideas from single words has been deliberately developed by such scholars as Gregory Nagy, who constantly moves back and forth between the semantic patterns of individual words and corresponding thematic patterns found in myths. Here is a recent example from his analysis of Pindar's conception of the unity between athletic victory and mythical heroism:

In Pindaric usage ἂεθλος applies equally to the contests of athletes and to the life-and-death ordeals of heroes. We have already seen from the myth of the chariot race of Pelops that the ordeals of heroes on the level of myth correspond aetiologically to the contests of athletes on the level of ritual, in that the myths can motivate the rituals. Now we see that a word like ἂεθλος can collapse the very distinction between the myth and the ritual.

I. The New Inscription from Cales.

II. The Date of the Operations Recorded by the Inscription Dessau 8965.

III. The Identity of the General.

I. The following inscription (Not. Scav. 1929, p. 31) was recently discovered at Cales:

M. Vinicius P.f., M.n., L.pron., cos. II, VII vir [epu]lonum, sodalis Augustalis, thriumphalibus ornamentis, quinq(uennalis) viam ab angiporto aedi[s] Iunonis Lucinae usque [ad] aedem Matutae et [clivum] ab ianu ad g[isiarios portae] Stellatin[ae et viam patulam] ad portafm laevam et ab foro] ad port[am domesticam sua pecunia stravit].

Professor Webster's attempt (C.Q. xlii, pp. 15 ff.) to prove that south Italian vases of the middle of the fourth century can be used as evidence of Athenian theatrical arrangements of half or three-quarters of a century earlier leaves me unconvinced. It, is true that, as he says, ‘the plays’ which the vases illustrate ‘come from Athens'— at least, most of them probably did: but (1) a number of scenes on the vases are not scenes presented in the plays at all, but are scenes suggested to the painter by descriptions in messengers’ speeches, or, quite possibly, by the story dramatized in the plays, but not by the Athenian poet's particular treatment of the story; (2) the plays —and the stories made popular by them—had been the common property of the Greek world for more than half a century, and there is no reason why Italian producers should have gone back to the original production in Athens, still less why Italian painters should have done so, even if they knew what the original production was like. (It is clear that Italian theatres of the fourth century were in various ways not like the fifth-century Athenian buildings.)

The text of Martial is fairly good, though not as good as many editors seem to think. We have three separate sources from which our manuscripts are derived, which are called by Lindsay in the O.C.T. AA, BA and O.1 All three sources seem to have suffered from editing, AA less than the others. In A.D. 401 one Torquatus Gennadius seems to have emended the text (feliciter as the ‘puff’ in some of the BA MSS. puts it). We do not know whether all three sources were affected by this recension: all we know is that the BA family are the only manuscripts that mention it. But there are many signs of recension discernible in the readings of the other families too, e.g. pas-sages which have evidently had grammar or syntax thrust upon them—and in these I do not include the now obscure allusions and the dead jokes past recall.