This paper should have had a longer and more explanatory title. I am not overmuch concerned with the interesting general question of the influence exerted by the Atthis of Androtion on subsequent accounts, primarily of course on that of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia: the specific problem I wish to discuss is the use of documents in these chapters of AP, and the possibility that they were transmitted by Androtion. Jacoby in his introduction to that author (n. 86) treats it as ‘fairly certain’ that ‘A. supplied the documents for the reform of the constitution in 412/1 B.C. (AP 29–33) in detail and evidently with approval as a kind of model constitution’. He was not alone in this opinion, which needs examination. The argument is necessarily speculative, a weighing of probabilities, and the only statement for which I claim certainty is that Wilamowitz was wrong in one detail.

In the first excitement of the publication of AP some eminent scholars, headed by Wilamowitz and Köhler, acclaimed the data found in AP as authentic documents which could be used to ‘correct’ Thucydides. The counter-attack by Ed. Meyer concentrated on the argument that official documents are not the best guide to what actually happens in a revolution: that is, Meyer still accepted the documents as authentic, but he upheld the narrative of Thucydides against them. To the best of my knowledge it was not till 1907 that the question was raised, by Judeich, whether any authentic documents would have survived the restoration of democracy.

Lucian's singular role within the socio-cultural context of the period known as the Second Sophistic has found increasing appreciation amongst scholars, particularly over the last fifteen years. Although not a sophist in the true sense, Lucian can be regarded as an outstanding pepaideumenos, meaning this: during an era in which being Greek was less a matter of political than of cultural definition, and in which membership in the upper administrative echelons was dependent on academic qualifications, on the mastery, that is, of a code which consisted of broad general knowledge and rhetorical activity partnered by thorough conversancy with the literary heritage and language of Attic Greece – during this age, then, Lucian proved himself not only a worthy representative of such paideia, but also contributed with his literary works to its development and adaptation.

The Eclogues are universally regarded as a highly structured literary artefact, and some scholars believe that Virgil's summa manus modified the contents of individual poems at the book's final stage to achieve balance and symmetry. Whether or not such modification took place, the pattern of addressees/honorands in the collection – where they exist – ought to have some significance. The following table sets them out:

1. 1. deus (7) = iuuenem (42), usually identified as Octavian

2. 2. None

3. 3. C. Asinius Pollio (84–9)

4. 4. C. Asinius Pollio (esp. 11–14)

5. 5. None

6. 6. P. Alfenus Varus (6–7); C. Cornelius Gallus (64–73)

7. 7. None

8. 8. tu (6–13), often identified as C. Asinius Pollio, but by some as Octavian

9. 9. P. Alfenus Varus (26–9); L. Varius Rufus and C. Helvius Cinna (35–6); (?)‘Caesar’ (cf. Dionaei … Caesaris astrum, 47–9)

10. 10. C. Cornelius Gallus (passim)

Ever since the decipherment of Linear B, a large amount has been written on Mycenaean spelling. The basic rules were established very quickly, although the debate is still continuing as to the theoretical basis of Mycenaean spelling; various models have been proposed here. One of the most serious problems for all existing models is that at the edges, there is spelling variation that simply cannot be captured by one and the same algorithm. Here, we shall look at two such cases:

• the graphic rendering of the subphonemic glides j and w as in e.g. i-je-re-u, a-re-ku-tu-ru-wo which can be contrasted with later Greek ἱερεύς and ἀλεκτρυών where the glides are not or not routinely indicated;

• and so-called plene writing; this term is used in a variety of meanings. Here, we shall deal with the graphic rendering of consonants in the coda of final syllables where the standard spelling rules would predict their omission, e.g. wa-na-ka rendering /wanaks/ where the spelling rules would predict a rendering wa-na.

In 1903, in the preface to the first volume of his edition of Manilius, Housman wrote:

… we now witness in Germany pretty much what happened in England after 1825, when our own great age of scholarship, begun in 1691 by Bentley's Epistola ad Millium, was ended by the successive strokes of doom which consigned Dobree and Elmsley to the grave and Blomfield to the bishopric of Chester. England disappeared from the fellowship of nations for the next forty years.

(Housman (1903) xlii)

The name which lurks unspoken behind this paragraph is that of Richard Porson, and Dobree, Elmsley and Blomfield, whose names are spoken, were all in different ways his disciples. Although Porson had no pupils and gave no lectures, in the generation just after his death he had a number of followers who cultivated his memory and emulated his style, at least before they were removed to higher spheres by death or preferment to bishoprics. If the cultivation of his scholarly style can be called Porsonianism, it was the cult of Porson himself after his death in 1808, centred on Trinity College, Cambridge, for which three years later the Oxford scholar Peter Elmsley coined the name ‘Porsoniasm’. As one might expect, the name-giver was an outsider. Yet as his inclusion in Housman's sketch indicates, Elmsley could be called a Porsonian, and indeed in 1911, in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Latin at Cambridge, Housman remarked that ‘scholarship meant to Elmsley what it meant to Dobree’ (Housman (1969) 25). But though Elmsley was a Porsonian, he was not (if I may venture a hapax of my own) a Porsoniast.