The treatise περὶ στρατιωτικῶν ἐπιτιμίων has been edited at least half a dozen times, and my only justification for bringing out a new text of a book which is not so widely read as it deserves is that all existing editions are based on inadequate manuscript authority and therefore misleading.

There are two editions by Karl Eduard Zachariä von Lingenthal (hereinafter called Z.). The earlier appeared as the thirty-fourth chapter of the Ecloga ad Prochiron mutata (Jus Grœco-Romanum, Pars IV, Lipsiae, 1865, pp. 138—141). It seems from the preface to be based on Paris gr. 1720 of the end of the fifteenth century. The later edition is in Z.'s article ‘Wissenschaft und Recht für das Heer vom 6. bis zum Anfang des 10. Jahrhunderts’ in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Dritter Band, Leipzig, 1894, pp. 450–453. He takes it—so he says at p. 449—‘nach einer Abschrift aus der Epitome ad Prochiron mutata, die ich aus der vorzüglichen alten Handschrift Marcianus 579 genommen habe.’ In an affecting letter to the editor of the Byzantinische Zeitschrift (p. 437, n. 1) he says that, although his eyesight and his pen have failed him, he has been able to complete the undertaking with the support of his children and the local pastor. Greek manuscripts are best collated without the help of women or priests. Certain it is that the manuscript of which Z. gives a copy is not Marcianus gr. 579. The illustrious man died, full of years and wrong references, before his article was published.

When is it rational to commit suicide? More specifically, when is it rational for a Platonist to commit suicide, and more worryingly, is it ever not rational for a Platonist to commit suicide? If the Phaedo wants us to learn that the soul is immortal, and that philosophy is a preparation for a state better than incarnation, then why does it begin with a discussion defending the prohibition of suicide? In the course of that discussion, Socrates offers (but does not necessarily endorse) two arguments for the prohibition of self-killing, at least in most circumstances, which have exerted a long and powerful influence over subsequent discussion of the topic, particularly in theist contexts. In the context of the Phaedo itself, however, this introductory conversation plays a crucial role in setting the agenda for the remainder of the dialogue and offering an initial discussion of the major concerns of the argument as a whole. In particular, the discussion of the nature of suicide is intimately bound up with Socrates' conception of true philosophy as a ‘preparation for death’, the relationship between soul and body, and the immortality of the soul. My intention is to provide a reading of that passage (61e-69e) which asks whether the Phaedo can offer a philosophically satisfying distinction between suicide and philosophy and how it relates to other ancient philosophical attitudes to self-killing. I argue that Socrates does not think that being dead is always preferable to being alive, and that the religious views expressed in the passage are consistent with his general stance on the benevolence of the gods.

Moments before Euripides' Polyneices and Eteocles square off for their final, fatal battle in the Phoenissae, each prays for divine assistance (1359–76). Their prayers, though very brief, are by the standards of Greek drama rather formal. Polyneices, as Theban as his brother Eteocles, is leading a force of Argives against Thebes to recover the kingship he claims is rightfully his. As he prays he looks toward distant Argos and invokes ‘Lady Hera’, for, he says, ‘I am now yours, because I married Adrastus’ daughter and dwell in his land' (1364–6). He has left his homeland, married into an Argive family, and now lives in Argos, and he must therefore appeal to an Argive deity. Hera is here made a doubly appropriate recipient of his prayer—by locality as patroness of the Argolid and by function as protectress of marriage, her two major roles in the religion of Greek life and tragedy. Eteocles, commanding the home forces against invaders, looks to the nearby temple of ‘Pallas of the golden shield’. He invokes her as the ‘daughter of Zeus’ and, like Polyneices but less explicitly, explains why he appeals specifically to her. He wishes to kill ‘the man who has come to sack my fatherland’ (1372–6). This Athena ‘of the golden shield’ is patroness of Thebes and, in more general terms, a goddess who aids the city in defence against foreign invaders. Like Hera she is doubly appropriate, in terms of locale and function, to her worshipper's needs.

A fragment, cited by Athenaeus (Deipn. xiii 557b–e =fr. 21) from the life of Philip II of Macedon by the Peripatetic biographer Satyrus, has been regarded by modern scholarship as a fundamental source for Philip's early campaigns and ‘matrimonial politics’. Here Satyrus lists Philip's wives, apparently in chronological sequence. The fragment, as it is usually printed, also states that during his reign Philip αἰεὶ κατὰ πόλεμον ἐγάμει. This has led scholars to infer a reasonably accurate account of Philip's method of conducting foreign policy through contracting political marriages.

Beloch was among the first of modern scholars to link Philip's marriages (as listed in the fragment) with specific wars and even to alter their chronological order so that most of them can be pegged to the few known campaigns of Philip's early career. He tacitly repudiated Satyrus' order by placing the marriage of Phila of Elimeia before that of Audata of Illyria and relegating Audata to the position of Nebenfrau, raising her status to that of Gemahlin only after the (hypothetical) death of Phila. He gave no specific reason for doing this, but it would appear that he regarded the marriage between Philip and a woman of the politically unstable region of Elimeia as being more appropriate to the time of his accession and therefore more likely to have taken place before his marriage to the Illyrian.

Mr. Newton in his History of Discoveries, p. 583, gives the following account of an excursion to the peninsula which lies to the west of Budrum (Halikarnassus) where he was then excavating:—

We next proceeded to examine the hill with the level top. This hill is called Assarlik.

Ascending from this gateway we passed several other lines of ancient walls, and on gaining the summit of the hill found a platform artificially levelled. There are not many traces of walls here. The sides of the hill are so steep on the north and east that they do not require walls. The platform terminates on the north-east in a rock rising vertically for many hundred feet from the valley below. The top of the rock is cut into beds to receive a tower. The view from this platform is magnificent.

[After brief mention of several tombs passed in the way down, Mr. Newton proceeds:]

The acropolis which anciently crowned the rock at Assarlik must have overlooked a great part of the peninsula and commanded the road from Halicarnassus to Myndus and Termera. From the number of tombs here, and their archaic character, it may be inferred that this was a fortress of some importance in very early times.

After Herodotus describes the stock-taking in Greece on the eve of Xerxes' invasion, and before he passes to the actions at Thermopylae and Artemisium, we are briefly told of an expedition to Thessaly (vii 172–4). As Xerxes approached the Hellespont, Thessalian envoys appealed for help to the Greek loyalists, who sent a large army in response. This enterprise argues a very high degree of confidence and organisation among the loyalists, and yet the sequel is strangely disappointing, for just a few days after reaching their destination the Greek forces withdrew again and were seemingly disbanded. Understandably enough the episode has puzzled scholars, and no ogreement exists as to either the motives behind the expedition or the reasons for the withdrawal. The facts need to be re-examined, especially as Herodotus' testimony has in one respect been misconstrued and another vital piece of evidence has escaped attention. I shall argue that the expedition was capably and resolutely planned as the main line of defence against Xerxes; that the federal authorities in Thessaly co-operated to the fullest; that the Greek army adopted the best strategic position for their purpose; and that the scheme miscarried only because of obstruction from an unexpected quarter. The dismaying failure of the Thessalian expedition helps to explain why the subsequent efforts of the loyalists during the campaign of 480 were so often confused or behindhand.

1. I happened to be staying in Constantinople in the late summer of 1922 as the guest of General Sir Charles Harrington, and I was there when the Chanak crisis of that year arose. I visited the Narrows of the Dardanelles at a time when Kemal's leading troops were approaching the Asiatic coast of the Dardanelles, and there was then naturally much debate as to whether and how he would attempt to cross into Europe. It occurred to me at the time that it would be of interest to study what Xerxes had done 2402 years previously, and on returning to Constantinople I borrowed a Herodotus from the American College, and when the crisis had died down I went back with it to the Dardanelles. In that district, during the dry season, the problem of water supply looms large, and I was at once struck on reading Herodotus by the fact that this had been also Xerxes' chief difficulty, in that portion of his march which took him from the Scamander, the modern Mendere, across the Hellespont to the Hebrus, the modern Maritza.

The word ‘little-master cup,’ as I use it, covers, first, ‘lip-cups,’ ‘band-cups,’ and variants of them; second, ‘Droop’ (or ‘Antidoran’) cups. I shall not deal with Droop cups; for I can add nothing to Ure's admirable study. I confine myself to lip-cups, band-cups, and their variants. Much of what I shall say has been said already, and I draw attention to the concise and accurate treatment which these also have received from Ure.

Into the origin of the shapes I do not enter for the present. The forerunner is the Attic ‘Siana cup.’

In the earlier years of the nineteenth century a few scholars questioned whether there was any direct relation between Anaxagoras and Empedocles. Since then these doubts have been voiced but rarely. Instead, opinion has been divided principally on which thinker was dependent on the other. Most scholars, following Zeller and Burnet, have thought that Anaxagoras was dependent on Empedocles. A minority, including Tannery, has held the opposite view.

It is essential to distinguish two questions. Who wrote first? Did he, whichever of the two it was, influence the other? Both questions are answered by a piece of external evidence, which since Zeller's second edition has been largely neglected: Alcidamas is reported by Diogenes to have said that Empedocles ‘heard’ Anaxagoras. This should imply both that Anaxagoras wrote earlier than Empedocles, and that he influenced him. Examination of passages in Aristotle and in some later writers, notably Plutarch, confirms the priority. Internal evidence may be applied to the question of influence. I shall seek to argue in particular that Anaxagoras' and Empedocles' theories of vision are such that they imply the influence of whichever is the earlier philosopher on the later.

The conflict between Prometheus and Zeus has long dominated critical discussion of the play and diverted attention from the only mortal to appear onstage. Prometheus is widely applauded as humanity's saviour and Zeus condemned as an oppressive tyrant, but the fate of the maiden Io is largely discounted. Her encounter with Prometheus, however, is the longest and most complex episode in the play, and it provides a very different perspective on events. The elaborate forecast of her journeys delivered by Prometheus deploys the ‘discourse of barbarism’ to picture a primitive world ravaged by savage violence and hostile monsters. The lands through which Io is to travel are devoid of the civil and religious institutions of the classical Greek polis and oikos. Yet the episode also foretells how this barbaric world will evolve under the aegis of Zeus. Argive Io, as ‘wife’ of Zeus, will found a ‘new family’ of mortals who will introduce and champion the norms of Greek civic culture in his and her name alike. Prophecy, allusion and foreshadowing thus reveal the Zeus of this play to be not the harsh and destructive despot imagined by most today, but the benevolent source and ultimate arbiter of justice for both gods and humanity.

Xenophon's Cyropaedia can be read as a proto-novel, a biography, or as an essay on leadership or constitutional theory. This article argues that the Cyropaedia can and should also be read as a pamphlet on practical military reform with special relevance to the Spartan state.

The inclusion of a series of proposals for the reform of the Spartan army in the Cyropaedia has not heretofore been recognized because Xenophon presented those proposals in the guise of a reform of the Persian army undertaken by Cyrus. There was no historical basis for this part of the Cyropaedia, and there is no trace of a major military reform in either the Greek or the Persian tradition about Cyrus as it existed before Xenophon. Cyrus' military reform was thus an authorial invention that presumably served some important narrative purpose.

Xenophon inserted a military reform into the Cyropaedia as a way of presenting a proposal for the restructuring of the Spartan army. When Xenophon wrote the Cyropaedia, the Spartans were struggling desperately to maintain their position in the face of a powerful Boeotian army. The Boeotians could put many more hoplites into the field and had a large cavalry force that they were using to excellent effect. The obvious response on the part of the Spartans was to take whatever measures were necessary to increase the number of men in their phalanx and to assemble a sizeable, highly trained group of horsemen. The programme of military reform enacted by Cyrus in the Cyropaedia produces just this result. If implemented in Sparta, this programme would have involved the wholesale addition of non-Spartiates to the Spartan phalanx and the conversion of the Spartan homoioi into an all-cavalry force.

Xenophon thus used Cyrus' army in the Cyropaedia to show what a revamped Spartan military might look like. The use of fictional narrative to explore ideas with immediate application to the real world has long been recognized as an integral part of the Cyropaedia. This aspect of the Cyropaedia has in the past been explored largely in regard to Xenophon's thinking about leadership and ethics, but it can and should be extended to include military reform in Sparta.

‘Daphnis & Chloe: A most sweet & pleasant Pastoral Romance for Young ladies by George Thornley, Gent. … 1657.’ The well-known title-page of the first English translation of Longos from the original is characteristic of the attitude which has always prevailed towards this work. If we turn to the present day we find that the latest translator into English writes in his introduction ‘Daphnis and Chloe was only meant to be “a source of pleasure for the human race”, and might have been described by a second-century Graham Greene as an “entertainment”’. The intervening three centuries provide some acknowledgments of Longos' skill in individual departments—the description of nature, for example, or the management of plot—but taking the work as a whole scarcely any reader seems to have regarded it as more than an amorous triviality with a country setting; enjoyable in its pastoral descriptions; enjoyable in its amorous passages (or shocking, according to the taste of the reader); essentially trivial.

It is my object to argue that this view, by taking account of only one side of the book, misrepresents it as a whole. Longos meant us to find in his work a serious import, as well as entertainment, and the way in which he realises this intention in all the details of the story makes of it a serious work of art.

The eleventh ode of Bacchylides begins and ends at Metapontum. But most of it is devoted to two myths about Tiryns. The first of these is the insult to Hera by the daughters of King Proitos and their consequent madness: they leave Tiryns to roam in the wild, until with the permission of Hera they are cured by Artemis, to whom they then build, with their father, an altar. The second is the earlier quarrel at Argos between the brothers Proitos and Akrisios which led to the foundation by Proitos of Tiryns. The latter myth is framed by the former, and the correspondences between the two are carefully implied: the story of the Proitids begins and ends with the foundation of the altar and cult of Artemis at Lousoi in the Arcadian mountains (41, 110), while the inner story begins and ends with the foundation of Tiryns (60-1, 80-1). Just as the girls’ departure from Tiryns led to the establishment of the altar, so the men left Argos and founded Tiryns. Both the joins between the stories are cemented by the idea of departure from a town (55-61, 80-4). Both stories move from a strange piece of folly to consequent suffering, prayers, divine ‘stopping’ of the suffering (76, 108), and finally the building of walls or altar. Similarly Alexidamos, deprived of an earlier Olympic victory by the ‘wandering wits’ of the judges, is now having his Pythian victory celebrated at Metapontum.

The purpose of this paper is to enquire into Plato's attitude towards a group of related problems which at the present time have assumed an unusual importance. By ‘the irrational’ I mean that surd element in human experience, both in our experience of ourselves and in our experience of the world about us, which has exercised so powerful—and as some of us think, so perilous—a fascination on the philosophers, artists, and men of letters of our own day.

That contemporary problems and interests should determine the questions which we address to the great thinkers of the past is entirely natural and proper. But he who uses this approach needs to be alive to its dangers. Such contemporary interests have very frequently determined not only the questions which scholars have asked, but also the answers which they have put into the mouths of the defenceless dead. Too often we unconsciously identify a past thinker with ourselyes, and distort his thoughts to make him the mouthpiece of our own preconceptions; or else, unconsciously identifying him with our opponents, we belabour him with gusto, serene in the assured knowledge that he cannot hit back.

One day in the year 326 of our era Nicagoras, torch-bearer of the Eleusinian mysteries, made his way unsuspectingly past the buried tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes, and climbed towards the entrance of the tomb immediately above it. Though it had itself long since been robbed, the making of Ramses VI's sepulchre had at least produced a generous scree, to which Tutankhamun owed his current oblivion and future fame. Scrambling cautiously over this, and the accumulation of sand and stones in the tomb's entrance, Nicagoras followed his dragoman down a long corridor. We can tell from its thick encrustation of graffiti that this tomb was by far the most popular with visitors; and Nicagoras's practised guide knew exactly what appealed to the different sorts of people who made up his clientèle. Learning that the Athenian was a priest, and a cultured man with philosophical interests, he made a point of stopping in front of a scene which shows the soul standing before Osiris, the god of the dead, thanks to which this tomb is sometimes called the ‘Tomb of Metempsychosis’.

The account of the reforms of Ephialtes given in the Aristotelian Ath. Pol. (25) is as follows:

For about seventeen years after the Persian Wars the constitution lasted unchanged with the members of the Areopagus pre-eminent, despite a gradual decline (καίπερ ύποφερομένη κατά μικρόν). With the increase of the mass of citizens [if that is the right way to understand the phrase αύξανομένου τοῦ πλήθους] on becoming leader of the People Ephialtes, the son of Sophonides, who was thought to be both uncorrupt and just in his attitude to the constitution, attacked the Council [sc. of the Areopagus]. First, he brought down many individual Areopagites, by bringing lawsuits against them for their acts of administration. Then in the year when Conon was archon (i.e. 462/1) he had removed from them all the additional functions (τὰ έπί'θετα) by means of which they guarded the constitution (δι’ ὧν ἧν ή τῆς πολιτείας φυλακή) and accorded some to the Council of the Five Hundred and some to the People and the Courts.

Empedocles' Fragment 100 contains an account of ‘the way that all things breathe in and out’. It may conveniently be divided into three sections:

A. Lines 1–5, the apparatus of breathing.

B. Lines 6–8, the manner in which breathing takes place.

C. Lines 8–25, an illustration taken from the working of the klepsydra.

I shall discuss the fragment under thesethree headings.

A. The Apparatus of Breathing

These lines (1–5) are translated as follows by Diels-Kranz: ‘Also aber atmet alles ein und aus: Allen sind blutarme Fleischröhren über die Oberfläche des Körpers hin gespannt, und an ihren Mündungen ist mit vielen Ritzen durchweg durchbohrt der Haut äusserste Oberfläche, so dass zwar das Blut drinnen geborgen bleibt, der Luft aber freier Zutritt durch die Öffnungen gebahnt ist.’ Thus the picture which Diels gives us is of tubes running out to the skin all over the body, and at the ends of the tubes perforated flaps of skin which will allow the passage of air but not of blood. The tubes are, furthermore, only partly filled with blood.

This line of interpretation has been followed by most scholars since, and it appears to derive some reinforcement from Aristotle, who in his comment on the passage at de respiratione 7, p. 473, b 1 ff., says: ‘They have passages through to the outer air.’ The ‘outer air’ would appear to mean the outer air outside the body, and we might therefore be tempted to suppose that Aristotle meant to say that these tubes ended up at the surface of the skin.

The ode celebrates a number of victories (all of them, as we shall see, in the δόλιχοϲ, the ‘long’ race) won by a certain Ergoteles, of Himera in Sicily. It is not in any proper sense an Olympian at all: the first victory mentioned was at Olympia, which is why the ode was classified by Aristophanes of Byzantium among the Olympians; but the most recent of the victories, the immediate occasion of the ode, was won not at Olympia but at Pytho.

The ode begins with an invocation of Fortune, and a prayer that she should protect the victor's city. From this it proceeds, in the regular fashion of the Greek hymn, to a statement of Fortune's power; and this statement then merges into a gnomic passage on the instability and unpredictability of human affairs, from which in turn we emerge to the victor and to his changing fortune and final success.

The study of animal behavior is a newcomer to the interpretation of the rites and symbols of classical antiquity. Here its promise to produce new insights into old questions is fully matched by the threat of ready-made frames, into which scant and fragile fragments of evidence can only too easily be fitted.

The bridging of the Hellespont by Xerxes was a unique achievement. How was it done? The Chorus of Elders in Aeschylus' Persians expressed their wonder at ‘the flax-bound raft’, and Herodotus described the construction of the two bridges, each with warships as pontoons, with cables well over a kilometre long, and with a roadway capable of carrying a huge army. Classical scholars have generally found these accounts inadequate and even inexplicable, especially in regard to the relationship between the pontoons and the cables. The Hellespont has strong currents which vary in their direction, turbulent and often stormy waters, and exposure to violent winds, blowing sometimes from the Black Sea and sometimes from the Mediterranean. How were the warships moored in order to face the currents and withstand the gales? Did the warships form a continuous platform, or was each ship free to move in response to weather conditions? What was the function of the enormous cables? How and where were they made? Did they bind the pontoons together? Did they carry the roadway? How were they fixed at the landward ends? This article attempts an answer to these questions through the collaboration of a classical scholar and a mechanical engineer.