The regular increase in the proportion of resolved feet in the iambic trimeters of Euripides' later plays was first commented upon in 1807 by J. Gottfried Hermann, who therefrom deduced the principle that the date of any play of Euripides could be directly determined from the frequency of its resolutions. This criterion he restated in several of his works in the following years, and when Elmsley objected that it was of uncertain value on account of the small number of plays of certain date by which it might be verified, he replied with a strong defence of his case: he did not, however, develop his principle in detail or give figures in its support. The first scholar to publish the totals of trisyllabic feet in each play was Zirndorfer: relying largely on these, he produced a chronology of Euripides' dramatic composition in several respects superior to any predecessor's. His conclusions were questioned by C. F. W. Müller, who, while accepting Hermann's thesis as being in general correct, doubted its reliability for determining the exact period of a tragedy's composition. Consequently, although he gave the totals of trisyllabic feet en passant, Müller made no attempt to suggest dates. At almost the same time as Müller's treatise appeared, J. Rumpel published an article giving a full and detailed list of references to all trisyllabic feet in Euripides: from this evidence he divided the dramas into four age-groups, but did not go so far as to assign specific dates.

Jasper Griffin's polemic, in this journal, against what he calls the ‘collectivist school’ of interpretation of Athenian tragedy is welcome, as it encourages clarification of fundamental differences. I do not have the space here to tackle him wherever I think he is wrong, still less construct an argument to the effect that Athenian tragedy was a ‘collective’ phenomenon. Rather I want to do two things. Firstly, the casual reader may have formed the impression that whereas the ‘collectivists’ operate with vague and unsubstantiated notions, Griffin's view has the advantage of being firmly grounded in the ancient texts. This impression I intend to dispel. In doing so I will confine myself to some of G.'s general remarks and to his attack on my own views, as a sample of the quality of his argument. Secondly, I also adduce new material in the hope of advancing the debate on this important issue.

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.

After his return from exile in A.D. 96 Dio of Prusa claims that even before it he had known the homes and tables of rich men, not only private individuals but satraps and kings (i.e. governors and emperors, Or. 7.66). Following the lead of Philostratus (V.A. 5.27–38) modern scholars have seen Dio as a confidant of the Flavian dynasty: amicus to Vespasian, possibly a special envoy of Vespasian to the Grek east, amicus to Titus, and friend and adviser to a minor member of the house T. Flavius Sabinus. These views are important not only for the biography of Dio, but also for the general question of relations between powerful Romans, above all emperors, and Greek philosophers and other intellectuals.

Old scholarly myths die hard. It was K. F. Hermann, the discoverer of the ‘Socratic period’ in Plato's development, who first proposed (in 1839) that Book 1 of the Republic must originally have been an earlier, independent dialogue on justice, parallel to the Laches on courage, the Euthyphro on piety, and the Charmides on temperance. Hermann also introduced the separatist enterprise of analysing the rest of the Republic into three or four distinct compositional stages. Analytical proposals of this sort were then formulated by a number of other scholars, including Krohn, Usener, and Rohde. The notion of an earlier, partial publication seemed to be supported by two bits of external evidence: a statement in Aulus Gellius that ‘about two books’ (duo fere libri) of Plato's Republic were the first to appear; and a number of striking parallels on the community of women between Republic 5 and Aristophanes' Ekklesiazousai, produced c. 392 B.C.

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 his discussion of Virgilian imitations of Lucretian phraseology Cyril Bailey examines the phenomenon of what he terms the ‘doublet’, that is, the procedure whereby Virgil imitates separate elements of a Lucretian phrase at different points in his own work. Take, for example, De Rerum Natura 1. 210–12:

esse videlicet in terris primordia rerum,

quae nos fecundas vertentes vomere glebas

terraique solum subigentes cimus ad ortus.

The period after the repulse of Xerxes' invasion is one of the more obscure in Greek history, and this is particularly true of the eclipse of Themistokles and the history of the Peloponnese in the seventies and sixties. On the period of Themistokles' ostracism before the flight which led him to Persia Thucydides says only that he was ostracized and lived at Argos while also travelling to the rest of the Peloponnese. Other writers add a few details to Thucydides' account on other aspects of the ostracism, but tell us even less on the sojourn in Argos. Diodoros and Plutarch merely tell us that he lived there in exile while Nepos informs us that Themistokles' virtuous and dignified life in Argos aroused resentment.

Now Themistokles did not remain inactive in exile. The Spartans had some good reason to wish to remove him from Argos. The activities which aroused the Spartans' distrust are probably referred to by Thucydides' remark that Themistokles journeyed to the rest of the Peloponnese. It is usually concluded that Themistokles was involved in the creation of an anti-Spartan coalition and that a major part of this policy may have been the establishment of democratic governments in and the synoecism of the cities of Elis and Mantineia.

But we lack any clear evidence on Themistokles' actions in this period and the hypothesis rests principally on deductions from two brief passages. The first is from Herodotos and records that in 479 b.c. the Mantineian and Eleian contingents arrived too late to take part in the battle of Plataia and on their return both cities banished their commanders.

From the scholarly activity of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. stem several collections of scholia to the poems of Virgil, most of which make copious reference to prose and verse composed in Latin before Virgil's time. The authors of these scholia were the last of a long line of commentators whose labours began soon after Virgil's death. Just as Virgil walked in the tracks of Theocritus, Hesiod, Aratus, Nicander, Homer, and Apollonius, so did his students in the tracks of the great Alexandrian expositors of the Greek poets. They sought to explain Virgil not only through Virgil himself, but also through the poets and prose writers, Greek and Latin, whom they imagined Virgil to have read. Thus we have scholia citing early republican literature in order to parallel words uncommon in or absent from the fourth-century classical syllabus, as well as unclassical usages, inflections, and constructions; in order to demonstrate ‘imitations’ on the part of Virgil; and in order to elucidate the structure of episodes of the three poems where Virgil appears to depart from the most commonly known versions of myth and history. Argument concerning the text or interpretation of a disputed passage is frequently based on appeal to the usage of Virgil's Latin predecessors.

From a purely historical point of view Lucan's epic is important, because it represents an intermediate stage between the contemporary account by Caesar of his defeat of the Pompeians and the later versions in Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio. However, it does not merely show us the development of the historical tradition about the war, in particular that part of it which did not stem ultimately from Caesar himself. It is a milestone in the development of Roman ideas about the fall of the Republic. For, while we can only tentatively deduce the attitude which Augustan writers, especially Pollio and Livy, adopted towards this war, Lucan represents the views of those who had not only lived under the monarchy which was the final product of the conflict begun in 49 B.c., but had experienced its less agreeable consequences under the later Julio-Claudians.

‘Hoplites are troops who take their name from their shields’. ‘The individual infantryman took his name, hoplites, from the hoplon or shield’. Such is the orthodox view. This paper will endeavour to show that its basis is inadequate. Rather, we shall argue, hoplites took their name from their arms and armour as a whole, their hopla in that all-encompassing sense; so that the original and essential meaning of the word hoplite was nothing more than ‘(heavily-)armed (infantry-)man’.

Histories of literature tend to treat Stesichorus as just one of the lyric poets, like Alcman or Anacreon. But the vast scale of his compositions puts him in a category of his own. It has always been known that his Oresteia was divided into more than one book; P. Oxy, 2360 gave us fragments of a narrative about Telemachus of a nearly Homeric amplitude; and from P. Oxy. 2617 it was learned that the Geryoneis contained at least 1,300 verses, the total being perhaps closer to two thousand. Even allowing for the shorter lines, this was as long as many an epic poem. Indeed, these were epic poems, in subject and style as well as in length: epics to be sung instead of recited. What was behind them ? Who was this Stesichorus, and how did he come to be, in Quintilian's phrase, ‘sustaining on the lyre the weight of epic song’ ?

The biographical problem must be tackled first. The question of Stesichorus’ historical setting and date is confused by legendary elements as well as by contradiction in the sources. On the whole scholars remain spellbound by the specious precision of the Suda's dates (632–556), although it has long been realized that they are founded on nothing but the assumption that Stesichorus was younger than Alcman and older than Simonides. There have been excellent discussions by Wilamowitz and Maas, but they seem to have had little influence.

The old proverb (‘poets tell a lot of lies’) can still more accurately be applied to their biographers.‘ Even the more plausible and psycho logically tempting details in the lives of literary figures derive from these authors’ fictional works, poems, and dramas, and not from the kind of source material biographers use today, letters, documents, eyewitness testimony. Critics and readers eager to establish some historical correlation between any ancient poet's life and his work should expect to be disappointed. But even if the ancient lives are useless to the historian or critic trying to explain what in Euripides’ experience compelled him to write about Medea, these stories are of interest to mythologists. If we stop being angry at the Lives for failing to be historical, and look at them rather as myths or fairy tales, some informative patterns begin to emerge.

Recent work on Callimachus has tended to concentrate on the technicalities of his poetry. Commentaries on the Hymns have dealt exhaustively with vocabulary, metrics, Homeric allusion, historical background. What remains to be done is to use these detailed pieces of work in readings of the individual poems, showing how the commentator's minutiae can be assimilated into an overall view of each hymn. In Hellenistische Dichtung Wilamowitz attempted such an appreciation; but since his time literary approaches have changed considerably. With the thorough commentary of G. R. McLennan as foundation, it may be worth while to make a re-assessment of the Hymn to Zeus in less technical terms. In the reading which I offer here I hope to escape the tyranny of the individual word; but I hope, too, that what I have to say will not appear too loosely founded on the text.

Most of the work done on tracing persistent themes and images in the Oresteia has failed to take account of the associations of the theme or image for the original audience. Some of these associations are with certain highly emotional rituals. In evoking the ritual the poet evokes also some at least of the emotion which generally accompanies its performance. I will take here as an example the association of the manner of Agamemnon's death, the fatal bath and the fatal robe, with the ritual of the funeral. This will I hope help to enrich our own emotional reaction to Aeschylus' presentation of this event, as well as to shed light on certain problematic passages.

A number of Democritean fragments may loosely be called ‘political’, concerned as they are with questions to do with the π⋯λις – with government, with the duties and dangers of public office, with justice, law and order. The majority of them (B 248–66) have been preserved in chapters of Stobaeus’ anthology entitled ‘On the State’ (iv 1), ‘On Laws and Customs’ (iv 2), ‘On Government’ (iv 5).

It may seem faintly absurd to claim or imply that a Vergilian cento has suffered unjustified neglect from scholars. These works—of which there are sixteen, covering a period of over three centuries within Late Antiquity—are usually treated at best with amused tolerance, and at worst (as in the new Anthologia Latino) with angry disdain. Though always ingenious, sometimes funny, and occasionally informative about the reception of Vergil, they are seldom admired. Even among Italian scholars, some of whom have paid much attention to centos, a recession has set in since the annus mirabilis of 1981, which saw two editions of the Medea of Hosidius Geta. Proba has, deservedly, attracted more attention than most; her aims and methods as a Christian poetess were carefully and illuminatingly studied twenty years ago by Reinhard Herzog, and her interest as a female Roman aristocrat has brought her further attention, especially in recent years. The main aim of the present article is to suggest a particular context and a serious purpose for her cento. A postscript will show that it went on to enjoy considerable popularity until the end of the century, and an introductory section will discuss its date, but very briefly, since Matthews has convincingly said most of what needs to be said about a recent attempt to redate it. Proba's preface, much of it not in cento form, calls for detailed treatment from various angles—textual, literary, historical—and will be explored in a separate article.

Our information about the Athenian politician Syrakosios is entirely derived from Ar. Birds 1297 and the scholia thereon. Syrakosios here figures among a long list of Athenians who are said to be nicknamed after various birds:

δοκεῖ δ⋯ κα⋯ ψήɸισμα τεθεικέναι μ⋯ κωμῳδεῖσθαι ⋯νομαστί τινα, ὡς Φρύνιχος ⋯ν Μονοτρόπῳ ɸησί [fr. 26 Kock]· “ψ⋯ρ' ἔχοι Συρακόσιον. ⋯πιɸαν⋯ς γ⋯ρ αὐτῷ κα⋯ μέγα τύχοι. ⋯ɸείλετο γ⋯ρ κωμῳδεῖν οὕς ⋯πεθύμουν.” δι⋯ πικρότερον αὐτῷ προσɸέρονται, ὡς λάλῳ δ⋯ τ⋯ν “ κίτταν” παρέθηκεν