The return of Orestes to avenge his father's death was good material for tragedy since it provided at any rate the possibility of a tragic dilemma. Thus in the Oresteia Orestes cannot deny the duty to avenge his father, a duty imposed by public opinion and divine command; but he cannot do this without killing his mother, an act that involves pollution and is also repugnant to the deepest instincts. In mythological terms he will inevitably be pursued either by the Erinyes of his father or by those of his mother. Aeschylus stresses the divine command, repeated at a crucial moment when Pylades breaks silence at Cho. 900, and presents Orestes as essentially guiltless, caught in a tragic dilemma, and eventually after much suffering purified and absolved. In Euripides the divine command is still there, though its validity is questioned both before and after the matricide, and Orestes is still faced with a dilemma, though he and Electra (who now becomes much more prominent) are presented in a less sympathetic light; in the main part of the play Euripides clearly invites us to condemn their action, and it is only in the epilogue that the mitigating circumstance of Apollo's command is emphasized and ultimate acquittal on Aeschylean lines is foreshadowed. In Sophocles the killing of Clytemnestra is approved even if not expressly commanded by Apollo, and it is not surprising that Orestes should be presented as justified. What has surprised many critics is that the dilemma seems to have disappeared: Orestes never has any doubts or qualms, nor indeed has anybody else in the play, and some have felt that this leaves Sophocles open to the charge of ‘moral obtuseness’. In 1927 J. T. Sheppard came to the rescue with an article entitled ‘In Defence of Sophocles’ (CR 41 (1927), 2–9) containing a new interpretation, which has now been revived and persuasively argued by J. H. Kells in his valuable edition of the play (Cambridge, 1973). Briefly it is that Sophocles is actually condemning the act of matricide quite as strongly as Euripides, not as explicitly but rather by means of ‘a series of subtle but forceful dramatic touches’, and that the play is ‘a continuous exercise in dramatic irony’. By this means Sophocles is inviting his audience not of course to condone the crime of Clytemnestra, but to condemn Orestes and Electra as murderers, and to see Electra, before the killing of her mother, as overwrought to the point of mental derangement and delusion, but ‘like many mad people hard-headed and cunning in achieving her ends’.

Historians, we are told on all sides, have signally failed to clarify the terms ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’, though they employ them all the time. The man in the street, curiously enough, sees no great problem, and I shall argue that he is right. Much of the trouble in the professional literature stems from a elementary confusion between a definition and a typology. It would not be a useful definition of empire, for example, that excluded either the Athenian or the Persian empire because Athens was a democratic city-state or Persia an autocratic monarchy; whereas that distinction might be important in both a typology and an analysis.

The source of the tears mentioned in the much quoted final line (449) has been the subject of diverse views. That the shedder of the tears is not specifically designated has been felt to create an ambiguity, and critics have been tempted to conjecture his or her identity according to their personal whims or prejudices. The point is of more than passing interest and is of relevance in the assessment of Aeneas' character and the understanding of Book 4. The tears have been variously assigned: to Aeneas (so Servius, Augustine, C.D. 9.4 fin., and a number of modern critics); to Dido and Anna (Heyne-Wagner, Conington-Nettleship), or Dido (Sidgwick, Page); to Aeneas, Dido, and Anna (R. Lesueur, L'Énéide de V. (Toulouse, 1975), p. 404). R. G. Austin (ed. Aen. IV, Oxford, 1955, p. 135) thinks it wrong to probe: ‘Virgil is purposely ambiguous, and why may he not remain so? The line is ruined by a chill analysis … These tears could not be denied to Aeneas: but … few could withhold them for ever from Dido.’ The position is summed up in Servius auctus: ‘quidam … lacrimas inanes uel Aeneae uel Didonis uel Annae uel omnium accipiunt’, to which we may add ‘〈uel totius generis humani〉’: cf. ‘Virgil has not said whose tears; by not specifying he widens the area of sorrow, generalises this particular conflict into the universal conflict of pity with duty’ (R. D. Williams (ed.), Aen. I–VI (London, 1972), p. 373; cf. too W. F. Jackson Knight, Roman Vergil (London, 1944), p. 205). That Virgil should in truth have intended such puzzling obscurity seems hard to credit. It is being assumed that in a detail of his narrative which closely concerns the leading characters and which cannot but excite the reader's interest this master artist is guilty of a vagueness for which another writer would be censured as negligent, if not inept. It appears to me that the evidence presented by the poet himself is nowadays commonly ignored, and, outmoded as the process may seem, a reasoned consideration of the actual Latin text may not be out of place.

Now that many students of ancient civilization, whether at school or at university, are necessarily studying the ancient sources in translation, it has become more important than ever that the translations should be accurate. It is true that some errors make little or no difference to the interpretation; for instance, it does not really affect Thucydides' explanation at 3.15 of the reluctance of Sparta's allies to take part in a second invasion of Attica in 428 to bring relief to Mytilene that Warner (Penguin Classics, revised edition 1972, p. 201) translates ἐν καρпο ξυγκομιδσαν as ‘were busy in harvesting their corn’, when the chronology makes it clear than the time is August and well after the corn harvest. It is true also that a good many errors will be noticed by the teacher or tutor who knows Greek (or, as the case may be, Latin) or suspected even by his pupils as a result of reading some modern comment or interpretation (as in the case cited above) or of comparing different translations, although either of these exercises, especially the latter, may merely suggest that there is legitimate doubt and one may have some degree of choice about which version to follow. I should like, however, to offer one case affecting a historical episode which falls within a good many syllabuses, where the translations are in agreement, but seem to me to have got it wrong, where the structure of the Greek has not, as far as I know, been discussed in any commentary and where, I think, it does matter which meaning is taken.

The following is the fourth of the series which began in G & R 20 (1973), 38 ff. and 155 ff. and was continued in G & R 21 (1974), 165 ff. and in the current volume, 70 ff.

At the end of the first episodion of Sophocles' play, Ajax, having affirmed the immutability of his ἦθος, which leaves him no choice but to live nobly or to die nobly, retires into his tent to end his life. Overwhelmed by shame from his attempt to kill the Greek leaders, which resulted instead in his deluded slaying of sheep and cattle, he sees death as the only way to reassert his heroic stature and to prove to his noble father, Telamon, that his son is not ἄσπλαγχνος (472). Many critics have agreed that at this point the audience and Chorus consider him as good as dead and that consequently his reappearance in line 646 comes as a dramatic surprise. What has proved a source of continuing controversy, however, is the explanation for this reappearance, and thus the question inevitably suggests itself: why, indeed, is Ajax still alive when he emerges from his tent in line 646? This question provides the central focus for this paper, which seeks to provide an explanation based upon an analysis of interrelated patterns of imagery within the play, particularly those involving Ajax's sword.

There has been a revolution in Pindaric studies in the last twenty years; hardly an issue of a classical periodical now appears without a new treatment of one of the forty-five epinician odes, the author putting into practice the genre-centred approach which began (more or less) with W. Schadewaldt's Der Aufbau des pindarischen Epinikion (Halle) in 1928, and had its greatest forward impulse from E. L. Bundy's Studia Pindarica (Berkeley and Los Angeles) in 1962.

‘The Blinding of the Ogre’, a widespread folktale, has long fascinated and stimulated man's imagination. By far the earliest known version of the story appears in Book 9 of Homer's Odyssey, but the current scholarly consensus holds that this tale is earlier than Homer, was borrowed by the poet, and has survived independently in oral tradition down to modern times. In attempting to explore its origins, I must emphasize at the outset that I am not concerned here with the physical, geographical origin of the story–a problem which has thus far proved insoluble. Rather, my focus will be on the deeper, less tangible origin of the myth: is it possible to discover the idea, the significance, perhaps some symbolism or psychological appeal which lies at the root of the story and might help to explain its astonishing endurance and popularity in oral traditions spanning three continents and three millennia?

There is no novelty in suggesting the importance of Roman coins as a source for the study of Roman history; a considerable number of works have explored the possibilities of the subject. The chief problem, however, has always lain in appreciating how far they can take us in an understanding of events: the coins are after all often as tendentious as the literary sources are sometimes alleged to be–or even more so. Further, when the historian moves from attempting to explain the legends to such matters as interpreting features of the portraiture, he is moving on to very subjective ground: for example, what may be the significance of the fact that on Nerva's Divvs Avgvstvs coins, the portrait of Augustus begins to look uncannily like that of Nerva himself? Or again, what are we to make of the fact that the obverse portrait on early coins of Trajan bears a resemblance to that of Nerva?

The relation of poet to patron is one which we today find rather difficult to understand. In our present society the theory, and to a considerable degree the practice, is that everyone has an equal opportunity and owes his position to his merits. It was not always so. The old way of doing things was by influence and interest and patronage. It was thought only right to do the best for your relations and friends and those who had done you some service, and those without wealth and power could only get on with the help of the wealthy and powerful. And as talent does not always go with wealth and power, men of talent such as writers often found themselves in a position of dependence. The invention of printing, the spread of literacy, and the establishment of a system of copyright, have now made it possible for a writer to be independent—dependent, that is, on the general public instead of on individuals. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no one would have had any difficulty in understanding Virgil's and Horace's relation to Maecenas.

The celebrated trick with the arrow and the axes, described in the twenty-first book of the Odyssey, has been extensively discussed; but there is little agreement on how, if at all, it was performed. We report here an attempt at a practical reconstruction.

This Note is a supplement to J. C. Davies's discussion of the Republic's declaration that when the philosophers of the kallipolis have been trained in dialectic, they must be compelled to forsake pure contemplation of the forms and return to the Cave to rule (519 c–520d).

Our first need is to define closely the sort of people for whom we intend the translation. Then we must be clear as to what we aim to achieve with them and it. Our audience, presumably, consists of young people many of whom have a primary allegiance to some other Arts discipline, chiefly English, Modern Languages, or History. Almost all will have some experience of studying literature in their own tongue, some will be familiar at first hand with foreign literatures, few will have more than a nodding acquaintance with Latin. By and large they will be used to taking a text and pressing it so as to establish a close understanding of it. Unhappily, if they attempt that with any translation known to me disaster will inevitably ensue. At this point, many readers will no doubt feel that all their doubts about the wisdom of attempting to teach Virgil through translation are being vindicated, while, in my experience, those who wish to defend the practice will tend to do so by granting the proposition that much will inevitably be lost in translation, conceding that students must learn not to press translations, and then making a number of ill-defined generalizations on what can be achieved. What I wish to argue is that none of the popular Virgilian translations was composed with our needs in mind, all make certain assumptions which were possibly quite proper for their audiences but which render their work unsuitable for ours. I shall argue further that we are far too lenient in the demands we make of our translators.