Athenaeus (xiv. 640 b–c) quotes from the Olbia of Euboulos, the Middle Comedy poet, some lines which begin ⋯ν τῷ γ⋯ρ αὐτῷ πάνθ' ⋯μο⋯—a phrase reminiscent of Anaxagoras for ancient hearers and for modern readers—and which continue, παρ⋯ προσδοκίαν, as follows: ‘“Everything together in the same place” will be for sale at Athens, figs, summoners, bunches of grapes, turnips, pears, apples, witnesses, roses, medlars, haggis, honey-combs, chick-peas, lawsuits, beestings, beestings-pudding, myrtle-berries, allotment-machines, irises, lambs, water-clocks, laws, indictments.’

Modern scholarship has devoted much time and ingenuity to the problem of the sources from which the Greek tragic poets drew the plots of their plays. It has been commonly assumed that somewhere in that largely unknown area of literature which lies between Homer and the fifth century b.c. most legends had already crystallized into more or less the shape in which we know them from drama; and that the Attic playwrights (with the possible exception of Euripides) made little more than minor alterations in tales already familiar to their audience. But there is little evidence to support this assumption, either in the scanty remains of Cyclic epic and choral lyric, or in the occasional remarks on the subject by ancient commentators. In this article I attempt to illustrate by a single example a different point of view: the belief that in dealing with this aspect of tragedy we should put the same emphasis on the creative artistry of the dramatists themselves which it has received from Kitto and others in discussing other sides of their work; and that where (as in most cases) the source of their version is unknown, the very fact that it is moulded to suit a dramatic purpose should lead us to give the author, rather than a hypothetical and perhaps imaginary tradition, the benefit of the doubt.

One of the disadvantages of specialization is that other scholars often wish to make use of, but cannot evaluate, work in other fields. Moreover, it usually takes some time for a new theory to spread beyond the confines of a narrow specialist circle. The purpose of the present article is to summarize in English, and comment on, a new theory of the relationships of the Greek dialects and the historical facts to be deduced from them. The theory is mainly the result of the application to the ancient Greek dialects of the new technique of linguistic geography, which was first devised for the study of the Romance languages. The basis of what follows is an important article by E. Risch, following on a remarkable study by W. Porzig. The latter, though only recently published, was written some time ago, and some of its conclusions are disproved by the new evidence made available by the decipherment of the ‘Minoan’ Linear B script. Risch has been able to make some use of this, and it provides a valuable check on the soundness of the new theory.

Few poems ever written have the poignancy of those in which Catullus finally turns aside from Lesbia and renounces her. They are the more poignant because of their finality, a finality clearly expressed as he deliberately looks back across the course of their love, and with that backward glance points his rejection of her. This is most clearly seen in the eleventh poem. When Catullus first came to Rome as a young provincial, he was doubtless encouraged by Metellus Celer (who had been in Cisalpine Gaul in 63 b.c. and presumably, like Caesar later, stayed with Valerius Catullus the elder) to visit Metellus' house on the Palatine. There he met Clodia. She overwhelmed him; and, unable to find words of his own in which to express this new and overpowering emotion, he turned to a poem of Sappho's, conveying rather than translating it in perhaps the first Latin Sapphics ever written (li).

In his Sather Lectures on Roman Satire, J. Wight Duff writes (pp. 160–1): ‘Indignatio facit versum, says Juvenal: “Wrath is the maker of my verse”. The author ought to know whence his main inspiration comes; and the thunder of explosive anger is abundantly audible in the earlier books. Yet there is a sense in which this familiar quotation tells only part of the truth. People can be immeasurably angry without achieving the satiric; for anger, to rise above mere invective into satire, must be artistically directed; and this is where Juvenal's own talents are necessary for the complete recipe.’

Generations of English editors, brought up to a rigid observance of the rules in the Public School Latin Grammar, have boggled at Horace's disregard of convention. It seemed indecent for the ablative of the agent to appear without its chaperon, the preposition ab. Some years ago a writer in the Classical Review faced the whole question afresh. He condemned Horace for omitting the preposition, though at the same time asserting that he could not have used it, because it was his rule never to represent the agent by ab with the ablative in lyric verse.

Greece & Rome, Second Series, ii (1955), 138, n. 3: for ‘By J. B. Skemp’ read ‘By H. LI. Hudson-Williams’. Both are Professors of Greek in Durham University: Professor Skemp in the Durham Division, and Professor Hudson-Williams in the Newcastle Division. This confusion, for which the Reviews Editor was not responsible, is much regretted.

Mr. Francis Elliot's eloquent plea for substituting the ‘beautiful modern Greek pronunciation’ for the so-called ‘reformed’ pronunciation of the ancient language is at first sight very attractive, and there is no doubt that the reformed pronunciation is itself in need of some reforming. I would agree that the modern language in the mouths of most Greeks is more beautiful than the ancient language in the mouths of most Englishmen—this is partly due to the Englishman's inability or reluctance to fit his mouth to continental vowels and consonants—and that the modern Greek way of stressing the syllables bearing the acute or circumflex accent should be universally adopted in our schools instead of being the hobby of a few eccentric teachers. The ancient Greek accent was no doubt one of pitch, but there are traces of the transformation of this into a stress accent as early as the fourth century a.d.; in any event there is a tendency for a higher-pitched syllable to carry a stress with it, whereas there is no case at all for foisting the Latin trisyllabic rule of stress on to ancient Greek. Even to utter the stressed syllables at a higher pitch is no impossible feat.