The cento of Proba has recently enjoyed a remarkable upsurge of scholarly interest. A welcome translation was provided in 1981, and an article of five years later, scrutinizing the evidence for its date and authorship, has aroused much controversy. In two recent contributions vindicating the traditional date new or more precise suggestions have been made about the poem's historical context. In between these, yet another article has argued, without confirming or refuting the revised dating and attribution, that in various ways the work reflects the interest of the aristocratic ladies of the Anician family. And now there is a second article by Danuta Shanzer, repeating many of her early points (not always with greater clarity) and adding some interesting new ones. All this sudden attention is not unmerited, for as Herzog observed long ago the work is not of the comic or trivializing kind that Ausonius envisaged in his comments on the genre and does not degrade Vergil but rather, at least in the often quoted words of its prefatory poem, ‘improves’ him.

Despite its often daunting obscurity, the ‘Hippocratic’ treatise De Victu is a text of particular interest, not only because it presents the first clear formulation in an entirely preserved Greek text of the microcosm–macrocosm relationship but also for the sophisticated use it makes of this pervasive pattern of Greek thought in the context of dietetics.

Hannibal's trek through western Europe has fascinated ancient and modern historians alike. Although most attention has been focused on determining his route through the Alps, a less popular question, the site of his Rhône crossing, has been by no means neglected. Many scholars have offered differing solutions to this problem, but all agree on one point: that Hannibal transported his elephants across the Rhône by raft. No doubt this consensus stems from the fact that both Polybius and Livy, who give almost identical versions of the crossing, agree on this mode of transport. But an analysis of their accounts will show that the use of rafts was neither necessary nor desirable and that a more likely method is contained in an alternative version that Livy records, then rejects in favour of Polybius' account.

The only evidence we have concerning the date of Porphyry's is that it was written during his stay in Sicily, which lasted from 268 until his return to Rome after Plotinus’ death in 270. How soon after is unknown. Castricius’ lapse from the vegetarianism of the Plotinian school and Porphyry's attempt to recall him to the fold with De Abstinentia should presumably be placed after Plotinus’ death, and Porphyry was still in Sicily at the time. Cassius Longinus’ letter from Phoenicia, apparently written after Plotinus’ death, seems to have found Porphyry still in Sicily. Thus he may still have been there in 271, or possibly even later. There is nothing to support the common view that he returned to Rome immediately or even soon after Plotinus’ death.

[Lichas] ‘videbatur mihi secundum quietem Priapus dicere: “Encolpion quod quaeris, scito a me in navem tuam esse perductum”.’ exhorruit Tryphaena et ‘putes’ inquit ‘una nos dormiisse; nam et mihi simulacrum Neptuni, quod Bais <in> tetrastylo notaveram, videbatur dicere: “in nave Lichae Gitona invenies”.’ ‘hinc scies’ inquit Eumolpus ‘Epicurum hominem esse divinum, qui eiusmodi ludibria facetissima ratione condemnat.’ <*> ceterum Lichas ut Tryphaenae somnium expiavit: ‘quis’ inquit ‘prohibet navigium scrutari, ne videamur divinae mentis opera damnare?’

(Petr. Sal. 104.1–4)

Priapus and Epicurus have frequently been claimed to be major influences, each in their particular way, on the plot and composition of the Satyrica.

The view that Pausanias 9. 13. 1–15. 6 is a simple epitome of Plutarch's lost Epaminondas, first advanced by Wilamowitz in 1874 and later elaborated by Wilamowitz himself and by Ludwig Peper, has commonly been accepted, with little or no further discussion, by students of Plutarch, Pausanias and fourth-century history. In a recent general reaffirmation of the thesis John Buckler does note that what Pausanias says about Mantinea is hard to square with Plutarchan evidence and he therefore admits some contamination of the hypothetical source with non-Plutarchan material. But Buckler's discussion of the matter within the framework of a book on the Theban hegemony is necessarily brief and somewhat unsystematic, and may be thought over-ready to assume Plutarchan connections where none can be demonstrated. The purpose of this paper is to show that the Wilamowitz/Peper hypothesis in its pure form (as accepted apparently by such authorities as Ziegler and Sandbach) cannot reasonably be sustained, that at the very least some degree of contamination must be presumed, and that the existence of a direct connection between Pausanias and Plutarch can hardly be regarded as established beyond reasonable doubt.

This paper is primarily an attempt to study the Homeric evidence on houses, particularly on the , in relation to the relevant remains. The reverse procedure, illuminating the archaeological evidence by references to Homer, is a hazardous one, as we shall see. It is often unclear just what is represented by the descriptions in the poems, and what period, if any, the things described belong to. I shall be concerned with these questions here. Are the houses in the poems Mycenaean: genuine traditions from the period in which the stories are set? Or are they Geometric: contemporary? Or a memory of some time in between? Or a mixture? We know so little about the development of the epic tradition that any possible source of information is worth pursuing.

In 204 B.c. Pleminius, after perpetrating appalling atrocities at Locri, was sent back to Rome, and his fate is described at Livy 29.22.7–10

One of the most interesting recent attempts to interpret the peculiarities of Plotinus's philosophy is that of Bréhier in his ‘La Philosophie de Plotin’(Bibl. de la Revue des Cours et Conférences, Boivin, Paris, 1928). His thesis, contained in the last four chapters of the work, is that Plotinus, instead of being simply the continuator of the Greek rationalist tradition, is the founder of modern European Idealism, or, perhaps more accurately, Pantheism. ‘Avec Plotin nous saisissons done le premier chatnon d'une tradition religieuse qui n'est pas moins puissante au fond en Occident que la tradition chretienne …’. He is the spiritual ancestor of Spinoza and Hegel. It is interesting in passing to compare this view with that of Dean Inge, for whom Plotinus is the spiritual begetter of S. Thomas Aquinas. The divergences of modern interpreters of the Plotinian metaphysic are often both amusing and suggestive.

In a masterly study of the language and motifs of Theocritus’ Thalysia, Dr. G. Giangrande has demonstrated that what the poem relates is the mock-investiture of Simichidas, the naïve young townsman and littérateur, performed with almost malicious irony by the goatherd Lycidas, who sees through, and ridicules, Simichidas’ rustic and poetic pretensions.1 My object in this paper is to examine, in the light of Giangrande's findings, some aspects of the presentation of Lycidas; this examination will, I believe, enable us to bring the poem into still sharper focus.

During the entire period of the creative activity of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, tragic playwrights were required to enter the dramatic competition at the Dionysia with tetralogies consisting of three tragedies followed by a satyr play. This last was a comparatively short mythological travesty, a , 2 that received its name because its chorus is invariably composed of satyrs:3 comical half-men, half-beasts who regularly embody a wide range of shortcomings but nevertheless are possessed of a mysterious fund of knowledge and wisdom.

I. The present paper was read as one of ‘Three Notes of Doubt and One of Despair’ at the Oxford Philological Society in June 1948. Generally speaking, there is nothing to be said in favour of publishing an article on a text one is admittedly unable to under-stand. But in this case it has seemed advisable to start a discussion. I am therefore grateful to my friend P. Fraser for having consented to communicate his thoughts on the matter in an appendix to my note. We both hope that other scholars will be able to provide the satisfactory solution that has escaped us. Meanwhile we thank P. Maas, C. H. Roberts, and H. M. Last for their great help.

In recent years a great deal of scholarly and philosophical discussion has been devoted to the interpretation and evaluation of the regress arguments which Parmenides is made to deploy against the theory of Ideas in the first part of the dialogue which takes its name from him. By contrast, scarcely anything has been written about the infinite regress argument which Parmenides presents at the start of the second of the deductions which make up the dialogue's second part. Yet while it may contain less to reward the philosopher than the earlier regresses, it can hardly fail to perplex the scholar.

Plato in his discussion of the Divided Line (Republic 6) introduces a distinction between knowledge of the Forms in and by themselves () and . The first distinguishing characteristic of is that it ‘is compelled to employ assumptions, while knowledge of the Forms tries to advance to a certain first principle’ (510 b 4–9). The second distinguishing characteristic of is that it employs the ordinary objects of sense-perception as images (510 d 5–511 a 1). The geometer, in order to find out about ‘the Square’ and ‘theDiagonal’, draws diagrams and makes models.

Here Ovid treats the demiurge's disposition of weightless aether over the other elements. This section of the cosmogony follows one that is devoted to the sphere of aer (52–66) where the creator settles the turbulent winds and other threatening meteorological phenomena. Recently Denis Feeney has suggested that Ovid's demiurge ‘does not act in a very epic manner’ by placing weightless aether on top of the winds. He argues: ‘The oddness of the control is caught in a moment of comparison with Vergil's universe: Vergil's Jupiter controls the winds by putting on top of them a mass of mountains(Aen. 1.61), while Ovid's mundi fabricator places above them the aether, explicitly “liquid and lacking weight, containing nothing of earthly sediment” (liquidum et gravitate carentem / aethera nee quicquam terrenae faecis habentem, 1.67–8)’. Feeney's observation has much to recommend it. To begin with, Ovid's excursus on the cardinal winds (57–66) evokes Vergil's set piece on the cave of Aeolus in Aeneid l. And the demiurge's subsequent placement of aether (‘haec super inposuit liquidum et gravitate carentem / aethera’) seems to echo the action of the Vergilian Jupiter(‘hoc metuens molemque et montis insuper altos / imposuit,’ Aen. 1.61–2). However, Feeney's conclusion that the demiurge's action is ‘redolent of anti-epic allegiances’ needs some adjustment.4 For his reading neglects an important verbal and structural allusion to the cosmogony of Lucretius (D.R.N. 5.495–501). Accordingly, the conclusion to be drawn from lines 67–8 may be, not that Ovid momentarily reveals his Callimachean colours in an epic context, but that he plays Lucretius off against Vergil and so establishes his own position in the epic tradition of cosmological poetry.