Among the many codices carried by Cassiodorus when he returned to Italy from Constantinople in the early 550s was a copy of the chronicle of Marcellinus, an Illyrian who had lived for many years in Constantinople before writing his chronicle in A.D. 518/519. The chronicle covered events from 379 to the death of Anastasius (518) and was later continued by Marcellinus to 534.1 That the chronicle is preserved at all is due partly to the fact that Cassiodorus recommended it in his reading guide for monks, the Institutiones (c. 555), where it is included under the heading ‘Christian Historians’ (Inst. 1. 17). If you want to know which chroniclers to read, says Cassiodorus, then begin with Jerome's translation of Eusebius and his own continuation of Eusebius to 378. Of all the continuators of Jerome Cassiodorus recommends Marcellinus and Prosper, but in mentioning Marcellinus he digresses slightly to include some valuable and unique information which he had picked up while in Constantinople on Marcellinus' public career.

There are certain ‘facts’ which every schoolboy knows. Every schoolboy knows, for instance, that at the Battle of Hastings King Harold was killed by a shot in his eye from an arrow; and Sir Frank Stenton's demonstration that he pretty certainly wasn't has done little to shake this conviction.1 Not every schoolboy, perhaps, but every undergraduate who studies the history of ancient Athens knows that Ephialtes was murdered. After all, that is what the books tell him. Thus in Meiggs/Bury we read that ‘Cimon's chief antagonist Ephialtes was murdered’; this is echoed by Forrest and Davies, to name just two authors of recent standard works. Hignett even knew the weapon the murderer used: ‘the dagger of the assassin removed him in the hour of his triumph’

C.Q. n.s. 31 (1981), 468 line 12 should read ‘the surviving portion covering his own lifetime, in the lost books he was subject to’; line 16 should have ‘Confidence’.

At Supplices 337, as part of the increasingly tense stichomythic testing between the Danaids and Pelasgus, the Danaids utter an emotional question, which reads in all the MSS, that is M and the apographa Ma, Mb, Mc, Me, Md(E)

After these words begins Cassandra's long, halting movement into the house and towards her death.

After consulting the commentaries and the fine remarks of ‘Longinus’ (23. 3) on this passage, a reader may still reasonably feel dissatisfied. Lines 1405–7 are normally taken to mean ‘you have shown fathers, brothers, sons and brides, wives, mothers to be kindred blood’; for the position of Schneidewin-Nauck compare Od. 4.229–30

Ritualistic formulae and acts pervade the political, legal, societal and religious life of the ancient world. In many instances there are striking similarities between the formulae of the Greco-Roman world and those of the Near East. Often illumination exists from one to the other. Here I wish to notice a few passages in Greek drama where I think such illumination is possible.

Since the publication of our article on Thucydides and the Plague of Athens, Dr Heinrich von Staden of Yale University has kindly drawn our attention to a paper by Eby and Evjen suggesting that the Plague was glanders. We do not think that this diagnosis can possibly be correct, though there are undoubtedly some points in its favour. The authors have argued their case as persuasively as possible, and the proposal has sufficient merit to deserve a serious reply.

Bailey posed the problem succinctly and clearly: ‘Though you can be said to “fashion a dream for yourself”, it is not easy to see how you can do it for someone else.’ He agrees with Giussani: somnia = ineptae fabulae, which is unexceptionable. But in fact Bailey's objection to the ‘literal’ meaning of the text is baseless. Dream control was indeed practised in antiquity.

The editors of the new fragment of Gallus draw attention to line 6, ‘fecerunt carmina Musae’. They say ‘“fecerunt” is unusual in such a context, and to a Roman reader would inevitably suggest (not used of poets in early Greek); the Muses of Gallus provided craftsmanship as well as inspiration’. It is possible to be more precise: cf. Euphorion fr. 118 Powell

In the past most scholars held that at Odes 1.16. 5–21 Horace is making excuses for his own anger. More recently, however, Commager (The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study, p. 138) and Nisbet and Hubbard (A Commentary on Horace: Odes I, pp. 202–3) maintained that in this passage the poet is referring to the addressee's ira and trying to dissuade her from being angry with him. In my opinion both interpretations contain part of the truth, but both fail to grasp the essential point that the passage is in fact yet another instance of an Horatian tease.

Michael Winterbottom (CR n.s. 26 (1976), 39) criticizes Costa's edition of Seneca's Medea for failing to annotate sic fugere soleo (1022). ‘Did Medea’, he asks, ‘habitually escape by chariot - or is this a coy allusion to Seneca's predecessors?’ Of course it is neither; sic fugere soleo means Medea was accustomed to flee by leaving dead bodies behind to encumber her enemies (her children's in this instance, Absyrtus' and Pelias' on previous ones). According to. Seneca's usage, and that of Silver Latin rhetoric in general, once would be enough to establish such a ‘habit’, for in that fairy-world wonders and horrors become, as Atreus (Thyestes 273 f.) says petulantly, immane…sed occupatum on repetition. At Troades 249 and 360 soleo is used of the virgin-sacrificing ‘habit’ of the Achaeans, i.e. the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, which makes the sacrifice of Polyxena seem a good idea.