In beginning to speak of Euripides in this University of Manchester, one's thoughts naturally turn to the work of Professor Norwood in this direction, and it is with an especially keen sense of pleasure that I find myself not only following in his footsteps—a long way after!—but helping in a small way to contribute some further confirmation to the views on Euripides established by him and Professor Verrall.

In 1915 a dispute over the meaning and interpretation of lines 3–4 of this poem prompted Ernst Hohl not only to propose reading ‘quo … locos’ instead of ‘quae … loca’ (a conjecture which he rightly abandoned in his edition of the Historia Augusta for the Teubner series in 1927) but also to question whether the poem really was composed by Hadrian.

Codex Louaniensis, or L, the best MS. of Caesar in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 10,084), which is assigned to the eleventh century, has been collated by Alfred Holder for his edition of the Bellum ciuile and by Mr. R. L. A. Du Pontet for his edition of the Bellum Alexandrinum and the Bellum Africanum; but for the Bellum Gallicum no collation has hitherto been available. Last year I made one, which I sent to Dr. Meusel. He urged me to publish it, remarking that it would be very useful, as ‘wir haben nun ein sichereres Urteil über die Familie φ.’ Relying upon Holder's collation, he had described L in his own edition of the Bellum ciuile (1906, p. viii) as ‘a twin-brother of Ashburnhamianus’ (S); and so it is in the Bellum ciuile, but, as he acknowledged after reading my collation, not in the Bellum Gallicum. The first folio, comprising i, I–6, §3 (… bono animo in), is by a later hand. The MS. is described in the Catalogue thus: ‘c. Jvlii Caesaris commentariorum libri. Desinit cum verbis “res eis suppeteret” in libro de Bello Africano, cap. 33. Codex membranaceus, sec. XL, sed folium primum a manu recentiori suppletum est. Folio [10,084.].’

It has frequently been observed that the Prometheus Vinctus shows certain Sophoclean characteristics of rhythm. In order to vary the rhythm of his iambics and to avoid monotony, Sophocles often knits consecutive trimeters closely together by placing at the end of one line some word which looks forward to the next line, and so precludes the reader from stopping for the natural pause after the sixth foot. Sometimes he uses in this way subordinating words which introduce a dependent clause in the next line (Antig. 311); sometimes proclitics (O.C. 495) or quasi-proclitics (O.R. 267). (Sometimes, too, he even allows elision at the end of the trimeter, but this peculiarly Sophoclean device does not concern us now.)

In several recent studies we have developed precise statistical methodologies which have demonstrated that the cursus mixtus was the dominant rhythmical system for final clausulae in Latin prose from the third century a.d. to the fifth. The cursus mixtus consisted of four standard metrical forms derived from the richer variety of Cicero's Asiatic tradition – cretic-spondee, dicretic, cretic-tribrach and ditrochee –, which were structured according to three accentual patterns – planus, tardus and velox. The latter are differentiated by the number of unstressed syllables intervening between and following two accented syllables. The planus has two unaccented syllables between two word accents and one after the last accent. The tardus has two between two accents and two after the last accent. The velox has four between two accents and one after the last accent. The four metrical forms are contained within the parameters of the accentual cadences. The planus contains either the cretic-spondee (epistulae nostrae) or the ditrochee (manu ferire); the tardus either the dicretic (carcer includeret) or the cretic-tribrach (estis indigenae); the velox either the ditrochee (experientiam singulorum) or the cretic-spondee (nimium videbatur. Authors who used the cursus mixtus, however, preferred to effect an exact coincidence between the accent and ictus, and as a result evinced primarily the following standard rhythmical forms: planus/cretic-spondee; tardus/dicretic or cretic-tribrach; and velox/ditrochee.

So far now we have examined only the rhythmical properties of final clausulae, but it is appropriate also to investigate for rhythm at internal positions within the sentence.

At 876ff. Octavia's partisans lament the ruinous intervention of the Roman mob in support of the heroine's legitimate claims against Poppaea. A series of paradigmatic figures illustrates the sentence ‘o funestus multis populi dirusque fauor’: the two Gracchi, first, then Livius Drusus, the tribunus plebis of 91 B.C., stabbed to death in his house in the year of his tribunate. The gallery of historical characters suits the Roman atmosphere of the play, the fallen heroes of Republican times are presented as noble and disinterested figures, struck by disaster and evil fortune. This is the description of Livius' fate (887–90; text and colometry given as in Zwierlein's OCT):

This paper discusses the problem of Democritus’ allegoresis. The question whether Democritus practised allegoresis is usually answered affirmatively. Thus, for example, Jean Pépin, in his classic work on the development of allegorical interpretation, forcefully asserts that ‘Démocrite pratiqua d'abord une allégorie physique’ and that ‘il poursuivit aussi l'allégorie psychologique’. In one way or another, this view has been embraced by Luc Brisson, Ilaria Ramelli, Ilaria Ramelli and Giulio Lucchetta, Gerard Naddaf, to name just a few scholars who have recently examined the issue. However, those who find allegoresis in Democritus are often somewhat perplexed at what they discover. For instance Naddaf, in his otherwise excellent study, assumes that ‘Democritus believed that Homer was indeed a visionary sage with a privileged utterance that he intentionally transmitted allegorically’, upon which he concludes that Democritus’ position is ‘inconsistent and disconcerting given his place in the pantheon of Ionian rationalism’. This shows that the claim that Democritus practised allegoresis stumbles upon the following problem: if Democritus was a rationalist, then the question arises how his rationalism can be reconciled with his alleged belief that Homer deliberately disguised his poems as allegorical prefigurations of various Democritean views. Indeed, one may legitimately ask how rational it would be on Democritus’ part to ascribe to Homer the intention of being interpreted as a precursor of atomist philosophy. The purpose of the present paper is to shed some light on this conundrum and to offer a reconsideration of certain accounts that have been suggested so far.

As the plan of the Oxford Bibliotheca does not allow an editor to justify his treatment of a text in detail, it is inevitable that misunderstandings should arise, and I see that even a competent Platonic scholar like C. Ritter has missed the point more than once in his recent Bericht (Jahresber. für Altertumsw., Vol. CLVII., 1912, 1). I make no complaint of that–it was inevitable–but I feel bound to put on record my views on at least the more important problems suggested by the text. First, however, I must say something about the MSS. and the use which I have made of them.

The problem of man's early existence and of the value of culture is discussed in one of the post-classical tragedies, and the answer given is definitely anti-primitivistic.

The longest and most remarkable of Moschion's fragments deals with man's development (fr. 6 N2/Sn., ap. Stob. 1. 8. 38) and runs to 33 well-constructed iambics containing throughout not a single resolved foot. It is uncertain whether Moschion belongs to the fourth or third century b.c. Nevertheless, his account is consistent with the conscious affirmations of progress which were widely attested in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.

A new look at Thucydides’ account of the debate at Sparta motivating the Spartan declaration of war (1.67–88) may provide a footnote to valuable past discussion. Chief concerns about the debate have always been (1) the uniqueness of the four-speech set-up; (2) the oddity of an Athenian embassy in attendance at a Peloponnesian League meeting; and (3) the unlikelihood that any detailed report of speeches made to the Peloponnesian League or Spartan assembly came to Athens. Thucydides' judgement concerning the cause of the Peloponnesian War is far more likely to have been based on his knowledge of past and present relations between Athens and Sparta and members of the Peloponnesian League (Ξυμπ⋯σα γνώμη) than on any information about an actual debate (τ⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς λɛχθ⋯ντα). But for τ⋯ δ⋯oντα he needed a confrontation which would not only dramatize both opposition I and characters of Sparta and Athens but also put them in historical context, that is, in their Persian War roles as recorded by Herodotus. Only in this way is it possible to explain peculiarities of this confrontation which appear to duplicate characteristics of the Herodotean debate involving Athens and Sparta before the battle of Plataea. Thuc. 1.67–88 is like Hdt. 8.140–4 in comprising four speeches of which the first (A) 1 is answered by the third (Cl) and the second (B) is answered by the fourth (C2). In each case Cl and C2 are spoken by representatives of a single people: with the Athenians in Herodotus’ debate answering two different peoples, and with two different Spartans in Thucydides answering two different peoples.

The difficulty of τєἠν at 8 is notorious, and it has never been answered. The word refers back to Apollo, who has been invoked in the first line, but ‘it is not in accord with epic convention that, after the invocation, reference should be made to it’ (Seaton, CR xxviii [1914], 17). I suggest that we simply should not expect Apollonius to conform to the conventions of older epic: he does not do so in a number of other important respects. One is reminded here of the nervous restlessness of Callimachean poetry, particularly Cer. 25. There the goddess is addressed out of the blue with τìν δ’ αύτᾳ, and emendation is unconvincing. Perhaps τєἠν in Apollonius is even more abrupt than the example in Callimachus. Yet Apollonius seems on many occasions to carry further the devices of his master. The astonishing parenthesis at 1. 623 f. is a good example (for Callimachus see Lapp, De Call. Cyr. Tropis et Figuris (1965), 52 f, F. Bornmann, Call. Hymnus in Dianam, 1–li).

The Turin manuscript containing the first three books of Oppian' Halieutica was almost completely destroyed in the fire of 1904, but a collation of it has recently come to light. In 1811 the noted classical scholar and Orientalist Vittorio Amedeo Peyron collated the manuscript against Schneider' first edition of the poem (Strasbourg, 1776) and also transcribed the scholia. He sent his results to Schneider for use in the preparation of his second edition (Leipzig, 1813), but they apparently arrived too late. Although the original plan of this second edition called for the inclusion of the scholia, Schneider published only a text of the poem and turned over his materials on the scholia to G. H. Schaefer, including no doubt Peyron' collation of the Turin manuscript. Schaefer never did manage to produce his edition of the scholia and in some unknown way Peyron' collation and some of the other material came on to the open market in 1969.

It has been known for many years that inscriptions in the Arcadian dialect contain a considerable number of words which occur commonly in the Homeric poems and rarely, if at all, elsewhere. The first attempt at a complete list was made by Otto Hoffmann in Die grieckischen Dialekte, I. pp. 276–278. He gives as Homeric αἶσα (‘share’), βóλομαι νυ ⋯πυέσΘω, ⋯ρτύω ⋯σκηΘές, δεάτοι, δ⋯μα, 'EἙκατόνβοια and 'Eκατόμβοια, hίκοντα, κελεύθω, μέστ', πληθύς, and πλός. Buck, in Greek Dialects, p. 132, added εùΧωλά and ἆμαρ and we might with as much justification add ἒρπειν λεύσοντες and λεύσοντες. In each case a Homeric word, unusual in later Greek except in verse, is used in ordinary Arcadian epigraphic prose.

Vernae—often but not exclusively taken to be home-born slaves—are usually thought to have had a privileged role within the ancient Roman household. While previous studies have highlighted how these individuals were represented with affection or as surrogate members of the freeborn family, this article uses epigraphic evidence from Pompeii to argue that the reality for at least some vernae was much more grim. A full examination of Pompeian attestations of the word verna reveals that there was a connection to prostitution in over seventy per cent of extant appearances of the noun. Furthermore, contextualizing this phenomenon within the corpus of prostitution-related graffiti more broadly reveals that verna was the single most commonly used descriptor in advertisements for sexual services at Pompeii. Ultimately, the epigraphic evidence from Pompeii suggests that vernae were not safe from sexual exploitation, and it may have been their status as vernae that made them attractive to those wishing to purchase sex.

This article investigates the semantics and pragmatics of the ‘hortative’ aorist (the aorist indicative in questions with τί οὐ ‘why don't …’) and the ‘tragic’ or ‘performative’ aorist (for example ὤμοσα ‘I swear’). Lloyd argued in 1999 that the tragic aorist is a more polite alternative for the corresponding present (ὄμνυμι ‘I swear’). Recently, he has extended this view to the hortative aorist, suggesting that, for example, τί οὐκ ἐκαλέσαμεν; is a polite alternative for τί οὐ καλοῦμεν; Lloyd argues that the politeness value of the aorist derives from its being a past tense, comparing the so-called ‘attitudinal’ past (as in I wanted to ask you something instead of I want to ask you something). The present article, building on work by Colvin, Bary and Nijk, argues instead that the semantic value of the aorist is purely aspectual in these cases: the hortative and tragic aorists serve to construe the designated event as bounded, while the corresponding present forms serve to construe the designated event as unbounded. An extensive discussion of the evidence for the hortative aorist and present is presented, as well as a case study concerning the aspectual behaviour of the verb ὄμνυμι. Moreover, I argue that the proposed semantic account of the hortative and tragic aorists in terms of aspect can be unified with Lloyd's pragmatic account in terms of politeness: the difference in tone between the present and the aorist can be derived from their respective aspectual values, rather than from their temporal values.