While Caesar as man of letters is most famous for his commentarii, it should not be forgotten that he also wrote two volumes on Analogy and was the author of various verses, one set of which, on the comic playwright Terence and his relationship to Menander, runs as follows (fr. 1 Courtney):

tu quoque, tu in summis, o dimidiate Menander,
poneris, et merito, puri sermonis amator.
lenibus atque utinam scriptis adiuncta foret uis,
comica ut aequato uirtus polleret honore
cum Graecis neue hac despectus parte iaceres! 5
unum hoc maceror ac doleo tibi deesse, Terenti.

Recently in the pages of The Classical Quarterly Mathias Hanses convincingly demonstrated the existence of a fourth occurrence of the programmatic adjective λεπτός in Aratus, Phaen. 783–7. This new example occurs in the form of a diagonal acrostic alongside the known ‘gamma-acrostic’ (formed by the λεπτή that is the first word of the passage and the vertical acrostic λεπτή made up of the first letters of each line) and the occurrence of the same form of the adjective in line 784. Jerzy Danielewicz has now proposed yet a fifth instance of λεπτή in the form of an acronym spread over two lines and meant to be read anticlockwise.

odi profanum uulgus et arceo.
fauete linguis: carmina non prius
audita Musarum sacerdos
uirginibus puerisque canto.

I hate and spurn the unversed crowd.
Mind your tongues: songs yet unheard
I sing to boys and virgin girls,
the Muses' priest.

Peneus comes to the wedding celebration of Peleus and Thetis (64.288–91) –

non uacuus: namque ille tulit radicitus altas
fagos ac recto proceras stipite laurus,
non sine nutanti platano lentaque sorore
flammati Phaethontis et aeria cupressu.

Dio reports that, at the time Augustus was declared Divus, Livia, who was already called Julia and Augusta, was appointed his priestess (Cassius Dio 56.46.1). The term Dio uses is hiereia, which occurs in the same passage as his account of the priests and sacred rites (en tais hierourgiais) that were assigned to Augustus on his deification. As Livia was also permitted to employ a lictor, an honour that Tiberius apparently restricted to her function as priestess, everything suggests that Livia played a part in the state cult. In contrast, the festival Livia established in honour of her deceased husband was certainly a private gathering: three days of scenic games to which were invited only persons of the highest station. To distinguish between the two is crucial to the precise title of Livia's office. Just as Mark Antony had been made flamen of Divus Iulius—to all appearances for life (Cassius Dio 44.6.4)—so Germanicus was appointed life-long flamen Augustalis (Tac. Ann. 2.83.2)—a distinctive term of office compared with the single year accorded provincial flamines in the Latin West. The office of Livia ought correspondingly to have been that of flaminica, even if it was unprecedented for a woman to serve a god who in the light of his will was technically her father. A precise parallel to all this, it is important to note, exists in the case of Divus Claudius, whose cult Agrippina was appointed to tend and who in her capacity as priestess of Divus Claudius was granted in addition two lictors. Fortunately in this case the exact terminology of her office is given by Tacitus in his account of the honours bestowed by the Senate on Agrippina, who evidently was named flaminica (Ann. 13.2.6):

The first eclogue opens with an exposition, put in the mouth of Meliboeus (1.1–5):

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi
siluestrem tenui Musam meditaris auena;
nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arua.
nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra
formosam resonare doces Amaryllida siluas.

In the late nineteenth century J.L.G. Mowat published a short note in the Journal of Philology pointing out that in the Bodleian's MS of the Dissertationes of Epictetus there is an ink smudge (on fol. 25r) where all the other MSS have lacunae in several lines, leading to the conclusion that the Bodleian MS is the archetype for all other surviving copies.

In two chapters of Enn. II.9 [33], Plotinus discusses the Gnostic idea that the creation of the world is due to the ‘decline’ (νεῦσις) of a principle that he variously calls Soul or Sophia. The identity of Plotinus' Gnostics is notoriously difficult to establish with any degree of precision; I can only note here that the idea of Sophia's ‘decline’ features in a number of extant Gnostic texts, such as those from Nag Hammadi and the Berlin Codex (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502), as a recent survey of the evidence by Poirier has demonstrated.

A distinctive feature of Aeneid 8 is the constant interplay and fluctuation of registers, with high epic and the genus grande alternating with the lighter strains or learned allusions associated with the genus tenue. As one commentator has remarked, ‘Man darf das Buch allein schon wegen seines Reichtums an Aitien als das ‘kallimacheischste’ der Aeneis bezeichnen.’ Beyond the emphasis on aetiology—the Cacus myth in particular is presented as aition for the consecration of the Ara Maxima—the Callimachean complexion comes out also in several smaller not-so-serious or learned touches, typically at unlikely moments to infuse an element of humour in an otherwise intensely dramatic narrative. The Hercules–Cacus episode conflates high drama and low comedy as the cattle rustler's slightly ridiculous stratagem becomes a gigantic clash resonating with the primal gigantomachy. Among the rudimentary weapons of mass destruction unleashed by Hercules upon Cacus (omniaque arma | aduocat et ramis uastisque molaribus instat, 8.249-50), the hapax molaris (massive boulder, lit. millstone) echoes its Homeric equivalent μύλαξ (Il. 12.161), itself a hapax, with the recherché term then reappearing (again as hapax) at Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.59: missiles and diction are equally outlandish. When Hercules in a reprise of the celebrated Empedoclean leap plunges per ignem in pursuit of Cacus (8.256-8), an (incongruous) evocation of the Sicilian philosopher's fiery exit adds a touch of comedy at the heated moment. And from this inferno Virgil moves to Olympus, lowering the tone but raising the temperature as Venus in a domestic comedy seduces the uxorious Vulcan into preparing new armour for Aeneas: now she kindles flames of a different sort in the fire-god (8.388-92, 8.404-6) in a scene marked by witty double entendre that provides a playful contrast with the unfolding drama at Pallanteum. At moments like these, a lighter strain is audible through the epic thunder, Vergilius ludens is hard at work (or play).

Claudian's panegyric for Olybrius and Probinus, the young consuls of 395, includes a passage describing Rome armed in the image of the goddess Minerva. Lines 83–90 read as follows:

ipsa, triumphatis quae possidet aethera regnis,
assilit innuptae ritus imitata Mineruae.
nam neque caesariem crinali stringere cultu 85
colla nec ornatu patitur mollire retorto;
dextrum nuda latus, niueos exserta lacertos;
audacem retegit mammam laxumque coercens
mordet gemma sinum; nodus, qui subleuat ensem,
album puniceo pectus discriminat ostro. 90

Virtually all the major scholarly reference works, as well as many more popular sources, provide two alternative versions of the ancestry of Amphictyon, the mythical founder of the Delphic-Pylaic amphictyony, as either the son or the grandson of Deucalion, that is, by implication, either the brother or the son of Hellen. Yet, a review of all relevant sources shows that they unanimously and exclusively refer to Amphictyon as the son of Deucalion.

Scholarship on Grattius’ Cynegetica, a minor Augustan didactic poem on hunting, has done a laudable job of finding allusions in the text or other ancient passages that elaborate the sometimes-obscure information that Grattius provides. Such scholarship has not led to a floruit for Grattian research, although the June 2015 conference ‘Grattius in context(s): Hunting an Augustan Poet’ indicates that there is more to the poem than meets the eye, for those who are willing to spend time with the text. One area particularly open to research is the influence of Greek authors, a subject not addressed even in the aforementioned conference. To demonstrate what work can be done, as well as to speculate on the underlying themes of Grattius’ Cynegetica, I wish to discuss one unnoticed allusion to the Greek epinician poet Pindar. These two authors are not often or obviously read in conjunction to one another, but there are moments of contact: a recognized reference occurs at Grat. 527, cantatus Graiis Acragas. One unrecognized moment of contact is when Grattius quotes Olympian 1.13 when discussing dog-breeding (Grat. 198). The allusion highlights that there is still literary work to be done on the Cynegetica to appreciate fully Grattius’ poetic agenda and how he establishes his authority—not to mention the idea that Grattius has an agenda at all. To discuss this reference, I will first focus on the technical aspects of the translation before discussing interpretations of the line and the allusion.

Near the end of the first book of his De reditu the poet Rutilius is delayed in Triturrita, on the Tuscan coast, because of the dark and stormy weather. The South-West Wind with its dripping wings—says the poet in an Ovidian imitation—does not cease from summoning pitch-black clouds and obfuscating the sun's light for several days (631–2). Elegant images of constellations (633–8)—perhaps not just ornamental, but also indicating the dates and the duration of the delay—and the reference to the tempestuous sea and to two possible explanations of ocean's tides (639–44) round the first book off (1.631-9):

interea madidis non desinit Africus alis
continuos picea nube negare dies.
iam matutinis Hyades occasibus udae;
iam latet hiberno conditus imbre Lepus,
exiguum radiis, sed magnis fluctibus, astrum, 635
quo madidam nullus nauita linquat humum;
namque procelloso subiungitur Orioni
aestiferumque Canem roscida praeda fugit.

In 1924 The Classical Quarterly published a note by Alexander Haggerty Krappe titled ‘Euripides’ Alcmaeon and the Apollonius Romance’. Drawing attention to the obscure origins of the ancient Greek and Roman novels in general and pointing out the scholarly agreement on the role love plays in both the ancient novels and Euripidean tragedy, Krappe observed that ‘Euripides was drawn upon for whole episodes in order to enrich the plot of the [ancient] novel’. Krappe then goes on in his note to attribute the plot of Euripides' lost Alcmaeon as a source of inspiration for one of the major episodes of the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (to wit, the separation and reunion of Apollonius and his daughter, Tarsia). Today, this reliance of the ancient novels on Euripides is generally recognized, but, curiously, Krappe, while identifying an episode from the lost Alcmaeon, failed to identify a clear plot-borrowing from another extant Euripidean play, the Alcestis.

In an article published in this journal in 1996, I surveyed number stylization in monetary amounts recorded in Roman-era literature up to the Severan period. I argued that certain leading digits such as 1, 3 and 4 were heavily over-represented in the evidence. For the limited samples I used at the time these findings are not in need of revision. However, as I show here, a more inclusive approach to the material produces a substantially different picture. The most significant shortcoming of my study was my failure to take account of the probable distribution of leading digits in a random sample, which may serve as a benchmark for assessing the nature and extent of number preference. While I noted that lower leading digits were inherently more likely to occur than higher ones, I schematically related observed frequencies to an even distribution of leading digits (in which each of them is expected to make up one-ninth of the total). This benchmarking strategy is invalidated by a widely observed phenomenon known as Benford's Law, according to which leading digits frequently conform to a predictable pattern that greatly favours lower over higher numbers. This is true in particular if observations are spread across several orders of magnitude. Ancient monetary valuations satisfy this condition since recorded amounts range from single digits to hundreds of millions. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, Benford's Law has never been applied to the study of these data.

In his panegyric of Avitus, his father-in-law, the poet Sidonius gives a vivid and often detailed picture of the career of the future emperor from his boyhood until he gained the supreme power in the West in the year 455, which he owed to his ability and accomplishments in warfare, diplomacy and administration. He also enjoyed strong support from both Goths and Gauls, and his repeated success in managing the volatility and the aspirations of the Goths is a major theme. This short note seeks to contribute to the understanding of his emergence as Augustus by proposing a new interpretation of a pivotal passage (lines 519–24), quoted below. The context can be briefly given. Sidonius has painted a graphic picture of the reaction among the Goths to the news of the Vandal capture of Rome in the year 455 (lines 441–57). In the ensuing assembly of Gothic elders Avitus (who happens to be with them at Toulouse at this moment) gives a speech that vigorously praises peace (lines 458–86), and this is favourably received. There follows a speech from the Gothic king, Theoderic II, in which he puts his own strong case for an agreement between Goths and Gauls, and seeks to persuade Avitus to fill the vacuum in Rome and Italy caused by the recent death of the emperor Petronius Maximus and take the name of Augustus (lines 489–518).