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.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate the slightness of the foundation on which a commonly received doctrine about Roman funerals rests, and to discuss a point in connexion with the ritual of funera acerba.

Students of later Platonism know well the significant role Porphyry played in the development of what we now call Neoplatonism. His own biography of Plotinus makes clear that we probably owe the very existence of the majority of Plotinus' written works to Porphyry's nagging. Having cajoled the master into penning a large number of works during his latter years, Porphyry then edited and published them, giving them the title Enneads which they have since borne. We must, of course, take Porphyry's claims regarding the importance of his own influence with a grain of salt. Still, with the sole exception of Plato himself, no figure in the Platonic tradition had ever enjoyed Plotinus' good fortune in the transmission of his complete works, and none would again, for which we clearly have Porphyry to thank.

It is exxtraordinary what difficulties have been found from ancient times in the extract from Empedocles (fr. 100 Diels) containing his theory of respiration, and preserved by Aristotle, De Respiratione 7, p. 473 B1.

When I refer to ‘modern editors’ I mean the following: (i) S. G. Owen, who edited the Tristia thrice (Tristium libri v, Oxford, 1889; in Postgate's Corpus poetarum Latinorum, 1894; Oxford Classical Text, 1915) and produced a small commentary on the first book (Oxford, 1885) and a large one on the second (Oxford, 1924); (ii) C. Landi (Corpus Paravianum, 1917); (iii) R. Ehwald-Fr. W. Levy (Teubner, 1922); (iv) A. L. Wheeler (Loeb edn., 1924); (v) J. André (Budé edn., 1968); (vi) Georg Luck (Heidelberg, 1967 (text and translation), 1968–72 (commentary on Books 1–2), 1977 (commentary on 3–5)).

Ecclesiazusae, the first surviving work of Aristophanes from the fourth century b.c.e., has often been dismissed as an example of Aristophanes’ declining powers and categorized as being less directly rooted in politics than its fifth-century predecessors owing to the after-effects of Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Arguing against this perception, which was largely based on the absence of ad hominem attacks characterizing Aristophanes’ earlier works, this paper explores how Ecclesiazusae engages with contemporary post-war Athenian politics in a manner which, while different to his earlier comedies, remained closely rooted in the political and cultural concerns of the 390s. By examining the figure of Praxagora, I will first consider recent suggestions that Ecclesiazusae hints at the possibility of an anti-democratic coup. I will then examine how contemporary discussions of constitutional and legal reforms (including the invocation of ‘founding fathers’ such as Solon and Lycurgus) are incorporated into both Praxagora's language and the scenes featuring the Selfish Man and Hags that follow the establishment of Praxagora's regime. Examining these final scenes, I conclude that Ecclesiasuzae does not suggest that the idea of democratic equality itself is fundamentally flawed, but instead argues that Athens needs a suitable leader, well suited to the rough and tumble of assembly rhetoric, in order to successfully function. In the world of Ecclesiazusae, the men of Athens have failed too often to inspire any hope, putting their own interest above the state, and the new leader must be someone different. Thus Aristophanes sets up Praxagora as a female Solon to remake the state and lead the democracy. The second half of the play demonstrates this need for a strong leader, as problems arise both from the quarter of critical bystanders (the Selfish Man and Epigenes, the Young Man in the ‘hag scene’) and from over-zealous enforcers (the Old Women).

There is a certain conventional interpretation of Aristotle's argument, in Metaphysics Λ.7, for the identification of the first unmoved mover as God, according to which that argument has the following outline

It has become a commonplace to say that, in classical Greek and Roman religion, to know the name of a god was to have power over him. The idea was rejected by Martin Nilsson, but he did not argue the point at any great length and a more detailed discussion may be of use. In this paper, I shall examine those contexts where it might be maintained that gods' names possessed some kind of intrinsic power but I shall conclude that the phenomenon is marginal and not universally true of Greek religion as a whole. To do this, we shall have to consider the whole question of how far the Greeks were worried about divine names and what the motives for this may have been. Evidence derived from prayers is of particular importance in this.

Diogenes Laertius relates the tale that Aristotle, upon being reproached for giving alms to a debased fellow, replied, ‘It was not his character, but the man, that I pitied.’ Some such reply is equally apt in apology for a paper paying homage to an idea long discredited in the philosophical world, Aristotle's theory of Place. I have been moved, not indeed by the apparent character of Aristotle's theory, for that is easily reproached, but by what has proved for the philosophical tradition of infinite worth, what we may call the theory's ‘latent virtue’. There is a danger, of course, as hard-headed philologists and commentators are always reminding us, that in attending to this latent virtue we may be paying sentimental homage to the dead. Thus it will be important that we first carefully and coldly examine the overt character of the Aristotelian doctrine before attempting to justify any philosophical compassion felt in its presence. More than likely in such a disinterested inquiry it will be found that our ‘debased fellow’ is a good deal more of a man than the modern reformers have allowed.

Amongst the people who pester Peisthetaerus (or Peithetaerus or whatever his name is) with unwanted help and advice in the latter part of the Birds is Meton, famous astronomer and mathematician, who produces and demonstrates with instruments a method of laying out the plan of the new town. Peisthetaerus makes no attempt to follow him and quickly bundles him out again without much ceremony. Commentators and readers with few exceptions treat him in a similar way. ʹΕπίτηδες ⋯δɩανόητα, δɩόλου ⋯νοηταίνεɩ, παίζεɩ—such are the comments of the scholiast, and editors are mostly content with that. Van Leeuwen (on 1002–1005) says, ‘Metonis haec verba intellegere velle, id est operam dare ut suo ioco frustretur cbtnicus.’ The passage is of course highly comical; to make it didactic and attribute to Aristophanes a serious excursion into geometry and town-planning would be perverse and pedantic; but in Aristophanes more than in most comic writers there is commonly a grain or two of truth among the chaff. These grains, though of little or no importance for the appreciation of the play as comedy, may still have some possible value in other ways, and should be carefully sifted.

Cicero, de div. i. 107, has preserved the longest fragment of the Annals: a piece of twenty lines, describing how Romulus and Remus took the auspices to decide which of them should found, give his name to, and rule over the city. Mommsen, Ges. Schr. iv. 1 ff., declared that such auspice-taking was incompatible with Roman augural practice and indeed with the whole nature of augury: the birds could approve or disapprove but not select; selection had to be done by lot (p. 11). The impossible story, he argued, arose when the twin (Remus according to him, Romulus according to P. Kretschmer, Glotta i [1909], 294 ff.) intruded into the original version which knew of one founder only; the auspices, because they were an integral part of that version, had to be adapted to the two actors. Little is heard of Mommsen's theory now; but it seems to have been contradicted explicitly only by E. Petersen, Klio ix (1909), 42, and since his arguments, such as the finding of the large grape by Attus Navius (Cicero, de div. 1. 31), are perhaps not decisive, the point must be briefly settled.

Among the insinuations that Tacitus bequeaths to posterity in the negative segment of his post mortem of Augustus (Ann. 1.10) is the emperor's putative role as machinator doli in the death of the consul Hirtius during the fighting at Mutina in the spring of 43. The historian is thinking of a focal moment in the Aeneid when Sinon releases his fellow Greeks from within the wooden horse. I quote Aen. 2.264–7. Among the heroes who descend from the animal's belly are Ulixes, Neoptolemus

et Menelaus et ipse doli fabricator Epeos.

invadunt urbem somno vinoque sepultam;

caeduntur vigiles, portisque patentibus omnis

accipiunt socios atque agmina conscia iungunt.

The principle that a moving body must continue to move unless something stops it was not known to Aristotle nor even unconsciously assumed by him. The effect of this ignorance upon his philosophy was discussed in C.Q. 1939, p. 129 f. It forbade him to conceive of a mechanist theory in the nineteenth-century sense. It enabled him to hold, what must seem self-contradictory to us, that all events have definable causes without there being a universal nexus of causes and effects (future events, therefore, he thought of as not yet determined in the nature of things). And it compelled him to believe that nature could not be orderly unless guided by a purposive force. Therefore he attacked those scientists who had thought that the world could be explained in terms of the compulsions and interactions of natural stuffs—a principle which they vaguely called Necessity, Ananke. In attacking their doctrine A. cannot have thought he was attacking the mechanistic determinism which modern critics have detected in their words: for he could not even conceive of such an idea. There is an a fortiori case for arguing that his predecessors cannot have conceived of it either. But it is always possible that A. misunderstood them. And there is still Epicurus to consider.

It may be affirmed with some confidence that on this topic no generally accepted solution will be found in default of new evidence, for which we can only faintly hope. Against certainty on the matter it would seem that the Everlasting has fixed his canon: quis iustius induit arma scire nefas. Dogmatism is out of place; we must be content with whatever theory is least difficult to reconcile with the texts and with a reasonable interpretation of the course of events at the time and the comments on them of contemporary observers. The thesis advanced in this paper is that there are strong reasons for supposing that the Lex Pompeia Licinia contained a date by which Caesar's command ended, that this date was not the end of February of the year 50 or the year 49 or the end of December of the year 50, that it did not contain a clause forbidding the discussion of a successor to Caesar before March 1, 50, and that if the date ending his command lies between the end of February and the end of December of the year 50, it may have been in fact the Ides of November in that year.

In his recently published Propertiana, Mr. D. R. Shackleton Bailey has given what I believe to be the correct interpretation of the first two lines. He maintains that sacra has no direct connexion with poetry, that it may be virtually synonymous with Manes or possibly signify the rites paid to the dead, or that it can be taken in the sense of their physical relics, the ashes in the urn. He reminds us that nemus is more than a ‘poetic grove’; it must be a ‘consecrated grove’.

It is recognized that Romans of the late Republic did not normally address or refer to one another by praenomen alone (for the conventions, see J. N. Adams, ‘Conventions of naming in Cicero’, CQ n.s. 28 [1978], 145 ff.; J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens, ch. 11; Fordyce on Catullus 68 init.). Most instances in which the praenomen is used alone are easily explicable (see Adams, p. 161); either the persons concerned are members of the same family, with names otherwise identical (‘Marce fili’, ‘Quinte frater’; ‘Luci’ in de Fin. 5. 71, cf. 15, etc.), or the praenomen itself is particularly distinctive and aristocratic (Appius Claudius or Servius Sulpicius).

The first study of Plutarch's prose-rhythm was made by Dr. A. W. de Groot, whose results were published in certain preliminary articles and in his Handbook of Greek Prose Rhythm, a work which is one of the landmarks in the history of its subject. In it he insisted that to discover which forms of clausula were favoured or avoided by any author it was not sufficient to make a count and discover which were frequent, which infrequent; for a form may be frequent not because an author feels it suitable for the end of a sentence, but because he likes it at any point in his sentence, or even because we should find it frequent if we picked out words by chance from the dictionary. To discover which rhythms are specially sought or avoided at the end of a sentence we must compare the ends with the sentence as a whole. This Dr. de Groot did for a number of texts, included in which were selections from Plutarch's Lives.