M. Finley in a well-known and influential article, established the theory that the bridegroom (or the potential suitors) offered gifts to the bride's father, which had their recompense in a counter-gift or dowry to the groom and the bride; these gifts must be equal in value.

The influence which the Pythagorean society and its leading doctrines exercised upon Athenian intellectual and political developments in the late fifth century leads us to seek in Pythagoras a figure of greater stature and more clear-cut features than modern scholarship is prepared to allow. To us he is a great name but little more, the large body of detailed information about his life which is available in later writers being dismissed as fabulous. This scepticism was reasonable enough when the reader was faced with the garbled hotchpotch of an Iamblichus or a Porphyry. But since the task has been put in hand of determining what portions of this tradition can safely be attributed to the various authorities who concerned themselves with the Pythagorean story in the fourth century, and of considering the respective historical value of these authorities, the scepticism of, for example, Burnet's account becomes unjustified. It is now possible to present a fairly detailed account of Pythagoras' activity, which has at least as much claim to credence as a great deal of what we now readily accept as ancient history, and is furthermore consistent with the general picture of the man that emerges from a careful scrutiny of classical sources. Not only for its own sake, but in the context of the increasingly fruitful investigation of fifth-century Athenian movements, I feel that it may be useful to put together such an account of Pythagoras. It will certainly be regarded by some as mere fiction, but may nevertheless provide others with a convenient summary of what the fifth- and fourth-century writers thought and believed about a man and a movement that had profound influence upon their times. I hope at the same time to suggest some links between what Pythagoras thought and did and the main tradition of Greek social behaviour. If Pythagoras was, as I believe, not so much an innovator as a reformer and developer of some of the central institutions of Greek life, the possibility will be opened of regarding various phenomena in mainland Greece which we have been asked to call Pythagorean, e.g. the Socratic phrontisterion as it appears in the Clouds, not as deriving from Pythagoras but as a parallel growth to the Pythagorean synedria and nourished by the same root.

In discussions of the complex and controversial problem of Spartan land-tenure,1 the mysterious ‘ρχαῖα μοῖρα’ (archaia moira) has assumed an importance out of all proportion to its prominence in the sources, for the actual phrase only occurs once in extant literature. It owes its importance to the fact that the reference to it has been used to support the theory that there were two categories of land in Sparta, a theory which in turn is held to explain how, when all Spartans supposedly owned equal estates, there could nevertheless be rich ones and poor ones, as authors such as Herodotos, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Aristotle make clear. The answer, it is claimed, is that although all Spartans possessed an equal share of one category of land, they could own more or less of the other category.2

The following quotations will show what is thought about the origin and extension of the name Chalkidike and the work of Euboean Chalkis in those parts:—

‘The barren islands of Sciathus and Peparethus were the bridge from Euboea to the coast of Macedonia, which, between the rivers Axius and Strymon, runs out into a huge three-pronged promontory. Here Chalcis planted so many towns that the whole promontory was named Chalcidice.’ ‘The whole peninsula was called Chalkidike, and the Greeks in it were comprised under the name of the Thracian Chalkidians.’

Some passages of Herodotus and Thucydides led me to suspect that Chalkis took but a minor part, if any, in the colonization of this region; that the area of the Chalkidians of Thrace was comparatively small; that the name was confined to this area; and that these Chalkidians were not colonists from the cities of southern Greece, but, like their neighbours the Bottiaioi, a tribe. Further enquiry, though it has strengthened these suspicions, has not established them beyond doubt; but it seems to me worth while to set out the evidence, in the hope that others may throw light on a question of some importance for the history of Greece. At least I may expect that in future ‘Chalkidike’ and ‘Chalkidians’ will be used with care.

This is the text of II. 18.603–6, the final scene on the Shield of Achilles, as presented unanimously by our manuscript tradition, five Vulgate papyri from the first to the sixth century A.D., our scholia, and in a quotation in Dionysius of Halicarnassus.1 As is well-known, a much discussed and contentious textual problem raised by Wolf2 is lurking behind it. It is prompted by a passage in Athenaeus providing an additional line after which mentions an and hisDiscussions of the controversial Iliad passage have concentrated on the authenticity of the information given by Athenaeus.3 This focus, I suggest, has been unduly narrow, and has led either to a neglect of other pieces of evidence or to a wrong assessment of their importance. I therefore propose to tackle the problem with a different strategy. Let us erase from our memories the very existence of Athenaeus' information for a while, and reconsider the passage in question accordingly.

Posidonivs was fortunate to be born in an age when the Romans had begun to recognize their own intellectual limitations, and had turned for guidance to a hitherto despised nation, admitted by themselves to be as much their superior in originality as it was inferior to them in practical matters. He was, moreover, the official exponent of a philosophical system which, destined as it was to exercise for hundreds of years the strongest moral influence over the world, had already taken a firm hold on the more thoughtful minds at Rome. Probably any Greek teacher of ability had, in the time of Cicero, a good chance to make a name; Posidonius, who was a man of considerable intellectual gifts, great learning, and some originality, and who was, moreover, the accredited successor to Zeno and Chrysippus, obtained a reputation which lasted for some centuries.

The private physicians of the Roman emperors with the exception of Galen are shadowy figures whose origins, friends, and political influence can only rarely be glimpsed. G. Stertinius Xenophon obtained immunity from taxation for his native island of Cos, and ‘L’. Statilius Griton may have secured certain privileges from Trajan for the Museum of Ephesus, but these are isolated instances. Their social position is similarly hard to define: no doctor entered the senate and equestrian rank was the most that could be obtained. But, if social prejudices prevented them from becoming senators, their descendants were free from such restraints, and in the turbulent Roman society of the late second century upward mobility was not difficult.

Nonnus, as well as being soaked in Homer and, no doubt, earlier epics on his particular theme (enough survives of Dionysius, Bassarica, to show the debt), had a great affection for the Hellenistic master—above all Callimachus, Apollonius, Theocritus, and Euphorion. For this reason he can provide valuable help towards the study of fragments and new papyri. Pfeiffer, in his edition of the Callimachus fragments, is of course fully alive to this point, and regularly quotes Nonnus. From the other side there is a useful collection of parallels in Keydell's Dtonysiaca (1959) and the new Nonnus lexicon (ed. Werner Peek) will be invaluable, though not a complete substitute for actually reading the poem because imitation need not involve more than a small amount of verbal reminiscence.

Probably no Greek tragedy has proved as rich a source of perplexity, theory, and debate as the Antigone. A number of the formidable problems which various critics have seen in the play emerge from the two watchman scenes and the great ode which separates them. It will be argued here that these difficulties are the result of certain radical misunderstandings and are capable of straightforward solution.

At a point not long after Anytus has been introduced in Plato's dialogue, Meno, we learn two things in particular: (i) that good and virtuous men often have despicable sons, despite their efforts to give them the finest educations (91a–95a), and (ii) that public affairs are not governed by knowledge; Athenian statesmen and those who elect them are ignorant even though they sometimes might get lucky and rule by true opinion (96d–99d).

In her Greek and Roman Sundials (New Haven and London, 1976), Sharon Gibbs discusses (pp.105–17) with success the identification of the archaeological finds of ancient sundials with the description of the types given briefly by Vitruvius (De Arcbitectura, IX.8.1). There is, however, an important piece of evidence from another ancient literary source which, though it does not alter her conclusions, ought to be added and clarified.

It hardly needs to be said that the parallel between mental and physical health plays an important part in Plato's moral philosophy. One of the central claims of the Republicis that justice is to the soul what health is to the body (443b–444e).1 Similar points are made in other dialogues.2 This analogy between health and sickness on the one hand and virtue and vice on the other is closely connected to the so–called Socratic paradoxes. Throughout his life Plato seems to have clung in some sense to the ideas that justice is our greatest good, that the unjust man is correspondingly miserable and that no one is therefore willingly unjust. It follows from these ideas that the unjust man, like the sick man, is in a wretched state which is not of his own choosing.

The myths which Plutarch has included, after the Platonic manner, in his dialogues de sera numinis vindicta, de genio Socratts, and de facie in orbe lunae constitute our main source for his views on the nature and fate of the soul. But before we use this material in the reconstruction of Plutarch's philosophy we must come to some conclusion on the question how Plutarch intended the myths to be regarded. Did he mean the peculiar doctrine of the nature of the soul expressed in the myths of the de genio and the de facie and implied in the myth of the de vindicta to be taken seriously, and is there any criterion which will enable us to answer this question? The object of this paper is to suggest that such a criterion may be found by examining the relation of the myth of the de facie to theTimaeus of Plato.

Rome and Carthage had established peaceful diplomatic relations before 300 b.c. — as early as the close of the sixth century according to Polybius, whose dating there no longer seems good cause to doubt. A second treaty was struck probably in 348. Both dealt essentially with traders' and travellers' obligations and entitlements, so any military or political terms sprang from that context. In both, the Carthaginians agreed to hand over any independent town they captured in Latium. In the first treaty they were not to establish a fort in Latium either; in the second, the Romans were not to found a city in Carthaginian Africa, Spain or Sardinia.

But independent military considerations are the stuff of a third treaty concluded during Rome's war with Pyrrhus. Rome and Carthage now pledged each other military aid in certain circumstances, as we shall see. And ‘geopolitical’ concerns of a very broad kind imbued a treaty which was reported by the third-century historian Philinus of Agrigentum. By this, he stated, ‘the Romans must keep out of the whole of Sicily, the Carthaginians out of Italy’ (ἔδει Ῥωμαίους μ⋯ν ⋯πέχεσθαι Σικελίας ⋯πάσης, Καρχηδονίους δ' Ἰταλίας). This is Polybius' citation of Philinus' allegation; Polybius himself then roundly rejects the very existence of such a pact and declares himself at a loss to understand how his predecessor could record it, but modern scholarship is no longer all that ready to accept his view. A strong majority of historians prefer to follow the Agrigentine, and many see 306 b.c. as the likely year for the agreement because Livy records a ‘renewal’ then of a foedus with Carthage (without giving details).

Julius Tomin has recently questioned the new orthodoxy, stemming from Burnyeat's impressive article, that Socratic midwifery is not genuinely Socratic. I understand that many will feel the need to question Burnyeat's position, but I am unhappy that Aristophanes' comedy has once again been thought to give support to the view that Socrates had been known as an intellectual midwife. Thus my response will concentrate on our understanding of Clouds, and in particular on the key passage at 135ff.

A neglected source for the text of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is to be found in the writings of the Byzantine theologian Joseph Bryennius, who seems to have been born about 1350 (details of his early life are obscure) and to have died before the Council of Florence (1438), probably in 1430/1. He was a monk who was also a scholar, a theologian, and an ecclesiastical diplomat. He spent the years 1382–1402 in Crete (then under Venetian rule), and was sent in 1406 on a mission of ecclesiastical diplomacy to Cyprus. Otherwise the greater part of his life was spent in Constantinople; from about 1402 to 1406 he lived at the monastery of Stoudios, from 1416 to 1427 at that of Charsianeites. He was a court preacher, and as a theologian upheld the claims of the Greek Church against the Roman; among his published works are twenty-one Discourses on the Trinity maintaining the Greek Orthodox position.