In the Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius and elsewhere we come across an epigram of Theocritus of Chios directed against Aristotle. I cite the poem in the form in which it has most recently been published by D. L. Page:

According to the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians (Ath. Pol. 43.4), the Assembly in Athens met four times every prytany. At each one of these meetings certain topics had to be discussed or voted on. For instance, a vote concerning the conduct of magistrates presently in office was to be taken at the κυρ⋯α ⋯κκλησ⋯α. At another meeting anyone who wished to could request a discussion of any matter, be it private or public. Nothing is said in this passage or anywhere else in the Constitution of the Athenians about the possibility of holding additional meetings of the Assembly in times of emergency, but in a few passages in the Attic orators we find the term ⋯κκλησία σύγκλητος used. The scholia to these passages and some entries in the ancient lexica indicate that this term refers to an extra meeting of the Assembly which could be convened at short notice in order to deal with emergencies.

On the basis of this information, scholars have in the past concluded that the Assembly normally met four times each prytany in the Classical period, but that extra meetings, called ⋯κκλησίαɩ σύγκλητοɩ, could also be held if the need arose. Recently, however, M. H. Hansen, whose work on many aspects of the Assembly has greatly increased our understanding of Athenian democracy, has challenged this communis opinio. Hansen argues that the evidence found in the scholia and lexica is unreliable and should be disregarded. In his view, several passages in the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes and some fines in IG ii 212 indicate that the Assembly met a fixed number of times each prytany, no more, no less.

In this paper I am merely analysing the meaning of Phaedo 99–107 without discussing either its historical significance or its value as a contribution to the logic of science. The paper attempts in fact to be little more than a paraphrase of the Greek, which aims only at accuracy of statement, but I am adding in the third section a note on the relation of this passage to the discussion of method in Republic VI, mainly in order to minimize its relevance. The first section of the paper deals with the linguistic analysis of the text, the second, very sketchily, with the general doctrine.

In CQ 55 (1941), 22–5, E. Harrison noticed that hiatus between verses in the trimeters of dialogue was much less frequent in tragedy when the sense ran on from one verse to the next, than when there was a pause in sense at verse-end. He observed (i) that Aeschylus' Prometheus differed from the other plays of Aeschylus in this respect, the proportion of run-over hiatus to end-stopped hiatus being much higher, and more like that of comedy; (ii) that Sophocles had remarkably few verses with run-over hiatus in the Trachiniae (8) and Antigone (12), much less than Aeschylus in proportion to the number of non-stop trimeters in the play, though Oedipus Tyrannus had much the largest number in Sophocles (48), and no continuous chronological development was discernible; (iii) that in Euripides there was a general progression from relative strictness to relative freedom in the run-over hiatus allowed, though individual plays did not conform closely to this pattern; (iv) that in general comedy was freer than tragedy.

The text of the fourth-century veterinary writer Pelagonius, recently edited for the first time this century and greatly improved by K.-D. Fischer, poses many problems for an editor. The Latinity of Pelagonius himself in the epistles which precede various chapters is awkward and difficult to understand. Much of the rest of the work is a compilation, not all of it Pelagonius' own work, based on a variety of sources from the magical to the scientific. The work survives largely in a single manuscript, codex Riccardianus 1179, a. 1485 (R). In this paper I pass over intractable questions of spelling and concentrate on more substantial problems of text and interpretation, some of which concern punctuation.

The precise position to be assigned to the Categories in the Aristotelian system has always been somewhat of a puzzle. On the one hand, they seem to be worked into the warp of its texture, as in the classification of change, and Aristotle can argue from the premiss that they constitute an exhaustive division of the kinds of Being (An. Post. I. 22, p. 83 b 15). On the other hand, both in the completed scheme of his logic and in his constructive metaphysic they retire into the background, giving place to other notions, such as causation, change, actuality and potentiality. Investigation has, moreover, been hampered, especially in Germany, by attempts to correlate them with the Kantian Categories, with which they have obvious points of contact. But Kant's formal a priori concepts by which the mind makes for itself a world, to use Mr. Bosanquet's phrase, imply an attitude to knowledge and reality so utterly opposed to the Aristotelian that the comparison has tended to confusion rather than elucidation. Scholars now realize better that the Aristotelian Categories can only be understood in connexion with the problems of Aristotle's own age.

Horace begins his second book of satires by picturing himself caught between the extremes of two sets of critics, one group claiming that his poetry is too aggressive (nimis acer, 1), the other that it is insipid and lacklustre (sine nervis, 2). The charges are extreme and contradictory, so there is no way he can adjust his work to please one group without further antagonizing the other: the more straightforward he becomes in his criticisms, the more bitter and ‘lawless ’ he will seem to group A. Further subtlety and indirectness will only draw further criticism from group B. He takes his problem to Trebatius, Rome's leading legal expert, expecting an easy solution, only to be told what his question made clear from the start: that the safest way to write satire in Rome is ‘not at all’: quiescas (‘keep quiet’, line 5). His question, as far as Trebatius is concerned, is irresolvable and best left unexplored.

Fifteen magistrates of the gens Veturia are recorded during the Republicanperiod in our sources; the earliest is C. (or P.) Veturius Geminus Cicurinus, the consul of 499; the latest is Ti. Veturius B(arrus ?), a monetalis of c. 110–108 B.C. Mommsen thought that the Veturii Calvini were plebeian, as were Veturius the curule aedile of 210, Ti. Veturius Gracchus Sempronianus who became augur in 174, and the monetalis. He considered the other Veturii patrician, and apparently assumed that the gens had two branches, one plebeian and one patrician. Münzer, however, held that the Veturii were patrician, and that it was only T. Veturius Calvinus, cos. 334 and 321, who had become plebeian. He sought to show that all the other supposedly plebeian Veturii were in fact patrician.

Among classical Latin poets, Juvenal is unusually richly provided with ancient scholia; at the same time, the scholia exhibit an unusual degree of ignorance and sheer stupidity. What is perhaps most surprising, however, is the extent to which these commentators appear to have been worse informed than we are today concerning the identity of individuals who appear in the satires.

The aim of this article is to map the relationship between the main words that comprise the Homeric lexicon of roads, journeys, paths and travel. The central task is to explore the relationship between the words hodos and keleuthos; along the way, the article will also address other terms that appear less frequently, such as atarp(it)os and poros. The article first teases out a difference in sense between keleuthos in the singular and in the plural. The discussion of keleuthos provides a key distinction, namely between ‘object-concepts’ and ‘activity-concepts’, that proves valuable in discussing different senses of the word hodos. Rather than differentiating the words keleuthos and hodos as others have suggested, however, this distinction should be used to differentiate domains of meaning within each word. The result will be what might be conceived of as a four-part grid, with the two words hodos and keleuthos split into two distinct parts along the ‘activity-concept’/‘object-concept’ axis. Finally, concepts drawn from discussions of verbal aspect and philosophy of action are deployed heuristically to develop further the analysis of this semantic field.

Mutilation, along with all forms of maltreatment of the dead, was widely condemned by Greek authors of the Classical period. In a culture where the obligation to bury and respect the dead was seen as one of the strongest moral compulsions universal to all men, mistreating the dead was considered to be the most outrageous and unholy of actions, more suitable, as Herodotus states, for barbarians than for Greeks, ‘and even in them we find it loathsome’. The importance of the theme of mutilating the dead in the Iliad, where one can find numerous and surprisingly detailed descriptions of warriors maltreating the corpses of their enemies, is therefore puzzling, to say the least.

The best-known fact about the interaction of the Republican Roman poet Gaius Lucilius (c.180–103/102 b.c.e.), the inventor of the genre of Roman verse satire, with the doctrine of Scepticism is probably a statement of Cicero: that Clitomachus the Academician dedicated a treatise to the poet (Cic. Luc. 102). Diogenes Laertius makes much of that writer's, Clitomachus’, industry (τὸ φιλόπονον, 4.67), with the comment: ‘to such lengths did his diligence (ἐπιμελείας) go that he composed more than four hundred treatises’. This phraseology surely reminds those interested in Lucilius’ influence on later Latin poetry of Horace's disparaging comment, in hora saepe ducentos, | ut magnum, uersus dictabat (‘as a bravura display, he would often dictate two hundred verses in an hour’, Sat. 1.4.9–10); moreover, Horace shortly afterwards calls his predecessor garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem (‘talkative and too lazy to bear the work of writing’, 1.4.12). Yet, a sceptical view of Horace's critique might have to think of Lucilius as hard-working, like his putative friend the Academic philosopher, Clitomachus.