Why cantoribus? The reference of the phrase cantores Euphorionis has been much discussed, by the author of this note among others. But what is the sense of cantores? The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, Lewis and Short, and the Oxford Latin Dictionary variously classify Tusc. 3.45 as an instance of cantor in the special sense of ‘supporter’, ‘imitator’, or ‘eulogist’. Recently, however, W. Allen suggested that this may be to read too much into the word: ‘… cantor could well have the standard meaning of personal and private recitation of poetry. Since sometime cantare and legere have a semantic identity, however, it may be possible that the word cantores in hi cantores Euphorionis has a meaning no more momentous than that of lector. ’

The history of Athenian relations with Sicily in the fifth century is beset with difficulties; and no part of it, perhaps, is more obscure than the story of what is commonly known as the First Sicilian Expedition, which set sail from Athens in the late summer of 427 under Laches, and was reinforced under Pythodorus, Sophocles and Eurymedon in the winter of 426.

In Cornford's opinion, the theory of Forms as put forward in theParmenides is identical with the theory as stated in the Pbaedo—both of them expressing thethat concrete things are the bearers, simultaneously, of contrary characters. Christopher Kirwan has recently denied this identity, in a paper which, if hisis accepted, will upset many traditions and greatly alter our understandingLthe middle dialogues.

The difficulties of this poem have led scholars to employ surgery of various sorts upon it.

This article attempts to show that surgery is unnecessary and that, given a fuller exegesis and a partial reinterpretation of subject-matter, the poem can be read as a single and consistent piece.

Near the end of the fifth book of Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle has a brief discussion (1138a6–14) of suicide, to illustrate the question of whether one can wrong one's self. Suicide, he declares, is not enjoined by law, and what law does not enjoin, it forbids. Thus the suicide does do wrong – but to whom or what? Surely the polis, not himself (for his suffering is voluntary, and no one wrongs himself voluntarily). δι κα πλις ζημιοῖ, κα ις τιμα πρσεστι τῷ αυτν διαφθεραντι ὡς π πλιν δικοντι.

Before venturing to emend 39 it is as well to be certain of the meaning of 40. Here are some suggestions: ‘fill out their tale of years’ (Showerman); ‘accomplissent toute [om. Ripert] leur destinee’ (Ripert, Bornecque); ‘compiono interamente il loro destino’ (Munari); ‘¨berdauert die Frist’ (Harder and Marg). This is no doubt what the words, in the context of 41–42, might be expected to mean, but is this sense in the Latin? Riley was bolder with his ‘fills its destined numbers’, but it was left to Némethy to state explicitly that the passive and the active voices of the Latin verb are interchangeable and that inplentur numeris suis means ‘implent numeros annorum suorum’

This paper addresses itself to two transitional passages in Pindar which are frequently misunderstood. In both we appear at first sight to have an awkward change of direction, with the myth terminated abruptly and the following item of praise merely juxtaposed. In reality, both transitions are effected smoothly, and the same technique is employed in both odes.

We now know that the epitomes prefixed to the plays of Euripides in the medieval manuscripts were written not for this purpose but as part of a complete collection of Euripidean epitomes, arranged alphabetically by initial,and intended presumably to make the subject-matter of the plays available to persons unable or unwilling to read the plays themselves. The first direct proof of the existence of this collection came with the publication in 1933 of a fragment containing Rhesos, Rhadamanthys, Skyrioi (Gallavotti, Riv. Fil. lxi [1933], 177 fif.; now P.S.I. 1286); we now have parts of it in three other papyri as well (P. Mil. Vogl. 44, with Hippolytos; P. Oxy. 2455, with over twenty plays, including Medea, Orestes, Troades, Phoinissai; P. Oxy. 2457, with Alkestis and Aiolos), and may reasonably suppose that P. Oxy. 420 (Elektra; published in 1903) is also from the same work.

Plato's fondness for words compounded with παν- (nearly all adjectives and adverbs) is obvious at the most cursory reading of his works; this characteristic of his style becomes even more striking when his use of these words is compared with their frequency in earlier authors. An investigation of Platonic usage in this respect, relatively easy since the publication of Leonard Brandwood's Word Index to Plato (Leeds, 1976), yields interesting results. Whether the effect of the παν-prefix is intensive or determinative (see below, §I), Plato has a tendency to associate these words with some sort of disapproval; this disapproval is sometimes explicit enough and can sometimes be inferred from the use of the word, or of a word related to it, in other contexts. The words may be used ironically, as π⋯γκαλος often is and π⋯σσοϕος always. Another sort of disapproval springs from what may be called Plato's general dislike of (promiscuous plurality, excess and variety; for a philosopher who believes in single, unchanging Forms there is something intrinsically objectionable in such words as π⋯μπολυς and παντοδαπ⋯ς. It also transpires that Plato may have coined a number, of these words and that he was probably the first prose writer to import others from poetry; in the face of the fragmentary nature of surviving Greek literature it would be unwise to be more dogmatic. The following, somewhat dry, survey will, it is hoped, throw some light on the usage of these interesting words

Since other readers of Mr. Creed's recent interesting article may find themselves in a similar puzzlement to my own over certain statements there made, I offer this reply in the hope of providing elucidation. It is clear that someone named Adkins has perpetrated something heinous; but that ‘someone’ manifestly holds views which differ in a number of important respects from my own. The most convenient method of demonstrating this fact would be to juxtapose passages of Creed with passages of my Merit and Responsibility; but since space does not permit the juxtaposition of whole passages, I confine myself in the first part of this article to juxtaposing the references.

The phrase ληκύθιον ⋯πώλεсεν, which Aeschylus in the contest of Aristophanes' Frogs mockingly introduces into six of the prologues of his rival Euripides (twice into one of them), has recently attracted a great deal of attention. With a couple of exceptions those scholars who have discussed it during the last fifteen years agree that it contains a sexual innuendo. Where they differ is on the exact nature of its meaning. What vase shape does ληκύθιον or λήκυθοс denote and hence what part of the male genitalia is envisaged? Or is it mistaken to press for anatomical detail? May not the phrase simply suggest ‘become detumescent’? These are the questions that have been posed regarding Ar. Ran. 1200–47. In what follows I shall try to show that the context, far from demanding that we give an underlying sexual meaning as well as its surface meaning to the phrase, could almost be said positively to exclude such a meaning. In an attempt to be as brief as possible I shall not deal with all of the suggestions made by the scholars mentioned in my second footnote and rarely indicate points of agreement, disagreement or indebtedness. When I confront the arguments of these scholars they are mostly those of two of the most recent contributors to the debate, Snell and Anderson.

At first sight there is some plausibility in the suggestion that lekythion might denote a penis or a pair of testicles or both things. Several vase shapes have a suggestive appearance. If the object denoted is actually the vase we are accustomed to call the aryballos, the reference would be to an object whose name possibly derived (in part) from a word which had a genital reference. It has also been suggested that this object was once manufactured from animals' testicles.

Most recent critics of Alcman's Partheneion have assumed that it was composed for a festival of Artemis Orthia, and have strengthened their case by adopting the scholiast's reading of Ὀρθίᾳ at 61 and assuming that ᾈώтι at 87 can only refer to Artemis. The case for Artemis has been made more popular by the excavations of her shrine, which have revealed copious evidence of a rich and popular cult with which festivals of maidens must have been connected. But on a closer examination the case for Artemis Orthia is seen to be based on fallacious evidence. First, let us consider the scholiast's suggestion of Ὀρθίᾳ which Bergk read at 61.

Catullus' use of nutrices for the Nereids' breasts in line 18 of Poem 64 is not perhaps the most important problem in the poem, but it is not without interest and may have significance beyond its narrow context. This ‘weird preciosity’ (R. Jenkyns) has been integrated into a wider reading by Francis Cairns, who interestingly drew attention to Artemidorus 2.37–8 where to dream of Aphrodite emerging from the sea and naked as far as the ζώνη is a good omen for sea-travellers because her breasts are τροΦιμώτατοι. So too, to dream of Nereids and Amphitrite (cf. Cat. 64.11) is also a good omen. Cairns linked this passage to the persistent connections of Aphrodite and the Nereids with marriage, concluding that the Argonauts are presented with a very good omen as they set out and as the prospective bride and groom, Peleus and Thetis, meet. Cairns naturally finds support here for what we might call the ‘positive’ view of Catullus' heroic age, a view now apparently in the ascendant after the doubts created by John Bramble's well-known paper. Problems remain of course – Catullus 64 is not a dream – and the purpose of the present note is to keep debate alive by calling attention to a rather different set of considerations which complicate, rather than undermine, Cairns' reading.

I. HomericHymn to Apollo 334:

κἐκλντε νῦν μοι γαῖα καὶ οὐρανòσ εὐρὺσ ὓπερθεν,

TιτǴνεσ τε θεοιí ὑπὸ χθονὶ ναιετάοντεσ

τάρταρον ἀμφὶ μέγαν, τῶν ἔξ ἂνδρεσ τε θεοί τε.

The transmitted text of line 13, ‘inter geminas…frontes’, has long presented an anomaly in the description of the decorated papyrus roll. If, in the context of book production, frons means the flat, round cross section located at either end of the rolled up book (TLL 6.1.1362, 84) and if cornu means an ornamental projection attached to the ends of the umbilicus and extending beyond the plane of the frons, then the transmitted text is a physical impossibility. For it is the frontes that lie between the cornua and not the other way round. In the words of Heyne's paraphrase: ‘geminae frontes inter duo cornua, non duo cornua inter geminas frontes.’ Emendation is required not only because an author is unlikely to be inaccurate or imprecise about the physical details of his book but also because the transmitted text can be salvaged only by recourse to tortuous theories about the meaning of cornu and frons, about their locations with respect to one another, and about the interpretation of inter with geminas.

‘In historical composition’, said Samuel Johnson, ‘all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent’. Perhaps so, but even if the historian must appear dull and plodding next to his more profound and shimmering brethren, the philologists and – of course – the literary critics, still he must be granted at least one virtue in plenty and that virtue is scepticism. Especially nowadays. While not quite yet ready to surrender his province to the meta-historians (who, not much believing in facts, have no real use for scepticism anyway), the historian continues diligently to scrutinize his sources with such wary Pyrrhonism as he can muster. He is especially suspicious of those ancients whose intelligence and whose literary gifts he most admires, hence the unrelenting distrust of authors such as Cicero and Caesar – and recently even such paragons of accuracy as Polybius. Still, a few authors have earned our unconscious credence, it would seem, merely by dint of their artlessness; we simply do not respect them enough to doubt them. A case in point: Varro's De Re Rustica, a remarkable ensemble of three dialogues, a highly literary work, yet one whose obvious inadequacies have distracted readers from its attempts at literariness and consequently have led them to take its veracity for granted – even when it relates to items having little or nothing to do with agriculture. A brief passage in the third book of R.R. informs us, or rather seems to inform us, that what was perhaps republican Rome's most illustrious family, the Claudii Pulchri, was reduced to poverty in the seventies B.C. in the aftermath of the death of the consul of 79 – evidence that has been accepted widely by modern scholars. In this paper I hope to show that there is no good reason for believing Varro's Appius when he claims to have been pauperized by his father's death and, furthermore, that to do so is to fail to appreciate the artistry and wry humour with which Varro has composed Book Three.

(1) In Cicero, In Vatinium, § 29, occur the words: ‘ Fecerisne foedera tribunus plebis cum ciuitatibus, cum regibus, cum tetrarchis?’

With this are to be compared:

(2)Ad Fam. I. 9, 7:‘In quo omnia dicta sunt libertate animoque maximo de ui, de auspiciis, de donatione regnorum.’

(3)Att. II. 9, I:‘Irnprobitate istorum, qui auspicia, qui Aeliam legem, qui Iuniam et Liciniam, qui Caeciliam et Didiam neglexerunt … qui regna quasi praedia tetrarchis … dederunt.’

In a previous article (C.Q. N.S. xv [1965], 281 ff.) I argued that the promulgatio trinundinum, regularly necessary before a vote in a legislative assembly, an election, or a iudicium populi during the late Roman Republic, was not the declaration of an interval of time (either seventeen or twenty-four days) but a publication of the proposed business which had to be made over three market-days or nundinae. These market-days occurred continuously at eight-day intervals, and no fresh start was made at the beginning of a year or other period. So the identification of nundinae near the time when a law or other piece of public business was being transacted should provide evidence for or against my view, and further, if this view is sound, suggest more precisely the dates on which certain events occurred.

Mr. Shewring's recent articles on ‘Prose-rhythm and the Comparative Method’ (C.Q. XXIV, pp. 164 sqq.; XXV, pp. 12 sqq.) are gratifying in that they betoken a growing interest in the problems of a comparatively modern and fascinating study, and also an appreciation of the methods followed by different investigators. His estimate, however, of De Groot's services seems to me somewhat extravagant; his estimate of Zielinski's contributions unduly belittling (as I shall show below, he cannot have read Zielinski's Der constructive Rhythmus); while his references to my own work cause me to doubt whether he has grasped even the main contention of my book. I shall deal with all these points presently.