This article re-evaluates the role of the manuscript tradition of the Historia Augusta in debates over the original contents and authorship of the text. Evidence for physical disruptions to the text before our oldest surviving manuscripts points to an earlier manuscript distributed across multiple codices. A multi-volume archetype eliminates critical arguments against the author's claims about lives missing before the Life of Hadrian as well as in the lacuna for the years a.d. 244–260. Other multi-volume codices of the eighth and ninth centuries show that loss of an initial volume would have disrupted the textual tradition for the index, titles and authorial attributions. Comparison of our most complete early witness, Pal. lat. 899, to the independent branches of the textual tradition shows discrepancies between these paratextual elements as expected in a disrupted tradition. Ultimately, this article concludes that the current debates on authorship and the original scope of the Historia Augusta rest on paratextual elements from a single branch of the manuscript tradition, raising doubts about the centrality of these controversies to understanding the work.

Burnet's text at Pl. Ti. 55c7–d6 is at least questionable, and opting for a different reading at 55d5 (θεός instead of θεόν) would shed light on an intriguing argumentative aspect of Plato's cosmological account: God confirms the metaphysical reasons why there is just one perfect world.

This note adduces corroborating evidence for Skutsch's ascription of Enn. Ann. 5 to a description of the water cycle in the speech of Homer in the proem to the Annales. Despite the flawed argumentation in Skutsch's presentation and despite a general reluctance among scholars to endorse his ascription, this note argues that his solution should remain part of the scholarly discussion, not least because there are aspects of Skutsch's argument that remain uncontested and because Lucretius seems to endorse this location of the fragment in the original Annales.

This paper identifies a neglected manuscript, Viterbo, Centro Diocesano di Documentazione (CeDiDo), Capitolare 51 (R), as the extant archetype of the Libri Romani version of the glossary of Placidus. It first demonstrates that R is the parent of the three witnesses to the Libri Romani text used by editors, and it considers the implications of the neglected manuscript for future editions of the text. It then corroborates the importance of R by tracing its travels in humanistic and antiquarian circles in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This history provides a framework for future research on the textual transmission of the Libri Romani text of Placidus.

This note discusses the meaning of the word κοπροφορεῖν at Aristophanes, Knights (= Eq.) 295 and proposes a translation.

This article aims at proposing a solution to one of the well-known textual cruces in Lucretius’ De rerum natura. After a brief survey of the suggested emendations, the author will shed some fresh light on Manning's gratus, which recent editors have curiously neglected. The idea that the old man should retire from life with thanks is not uncommon among classical writers. In addition, parallel expressions are also found in Epicurus’ own words. This article concludes that gratus is what we would expect in the last line of Nature's admonition in De rerum natura and, therefore, the most probable emendation.

This note offers a new emendation in the Ciris. The author suggests that the text of line 118 should read: deicere et indomita Minoa retundere mente.

This brief article aims to supplement Stefan Schnieders's presentation of the evidence for Historia animalium 7(8)—that is, Book 7 according to the manuscript tradition, Book 8 according to Theodore Gaza's rearrangement—having been considered the seventh book of this work in antiquity. This is accomplished through the discussion of two texts not considered by Schnieders, both of them passages commenting on Iliad Book 21: P.Oxy. 221 (col. X 11–14) and Porphyry, Homeric Questions Book 1 (§8, page 43.8–14 Sodano).

This article considers two passages in which either the sky (Plin. HN 17.74) or the sun (Manilius 2.941) is described as ‘green’; it argues that in both cases such a colour epithet is out of place and proposes to correct uiridi caelo to nitido caelo in the former case, and uiridis … Phoebus to rutilus … Phoebus in the latter.

This paper discusses the transcription of three Greek proper names in Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 10. It argues that we should read Haemon (10.77), Amycliade (10.162) and Panchaica (10.309) rather than Haemum, Amyclide and Panchaia.

This note adduces three passages in Seneca the Elder to reinforce a demonstration in CQ 69 (2019), 793–8001 that the text of Plin. HN 7.117 has suffered corruption in one of its clauses and requires emendation to restore Pliny's intent. This additional evidence concerns a trope employed by declaimers which could have predisposed a scribe to alter Pliny's text to state that Cicero proscribed Mark Antony. Such a statement has no place in a list of achievements that otherwise all belong to Cicero's consulship twenty years earlier in 63 b.c.

This article argues against the long-enduring practice of Josephan scholarship to treat the terms τύραννος (‘tyrant’) and λῃστής (‘brigand’) as a collocation, or as undistinguished terms of invective employed by Josephus against various Jewish antagonists in his Bellum Judaicum (= BJ). Towards this aim, the article first examines the frequency in which these two terms appear together throughout the text of the BJ, before turning to a critical examination of particular passages that feature the terms, in order to prove that they are, in fact, not used as undistinguished terms of invective but as terms pertaining to two distinct classes of people: renegade aristocrats vying with their peers for absolute power (the ‘tyrants’) and their gangs of foot soldiers comprising men from the lower classes (the ‘brigands’). The article concludes that Josephus used these terms in this manner in order to convey to his readership, which largely consisted of Roman aristocrats, that the ringleaders of the Judaean revolt which raged between a.d. 66–73 were akin to renegades who periodically wreaked havoc on Rome's own aristocracy, often with devastating consequences for class and country alike.

This short note attempts to shed light on some of the surgical procedures referred to in Martial's epigram 10.56 by consulting pertinent Graeco-Roman medical texts. A fuller understanding of one such intervention (treatment of infected/inflamed uvula) supports Martial's text as transmitted.

This article discusses the text and interpretation of passages in Plutarch's Lives of Romulus, Agis and Cleomenes, Pericles, Brutus, Marcellus, Alexander and Marius.

On the basis of two neglected testimonia, this short note argues that the terminus ante quem for Philippos of Amphipolis (BNJ 280) should be moved forward to the third century or to the early fourth century c.e. if not earlier.

The note presents the discovery of a spurious Apuleian work entitled De fato from MS n° 1040 at the Bibliothèque patrimoniale Villon in Rouen. This work is, in fact, a series of excerpts from Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis Book 1.

The entry π 196 of Hesychius is textually corrupt. This note challenges the traditional way of explaining the corruption and emending the text, which goes back to Marcus Musurus (1514), and replaces it with a simpler and more economical approach.