The fragmentary columns of the Fourth Book of Philodemus' περ μονσικς were the first-fruits of Herculaneum, published in 1793, with venturesome reconstructions and learned notes, by the Academici of Naples. Fragments of the other books occur in four volumes of the Collectio Altera of 1862–5. A. Teubner Text by J. Kemke, a pupil of Bücheler, appeared in 1884, upon which Gomperz made a number of improvements in a pamphlet published in the following year. Otherwise, save for a few pages in H. Abert's Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik published in 1899, the work has attracted very little attention; which is scarcely surprising in view of the state of the text and the peculiar awkwardness of Philodemus' Greek.

Here Gellius, also the target of poems 74, 80, 89, 90, 91 and 116, is accused of incest with his mother, sister, and aunt. This accusation is coupled with the only extended mythological reference to be found in the group of short Catullan epigrams 69–116:2 not even Tethys or Oceanus can wash out Gellius' crimes. This notion that large bodies of water are unable to wash away the stain of crime is of course a topos going back to Greek tragedy, but the individual naming of the two sea-deities seems to make a point—a literary point which is relevant to the invective of the poem.

The literary sources for the Flavian and Antonine periods of Roman history, it is a notorious and unhappy fact, where they exist at all, are infuriatingly fragmentary, frequently obscure, too frequently inaccurate or mendacious. Significant gaps still linger even in chronology; hence it can hardly occasion surprise that we are rarely permitted a glimpse of the political activity which preoccupied the emperors and Senate.

In 56 L. Cornelius Balbus, a native of Gades, was charged with having usurped the Roman citizenship. Most scholars have held on the basis of Cicero’s speech in his defence that the charge was unjustified. This orthodoxy was challenged in 1966 by H. Braunert:1 in his view Balbus’ enfranchisement was illegal because the consent of Gades had not been obtained. More recently H. Galsterer has deduced from this premise the further conclusion that in the second century the Latin ius migrationis was restricted by a rule that no migrant could become a Roman citizen without the consent of the city of his origin. 2 It is my aim to rehabilitate the orthodox view and to show that there is no warrant for Galsterer’s thesis.

Of all the leading personalities who left their imprint on the history of the Peloponnesian war Tissaphernes was to Thucydides the most enigmatic. Although judgements on the ability and character of individuals occur more frequently in the eighth book of the History than in other parts, Thucydides apparently did not feel himself to be in a position to include an explicit judgement on Tissaphernes. Nor does Tissaphernes, unlike many major and minor characters, receive even a brief descriptive introduction, though such introductions are also exceptionally plentiful in the eighth book. Thucydides has been successful in collecting an abundance of detailed information about the part played by Tissaphernes in the opening phase of the Ionian war and yet has failed to produce a satisfactory picture of him. In this paper attention will first be drawn to special problems arising in the case of Tissaphernes which do not arise in the presentation of other leading characters. My main purpose, however, is to attempt to establish that the account of him by Thucydides is basically inconsistent and that this inconsistency occurs because the material in the eighth book has not been fully integrated.

One source of difficulty for Thucydides in writing about Tissaphernes was that he seems to have had little opportunity to acquire knowledge of Persia and the Persians. There is no indication that he spent any part of his exile in or near Asia, and the notorious sparsity of his references to Greek relations with the Persians before the outbreak of the Ionian war suggests that his contacts with them were scanty. In this respect he was not exceptional. Before the end of the fifth century even the best educated Athenians seem to have possessed only a dim or distorted impression of Persia, as is illustrated in different ways by the Persae and the Acharnians.

[The following notes, from a MS. of Headlam's, now published by permission of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, give the substance of a lecture which Headlam delivered in Cambridge but did not publish, though some account of it is given in the memoir by Mr. Cecil Headlam (pp. 55–7). A few verbal alterations have been made for the sake of clearness and some references added.—GEORGE THOMSON].

The fire beacon in the opening scenes of the Agamemnon commands attention and creates the positive image of light from darkness. In the immediate context the light of the beacon relieves the watchman of his toil and brings joy to Argos. The image, however, is not totally positive. The fire signal announces both the fall of Troy and the return of Agamemnon to Clytemnestra. The negative aspect, furthermore, is emphasised at the opening — the watchman's joy at seeing the beacon (lines 22ff.) gives way at line 36 to foreboding (τ⋯ δ' ἄλλα σιγ⋯). For the original audience of 458 b.c. I suggest that this fire beacon proclaiming victory must have conveyed other negative overtones. In brief, it will have recalled to them vividly the signals used by the Persian commanders during the great invasion of 480 to announce Athens' capture to an expectant Persian court.

This is clearly meant to ‘speak’, and offer thereby some clue to the interpretation. But what it ‘says’ is debatable. Most modern edd. settle for Ipsit(h)illa as the least badly attested form. The prominence of bidding in the poem best accords with the assumptions that the stem is indeed ipsa connoting ‘mistress of the establishment’ (cf. 3.8; OLD ipse 12, OLD ipsimus; ipsula, Pl. Cist. 450, issulo et delicio suo CIL 6.12156; ipsuma, Petron. Sat. 75. 11) and that the denotation is something facetious like ‘Miss Bossy-wossy’, ‘Imperia’, ‘Your nibsy-wibsy’.

Propertius' account of this myth contains two major difficulties of syntax and interpretation:

(a) modo (line 11). When the word modo means ⋯ννοτε μ⋯νand stands in the first of two co-ordinate clauses it requires an answering modo or its equivalent in the second clause. Et and etiam are not satisfactory equivalents. So the necessary second modo—or equivalent—is here absent.

(b) ibat uidere (line 12) is the sole account of Milanion's activities in connection with the hirsutae ferae. As such it appears obscure and abrupt.

Burnet's text (here printed) should be emended or repunctuated at three points. At d I we should follow Moreschini and with BT omit Proclus' γε: the unanimous voice of our best manuscripts must be allowed to drown the unreliable Neoplatonist. At e 2, as I shall argue, should be excised. And at e 2–3 the clause is to be attributed to Aristoteles, as Brumbaugh (tentatively supported by Stokes) advocates. This attribution gives a better and more typical question and answer sequence, although I can find no other example where Aristoteles ventures sua sponte (but he often enough—if less often than when prompted—volunteers e.g. 137 c 9, 138 c 6, 142 c 5, 145 a I).

A Significant distinction can be noticed in Cicero&s contemporary references to the anti-revolutionary parties in the first two Civil Wars. For both he claims superior dignitas: Rosc. Am. 136 quis enim erat qui non videret humilitatem cum dignitate de amplitudine contendere? (cf. Phil. 8.7. ne dominarentur indigni), Lig. 19 principum dignitas erat paene par, non par fortasse eorum qui sequebantur. But in the Pro Roscio dignitas and nobilitas go together. Sulla's cause is causa nobilitatis (135,138), his party is the nobility (141, 149), his triumph victoria nobilium (142). Such expressions, frequent and casual, evidently belonged to current usage and may be assumed to have fitted the facts. Marian nobiles are indeed not lacking; but the records are meagre, and presumably they were a small minority in their class. An ironical hit at Verres (not a nobilis, though of senatorial family) tells the same tale ten years later: ut possit aliquis suspicari C. Verrem, quod ferre novos homines non potuerit, ad nobilitatem, hoc est adsuos transisse (Verr. 2. 1. 35)—for a nobilis, as such, Sulla was the only leader. Verres' true motive for changing sides, discreditable of course, is explained later on (§37); eo Sullanus repente foetus est, non ut honos et dignitas nobilitati restitueretur.

Central to any understanding of archaic Roman criminal law is the trial, as recorded by Livy, of Horatius for killing his sister. It is not just that the case raises so many legal issues; the jurisdiction of the father (paterfamilias) and of the king, the institution of a separate state procedure with two judges (the duoviri), the right of appeal to the people, the scope of the crime of perduellio (usually roughly translated as ‘treason’) and of parricidium, murder, and the use of sacral punishment. But also, on the ability to determine how accurate for the period of King Tullus Hostilius is this account of law and legal procedure will depend our wider appreciation of the reliability of the sources. It must be admitted that almost all modern scholars regard Livy's account as quite untrustworthy.

J. T. Hooker argues that at Il. 24.649 ⋯πικερτομ⋯ων must mean ‘taunting’ and, since ‘taunting’ makes no sense, that ⋯πικερτομ⋯ων must have entered our Iliad at this point from a version of the Iliad slightly different from ours in which it did make sense. I wish to argue that ⋯πικερτομ⋯ων has a meaning different from ‘taunting’, which makes good sense of this, and every other, context.

We know of the Atinian plebiscite only from a tantalizing reference of Gellius, apparently citing Ateius Capito: ‘nam et tribunis, inquit plebis senatus habendi ius erat, quamquam senatores non essent ante Atinium plebiscitum.’ Willems was able to note two interpretations, one of which held that the plebiscite required that all tribunes be senators already, the other that it allowed tribunes the enjoyment of senatorial rights. The first was rightly rejected; since all we know disallows the notion that an aedileship would precede the tribunate, senatorial status could only come after the quaestorship and while there were only eight or less quaestors, clearly ten tribunes could hardly all be ex-quaestors. Consequently Willems adopted the second alternative: acquisition of the tribunate entailed the ius sententiae dicendae in the senate.

In an article entitled ‘Some Facts about our Oldest Latin Manuscripts,’ which appeared in this journal, the present writer put together a group of forty-seven MSS. which had this one feature in common, that each page or each column of a page they contained began with a large letter, regardless of whether that letter occurred in the middle of a sentence, or even in the middle of a word. It so happened that the list thus drawn up was composed almost entirely of very ancient MSS.; indeed, it contained a very large proportion of the oldest MSS. extant. In the circumstances it seemed useful to note down the behaviour of these MSS. with respect to four other features—namely, the manner of indicating the omission of m and n at the end of lines, the use of running titles in the top margin, the size and arrangement of the written space, and the manner of signing quires.

In the famous opening chapter of the Metaphysics Aristotle, in his analysis of σοϕία, introduces the important concept μπειρία, ‘experience’. In the course of the discussion he cites the sophist Polus, 981a 1–5:

κα δοκεῖ σχεδν πιστήμῃ κα τέχνῃ μοιον εἶναι μπειρία, ποβαίνει δ’ πιστήμη κα τέχνη δι τς μπειρίας τοῖς νθρώποις μν γρ μπειρία τέχνην ποίησεν, ς ϕησι Πλος, ρθς λέγων, δ’ πειρία τύχην.

The critics have not been generous towards Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica as a whole, but their praise of his Medea episode, whether moderate or immoderate, has been fairly unanimous. W. C. Summers writes: ‘Valerius manages to treat the same theme with originality and power; in psychological probability his version seems to me superior to anything that has reached us from antiquity’. And J. M. K. Martin: ‘Where he displayed the most distinct originality, where he parted company with the Alexandrian poet with greatest advantage to himself and his readers, is in the treatment of the episode of Medea and Jason’. Earlier articles of mine have endeavoured to illustrate Valerius' basic originality, i.e. that, however much he takes over from others, the final product is something new and distinctive.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to a similarity between an ancient and a modern theory of living nature. There is no need to present the Aristotelian doctrine in full detail. I must rather apologize for repeating much that is well known. My endeavour is to offer it for comparison, and, incidentally, to clear it from misrepresentation. Uexküll's theory, on the other hand, is little known, and what is given here is an insufficient outline of it. I do not maintain that either doctrine is right. I am fully aware that the problem of the essence of living nature by no means admits of an éasy solution. In offering for consideration the comparison contained in this paper I would go no farther than owning my belief that the two authors here discussed, both thinkers who combine an intensely philosophical outlook with a wide biological experience, are worth the attention not only of the historian of science and philosophy, but also of the student of philosophical biology.

This line has been thought corrupt by most editors, though there is no agreement on the remedy. The Herald is plainly asking why the people at home are despondent: picks up the Chorus's phrase . But as Wilamowitz says, ‘ de populo aut senatu Argivorum accipi non potest’: it can only mean the army at Troy, as in lines 538 and 545. The usual inference is that arparw is corrupt.

There can be no doubt of the primacy of Andronicus in Roman literature, but there is an interesting and unorthodox ancient tradition concerning his date. Modern scholars incline to place Andronicus' birth about 285 B.C. and to postulate either that he came to Rome as a slave from Tarentum in 272 B.C., or that the story of his captivity is a fiction. His first play was produced in 240 B.C.