The evidence of the Marmor Parium confirms that Sophokles ‘died under Kallias’, who was archon from the summer of 406 to the summer of 405. The Frogs was produced during the archonship of the same Kallias, at the Lenaia: that is, in January/February 405. The Frogs refers to the dead poet in the prologue, in the second prologue, and in the exodos (76–82, 786–94, 1515–19): in the prologue and in the exodos Sophokles is mentioned in connexion with the return of Dionysos from Hades with a good tragic poet (cf. 71–85 and 1414–1533), and in the second prologue in connexion with the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides for the tragic throne in Hades (cf. 757–1410).

The eighth poem of Catullus is in many ways fundamental to our understanding of the poet; in it can be seen something not only of his methods but also of his approach both to his poetry and to the experience which he attempted to express through it. It is possible, by thinking in terms of ‘the Catullan experience’, to be led to overemphasize particular aspects of it at the expense of others and to attempt to find in one particular experience or set of experiences a clue to the man and his poetry. Such an approach may be fruitful; it may throw light on particular aspects of Catullus; but unless we remember that our results can only be partial, there is a danger that we may think we understand him when we do not.

Greek myths are so vivid that we think of the figures in them as real people and argue about their characters and what made them do what they did. We forget not only that the people never existed (or if some of them did, they were certainly very different from the refined and sophisticated representations of them about which we argue), but also that what we have is a number of often incompatible versions in literature and art dating over a period of a thousand years or more, whereas what we argue about is either a single late version or a very late amalgam of a number of versions made in a handbook of mythology.

Bycommunis is meant a syllable, not the last syllable of a word nor a prepositional prefix, which may in one context be short, in another long, because it contains a short vowel, this vowel being followed by a mute (which may be represented by more than one character) followed by a liquid. The first two syllables of quadruplicis are communes. In Cicero, Arati Phaenomena 334, this word is scanned with the first syllable long and the second short, and we may say that it contains a long communis followed by a short communis; but in another context the first syllable of this word might be short and the second long, or both might be long. For brevity we may use CR (CCR) to mean long communis (-es) in the rise of a foot (arsis, strong position), CF (CCF) to mean long communis (-es) in the fall of a foot (thesis, weak position).

On the last occasion when I had the misfortune to examine in Honour Moderations at Oxford I set a question on the Oedipus Rex, which was among the books prescribed for general reading. My question was ‘In what sense, if in any, does the Oedipus Rex attempt to justify the ways of God to man?’ It was an optional question; there were plenty of alternatives. But the candidates evidently considered it a gift: nearly all of them attempted it. When I came to sort out the answers I found that they fell into three groups.

Peter Bruegel's The Fall of Icarus—his only painting with a mythological subject—has long been seen as an allegory: Charles de Tolnay has shown how Bruegel took the details which he found in Ovid and used them, contrary to the accepted tradition of his time, to contrast the futility of Icarus' venture with the solid worth of the peasant labourer's life. Ovid, like Bruegel's contemporaries (for the most part), emphasized the wonder and novelty of the flight: the people in his landscape stopped in the middle of their tasks to wonder at the god-like beings who flew so effortlessly above them:

hos aliquis tremula dum captat harundine pisces aut pastor baculo stivave innixus arator vidit et obstipuit, quique aethera carpere possent credidit esse deos.

Thucydides was, inter alia, a political thinker of rare insight, Isocrates an avowed propagandist. Their works present several passages of apparent congruity in their assessments of the Athenian Empire; but all such appearances are illusory. For by the nature of their personalities they view their subject from entirely different standpoints, and, in citing the same facts, only underline the differences that exist between them.

Characters, though not under that title, began like many other things with Homer. A δειλός is typified in Iliad xiii and the Catalogue of Ships has brief descriptions of the leaders of the various contingents. Ajax the Lesser, for example, ὀλίγος μὲν ἔην, λινοθώρηξ,/ ἐγχείῃ δ' ἐκέκαστο Пανέλληναςκαὶ'Αχαιούς. Or Nireus, ‘the best-looking man that went to Troy, excepting the blameless Achilles’: ἀλλ' ἀλαпαδνὸς ἔην, пαῦρος δέ οἱ εἳпετο λαός. Best known, and in contrast to Nireus the handsome, is Homer's portrayal of Thersites (αἴσχιστος δὲ ἀνὴρ ὑпό λιον ἦλθε) with full supporting details of his figure. The physical oddities of Pittakos the sage were emphasized in verses by Alkaios: Herodotos, through Otanes the Persian in Book iii, depicted the nature of a tyrant. This recalls ὁ τυραννικός of Plato Republic iv. 573 c as well as his political descriptions of men and constitutions in Book viii.7 Aristotle also pictured tyrants (Politics 1313b): as well as (for ethics) a χαῦνος, (for rhetoric) a young man and an old, and the germ of the later portrait Character is seen in Thucydides already (Themistocles, i. 138. 3). But the truest pre-Theophrastan Character is that of Philokleon in the Wasps—the lover of the courts, φιληλιαστής.

The poem that stands first in Vergil's bucolic collection is a dialogue between two herdsmen. It begins with five of the most exquisite lines in Latin literature, and it is worth while examining them in some detail:

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. (1–5)

To learn that the Greeks knew of no equivalent to the special church music of today might cause some surprise. But, in fact, it was under the auspices of religion that their music in most of its branches was cultivated, its character being as manifold as that of the rites to which it was attached. The music associated with, for instance, the cult of Apollo was restrained, pacific, and harmonious, while the opposite character of turbulence and excitement typified that of Dionysiac worship. These were the classical and romantic strains of Greek music. Although the former approaches the more closely to our own idea of the liturgical style, the one was, to the Greeks, no more inherently sacred than the other.

Exploration in ancient Egypt was fostered originally by the militaristic designs of the Pharaohs. Between the end of the Third Dynasty (c. 2600) and the Eighteenth (1570–1304), the Egyptian kings were continually extending their southern frontier, and bringing under their control the Ethiopians or Kushites of Nubia. The Sahara blocked any expansion westward, although it was certainly less extensive in those times and contained more abundance of water. The camel, however, had probably not been introduced into Egypt, and there was little incentive for traders to make long marches across the desert. Nigerian gold, ivory, and slaves were brought in by sea. Travel by boat up the Nile therefore remained the sole means of opening up new areas. Along with the military expeditions went scholars and explorers who brought back tales of the Upper Nile, which gradually came to the ears of Greek visitors to the Delta region in Mycenaean times. From the Homeric poems we may see in what form they were assimilated by the Greeks. At the edge of the river Ocean were said to dwell the Aithiopes, ‘burnt-faced men’, probably Somalis, while the story of the Pygmies who fought with cranes shows knowledge of the tribes of the interior. It is significant, too, that the name given to the Nile in Homer is Aigyptos, the river being equated with the country. There is however hardly any mention of Egypt in Greek literature between Homer and Hekataios. Not until 664 were Greeks encouraged to visit the country, and then Psammetik I brought in Lydian and Carian mercenaries perhaps by arrangement with the Lydian tyrant Gyges. By means of these troops he was able to break the power of the Kushites, who had established themselves as rulers over Egypt.