Everyone who reads Aeschylus sympathetically does so, I should guess, with at least an implicit understanding of the point I shall be attempting to make in this paper; my reason for elaborating it at such length is that it is barely acknowledged in some of the recent scholarly literature, and the new orthodoxy on characterization is in danger of becoming no more helpful than the old.

Since so many Roman cognomina are derived from physical peculiarities and personal idiosyncrasies, it is not surprising that the unfortunate bearers were often the butt of laughter. As Cicero says (de Or. ii. 236), ‘Locus autem, et regio quasi ridiculi (nam id proxime quaeritur) turpitudine et deformitate quadam continetur: haec enim ridentur vel sola, vel maxime, quae notant et designant turpitudinem aliquam non turpiter.’ Cicero remarks that there is need for restraint and good taste in such jokes, and he adds (247) that it is not enough just to get a laugh, a man must also derive some benefit from the remark. Cicero's qualifying comments are in reference to an occasion when a man called Vargula was embraced by A. Sempronius, a candidate for office, and the latter's brother Marcus, whereupon he shouted to his slave ‘Puer, abige muscas’ (‘Boy, chase away the flies’), Musca being a cognomen of the Sempronii.

Our views on literary patronage in the Augustan Age may be dominated to such an extent by the personality of Maecenas that other, contemporary, patrons are forgotten or, worse still, seen as pale reflections of the ‘ideal’ patron, Maecenas, and so best disregarded. Professor Ronald Syme, for example, in his notable chapter on Augustus' ‘Organization of Opinion’, writes that ‘Augustus’ chief of cabinet, Maecenas, captured the most promising of the poets at an early stage and nursed them into the Principate. Augustus himself listened to recitations with patience and even with benevolence. He insisted, however, that his praises should be sung only in serious efforts and by the best poets. The Princeps succeeded: other patrons of literature were left far behind.’ This article looks briefly at the work of those poets who were closely associated with one of these ‘other patrons’, M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, and attempts to show that his patronage, and the poets' attitudes towards it, were essentially Republican in nature—a factor which should be kept in mind in making any comparison between Messalla's poets and those more directly concerned with the Princeps.

The only reference to the Sauroktonos by Praxiteles occurs in the writings of Pliny. Although much scholarly ink has flowed over virtually every square inch of the figure's languid body, no one (to my knowledge) has yet considered the activity of the left hand which is held directly above the ascending lizard in all three copies and on coins of Nikopolis and Philippopolis.

As the first in what is hoped to be a continuing series, the editors of Greece & Rome have invited two contributors to attempt a critical appreciation of Propertius iii. 10. The contributors were asked to present their opinions independently and no ‘rules’ were laid down by the editors. It is our intention to publish from time to time further exercises of this type.

I should like to begin like a preacher in his pulpit, by citing two texts. In a lecture given at Harvard University in 1950 on the subject of ‘Poetry and Drama’ T. S. Eliot said: ‘I tried to keep in mind that in a play, from time to time, something should happen; that the audience should be kept in the constant expectation that something is going to happen; and that when it does happen, it should be different, but not too different, from what the audience had been led to expect.’ My second text comes from the paper that has most effectively influenced my own ideas on the subject of Euripides' clever exploitation of the unexpected in his plays: R. P. Winnington-Ingram's ‘Euripides: Poietes Sophos’, published in the second volume of Arethnsa. Winnington-Ingram ends his paper with these words: ‘It makes me wonder whether, in the words of Oscar Wilde, Euripides was not capable of resisting everything except temptation—the temptation to be clever.’

My title is an ambitious one, and defines a field which is more suitable for a book than for a single lecture, and which has the added disadvantage that it crosses the boundaries between a number of disciplines: history, science, philosophy, and technology. Anyone who chooses such a theme is in danger of being told by those well-versed in the individual disciplines that his knowledge of each of them is inadequate; which may well be true, and is certainly true of me. But cross-disciplinary exploration is in itself a desirable activity; and if a few explorers perish in the process no great harm is done, and others may follow their example more successfully. I should not, however, in saying this, like it to be thought that I am claiming any great novelty for what I shall say to you today. Little of my material is new; all I can hope to do is to suggest to you a particular interpretation of it.

Juvenal's rhetorical recipe is characteristically simple: a finelychiselled sententia to summarize the chilly treatment accorded to honest men, followed by a catalogue in asyndeton of the luxuries which come as the rewards of wickedness. The impact of the passage does not depend on the precise details of the items listed: in consequence it is hardly surprising that commentators have been lax in their duty over the last five words of line 76, and left the picture blurred when regard for a well-known art-fashion would have instantly sharpened the focus. Thus Friedländer, as conscientious as he was unimaginative, tells us (ad loc.) that Juvenal meant a cup adorned with a goat in high relief (‘einen Pokal mit einem Bock in Hochrelief’). The usually more percipient Duff acquiesces, while Mayor, Ruperti, and the rest chime in with words of similar import. Passages to show that the verb exstare is appropriate to describe relief-work are duly paraded: Ovid, Met. v. 80–2 has altis exstantem signis … cratera, and in a later book of the same poem (xii. 235–6) signis exstantibus asper / antiquus crater: Martial may also be cited to the same effect (viii. 51.9, al.).

In the Choephoroi and the Eumenides Aeschylus has described curious and repellent characters, composite beings who partake of the nature and appearance of old women, dogs, Gorgons, Harpies, and aged children, creatures of a compound well able to fright and amaze the original audience. But if a modern theatrical director were to ask, ‘What did they look like? How shall I dress them and have them masked?’, it might be too easy to allow his wardrobe mistress a gallop into phantasy, whereas it is almost as easy to give a simple, if less exhilaratingly imaginative, answer. Aeschylus describes the Erinyes as follows:

Choephoroi

like Gorgons, 1048; φαιοχ⋯τωνες, 1049; wreathed about with snakes, 1049–50; with blood dripping from their eyes, 1058.