These lines conclude the speech of Pompey to Cornelia when she met him on the shore of Lesbos after the disaster of Pharsalia. This speech Mr. Heitland in his excellent Introduction to Haskins' Lucan has stigmatised as ‘abominable’.1 So far as the bulk of the speech is concerned a plea may perhaps be urged in mitigation of this judgment. Cornelia has completely broken down at the sight of her unfortunate husband, and his first object should be to restore her to herself. For this purpose, as all, not excluding Lucan, know, a tone of sharp chiding would be most effectual, and we learn from the sequel that it succeeded : ‘uocibus his correpta uiri uix aegra leuauit | membra solo’ (86 sq.). For the crude brutality of the statement in the last four words there is however no excuse. But happily it is not to be charged to Pompey or to Lucan, but to the editions. We should punctuate:

quod defies, illud amasti?

2. Vv. 155 sqq.

tanto deuinxit amore

hos pudor hos probitas castique modestia uoltus

quod submissa nimis nulli grauis hospita turbae

stantis adhuc fati uixit quasi coniuge uicto.

Two inscriptions, one (A) found at Tylissos on Crete, the other (B) found at Argos, both dated about 450, concern relations between Argos and the Cretan towns of Knossos and its smaller neighbour, Tylissos. The close relationship between the treaties of fragment A and fragment B – and therefore the interconnection among Argos, Knossos, and Tylissos – seems generally recognized by scholars. The articles of the agreement lay down a diverse and complex set of arrangements among the three parties, but as a whole, the treaty has been interpreted in two ways: (1) the three πóλεις have entered into some sort of federal union; (2) only Argos and Knossos are signatories to the treaty, while Tylissos is a dependency of Argos. The former interpretation has gained wider acceptance than the latter, and if it is correct, just such a federal union would represent a remarkable advance in the development of Greek political institutions. In this paper we shall press a philological point based upon the information we have both from the treaty and from contemporary sources, and in so doing, we shall attempt to show that a federal union is unlikely. We shall then offer our own interpretation of the regulations governing the insular cities with regard to the formation of alliances and the declaration of friends and enemies.

If we reject τις, which appears only in derivative manuscripts, then the sentence is notable in the following ways. First, the position of τι—not that it separates ἕκαστος from ὑμν, but because (a) we expect it, if present at all, to appear as πρός ὃ τι … and (b) ἓαστός τι in itself is a conspicuously discordant juxtaposition—hence presumably the corruption to ἓαστός τις. Second, the sense: the sentence must surely mean not that each juryman has a criterion, but that each has a different criterion, that he would like to see satisfied.

To ensnare the sophist of the Sophist in a definition disclosing him as a purveyor of images and falsehoods Plato must block the sophistical defence that image and falsehood are self-contradictory in concept, for they both embody the proposition proscribed by Parmenides — ‘What is not, is’. It has been assumed that Plato regards this defence as depending on a reading of ‘what is not’ (to mē on) in its very strongest sense, where it is equivalent to ‘what is not in any way’ (to mēdamōs on) or ‘nothing’. Likewise, the initial paradoxes of not-being (237b–239c) are seen as requiring that to mē on be understood in this way, that later designated by Plato (257b, 258e–259a) as the opposite of to on or ‘being’. On this interpretation, Plato's counter-strategy is to recognise a use of to mē on which is not opposed in this strict sense to being, but is indeed a part of it and is ‘being other than’.

In a stimulating article, R. W. Jordan challenges this account. I shall briefly attempt to show that his objections are not decisive and that his own interpretation is open to question.

Jordan makes the interesting suggestion (p. 120) that a distinction between two senses of not-being, where one is equivalent to nothing and one is not, dates from the middle dialogues — particularly from Republic V, where objects of agnoia are mēdamē onta and objects of doxa are both onta and mē onta. He concludes (p. 121), ‘Malcolm's view, then, seems to amount to this: that Plato is now extending the moral he draws about objects of belief (i.e. particulars) in the Republic to cover forms. Forms too now are seen to be both being and notbeing.’

The reputation Theologoumena Arithmeticae has acquired is largely that of being an odd, and frequently opaque, compilation of arithmological lore. As a sourcebook for this aspect of the Pythagorean tradition it is, of course, invaluable. However, its poor reputation is increased, and its historical value lessened, by the depredations time has wrought on the text. ThA was never great prose: it is a compilation, largely from the lost Theologoumena Arithmeticae of Nicomachus of Gerasa and from Anatolius' Peri Dekados; and the text which cannot be safely or conjecturally assigned to these two sources often reads like little more than the written-up notes of some student. However, the treatise contains passages of considerable lucidity, within the context of its peculiar framework.

Cicero's discussion of wit in the de oratore includes an entertaining story about Ennius and a certain Nasica (whom it is almost certainly wasted energy to attempt to identify) (2.275–6): ‘Valde haec ridentur et hercule omnia quae a prudentibus per simulationem subabsurde salseque dicuntur. Ex quo genere est etiam non videri intellegere quod intellegas… ut illud Nasicae, qui cum ad poetam Ennium venisset eique ab ostio quaerenti Ennium ancilla dixisset domi non esse, Nasica sensit illam domini iussu dixisse et ilium intus esse; paucis post diebus cum ad Nasicam venisset Ennius et eum ad ianuam quaereret, exclamat Nasica domi non esse, turn Ennius “quid? ego non cognosco vocem” inquit “tuam?” Hic Nasica “homo es impudens:ego cum te quaererem ancillae tuae credidi te domi non esse, tu mihi non credis ipsi?”’ This anecdote, devitalized by its divorce from a well–known name, finds a place in the Philogelos, a compendium of jokes compiled in late antiquity and ascribed to the otherwise unidentifiable Hierocles and Philagrius, (193): Δύσκολόν τις ζἠτει. δ πεκρίνατο∼ Ούκ εἰμì ὧδε. τοû δ γελσαντος καì εἰπόντος∼ Ψεύδῃ∼ τς γρ φωνς σου κούω – εἶπεν∼ ῏Ω κθαπμα, εἰ μέν δολός μου εἶπχες ἂν αὐτῷ πιστεσαι∼ γὼ δ σοι οὐ φαίνομαι ξιοπιστότερος κείνου εἶναι

This passage has occasioned, if not proelia, at least divergent interpretations, not to mention instances of tergiversation. In 1910 Cyril Bailey modelled his first rendering of the lines closely on that of H. A. J. Munro: ‘But unless the breast is cleared, what battles and dangers must enter into us in our own despite’; ‘but unless the heart is cleansed, what battles and dangers must then find their way into us in our own despite’. But a reprint of Bailey's translation in 1921 produced the following change: ‘…what battles and perils must we then enter into despite our will’. What changed Bailey's mind?

The explanation appeared years later in Bailey's great edition and commentary of 1947. In his note on the passage (p. 1328), he cites objections to Munro's interpretation that had been raised by C. N. Cole and W. R. Hardie. In this paper I will examine these objections and present my own interpretation of the passage, which amounts to a qualified vindication of Munro.

On November 8, 1894, I read before the Cambridge Philological Society a paper in which the reading and the interpretation of this passage were discussed at length. A brief report of the paper was published in the Proceedings of the Society, Nos. 37–39, p. 16; and the cardinal correction (in v. 274) was received into the text of the Fasti which Professor G. A. Davies published in the Corpus Poetarum Latinorum. The Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society are indeed now among the periodical publications of which the Bibliotheca Philologica Classica takes account: but an acquaintance with their earlier numbers is the privilege of the elect, and the sole mention of the correction that I have seen is an entry in the diligent summary of Ovidian literature in the Jahresbericht vol. 109 p. 282 which runs as follows ‘VI 247 ut tangat ( = Text; st. et t. unnötig).’ Whether the correction is ‘needless’ is not for me to say; but there is excuse for thinking that those who wish to form a judgment on its character will not deem it needless to have the evidence before them.

The ancient tradition is strong that the execution of M. Marius Gratidianus during the Sullan proscriptions was carried out by L. Sergius Catilina. The earliest evidence comes from several passages in Cicero's speech in toga candida, delivered just before the consular elections in 64 and designed to rake up as much prejudice as possible against his two main rival candidates, Catilina and C. Antonius (Hybrida). While in none of the passages does Cicero specifically mention the executioner or the victim, it is Asconius commenting on the passages (which are preserved for us as lemmata in his commentary on the speech) who reveals that Catilina was the executioner and Marius Gratidianus the victim. We do not have a great deal of the speech in toga candida left (and we are indebted to Asconius for what we do have of it); if we did have the whole speech, it is clear that we would have been given the name by Cicero himself.

The Ciceronian version (if that term may be used for convenience) is that the head of Gratidianus was cut off by Catilina, carried in his hands through the city from the Janiculum to the temple of Apollo, and delivered to Sulla still full of life and breath. This version is followed by Plutarch (Sull. 32.2). A variation can be found, as early as Sallust (and so for convenience it may be called the Sallustian version — not that the two versions are necessarily to be regarded as mutually exclusive). There is a fragment of the historiae which says that Gratidianus died after his arms and legs had been broken and his eyes gouged out, so that he expired as it were through each and every limb. There is nothing about his head being cut off and carried about, nor is there any mention of Catilina as the executioner. While the details of the torture and mutilation become progressively more gory, this version is followed by Livy (per. 88), Valerius Maximus (9.2.1), Lucan (2.173–93), and Florus (2.9.26 = 3.21.26).

29–33. Phaedra's ἒρως must at first (at Athens) have been without betraying symptoms, by contrast with the change at Trozen to symptoms of νόσος (still unexplained) as described in 34–40. We need to be told that explicitly, in preparation (μέν) for 34ff. (ἐπєὶδὲ…) and in conjunction with the potentially revealing foundation of a temple to Aphrodite. We therefore need not only Jortin's ὀνομάσουσιν for ὠνόμαζєν in 33, but also my ἂδηλον for ἒκδηλον (v.l. ἒκδηλον) in 32. The nearby ἒκδηλον in 37 will have played a part in the corruption.

In response to Iolaus' cry for help, the chorus in Held, enter at a run (βοηδροµοντεс cf. 121), and the Parodos takes a form appropriate to that. Instead of choral song-and-dance, what follows, after an exceptionally brief non-strophic ‘entry’-passage, is an amoibaion first between the Chorus-leader and Iolaus, then between the Chorus-leader and the Herald, musical only as featuring some ‘half-chanted’ sequences in the Chorus-leader's utterances.

Porphyry's Life of Plotinus is the earliest extant memoir of a philosopher by his pupil. Historians of philosophy have embraced it as a key to the intellectual development of Plotinus, while historians of the third century have found it an invaluable supplement to the fragmentary records of this era. Yet few have cared to read it as an original work of literature, or even as the mature work of a scholar and philosopher who for centuries eclipsed his master in influence, if not in reputation. In consequence, attention has not been paid to certain striking peculiarities in Porphyry's selection and arrangement of materials, which, if studied, will shed light on the form and purpose of the whole biography. This article is devoted to a strange chapter which, as in any ancient writing, we should expect to be the most instructive because it is the first.

CO. Brink's discussion of these lines takes five pages in the body of his commentary, and is continued in an appendix of nine pages at the end. But the passage has for so long caused such sore vexation that his treatment of it seems actually compendious rather than long, and deserves our gratitude. With the main part of his solution, which is to understand communia as ‘generalities to which individual features must be given’ (p. 196), I fully agree.

In my previous article I argued that certain of the later MSS. of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and especially those which I call Class I., are to a large extent descended from a lost copy of F, made before the rent was torn in Book VIII., and therefore before the writing of ϕ; and I inferred that it was likely that the evidence of these MSS. would prove a valuable addition to that of ϕ in places where F is now illegible. In the following pages I shall prove that this hope has been fulfilled.