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.

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:

In C.Q. xxiii. 2 (1929) Dr. C. M. Bowra examined the Ennian phrases in the Aeneid which Virgil adopted but transformed. Bowra, whose object was to investigate the reasons which led Virgil to make slight changes in these echoes, naturally had nothing to say about those borrowings which remained unaltered in Virgil. Of these, perhaps the most striking is the allusion to Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator in v. 846 above. The following points can be noted about the line:

1. It is not a subconscious, or apparently purposeless, reminiscence of familiar words, a habit of which the best-known example is Aen. vi. 460, invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi, cf. Cat. lxvi. 39.

Athenaeus, xii. 526 a, quotes three elegiac couplets of Xenophanes on the luxurious ways which the men of Colophon learned from the Lydians. Since the lines lack theological or metaphysical interest, they have not received so much attention as other fragments of Xenophanes, and few attempts have been made to unravel their exact meaning. But it is rash to hurry over anything written by Xenophanes, and these lines are in their way as interesting as anything else that he wrote. For they show what he, a penetrating and serious critic, thought about one aspect of the impact of East on West, of barbarian on Greek, and they contain his only known judgement on historical events. On examination they raise more questions than are usually found in them. They may be quoted as Diels printed them:

⋯βρоσ⋯νας δ⋯ μαθ⋯ντες ⋯νωφελ⋯ας παρ⋯ Λνδ⋯ν,

⋯φρα τνρανν⋯ης ἦσαν ἄνεν στνγερ⋯ς,

ἤϊσαν εἰς ⋯γоρ⋯ν παναλоνργ⋯α φ⋯ρε' ἔχоντες,

оὐ με⋯оνς ὥσπερ χ⋯λιоι εἰς ⋯π⋯παν,

αὐχαλ⋯оι, χα⋯τῃσιν ⋯γαλλ⋯μεν' εὐπρεπ⋯εσσιν,

⋯σκητоῖσ' ⋯δμ⋯ν χρ⋯μασι δεν⋯μενоι.

‘Alexander, it is said, starting from Amphipolis and keeping on his left the city Philippi and the mountain Orbelus, invaded Thrace, that part occupied by the so-called self-governing Thracians. He crossed the river Nestus, and in ten days, they say, he reached the mountain Haemus.’

The text of a Laconian inscription recorded by Fourmont is re-examined and found to be part of an early lex sacra relating to the cult of a goddess, probably Demeter.

Restoration of the text is attempted and, despite many uncertainties, the general structure and meaning are established. The first sentence deals with the weaving or dedication of certain garments by the votaries; the second excludes unmarried women from participation in the rites.

Mr. Bishop's article in C.Q., xlix (vi. 3/4). 187–92 on Palatine Apollo calls for an answer from me, since I am still alive to give it, though my own study dates from 1910 and was published in J.R.S. for 1914, pp. 193–226. So far away is this publication, and my offprints have for so long been exhausted, that scholars of my generation need to go to university libraries to refer to it, and recent generations do not know it at all. From Lugli's book on Rome they do not gather the details which convinced Boni that I was right, because he omitted some of the most cogent from mention.

There is still something to be said about these figures for the Athenian hoplite force, the more so as the most reasonable discussion of them, Meyer's, is spoilt by some unsound inferences and has in consequence not found support. Their difficulty is apparent: a muster πανσημει in 338 meant calling up all classes up to the age of 50 (Lycurg. c. Leocr. 39), and since Socrates fought at Delion and Amphipolis when he was in his late forties, and not at Mantineia when he was over 50, we may assume that it meant the same in the fifth century; we also assume (though this is by no means proved) that ‘the youngest’ are those in their nineteenth and twentieth years, as in the fourth century, certainly after the reform of the Ephebeia, perhaps earlier (Aeschin. II. 167); military service ceased at 60. But how could the number of men in these twelve classes, 19-20 and 51-60, stand in the proportion of 13: 17 (16,000 less 3,000 metics, 13,000 plus 1,000 cavalry and 3,000 metics) to the men between 21 and 50 ? They could not be more than a third, and might be less. (Beloch, 1923, tries to make the problem more difficult by the arbitrary assumption that the 13,000 citizen hoplites are all the men of 21-60, instead of 21-50. Meyer, who accepts Thucydides’ figures, forgets that there must have been ‘oldest and youngest’ metics, besides the 3,000 who marched into Megara. Busolt and Meyer also argue that the classes 51-60 will have suffered specially heavy losses in the battles of 459-445, while the eight youngest classes would have seen no fighting;

Without doubt, veni vidi vici is one of the most famous quotations from Antiquity. It is well known that it was Julius Caesar who coined the renowned expression. Less frequently discussed is the fact that ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ was announced as written text. According to Suetonius, Caesar paraded a placard displaying the words veni vidi vici in his triumph held over Pontus in 46 b.c. (Suet. Iul. 37.2):

In the Iliad the Achaean ships play a prominent role in the narrative; they are foregrounded as Achilles sits by his vessels in anger and threatens to sail home; as the Trojans come close to burning them; and as Hector's body lies by Achilles’ ships until ransomed. Where not in the foreground, the ships remain a consistent background; without them the Achaeans would not have reached Troy; they are an essential component of the Greek encampment; and are the unrealized potential vehicle of the Achaean homecoming.

If we had no idea which parts of Greek literature in a certain period were poetry or prose, we would regard it as our first job to find out. How much of the Greek prose of the Imperial period is rhythmic has excited less attention; and yet the question should greatly affect both our reading of specific texts and our understanding of the whole literary scene. By ‘rhythmic’ prose, this article means only prose that follows the Hellenistic system of rhythm started, it is said, by Hegesias, and adopted by Cicero and by many Latin writers of the Imperial period. Estimates of how much Greek Imperial prose is rhythmic have long varied drastically. Some experts suggest that all or much artistic Greek prose in the period is rhythmic, others that what little there is fades out after the first century a.d., as part of the victory of Atticism. There has been fairly little substantial work on rhythmic prose in the first three centuries a.d. for over fifty years (more on accentual prose from the fourth). The object of this article is to investigate a large part of one author's work thoroughly, and to establish that that part is rhythmic. It will also aim to show how that conclusion should greatly affect our whole conception of the author as a writer, and our reading of his every sentence.

This passage provides invaluable evidence on the procedures pertaining to the admission of new citizens in Classical Athens. The picture that the author has given of the roles that were played by the institutions involved in these procedures is very clear: for the reader's convenience I display it in the form of a diagram in Figure 1. According to Ath. Pol., the deme voted on whether a candidate was both of legal age and of free status; if free status was denied by the deme, the candidate could appeal to the Central Court; and at the end of the process the Council of Five Hundred double-checked that the candidate was of legal age.

Caesar's description of the Germans' social organization and mores in the sixth book of his Bellum Gallicum (BG 6.21–8) has long been the subject of multiple scholarly controversies. Its focus on various seemingly random ethnographical details – above all the description of the Hercynian forest and its fantastical beasts – has so surprised readers that the very authenticity of the passage has been questioned. It has been convincingly argued that interpolation is not likely. However, the internal excursus describing the Hercynian forest, and the final section concerning its fauna in particular, remains a subject of intrigue, as a result of the extraordinary, semi-mythical nature of its contents. It is the latter portion of the excursus, concerning the beasts of the Hercynian forest, and the place and role of their portrayal within the ethnography as a whole, that I wish to elucidate in the present article. While it undeniably possesses great entertainment value, its presence cannot be justified merely on such grounds.