In a characteristically provocative judgement Sir Ronald Syme has declared: ‘It is not easy to go against a document. Nevertheless, the worse posture is obduracy against the testimony of a precise and lucid writer’. The writer is Ovid, the document one employed by Frontinus, and the context, the death-date of Messalla Corvinus, a subject of scholarly dispute since Scaliger's day. Largely on the basis of two passages in Ovid (Trist. 4. 4. 25 ff.; Pont. 1. 7. 29 f.), Syme rejects the apparent testimony of Frontinus (Aq. 102) and Jerome (Chron. p. 170 H) that Messalla died in a.d. 12 or 13, in favour of a date in a.d. 8, before Ovid's departure for exile. Issues beyond the death-date of Messalla are involved. Thus Syme wishes, as a corollary, to ante-date the year of Livy's death by five years from a.d. 17 to a.d. 12.3 Further, Syme's characterization of Ovid as ‘a precise and lucid writer’ seems to have more general implications. His arguments merit close scrutiny.

We can now approach the interpretation of the famous symbol called the Tetractys or Tetrad, which is a compendium of Pythagorean mysticism. The tetractys is itself a system of numbers. It symbolizes the ‘elements of number,’ which are the elements of all things. It contains the concordant ratios of the musical harmony. It might well be described in the Pythagorean oath as ‘containing the root and fountain of everflowing Nature.’ In one of the acousmata preserved in Iamblichus it is identified with the cosmic harmony. It was also called κσμος, οὐρανς, πν. Theon says it was held in honour because it contained the nature of the universe.

The metaphor is derived from archery. The epithet πτερόεɩς is appropriate to arrows [πτερόεντες ỏịστοί E 171, ỉờν ἰβλ⋯τα πτερόεντα Δ 117, ἰοì πτερόεντες π 773, ἰ⋯ πτερόεντα ϒ 68]. Just as ἰ⋯ πτερόεντα means ‘feathered arrows,’ so ἔπεα πτερόεντα means ‘feathered words.’ The early Greeks, when they formed a picture of words in their minds, thought of them as missiles—not as birds. Whence ‘to utter’ words is ἱέναɩ or ⋯ϕɩέναɩ. Missiles so light are more readily imagined as arrows than as spears or stones.

Here in the proem to his fifth book Lucretius is praising the philosophical achievements or discoveries (‘reperta’) of Epicurus through favourable comparison with other discoveries of traditional heroic or divine figures; first, in this passage, with the products of bread and wine associated with the gods Ceres and Liber (Bacchus), and later with the deeds of the god-hero Hercules. This technique clearly derives from the σ⋯γκρισις of formal rhetoric, one of the basic exercises (προγυμν⋯σματα, exercitationes primae) through which composition was taught in ancient schools, and Lucretius begins with ‘confer’, an imperative which has something of a formulaic force in rhetorical comparisons. But it is not the purpose of this note to point out the rhetorical qualities of this passage; Lucretius' treatment of Ceres and Liber has other important literary and philosophical associations, links which have not been noted or explored by scholars.

That three of them were popularly regarded as correlated with the three ages of human life; (2) that the structure of early Greek societies, as of other primitive societies, was based on the distinction of three main age-grades, of which the three virtues are characteristic; (3) that Plato's own Ideal State has the same age basis underlying the other features peculiar to it, and is indeed transparently modelled on the Spartan constitution; (4) that it is therefore probable that Plato started with the three divisions of his State and their several virtues, and then, proceeding on the assumption that the ‘natural’ State must reflect on a large scale the constitution of the individual ‘nature,’ arranged the structure of the soul to correspond with his polity.

The Latin versions of Aristotle's Categoriae have never received much attention from the editors of the Greek text. J. Th. Buhle (Arist. Op. Omn. i, Bipont. 1791) and Th. Waitz (Arist. Organ, i, Lpz., 1844) availed themselves of Latin texts, but in a very unsatisfactory way; and since them the Latin field has remained unexplored throughout the last hundred years, in which both Hellenists and Orientalists have done much to increase our knowledge of the textual tradition of the Categ. It is the purpose of these pages to give a summary account of the Latin tradition and to contribute to a revision of the Greek text by a collation of Boethius' recently discovered translation with the best printed Greek and Oriental sources.

The purpose of this essay is to elucidate certain difficulties in the text of the Eryxias and to make the author's position as a thinker clearer than it has hitherto been. The Eryxias is a work which has suffered severely from excessive partisanship. While German and Dutch scholars of the eighteenth century appear to have valued it highly—a great deal too highly—as a work of enlightened ethical purpose, the scholarship of the nineteenth century was almost unanimous in condemning it as an inept imitation of Plato's early writings. It soon became apparent, however, that it was not a mere imitation. The economist Hagen recognized in it traces of Stoic doctrine and proceeded somewhat hastily to the conclusion that the author was ‘a Stoic … who expressed the sentiments of his school in the form of a Platonic dialogue.’ Otto Schrohl of Göttingen, whose thesis is the most considerable work on the subject, is less emphatic in claiming the author as a Stoic, but nevertheless traces most of his ideas to Stoic and Cynic origins. This view is modified but retained in its essentials by Professor Souilhé in the Budé edition of Plato. While stressing the importance of the Platonic element, he agrees that the author's point of view has been influenced by Stoic and Cynic teaching, the influence of Cynicism being in his opinion predominant.

J. K. Evans' well-documented article, ‘Wheat production and its social consequences in the Roman world’, correctly makes the point that ‘the evidence with regard to wheat yields is at once meagre and plainly contradictory’. The difficulty in assessing yields arises, of course, from the character of the available source material; namely, literary sources. The information comes from the hands of men such as Cicero and Varro who were concerned with matters other than specific data on the cultivation and production of grains, and who probably never sowed or reaped a modius of wheat. What was lacking until recently was a bona-fide document from the hands of a farmer or a community intimately concerned with the growing of wheat. We now have one such document, P. Colt 82 of the seventh century A.D., that fills a gap in the evidence for yields for both wheat and barley.

In Plutarch's account (Cato min. 34–9) of the younger Cato's mission to Cyprus a fairly prominent place is given to one Canidius, described as one of Cato's friends. He is also twice mentioned in connection with the same events in Brut. 3. 2–3, but here the great majority of our MSS. read κανίνΉον, while only one family (Z), and perhaps a later hand in the early MS. L, have κανί΄ων.

Canidius is a very rare gentilicium—a fact obscured perhaps by scholars' familiarity with Horace's witch—and besides the subject of the present investigation there is only one known bearer of the name in Republican times, namely P. Canidius Crassus (Miinzer, R.E. iii. 1475 f., no. 2) cos. stiff. 40. He served with Lepidus in Gaul and then became a partisan of Antony, whom he accompanied to the East after earning a suffect consulship.

J. Kaerst, following a suggestion made by Ranke, conjectured that Diodorus' source for Alexander, whom he identified with Clitarchus, derived information from the mercenaries who served Darius. This conjecture has been developed into an elaborate theory by Sir William Tarn, a theory that has found some favour. He holds that the ‘mercenaries' source’, which I shall henceforth call M, was Diodorus' ‘principal guide [my italics] down to Issus’, and also ‘largely used’ by Curtius (p. 71); from certain texts in Curtius Tarn infers (pp. 105–6) that M went down to Darius' death, and he thinks that till that point both Diodorus and Curtius continued to draw upon him, as well as upon other authorities.

In January, 1914, I published in the Classical Quarterly an article on t1he Five Grammatical Chapters of Quintilian, in which I endeavoured to set out the general scheme of the writer and his relation to the educational practice of his time. In the present paper I propose to deal with some of the numerous difficulties of detail—difficulties both of text and meaning—which crop up in chapters 4–7. The technicality of the subject and the abbreviated method of treatment produce much obscurity, even when we have no reason to doubt the text. And as to the text, one can but echo the words of Varro with regard to philological and grammatical questions, ‘librarios haec spinosiora indiligentius elaturos putaui.’ The result is that these chapters provide perhaps more problems than are to be found in the same limits in any first class Latin writer—problems which, though not perhaps of much intrinsic importance, have that interest which must always attach to questions which have baffled generations of commentators. I have divided the questions which I have treated into two classes. The first consists of passages in which I feel some confidence in the text which I have adopted or the meaning which I have proposed. The second consists of those which I fear must be left unsolved, though I hope that I have been able to advance the discussion a few steps.

In his new text of Euripides (Oxford, 1984) James Diggle shows that he has the courage of his convictions: he deletes the last twenty-five lines of Medea's great monologue. He is to be applauded for following ratio et res ipsa where it leads him and being undaunted by the sight of so much blood. No editor of Euripides before him, as far as I am aware, has ever been courageous enough to put these lines in square brackets, although their deletion had been a subject of discussion for exactly one hundred years at the time Diggle's edition appeared.

But though Diggle is to be praised for his courage in following reason, I believe he is mistaken. The arguments for excision are far from negligible, and defenders of the passage show a regrettable tendency to underestimate their force. But while I shall give these objections as much weight as any of those who urge deletion, I shall argue that there is a much more economical way of dealing with them than large-scale amputation. I shall accordingly pay close attention to the problems for which excision is the proposed solution, with inevitable repetition of earlier scholars' arguments. Since I have myself recommended athetesis of long passages on several occasions, I do not think I will be regarded as insufficiently alive to the possibility of interpolation or overly reluctant to wield the knife. In this instance, however, there are strong stylistic grounds for believing in the genuineness of most of the passage in question.

The purpose of the present article is to examine the use of Logos as an ontological term in the Plotinian system and to seek to trace its connexion with Stoicism. Although at first the fact that the fundamental meaning metaphysically of Logos for Plotinus is a spiritual activity due, both as created and as creator, to the desire for contemplation may appear to be an obstacle to a close resemblance with the Spermatic Logos of Stoicism, the creative aspect of the elemental Fire, nevertheless abundant and striking similarities in other respects seem to furnish conclusive evidence that the title which I have selected is not mistaken. The full importance of the Plotinian Logos cannot indeed be grasped until the development of the term has been studied not merely in Stoicism but in Philo and early Patristic Literature; for then the common function of Logos in every system, the reconciliation of the transcendent and the immanent views of God, is clearly manifested. But here only a brief indication of the evolution of the Logos doctrine between the diffusion of Stoic thought and the emergence of Neoplatonism is possible. Chief interest will be directed to the use by Plotinus of the spermatic conception, fundamentally Stoic, of a creative Nature which informs and pervades the Cosmos as its immanent Logos.

It has been common in history for the conqueror or usurper to fortify his position by marrying a daughter of the old line. It was done by Alexander at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, by Herod at the end. There is reason to believe that it was also done both by Ptolemy I. and Seleucus.

‘uester, de uno, per indignationem’ (though I hardly see what indignation has to do with it) says Achilles Statius at the first of these two places, and again ‘uester, de uno’ at the second. Muretus on the other hand explains ‘uestrae saeuitiae, ferocitatis illius, uobis omnibus, qui formosi estis, innatae.’ Most commentators have taken part with Muretus, and deny that uester in these two passages means tuus; nor is the usage recognised in the lexicons. But when it comes to explaining what, if not tuus, uester does mean, the interpreters are not agreed: they contradict one another, and they even contradict themselves.

Tall tales abound in Ctesias' Indica, as scholars have not hesitated to emphasize, heaping ridicule on the author's enthusiasm for the fantastic and on his apparent lack of regard for the truth. However, by no means everything in the work is absurd or wrong, and marvels too are no surprise. After all, as a resident of the Persian court for a number of years at the end of the fifth century B.C., Ctesias had seen items from India which would have been truly remarkable to Greeks of his time. He had seen, for example, elephants, which few Greeks before Alexander's Asian campaigns had done, and, it should be added, much of what he says about these animals is quite correct. The following pages discuss what he relates of the bird which he calls the β⋯ττακκος, the parrot, or rather what Photius in a not entirely problem-free section of his summary of the work preserves of the original description. As with Ctesias' account of the elephant, this is the first Greek description, so far as we know.

Gellius, in N. A. 6. 20, claims to have read ‘in quodam commentario’ that theoriginal text had been not ora but Nola; ‘postea Vergilium petisse a Nolanis, aquam uti duceret in propincum rus, Nolanos beneficium petitum non fecisse, poetam offensum nomen urbis eorum, quasi ex hominum memoria, sic excarmine suo derasisse oramque pro Nola mutasse’. It may be from this passagethat by way of Donatus this story reached the expanded Servius: ‘et hocemendauit ipse, quia Nolam posuerat; nam postea offensus a Nolanis, qui eidemaquam negauerant, “ora” pro “Nola” posuit.’

The complete, or almost complete, absence from the Theaetetus of any unequivocal reference to Platonic Forms is a problem, the solution of which appeared to many scholars to have been found and convincingly presented in the late Professor Gornford's book Plato's Theory of Knowledge, published in 1935. Put briefly, his contention was that the main purpose of the dialogue is to show that no acceptable definition of knowledge can be reached if the Forms are left out of account, that there are a number of passages in which any reader of the middle dialogues would see that they were deliberately being left out of account, and one or two, namely in the famous digression on the philosophic life, and in the discussion of ‘common terms’ , where they are actually brought in, though not indeed under the name of

It is a well-known fact that of the three governors of Britain who were responsible for the Flavian advance of the northern frontier two had had previous military experience in the area in which they were now called upon to operate. Petilius Cerialis was in command of the IXth legion during the critical times of Boudicca's revolt (Tac. Ann. XIV. 32). And although in that capacity he succeeded in losing the larger part of his forces, his subsequent appointment by Vespasian to the command of the army despatched to reconquer the Rhine frontier from the revolted Civilis suggests that his military record was more distinguished than Tacitus would imply. Agricola has still better claims to be considered as a British specialist. In 61 as tribunus militum he was serving with distinction on the staff of Suetonius Paulinus in N. Wales (Tac. Agr. 5), and in 70 he was sent as legatus legionis to the XXth legion at Chester, in which capacity he served under Cerialis during the initial stages of the northward advance (Tac. Agr. 8). Of Julius Frontinus, the successor of Cerialis and predecessor of Agricola, we are less well informed; and it is the purpose of this note to show that in all probability he too had had previous military experience in Britain.