‘Here the prince held a review in the park and took a muster of our countrymen and they amounted all told to 11,000 heavy-armed and about 2,000 light-armed infantry. Thence he marched to—, a populous town, where he halted five days. More than three months’ pay was now owing to the troops and they came often to his gates and demanded it. He talked hopefully and tried to put them off, but was obviously worried. For it was not like him to withhold money when he had it. At this place the wife of a neighbouring king came to the prince and, it was said, gave him a large sum of money. At any rate he gave the troops four months' pay. This queen had a body-guard of her own men, but according to camp gossip the prince knew how to pass the sentries. Thence he proceeded another two marches further inland to another large town. There he halted three days and there, it was said, the queen asked him to show her his army. This was in accord with his own wishes. So he held a review of our countrymen and of his own troops. He ordered our men to draw up in their accustomed order of battle, each general in command of his own contingent. So they formed up four deep. The prince inspected his own forces first and they marched past, the horse by squadrons and the foot by companies.Then he inspected our men, driving up and down the lines in a chariot, and the queen following in an armoured wagon.

Vergil has an accurate eye for visual detail, and describes much as an artist might each cameo of his narrative. It is for this reason that we are shocked by images that cannot be easily translated visually. Perhaps the most arresting of such passages is the description of the monstrum Fama at A. 4. 173ff., which defies any reasonable attempt to convert it into a visual or narrative image.

I Have been invited to write an article on the subject of the pronunciation of Latin. I put this fact in the forefront, for I do not wish it to be supposed that I am a fanatic who seeks every opportunity of bombarding an unwilling audience with his one fixed idea. As a matter of fact, my main feeling in the matter is that a completely undue importance has been attached to the question, and that it is the so-called reformers and not their opponents who are responsible for this tedious discussion. Having made this apology I will state my case with what brevity I can.

A phrase of Mr. Middleton Murry in his chapter on the imagery of Shakespeare suggests some interesting possibilities of literary speculation. Noting the odd association of dogs and sweetmeats in four widely separated tragedies Murry remarks: ‘What is to be noted is that the image, having its roots in some vital experience, grows steadily more complex.…’ He goes on to suggest that the origin of a notion so obsessive lay in some unpleasant memory of Sir Thomas Lucy's hall.

Ancient drama is frequently said nowadays to be unsuited to the taste of modern audiences, and when one sees modern productions of ancient plays one is inclined to agree. And yet the plays read well, and they certainly appealed to a wide variety of audiences in ancient times. Can it be that it is the production and not the play that is at fault? Apart from the obvious fact that most modern producers are unable or unwilling to handle a chorus effectively, it does seem very often that the production is based on an interpretation of the play, which, if it is not actually misguided, is at any rate hesitant. There are two factors which make it extremely difficult to interpret or appreciate an ancient play. First, the influence of Aristotle has caused us to judge ancient drama by the rules which he laid down and to measure all tragedies by the standard of Sophokles' Oedipus the King, although it is obvious that the poets were not guided by Aristotle's rules and that many tragedies aimed at effects quite different from those of the Oedipus the King. Thus we expect ancient tragedy to be ‘tragic’ in our sense of the word, and we are baffled when we find no ‘tragic’ element to satisfy our expectations. Secondly, the knowledge that drama originated as part of the cult of Dionysos impels us to label it ‘ritual drama’, and to feel that it must be solemn and conventional and must concern itself with weighty moral and theological problems. We are slightly surprised to find that it is not confined to a re-enactment of the Dionysos myths, and we hardly dare to contemplate the possibility that poets dealt very freely with the myths and legends which they took as their subjects. But ancient drama had to appeal to mixed audiences. It could not afford to be bound by academic rules or by excessive subservience to tradition. The fact that dramatic performances were organized as competitions was in itself an inducement to introduce new methods of handling the traditional material; and, if we look at the plays which have survived, we can see that drama changed constantly to suit the inevitable changes in public taste.

Athene is mentioned in the Iliad nearly 200 times and almost as often in the Odyssey. On ninety-two occasions Homer calls her γλαυκ⋯πις. How should we translate this constantly recurring epithet? Neither Chapman nor Pope claims to provide a literal translation. Often they are content with ‘Athenian Maid’ or ‘Minerva’: but when they do attempt to render γλαυκ⋯πις they offer ‘Blue-eyed Goddess’, ‘Blue-eyed Maid’, &c. Cowper prefers ‘Pallas cerulean-eyed’, and Lord Derby ‘blue-eyed Pallas’.

When it was first proposed that an Association of Classical Teachers should be formed, there were some who feared that it might, if successful, become either a rival to the Classical Association or, at least, a force to divide and weaken it. The activities of J.A.C.T. and the appearance of its excellent journal, Didaskalos, have now made it quite clear that these fears were groundless. Both organizations can and should exist together and their co-operation has already produced considerable mutual benefits. Indeed, now that so many of our schools are suddenly subject to Protean transformation, it seems almost providential that there should be a responsible and representative association able to speak with an expert voice for classical teachers.

In his 1982 essay on Catullus 64, Richard Jenkyns offered an eloquent and elegant counterblast to the ‘reductivism that has characterized much recent criticism of Latin poetry’ (p. 82). He argued that to impose a unifying interpretation on such a work as Peleus and Thetis impoverishes it. ‘Anyone who has failed to perceive that throughout this poem Catullus is deliberately various, disproportionate and unpredictable has certainly not understood it’ (p. 92). With the advent of the millennium, it seems that Jenkyns, even if he won the battle, did not win the war, though, doubtless because of him, the unities which scholars now advocate have become decidedly more capacious, more able to serve as hold-alls, than those imposed by their predecessors. The instinct to identify unifying principles appears to be a strong one. In any case, Jenkyns’ own view of the poem – that it ‘is made up of pictures in that it is a gallery of tableaux or set pieces’ (p. 150) – can surely be taken as suggesting the kind of e pluribus unum of a work such as Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The various tableaux, each of them displayed, as it were, by the poet to elicit a differing response, may add up to a single experience. It is not simply that the total may be greater than the sum of the individual parts; it is rather that the total may attain a unity of its own.

The tradition of classical studies in Poland goes back to the Middle Ages. The first historical chronicle, written in Latin, appeared in this country in the twelfth century. At present Latin is taught in about 30 per cent, of our grammar schools. The course covers four years of instruction, and the texts studied are those of Nepos, Caesar, Sallust, Livy, Lucretius, Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, and Horace. Greek is studied at the universities, mainly by students of classical philology, although its knowledge is also required in some other fields of the humanities.

To one nurtured on the pure and sustaining milk of Cicero and the Augustans, with an occasional dash of Tacitus and Juvenal for medicinal purposes, the writings of Apuleius come with something of the force of a knock-me-down. The very words are unfamiliar. Barrio is onomatopoeic enough to be guessed, but what does vispellio mean to anyone outside the legal profession? What of cambio? His is a strange language, highly artificial, with its borrowings from the Greek—myoparo, schedium, and naulum, which Juvenal took before him, for instance; with its echoes of Plautus—tuburdnor, scitulus, atticisso, capero, ientaculum, agaso, lurco, pollinctor, cincinnus, and examussim are all Plautine; with its diminutives, always a sign of artifice, as it was the sign of the Graecis-santes of Cicero's day—mellitula, tenella, centunculus, sdtulus spring to the mind; with comparatively unfamiliar literary words—tesca and blatero are both Horatian, but are very rare; and with his own occasional extensions of usage, as when he describes his horse as vector meus, or speaks of a kiss being given pressule, or seemingly coins subterlabere for ‘to slight’. But with this mannered artificiality goes the easy conversational idiom of the professional popular writer, evinced by his repeated use of commodum in the Metamorphoses to carry on the flow of ideas. Fuscis avibus or sinistro pede for ‘without luck’ are as artificial as the rest, but minimo minus for ‘almost’, or dicam an with the indicative for immo vero are surely conversational.

Aristotle'sPoetics has centuries of tradition behind it as a substitute for first-hand appreciation in dramatic criticism, and this work has lent colour to the old view that the characters of Greek tragedy were all ‘idealized types’ in a performance in which the plot was the thing. This is because Aristotle explicitly puts plot above character in his list of the essentials of a tragedy, and when he comes to treat of character has little to say which appeals to us. But the pure tragic drama of human feeling depends entirely on its success in eliciting sympathy with its characters. Of this art Sophocles, like Shakespeare, is the acknowledged champion. Aeschylus is inspired to ‘justify the ways of God to man’, Euripides is concerned to question the ways of man to his neighbour. When Aeschylus added characterization to his loftier qualities, he produced in the Agamemnon the greatest play ever written, but we do not suspect his ‘Prometheus’ of character drawing any more than Shelley's. And in Euripides, as sometimes in Shaw, the characters are so under the thumb of the theories that we forget to take much personal interest in them. But in Sophocles we are not distracted by the prophet or the propagandist, and we can let his pathetic, human people stir in us their own hopes and sorrows.

The desire to celebrate the lives of famous men has no doubt been a fundamental characteristic of human nature since the beginning of time. The picture of ‘primitive’ man, squatting at night by a fire in the smoky cave, which served him for a home, relating his brief, rude, ancestral tales to an appreciative audience of two or three, rapt and forgetful (for a moment) of the harsh life outside, is neither unplausible nor improbable.

It is perhaps possible (on the principle of ex pede Herculem) to disentangle some of the elements which contributed to the experience afforded by the relation of such stories. In an uncivilized community the dead exact a tyrannical homage from the living in order that the consequences of their imagined wrath may be averted. Hence they are to be placated by all means, and their memory is to be revered by the enumeration of the glorious exploits which they performed whilfe living. For, in the ‘next world’, whither they have been translated—call it the Elysian Fields, or what you will—they are conceived of as taking joy in the celebration of their valour and the recital of their achievements.

Again, the tribe or race must be preserved, and there is no more suitable medium for the crystallization of tribal or racial virtues than oral tradition. The young men, as they listen to the deeds of their forefathers, are stirred by ‘this constant renewal of the good report of brave men’ and are themselves fired with the desire for an immortal name.

Towards the end of the winter 1939–40 I was asked by a nephew, who is the Mayor of a Midland town and had to request his Council to confer the freedom of the borough on some notable, whether there was not in Demosthenes an appropriate compliment for him to quote, expressing the high qualities of the candidate for the honour. I guessed that my nephew had a vague recollection from his school-days of the De Corona, and I found what I thought was in his mind in § 84—the spurious decree granting a crown to Demosthenes because he had always been friendly to the city, and had always said and done all the good in his power on its behalf. My nephew was pleased and used the quotation in his speech. I was then moved to explore the De Corona for myself, and very soon was startled by remarkable parallels to events in Europe in 1940; and the idea of this paper came to me. In the presence of experts, may I ask indulgence for my ignorance? My knowledge of Greek history, especially of this period, is but the sediment of what was never more than a very small cupful.