In 1957, Edgar Lobel published an Oxyrhynchus papyrus (P. Oxy. 2390) containing anonymous commentaries to poems of Alcman which has not ceased to fascinate philologists and historians of ancient philosophy.

The consensus of modern opinion on the performance of this ode is that it was not a properly commissioned epinicion, but was sent spontaneously by Bacchylides in an attempt to introduce himself to Hieron. Gzella, for one, argues that many so-called epinicia were sent from poet to patron in order to impress and win commissions. Hence one finds, or so he claims, the terms , though, to be sure, commissioned epinicia were far more common.1 One could be misled here into believing that these were terms used by Pindar and Bacchylides themselves

It is no longer generally believed that Empedocles was the divided character portrayed by nineteenth-century scholars, a man whose scientific and religious views were incompatible but untouched by each other. Yet it is still widely held that, however unitary his thought, nevertheless he still wrote more than one poem, and that his poems can be clearly divided between those which do, and those which do not, concern ‘religious matters’.1 Once this assumption can be shown to be shaky or actually false, the grounds for dividing the quotations of Empedocles into two poems by subject matter disappear; and without that division our interpretation of Empedocles stands in need of radical revision. This paper startswith the modest task of showing that Empedocles may have written only one philosophical poem and not two, and goes on to suggest some of the ways in which we have to rethink the whole story if he did. If all our material belongs to one poem we are bound to link the cycle of the daimones with that of the elements, and this has far-reaching consequences for our interpretation.

This passage, which appears without variation at the end of four of Euripides' tragedies and with slight variation in a fifth,1 is perhaps the most notorious of the brief sequences of lines, usually anapaestic and usually assigned to the chorus, with which nearly all the extant plays of Sophocles and Euripides conclude.2 Unlike the more varied final speeches of extant Aeschylean tragedy, which are closely integrated with the play's concluding action, these passages often seem almost detachable from such action, a comment upon or merely after finished business rather than a part of its finishing. In some instances there is general scholarly agreement that the concluding lines are relevant to the action of a play, but many of these passages have been variously dismissed by scholars - as interpolations, as mere dramatic conveniences, or as intentional throwaways.

Few portions of Eduard Fraenkel's commentary on Aeschylus′ Agamemnon have been so influential as the three and a half ages On the Weapon with which, according to the Oresteia, Agamemnon was murdered.1 In contrast with the controversy and disagreement stirred by his remarks on The Footprints in the Choephoroe,2 his thesis concerning Clytemnestra's murder-weapon has met with almost universal approva and the matter is widely regarded as settled. It is symptomatic that within the past twelve months two important books should have appeared4 which independently assume the unquestionable Tightness of Fraenkel's conclusion: the weapon envisaged by Aeschylus was a sword, not an axe.

In an earlier contribution to this journal I argued that many details in the experience of Pentheus in the Bacchae derive from the ritual of mystic initiation. One of these details was his vision of two suns, two cities of Thebes, and Dionysos as a bull. I would like to add here a further point of the same kind about this vision.

‘Irony,’ says Quintilian, is that figure of speech or trope ‘in which something contrary to what is said is to be understood’ (contrarium ei quoddicitur intelligendum est). His formula has stood the test of time. It passes intact into Dr Johnson's dictionary (‘ mode of speech in which the meaning is contrary to the words’ [1755]). It survives virtually intact in ours:Irony is the use of words to express something other than, and especially the opposite of, [their] literal meaning (Webster's).

In Plato's Theaetetus Socrates is portrayed as a midwife of the intellect. The comparison of Socratic questioning to midwifery had until recently been commonly attributed to Socrates himself. In 1977 M. F. Burnyeat published Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration, which transformed the way in which the dialogue has since been perceived. The author maintains that the midwife comparison is in no sense to be attributed to the historical Socrates.

Editors and translators have found this paragraph troublesome. Though its general tenor is fairly clear it is not easy to interpret in detail, and the task is complicated by three points of uncertainty about the text, (i) Bury conjectured that in 5 is misplaced, and should stand in 3 after . (ii) After in 5, the second hand of Ven. 189 adds modern editors have often accepted this addition, (iii) In 6, has been thought incomprehensible: Badham offered instead, and this suggestion too has found some favour.

In his biological works Aristotle frequently applies the language of abnormality to those individual members of natural kinds which fail through various defects to live up to the standard of their kind (e.g. GA iv.3 and 4). Aristotle extends this language of abnormality to natural kinds themselves, and will often speak of kinds as‘ deformed’ (TreTTripanevos or avd-rrrfpos) or ‘warped’ (Siearpafifxevos).1 In the vast majority of his references to abnormal kinds,2 Aristotle represents them as defective only because they do not measure up to some standard of excellence, and not because of any genuine distortion of their nature. In one category of cases the defective species belongs to a genus which demands a certain characteristic of its species, but which the defective species does not possess. The lobster, for example, belongs to a genus that possesses claws for prehension and for defence, and thus it too possesses claws. It is, however, ‘deformed’, because it does not use its claws in the natural way, but rather for locomotion (PA iv.8.684a32-bl). Such deformities as these may even conform to Aristotle′s teleology and promote the good of the defective species. The seal, for example, belongs to the genus, the viviparous terrestrial, which requires external ears of its members. The seal does not possess them, and consequently is ‘deformed’ (PA n.12.657a22–4). Yet Aristotle also argues that the seal′s lack of external ears is an advantage, because of its aquatic life, and Nature acts ‘reasonably’ in depriving it of them (GA v.l.781b22–8). In another category of cases the abnormal kind is defective with respect to a broader standard of excellence that lies outside its genus. Testaceans, such as the snail, are ‘deformed’ because they move ‘contrary to nature’. They do not move like a footed animal, but as if they were footed animals whose legs have been cut off (IA 19.714b8–19). This category of abnormality even takes in the whole of the animal kingdom, with the exception of man. For every animal is ‘dwarf-like’ in comparison with man, which is the best of animals, because the upper part of every animal′s body, in contrast with that of man′s, is larger than its lower part (PA iv.lO.686b2–21).

In an excellent survey of Alexander′s campaign in western Pakistan, P. H. L. Eggermont has done a great deal to clarify local topography and toponymy and Alexander′s movements, and has improved on Sir Aurel Stein′s classic investigations and on the work of Sir Olaf Caroe on which he chiefly bases himself.1 However, he is less familiar with the critical use of Greek and Roman sources, and of Arrian in particular [henceforth cited as A.],2 than he so admirably is with the Indian sources. This has led to one or two errors in interpretation and especially in chronology, some of which are due to his following what specialists working on Alexander would regard as outdated scholarship. Since his work has opened up sources, and a point of view, hitherto unfamiliar to standard Alexander scholarship, and will remain of basic importance to our interpretation of Alexander, the chronology of this brief campaign, which has not received much attention from Alexander specialists, and the events surrounding the city of Peucelaotis3 are worth a more detailed investigation in the light of his discussion.

If Medea has attracted more readers to the Argonautica than any other character – thereby also determining which parts of the poem have become generally familiar – she has also provided critics of the poem with their major (sometimes their sole) topic for discussion. The main charge, particularly among critics writing in English, is that the various aspects of Medea – awakening love, deadly magic, fratricide – form neither a consistent nor a credible whole. One quotation, from an article which explicitly aims to summarise recent criticism, may stand as representative: ‘[Medea′s passion] produced an inconsistency [Apollonius] either ignored deliberately in the confidence of his Medea in love, or, just possibly, may not have noticed. The same emotionally immature and helpless Medea is the competent, unfrightened servant of Hecate, the cool instructress of Jason in taming the bulls, the calm soother of the dragon…the behaviour of Medea later in the [fourth] Book is, against all reason, quite untouched by what we would think of as a shattering experience, at the very least destructive of any real trust between her and Jason….It is as if Apollonius has thrown in [Apsyrtus′ murder] without care or realisation of its consequence for the consistency of her character’. Behind criticism of this kind lies both an understandable desire to relate the characters of ancient literature, if not to our own experience, at least to what instinct tells us is possible, and the whole tradition of criticism which descends from the Poetics of Aristotle. In recent years other approaches have gained currency, but in this paper I shall explore the presentation of Medea as a whole (Part I) and particularly of her flight from Colchis (Part II) within a traditional framework in an attempt to clarify what seem to me to be critical misunderstandings.

Late in the campaigning season of 198 B.C., the Achaean League abandoned its traditional place within Macedon's Hellenic Symmachy and entered into war on the side of Rome against the Macedonian king, Philip V. The Achaean politician Aristaenus, strategos of the League in 199/198, played a crucial role in bringing about this reversal of policy. The strategic impact of the Achaean decision is not in doubt: the Macedonian political-military system in Greece was weakened, while the Romans and their allies gained a firm base in southern Greece from which to threaten the Macedonian homeland next summer. What has been in some question among scholars, however, is the extent to which the Achaean decision was controversial among Greeks in the second century, both in the 190s and later. It is the purpose of the present paper to re-examine this question, with particular attention being paid to Pol. 18.13–15: the famous discussion ‘On Traitors’ by the historian Polybius, himself an Achaean statesman of a later period. I will suggest that – contrary to current scholarly opinion – the discussion ‘On Traitors’ was evoked, precisely, by Polybius' reflections (and unease) about the behaviour of Aristaenus and the Achaean League in 198, behaviour which was, in fact, highly controversial.

In Lucan′s second book, an old man looks back to the atrocities perpetrated in the civil strife of the eighties, chiefly on the return of Marius and Cinna to Rome in late 87 and on that of Sulla in 82 (lines 70–233). The episodes that Lucan briefly refers to are all otherwise known, and there seems no particular reason to assume that he is not drawing on Livy as his principal source, as he does for the events of his main narrative, the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. The scholia to the passage may be a different matter.

Ovid's Tristia4.10 has in the past chiefly been considered as a source of biographical information rather than as a poem, but increasing interest in the poetry of Ovid's exile has now at last started to promote serious efforts to appreciate its literary qualities. The poem presents a formidable challenge to the critic: at first reading it seems a singularly pedestrian account of the poet's life and, although one may adduce plenty of parallels for details in its phrasing elsewhere in the poetry of Ovid and the other Augustans, it is clear that Ovid's thought-processes are not to be explained solely in terms of the main stream of Greco-Roman poetic tradition. Prose biography and autobiography, rhetorical apology and eulogy, subliterary epitaphs and inscriptional lists of achievements: all these types of writing could have influenced Ovid's selection of data.

The above passage, from Maternus' first speech, poses a number of rather intricate textual problems. J. F. Gronovius rightly divined that the meaningless vaticiniireferred to a person whose evil power Maternus had broken. Who else but Vatinius, Nero's notorious jester? To read Vatiniifor vaticiniiis intrinsically attractive, and in default of a better alternative has found almost universal approval. The contextual implications of this acclaimed conjecture have not, however, always been appreciated. It is with these that the present paper is concerned. Discussing (I) the conjecture imperante Nerone(L. Miiller), and (II) the interpretation of J. Stroux, it will attempt in the final section (III) to relate the Vatinius incident to its original political and ideological context.

The interpretation of both the sulphur offered by the ambulator in line 3 and the glass he collects in exchange has long been a problem. Post′s opinion, offered in 1908, that broken glass could be, and was, mended with a sulphur glue has been subsequently eclipsed by scholars such as Leon and Smyth. They correctly discerned that Pliny, in HN 29.11.51 and 36.67.199, adduced by Post, does not refer to a sulphur-based adhesive, nor does Pliny suggest sulphur has any such property. Basic problems persist, however, which have not been properly resolved by recent commentators on Martial, regarding the form and function of sulphur as well as technical and cultural changes which would have bestowed some value on broken glass. New evidence and rarely cited evidence can be brought to bear on the earlier suppositions, which Citroni and Howell repeat, in order to solve the riddle of Martial 1.41 and add to our knowledge of ancient society.

An inscription found in the theatre of Hierapolis(Pamm UKkale)in Phrygia and recently published is of interest both in itself and because it may help to elucidate a passage of Arrian′sDiscourses of Epictetos.

It is often assumed that we know very little about how literary texts circulated in the Roman world because we know very little about the Roman book trade. In fact, we know a great deal about book circulation, even though we know little about the book trade. Romans circulated texts in a series of widening concentric circles determined primarily by friendship, which might, of course, be influenced by literary interests, and.by the forces of social status that regulated friendship. Bookstores and ‘public’ libraries, which made a text available to individuals personally unknown to the author and his friends, were comparatively late developments. To trace the circulation of a Roman literary work, we shall use a schematic model to follow a literary text from its initial conception through the widening circles through which it moved.

Critics comment on the simplicity of the jest here, not without reason.1 But the levity also has some sophistication, of a literary kind. For a start,andare aptly long and are carefully left to the end of their clauses and lines for maximum effect. In addition, these striking words, which appear for the first (and last) time in Sappho, may well have been deliberate adaptations of two adjectives which had previously occurred only in Homer,2 and they would in any case have called to mind the Homeric ones, because of their close similarity and because there are no other variants of these compounds in surviving literature down to the time of the j poetess.3 At Odyssey11.312 the poet had said of Otus and Ephialtes and at Iliad 7.220, 222, 245, 266 and 11.545 he had described the shield of Ajax asSo, given the epic flavour of Sappho′s epithets, it was amusing of her to include them at all in such a light and frivolous context. There is also pawkiness in the poetess′s application of these terms I with their Homeric tinge to quite different and very mundane objects; and the humour is increased when one takes into account the associations that these words had (in connection with the feet of a human she uses an adjective that recalls the extent of the whole bodies of two Giants; and with reference to the sandals of an ordinary man she uses one which conjures up the huge shield of a hero).This strikes me as an early instance of witty adaptation of epic diction such as is found in Anacreon 358 and 417 PMG.4