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.

In the middle of September, 47 b.c., Cicero obtained a copy of Atticus' recently published Liber Annalis, which he was consequently able to use in preparing his Brutus (46 b.c.) and his Tusculans and De Senectute (44 b.c.). Atticus himself had consulted Varro's works on questions of literary history (Schanz, p. 330). Cicero, reading his friend's work, found himself in the thick of a controversy about the beginnings of Latin literature.

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.

The review of Prof. Bywater′s new edition of the Poetics (Classical Review, December, 1910) once more raised the question of the interpretation of dfuipria in Aristotle′s definition of the tragic hero (Poetics, Ch. xiii.)

νδνουϲα μν Φυγι πολιτν ὧν Φκετο ϰθόνα, αὐτ τε πάνταξυμΦέρουϲ' 'Iάϲονι.

12 πολιτν Π1 codd. et Σ bv: πολίταιϲ V3, sicut coni. Barnes ϰθονοϲ Π1 gE; δ Stob. 4. 22. 30

The two Sophoclean passages by which Page supports his plea that 'πολιτν stands for πολίταιϲ…, being attracted by the following ὧν into the genitive case’ do not inspire much confidence, since both (as he acknowledges) are capable of being explained differently. Further, as a recent writer has remarked, ‘on cherche en vain la raison qui aurait pu inciter Euripide … à écrire πολιτν à la place de πολίταιϲ Le vers n' aurait rien gagné à cette substitution, sinon une obscurité inutile’ (G. Roux, REG 85 [1972], 40).

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.

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.

On Anatomy (Anat.) is the shortest treatise preserved in the Hippocratic Corpus (HC). It describes the internal configuration of the human trunk. The account is for the most part descriptive, function being largely disregarded and speculation completely eschewed. Though systematic it is unsophisticated: two orifices for ingestion are linked by miscellaneous organs, vessels, and viscera to two orifices for evacuation. There is a clear progression in two parallel sections: first, trachea to lung, lung described, location of heart, heart described, kidneys to bladder, bladder described, bladder to genitals, conclusion; and second, oesophagus to belly, location of diaphragm, location of spleen, location and description of belly (close to liver), belly to intestine/colon, colon to rectum and anus, conclusion. The text offers good basic topographical or regional anatomy (the organs studied as they lie in relationship with one another in the different regions of the body). That the work is concerned with human anatomy is certain from the precise description of lung and liver, with features peculiar to human organs; and is corroborated by frequent references to comparative anatomy, with which familiarity is apparently assumed. Such anatomical knowledge, based on extensive observation of animals (probably sacrificial victims as well as laboratory specimens), may have been corroborated by some human dissection, perhaps of the aborted foetus or exposed infant, in conjunction with opportunistic observation of war wounded and accident victims. While the syntax is bald, telegraphic, and asyndetic, the vocabulary is recondite, and poetic. There is erratic omission of the article and recurrent use of compendious comparisons. These features suggest that Anat. may be an abridgement of a fuller and more flowery account; this hypothesis is supported by several passages where erroneous or unclear information apparently results from excessive compression or imperfect comprehension of a source.

The career of the father of Claudius Etruscus is of special importance in the history of the Imperial administration in the first century A.D. In the course of a long life he rose from slave status under Tiberius to be head of the Imperial financial administration and to equestrian status under Vespasian. He was one of the most important, wealthy, and influential of the Imperial freedmen in the first century when their influence was at its peak; he is one of the best documented of their number outside the pages of Tacitus; yet we do not know his personal name—he has to remain simply ‘the father of Claudius Etruscus’ —and even his nomen gentilicium and the date of his appointment to be the secretary a rationibus are subject to disput.

What we know of citizenship, marriage and political status in Athens in the fourth century suggests that they were matters of no little public concern governed by a body of law which left few, if any, significant loopholes or anomalies. The ‘descent group’ criterion for citizenship had triumphed over the possible alternatives. The fundament of the system was the Periklean law (or laws) of 451/0, re-enacted in 403/2, and prescribing double endogamy — that is, citizen birth through both parents — as the normal qualification for a citizen (astos). Whether this fifth-century legislation declared mixed marriages (astos with xene, xenos with aste) positively invalid or merely deterred them indirectly, through the disabilities falling upon the children, remains unclear. It is certain, however, that by the time [Demosthenes] 59 was delivered, in the 340s, both the parties to and the accessories in such marriages were breaking the law. ‘At that time an alien who joined the oikos of a citizen as husband or wife (the word synoikein implies a purported marriage, not mere concubinage) could be prosecuted by graphe and, if found guilty, was sold as a slave; the citizen man who thus received an alien woman into his oikos as his wife was fined 1000 drachmas. A man who, acting as her kyrios, gave an alien woman to a citizen for marriage could also be prosecuted by graphe, and if he was found guilty he was disfranchised and his property was confiscated’.

The sea god Poseidon is taken for granted as such in Classical Greek literature and iconography. Yet one does not have to look far in the literary or iconographical sources to find material that conveys a somewhat different impression. This has been noticed, and in the past there have been some interesting attempts to surmise Poseidon's origins and significance from the evidence at hand. This paper is not an attempt to reconstruct a putative Mycenaean deity, but will examine certain episodes of the Homeric Iliad to suggest possible reasons for the inconsistencies and anomalies that appear.

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.

An archaic boustrophedon (or partly boustrophedon) inscription found a few years ago at Dreros is one of the oldest extant Cretan inscriptions, probably not later than 600 B.C., and is of the greatest interest for our knowledge of the early development of the Polis. The text runs as follows:

1. ←Aδ' εϜαδε πολι επει κα κοσμησει, δεκα Ϝετιον τον αIa←θιοσολοιον

2. →Ϝτον μη κοσμεν αι δε κοσμησιε, οπε δικακσιε, αϜτον οπηλεν διπηλεν καϜτον

3. ←ακρηστον ημεν, ας δοοι, κοτι κοσμησιε, μηδεν.

4. ← ⋈ομοται δε κοσμος κοι δαμιοι κοι ικατι οι τας πολ[ιο]ς.

‘The date of the poem has been canvassed with merciless prolixity for the last four-and-twenty years, but the pertinent facts are few.’ So I wrote in 1903 on p. lxix of my edition of the first book of Manilius; and in two octavo pages and a half I collected all those facts, said all that I could find to say on both sides of the questions in dispute, and drew the conclusion that books I and II were written under Augustus and book IV under Tiberius. Ten years have passed, and the prolixity has continued, but the prolix have added no pertinent fact to those which I collected: some of them have even subtracted one, by suppressing the numismatic evidence, which I duly recorded, that Tiberius had Libra for his star.

(a) The Regress: Knowledge, we like to suppose, is essentially a rational thing: if I claim to know something, I must be prepared to back up my claim by statingmy reasons for making it;and if my claim is to be upheld, my reasons must begood reasons. Now suppose I know that Q; and let my reasons be conjunctively contained in the proposition that R. Clearly, I must believe that R (for R cannot give my reasons unless it has my assent);equally clearly, I must know that R (for mere opinion is not nutritious enough to sustain the demanding body of knowledge). Thus if I know that Q, I know that R. But if I know that R, then I must have my reasons, R' for holding R; and, by the same argument, I mustknow that R'. And if R', then R”; and so on, ad infinitum

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’.

We generally think of the poetry of Anacreon as coming from an entirely different world from that of the iambists, but among the extant fragments there is some indication to the contrary. With fr. 44 Gentili = 432 PMG iamb. 5 West, an epodic passage, we find Anacreon closest in form to the iambists. Here is the text with the full context from the Etymologicum Magnum (p. 523. 4; after West):

τò δ κνύςα ώς λÉγι ‘Hgr;ρωδιανòς ν τ καθολικ (1. 251. 7, 2. 901. 20 Lentz), εί μν πί τοű ϕυτοű, συγκοπή στιν πò τοű κóνυςα, οίον “χαμαίςήλοιο κονύςης” (Nic. Th. 70). εί δ πί τού παρɛϕθαρμÉνου καί ρρυσωμνου, οÙ συγκοπή οτιν, λλ' πò τοű κνύω, ϕ' οǘ κνύος ϕθορá οȋον “κατà κνύος Ȅχευεν, φίλωτο δ κáρηνα” (Hes. fr. 133.3/5 M—W). γίνεται κνύςα, ώς παρà’ ΑνακρÉοντι ν ίáμβω

κνυςή τις ñδη καί πÉπειρα γίνομαι

σ διà μαργοσύνην.